James Hamilton

Hamilton argues that narratives engage our imaginations not so much by having us pretend the events they depict are true or present as by having us engage in a kind of anticipation of events to come. The idea is that the grasp of a narratively structured presentation is explained in very much the same way any sequence of events, considered as a sequence, is grasped.

_The Art of Theater_ argues for the recognition of theatrical performance as an art form independent of dramatic writing. Identifies the elements that make a performance a work of art Looks at the competing views of the text-performance relationships An important and original contribution to the aesthetics and philosophy of theater.

A survey of and a comparison of the relative strengths of two favored views of what theatrical performers do: pretend or engage in a variety of self-display. The behavioral version of the pretense theory is shown to be relatively weak as an instrument for understanding the variety of performance styles available in world theater. Whether pretense works as a theory of the mental capacities that underly theatrical performance is a separate question.