Editorial Style Guide for Fiction Studies: English Edition

Fiction Studies follows a house style based on De Gruyter’s adaptation of the MLA style. The journal generally follows British English conventions; however, it uses double quotation marks throughout.

Authors whose first language is not English are strongly encouraged to have their manuscripts reviewed by a native speaker before submission. The editors may correct minor language errors and suggest stylistic improvements, but they are not able to undertake substantial language editing or rewriting of manuscripts.

1. Manuscript Structure

·      Title

·      Author name

·      Institutional affiliation

·      Résumé (French)

·      Keywords

·      Mots-clés

·      Main text

·      Works cited

·      Notes/Footnotes

2. Formatting Rules

·      Use Times New Roman, 12-point font, for the main text and 10-point font for footnotes

·      Use British spelling.

·      Use a comma before the final “and” or “or” in a series of three or more items (the Oxford comma).

·      Use italics for book and journal titles.

·      Use major section headings in bold and title case and number them (e.g., “1 An Empirically Grounded Understanding of Fictionality”).

·      If dashes are used, use en dashes (–) rather than em dashes (—), with a space before and after the dash.

·      Avoid colloquial language, particularly contracted verb forms (e.g., didn’t, can’t, won’t).

·      Abstract length: 150–300 words.

3. In-Text Citations

·      (Walsh 2007)

·      (Lamarque and Olsen 1994)

·      (Altmann et al. 2014)

·      (Zwaan 1994, 930)

·      (Effe 2025a; Effe 2025b)

·      (Effe 2025a, ch. 1)

4. Works Cited

Arrange entries alphabetically by surname. Use hanging indents and full page ranges. Italicise book and journal titles. Place article and chapter titles in quotation marks. Repeat the author’s name in repeated-author entries.

Single-author book: Walsh, Richard. The Rhetoric of Fictionality: Narrative Theory and the Idea of Fiction. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2007.

Two-author book: Lamarque, Peter, and Stein Haugom Olsen. Truth, Fiction, and Literature: A Philosophical Perspective. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994.

Journal article: Walsh, Richard. “Fictionality as Rhetoric: A Distinctive Research Paradigm.” Style 53.4 (2019), 397–425.

Chapter in edited volume: Gjerlevsen, Simona Zetterberg, and Henrik Skov Nielsen. “Distinguishing Fictionality.” Exploring Fictionality. Ed. Cindie Aaen Maagaard et al. Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2020, 19–40.

Edited book: Hartner, Marcus, and Ralf Schneider, ed. Blending and the Study of Narrative. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012.

Repeated author: Effe, Alexandra. A History of Autofiction. London: Bloomsbury, 2025.
Effe, Alexandra. “Thinking (Im)Possibilities.” Literature 5.2 (2025).

Book with edition: Heti, Sheila. How Should a Person Be? 1st U.S. ed. New York: Henry Holt, 2012.

Reprint: Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000 [1957].

Translated work: Bakhtin, Mikhail. Problems in Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Transl. Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

5. Quotations

·      Short quotations should be incorporated into the running text and enclosed in double quotation marks.

·      Long quotations should be presented as indented block quotations.

·      Quotations in languages other than English should be accompanied by an English translation in parentheses. For short quotations, the translation should appear directly after the original quotation; for block quotations, it should be placed directly below the original quotation.

·       Use double quotation marks for article/chapter titles and short quotations.

·      Use single quotation marks for quotations within quotations.

·      Place commas and full stops inside closing quotation marks.

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Feuille de style pour Fiction Studies. Version française

Fiction Studies suit une charte stylistique fondée sur l’adaptation par De Gruyter du style MLA.

Les auteurs dont la langue maternelle n’est pas le français sont vivement encouragés à faire relire leurs manuscrits par un locuteur natif avant de les soumettre. Les éditeurs peuvent corriger des erreurs linguistiques mineures et suggérer des améliorations stylistiques, mais ils ne sont pas en mesure de procéder à une révision linguistique approfondie ni à une réécriture des manuscrits.

1. Présentation du manuscrit

·      Titre

·      Nom de l’auteur

·      Affiliation institutionnelle

·      Résumé (anglais)

·      Mots-clés

·      Mots-clés en anglais

·      Corps de texte

·      Bibliographie

·      Notes/notes de bas de page

2. Règles de mise en page

·      Utiliser Times New Roman, taille 12, pour le corps de texte, and Times New Roman, taille 10, pour les notes de bas de page.

·      Utiliser l’italique pour les titres d’ouvrages et de revues.

