Metafiction  

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 +[[Image:Reverse Side Of a Painting.jpg|thumb|right|200px|
 +This page '''{{PAGENAME}}''' is part of the ''[[meta]]'' series.<br>
 +Illustration: ''[[Reverse Side of a Painting]]'' (1670) by [[Cornelis Norbertus Gysbrechts]], an example of ''[[metapainting]]''.]]
{{Template}} {{Template}}
-'''Metafiction''' is a type of [[fiction]] which self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction. +:''[[endless knot]]''
 +'''Metafiction''' is a type of [[fiction]] that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion. Metafiction uses techniques to draw attention to itself as a work of art, while exposing the "[[truth]]" of a story. "Metafiction" is the literary term describing fictional writing that self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in posing questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, usually using [[irony]] and self-reflection. It can be compared to [[presentational theatre]], which does not let the audience forget it is viewing a play; metafiction does not let the reader forget he or she is reading a fictional work.
 +==History==
 +Metafiction is primarily associated with [[modernist literature]] and [[postmodernist literature]], but is found at least as early as [[Homer]]'s ''[[Odyssey]]'' and [[Geoffrey Chaucer|Chaucer]]'s 14th century ''[[Canterbury Tales]]''. [[Miguel de Cervantes|Cervantes]]' ''[[Don Quixote]]'' is a metafictional novel published in the 17th century, and so is [[James Hogg]]'s ''[[The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner]]'' published in 1824. The novels of [[Brian O'Nolan]], written under the ''nom de plume'' Flann O'Brien, are considered to be examples of metafiction. In the 1950s several French novelists published works whose styles were collectively dubbed "[[nouveau roman]]". These "new novels" were characterized by the bending of [[Literary genre|genre]] and [[Stylistics (linguistics)|style]] and often included elements of metafiction. It became prominent in the 1960s, with authors and works such as [[John Barth]]'s ''[[Lost in the Funhouse]]'', [[Robert Coover]]'s "The Babysitter" and "The Magic Poker", [[Kurt Vonnegut]]'s ''[[Slaughterhouse Five]]'', [[Thomas Pynchon]]'s ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]]'' and [[William H. Gass]]'s ''Willie Master's Lonesome Wife''.
-It is the term given to fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality. It usually involves [[irony]] and is self-reflective. It can be compared to presentational theatre in a sense; presentational theatre does not let the audience forget they are viewing a play, and metafiction does not let the readers forget they are reading a work of fiction. +Unlike the [[antinovel]], or anti-fiction, metafiction is specifically fiction about fiction, i.e. fiction which self-consciously reflects upon itself.
-Metafiction is primarily associated with Modernist and Postmodernist literature but can be found at least as far back as [[Miguel de Cervantes|Cervantes]]' ''[[Don Quixote]]'' and even [[Geoffrey Chaucer|Chaucer]]'s 14th Century ''[[Canterbury Tales]]''.+==Etymology==
 +[[William H. Gass]] coined the term “metafiction” in a 1970 essay entitled “[[Philosophy and the Form of Fiction]]”.
 +== Various devices of metafiction ==
 +Some common metafictive devices in literature include:
 +*A story about a writer creating a story; e.g. ''[[At Swim-Two-Birds]]'' by [[Brian O'Nolan|Flann O'Brien]], [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[Misery (novel)|Misery]]'' and ''[[Secret Window, Secret Garden]]'', [[Ian McEwan]]'s ''[[Atonement (novel)|Atonement]]'', ''[[The Counterfeiters (novel)|The Counterfeiters]]'' by [[André Gide]], [[John Irving]]'s ''[[The World According to Garp]]'', ''[[Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea]]'' by [[Michael Morpurgo]], ''[[A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man]]'' by [[James Joyce]], ''[[Oracle Night]]'' by [[Paul Auster]], and Cy Coleman's 1989 Tony Award best musical, ''[[City of Angels (musical)|City of Angels]]''.
 +*A story about a reader reading a book; e.g. ''[[The Neverending Story]]'' by [[Michael Ende]], [[Italo Calvino]]'s ''[[If on a winter's night a traveler]]'', [[Ishmael Reed]]'s ''Mumbo Jumbo'', [[Elizabeth Kostova]]'s ''[[The Historian]]'' and ''[[The Princess Bride]]'' by [[William Goldman]].
 +*A story that features itself (as a narrative or as a physical object) as its own prop or [[MacGuffin]]; e.g. [[Cornelia Funke]]'s ''[[Inkheart]]'' (which also plays a role in the sequels); ''[[The Dark Tower (Lewis novel)|The Dark Tower]]'' by [[C. S. Lewis]]. [[Ira Levin]]'s play ''[[Deathtrap]]'' is an extreme example.
