Many people share the intuition that by turning to works of literature something can be learned about the world. One way to explain the epistemic access to the world that fictional literature provides is by comparing it to thought experiments. Both - thought experiments and works of fiction - might be seen as imaginative exercises which help to find out what would or could happen if certain conditions were met. This comparison of fictional literature with thought experiments provides the point of departure for the contributions in our volume. It contributes to the discussion of an approach that has quite recently entered the field of the philosophy of literature.

Falk Bornmüller works as a research associate and project manager at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg. Johannes Franzen is Postdoc at the Graduate School Gegenwart/Literatur in Bonn. Mathis Lessau is currently working as an academic assistant at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg.