What does a fictional entity like Madame Bovary have in common with a melody? They are both higher order objects, i.e. objects that are made up of other objects but are not strictly identical with their sum. Melodies are, as is well known, objects of higher order par excellence: we can play a familiar melody of eight tones, then afterwards we can employ eight new tones, and yet still recognize the melody despite the change. Why is this possible? It is possible because we have something more than the mere sum of eight tones, i.e. a ninth something, which is the form-quality, the Gestaltqualität, of the original eight. This ninth factor is the element which enables us to recognize the melody despite the fact that it had been transposed. These considerations are analogously appropriate for fictional entities: we have properties, sets of properties, and we have to understand what kind of relation subsists between these sets of properties and the fictional object - e.g. Madame Bovary. The set of properties is not one and the same with its object-correlate: what then is the difference between Madame Bovary and its constitutive properties? It is the very same kind of difference subsisting between the eight tones and the melody. The form or shape characteristic of the fictional entity can therefore, exactly as in the case of melody, be transposed to a different story, even with different constitutive properties, and still remain the same entity, as happens, for instance, to Madame Bovary in Allen's novel, The Kugelmass Episode.

Carola Barbero (www.labont.it/barbero) has a PhD in philosophy of language (University of Eastern Piedmont, Vercelli) and has a collaborative research grant in theoretical philosophy at the University of Torino. She is a member of CTAO (www.ctaorg.org) and of Labont (www.labont.it). She has published articles on phenomenology, nonexistent objects and fictional entities.