Introduction to Literature: Fiction and the Form of Human Experience

What is Literature? How do you read and write about Literature? For many, fiction is a mystery, but Beach demystifies fiction and explains how literature expresses not only our human creativity, but also the important truths by which we live. Fiction derives from the Latin verb fictio, which means create, make, or form. It is related in meaning to the ancient Greek word poiema, which meant an action, deed, or act, and is the root of the English word poetry. The concepts of fiction and poetry refer to the fact that human consciousness is an active power. This led to the old Latin moniker of homo faber, "man makes himself." Consciousness acts on experience. Consciousness is not a passive receptor. Consciousness forms experience with emotion, colors it with meaning, and stabilizes it with identity. Our mind is not a “mirror of nature.” Our subjectivity co-creates experience with the objective world. Our minds cooperate with the world in order to produce an interaction between knower and known. As humans we personally participate in the "act of knowing" and in the construction of our knowledge. This interaction creates a phenomenon, a mental object perceived by the human senses, which is distinct from the object as it exists independently of our perceptions. The active creativity of human subjectivity does not falsify experience so much as make it meaningful and relevant. Fiction represents our truth.