·      Les titres des grandes parties doivent être en gras et en majuscules. Ils doivent aussi être numérotés (par exemple : « 1 Compréhension de la fiction »)

·      Si vous utilisez des tirets, privilégiez les tirets courts (–) plutôt que les tirets longs  (—), en laissant un espace avant et après le tiret.

·      Longueur du résumé : 150-300 mots.

3. Références des citations dans le texte

·      (Walsh 2007)

·      (Lamarque and Olsen 1994)

·      (Altmann et al. 2014)

·      (Zwaan 1994, 930)

·      (Effe 2025a ; Effe 2025b)

·      (Effe 2025a, ch. 1)

4. Bibliographie

Classer les entrées par nom de famille en respectant l’ordre alphabétique.

Utiliser les retraits à gauche.

Indiquer les séries de pages complètes (pour les articles notamment).

Mettre en italiques les titres d’ouvrages et de revues. 

Placer les titres d’articles et de chapitres entre guillemets français.

Répéter le nom de l’auteur lorsqu’il y a plusieurs entrées pour un même auteur.

Monographie :

Walsh, Richard. The Rhetoric of Fictionality: Narrative Theory and the Idea of Fiction. Columbus : Ohio State University Press, 2007.

Lavocat, Françoise. Fait et fiction. Pour une frontière. Paris : Seuil, 2016. 

Ouvrage à deux auteurs :

Lamarque, Peter et Stein Haugom Olsen. Truth, Fiction, and Literature: A Philosophical Perspective. Oxford : Clarendon, 1994.

Article de revue :

Walsh, Richard. « Fictionality as Rhetoric: A Distinctive Research Paradigm ». Style 53.4 (2019), 397–425.

Letourneux, Matthieu. « Le genre comme fait de discours : pour une définition molle de la science-fiction ». Res Futurae [en ligne] 20 (2022) : DOI :

The Routledge Handbook of Fiction and Belief offers a fresh reevaluation of the relationship between fiction and belief, surveying key debates and perspectives from a range of disciplines including narrative and cultural studies, science, religion, and politics. This volume draws on global, cutting edge research and theory to investigate the historically variable understandings of fictionality, and allows readers to grasp the role of fictions in our understanding of the world.

This interdisciplinary approach provides a thorough introduction to the fundamental themes of:

Theoretical and Philosophical Perspectives on Fiction
Fiction, Fact, and Science
Social Effects and Uses of Fiction
Fiction and Politics
Fiction and Religion

Questioning how fictions in fact shape, mediate or distort our beliefs about the real world, essays in this volume outline the state of theoretical debates from the perspectives of literary theory, philosophy, sociology, religious studies, history, and the cognitive sciences. It aims to take stock of the real or supposed effects that fiction has on the world, and to offer a wide-reaching reflection on the implications of belief in fictions in the so-called “post-truth” era

Contents

Introduction

Alison James, Akihiro Kubo, and Françoise Lavocat

Part I: Believing in Fiction: Philosophical and Theoretical Perspectives

Belief, Imagination, and the Nature of Fiction

Stacie Friend

The "Willing Suspension of Disbelief": The Long History of a Short Phrase

Nicholas Paige

The Fictionality of Games and the Ludic Nature of Fiction: Make-believe, Immersion, Play

Marie-Laure Ryan

Fictional Emotions and Belief

Eva-Maria Konrad

Fictional Characters and Belief

Thomas Pavel

Fictionality, the Zone of Generic Fiction, and the Allure of Unreliable Narration

James Phelan

Belief is a Mess. That Makes it Good for Fiction. (A Perspective from Cognitive Literary Theory)

Lisa Zunshine

Fiction and Historiography

Annick Louis

Fiction and Scientific Knowledge

Adam Toon

Learning from Fiction

Gregory Currie, Heather Ferguson, Jacopo Frascaroli, Stacie Friend, Kayleigh Green, and Lena Wimmer

Part II: From Fiction to Belief: Social and Political Effects

Do Fictions Impact People’s Beliefs? A Critical View

Nicolas Baumard and Edgar Dubourg

The Impact of Fiction on Beliefs about Gender

Vera Nünning

Implicit Bias, Fiction, and Belief

Kris Goffin and Agnes Moors

Children’s Ideas about Stories and about Reality

Ayse Payir and Paul L. Harris

From Suspension of Disbelief to Production of Belief: The Case of Alternate Reality Games

Patrick Jagoda

Interactive Environments and Fictional Engagement

Olivier Caïra

Fake News and Fictional News

Jessica Pepp, Rachel Sterken and Eliot Michaelson

Trust, Credulity, and Speech

Philippe Roussin

Literature on Credit: Fiction and the Fiduciary Paradigm

Emmanuel Bouju

Fifth Generation Fictionality? Fiction, Politics, War

Henrik Zetterberg-Nielsen

Uses of Fantasy Fiction in Contemporary Political Mobilization

Anne Besson

Fiction, Belief, and Postcolonial Criticism

Alok Yadav

Can Fictions Predict the Future?

