• A powerful and convincing solution to a deep and intuitive problem
• Impressive scholarship; draws on work in both the Continental and analytic traditions
• Clear, lively, jargon-free prose

Readership: Advanced students and scholars of aesthetics and literature; anyone with an interest in the relationship between fiction and everyday life

John Gibson, University of Louisville

"Gibson's book is well-written, erudite and wide-ranging, littered with valuable insights, and his broad vision of cognitive literary value as not constrained by narrow notions of truth and reference is an attractive and welcome one." - Cain Samuel Todd, Analysis Reviews

"Gibson's voice is strong and original and his contribution fresh. Fiction and the Weave of Life is a well written work whose thesis is clearly adjusted and moderately put forward, which distinguishes the study from many earlier superficial literature-illuminates-reality cognitivists notions. Further, the book contains discussion that could be called metaphilosophy of literature and that perspicaciously illustrates the ongoing transition of emphasis from semantic to aesthetic issues in the analytic philosophy of literature." - Jukka Mikkonen The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

"We need more books like Fiction and the Weave of Life. Brief, coherent, readable and bold...The book is well-written, original, and thought-provoking. It deserves to be widely read." - James Harold, British Journal of Aesthetics

"Gibson is a philosopher of admirable clarity whose discussions contrast favourably with so much work in literary and cultural studies that seems to have little sense of what an argument is. At each point in his presentation, the reader knows just what move is being made in the debate... This is a book to be recommended for its clarity, its precision of argument, its laying out of a strong case for the literary humanist position, and its clear presentation of, and confrontation with, a range of opposing views that currently are popular within the field of philosophy of literature." - Frank B. Farrell, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

"engaging and admirably clear contribution to the philosophy of literature...it is a rigorous and stimulating book that offers a balanced critique of contemporary theories and important insights into the philosophical problem of literature." - Clare Carlisle, Times Higher Education

Introduction
1: The Loss of the Real
2: Literature & the Sense of the World
3: Beyond Truth and Triviality
4: The Work of Criticism
5: The Fictional & the Real
Conclusion