Možné svety, naratívna fikcia a autofikcia

The aim of this article is to contribute to the discussion with Petr Koťátko about the nature of autobiographical and autofictional texts. It is argued that we approach all statements contained in an autofictional narrative text as readers in the as-if mode and read them as referring to an empirical author who styles himself or herself in the position of the narrator of the text. Based on the identity of the empirical author and the narrator, we pretend that the narrator has our a priori trust that the empirical author of the text is as the text portrays him or her; at the same time, we are always ready to relate the statements that we receive in the as-if mode to the real world outside the as-if mode. It is also argued that if the explanation of narrative fiction works is based on the notion of the as-if mode, the notion of a possible world becomes redundant.