Anne Duprat

Dystopian Fictions and Contemporary Fears

Jean-Paul Engélibert

Fiction, Belief, and Climate Change: Paratexts, Skeptics, and Objects of Care

Erin James

Part III: Fiction and Religious Belief

Greek Mythology: Discourse, Belief, and Ritual Action

Claude Calame

Fiction and Belief: Approaching Medieval Latin Christendom

Julie Orlemanski

Literary Fictions, Religious "Fables," and Unbelief in the West

Nicolas Correard

Saints, Between Faith, Belief, and Fiction

Barbara Selmeci Castioni

The Role of Fiction in Buddhist Hagiography: The Case of Shinran

Markus Rüsch

Fiction and Belief in Ancient and Early Medieval India

Isabelle Ratié

Fiction, Religion, and Pre-Modern Arab-Islamic Literature (8th–18th Centuries)

Aboubakr Chraïbi

Fiction against Belief and Belief in Fiction in Modern Arabic Literature

Ève de Dampierre-Noiray

On Jewish Fiction and Belief: Duplicity, Parables, Confession

Sarah Hammerschlag

Religious Uses of Fantasy Fiction

Markus Altena Davidsen

Fake Cults, Hyper-Real Religions, Virtual Beliefs at the Crossroads of Fiction, the Sacred, and Technology

Lionel Obadia

—

Alison James is Professor of French at the University of Chicago. Her research interests include the Oulipo group, the contemporary novel, theories and representations of everyday life, documentary literature, and questions of fact and fiction.

Akihiro Kubo is Professor of French Literature at Kwansei Gakuin University. His research interests focus on twentieth-century French literature and theories of literature.

Françoise Lavocat is Professor of Comparative Literature at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle. She received an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from the University of Chicago, and is a member of the Institut Universitaire de France as well as a member and section chair in the Academia Europaea.

Concerned with the nature of the medium and the borders between fact and fiction, reflexivity was a ubiquitous feature of modernist and postmodernist literature and film. While in the wake of the post-postmodern “return to the real” cultural criticism has little time for discussions of reflexivity, it remains a key topic in narratology, as does fictionality. The latter is commonly defined opposition to the real and the factual, but remains conditioned by historical, cultural, discursive, and medium-related factors. Reflexivity blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction, however, by giving fiction a factual edge or by questioning the limits of factuality in non-fictional discourses. Fictionality, factuality, and reflexivity thus constitute a complex triangle of concepts, yet they are rarely considered together. This volume fills this gap by exploring the intricacies of their interactions and interdependence in philosophy, literature, film, and digital media, providing insights into a broad range of their manifestations from the ancient times to today, from East Asia through Europe to the Americas.

• In collaboration with: Graham Priest and Richard Saint-Gelais
• Edited by: Erika Fülöp

Dirigé par Alison James, Akihiro Kubo, et Françoise Lavocat

La fiction peut-elle changer le monde ? Le fait-elle réellement ? Des délires de Don Quichotte aux rêveries romantiques d'Emma Bovary, la fiction a souvent dépeint ses propres effets en termes négatifs, tandis que les anxiétés contemporaines concernant les jeux vidéo ou les mondes virtuels ravivent les anciennes craintes de la confusion entre fiction et réalité. Au-delà de ces représentations et dénonciations, il existe de nombreuses preuves de l'influence des univers fictionnels sur les vies réelles, les identités et les pratiques sociales. Tirés de cultures et de médias variés, les exemples étudiés ici incluent les fictions politiques du Japon prémoderne, les utilisations de la fiction dans les affaires juridiques et la fanfiction activiste contemporaine. Ils illustrent les effets de la fiction à différentes échelles, des paradoxes de la réponse émotionnelle individuelle à l'action collective à grande échelle.

Alison James est professeure au Département de Langues et Littératures Romanes de l'Université de Chicago, Akihiro Kubo est professeur à l'École des Humanités de l'Université Kwansei Gakuin, et Françoise Lavocat est professeure de Littérature Comparée à l'Université Sorbonne Nouvelle.