"Literary works . . . are in a sense less deluded than other forms of discourse, because they implicitly acknowledge their own rhetorical status -- the fact that what they say is different from what they do, that all their claims to knowledge work through figurative structures which render them ambiguous and indeterminate.  They are, one might say, ironic in nature.  Other forms of writing are just as figurative and ambiguous, but pass themselves off as unquestionable truth."  (Eagleton, 145).

Judge Posner agrees! (sort of)