THE SMART TRICK OF LITERARY FICTION THAT NOBODY IS DISCUSSING

Philosophical fiction wasn't just new. Plato's dialogues had been embedded in fictional narratives and his Republic can be an early example of a Utopia. Ibn Tufail's 12th century Philosophus Autodidacticus with its Tale of the human outcast surviving on an island, plus the thirteenth century reaction by Ibn al-Nafis, Theologus Autodidactus are equa