 +*A story containing another work of fiction within itself; e.g. ''[[The Laughing Man (Salinger)|The Laughing Man]]'', ''[[The Dark Tower (Lewis novel)|The Dark Tower]]'', ''[[The Iron Dream]]'', ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]]'', ''[[Sophie's World]]'', ''[[A Clockwork Orange]]'', ''[[Pale Fire]]'', ''[[The Princess Bride]]'', ''[[Ki Longfellow|Houdini Heart]], ''[[The Island of the Day Before]]'', ''[[Steppenwolf (novel)|Steppenwolf]]'', ''[[The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay]]'', ''[[The Man in the High Castle]]'', ''[[Heart of Darkness]]''.
 +*A story addressing the specific conventions of story, such as title, character conventions, paragraphing or plots; e.g. ''[[Lost in the Funhouse]]'' and ''[[On with the Story]]'' by [[John Barth]], ''[[The Last Unicorn]]'' by [[Peter S. Beagle]], or [[Stephen Sondheim]]'s musical ''[[Into the Woods]]''.
 +*A novel where the narrator intentionally exposes him or herself as the author of the story; e.g. ''[[The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao]]'', ''[[The Razor's Edge]]'', ''[[Mister B. Gone]]'', ''[[The Unbearable Lightness of Being]]'', ''[[The Plague]]'', ''[[Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (novel)|Even Cowgirls Get the Blues]]'', ''[[The BFG]]'', ''[[O Tempo e o Vento]]'', ''[[The Museum of Innocence]]'', [[Ishmael Reed]]'s ''[[Japanese by Spring]]'', ''[[The French Lieutenant's Woman]]'', ''[[A Series of Unfortunate Events]]'', [[Samuel R. Delany]]'s ''[[Nova (novel)|Nova]]''.
 +*A book in which the book itself seeks interaction with the reader; e.g. ''[[Willie Masters' Lonely Wife]]'' by [[William H. Gass]], ''[[House of Leaves]]'' by [[Mark Z. Danielewski]], or ''[[Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!]]'' by [[Mo Willems]].
 +*A story in which the readers of the story itself force the author to change the story; e.g. ''[[More Bears!]]'' by [[Kenn Nesbitt]].
 +*Narrative [[footnotes]], which continue the story while commenting on it; e.g. [[Vladimir Nabokov|Nabokov's]] ''[[Pale Fire]]'', ''[[House of Leaves]]'', ''[[Infinite Jest]]'' by [[David Foster Wallace]], ''[[Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell]]'' by [[Susanna Clarke]], [[Alan Moore]]'s ''[[From Hell]]'', ''[[Cable & Deadpool]]'' by [[Fabian Nicieza]], ''[[An Abundance of Katherines]]'' by [[John Green (author)|John Green]], ''[[Shriek: An Afterword]]'' by [[Jeff VanderMeer]], many books by [[Robert Rankin]], and the [[Discworld]] novels by [[Terry Pratchett]].
 +*A story in which the characters are aware that they are in a story; e.g., ''[[Redshirts (novel)|Redshirts]]'' by [[John Scalzi]], the [[Parodies of Harry Potter|Henry Potty]] parody series, and various works by [[Robert Rankin]].
 +*An autobiographical fiction in which the main character, by the last parts of the book, has written the first parts and is reading some form of it to an audience: ''[[Shoplifting from American Apparel]]'' by [[Tao Lin]], ''[[Anathem]]'' by [[Neal Stephenson]].
-In the [[1950s]], several French novelists published works whose styles were collectively dubbed "[[nouveau roman]]", meaning "new novel". These "new novels" were characterized by their bending of [[Literary genre|genre]] and [[Stylistics (linguistics)|style]] and often included elements of metafiction. +Films which use metafictive devices include ''[[Adaptation (film)|Adaptation]]'', which wraps metafictively around the real-world non-fiction book ''[[The Orchid Thief]]'', and ''[[Barton Fink]]'', as well as the thrillers ''[[The Usual Suspects]]'', ''[[Memento (film)|Memento]]'' and ''[[Inception]]''. Examples of other media which take part in metafictiveness are [[Al Capp]]'s ''[[Fearless Fosdick]]'' in ''[[Li'l Abner]]'', the ''[[Tales of the Black Freighter]]'' in ''[[Watchmen]]'', or the ''[[Itchy and Scratchy]] Show'' within [[The Simpsons]], as well as the computer game ''[[Myst]]'' in which the player represents a person who has found a book named ''Myst'' and been transported inside it.
-It came to prominence in the early [[1960s]] through such authors as [[John Barth]], [[Robert Coover]], and [[William H. Gass]]. The classic examples from the time include: Barth's ''Lost in the Funhouse'', Wheen's ''Yellow is the Colour of My Banana'', Coover's ''The Babysitter'' and ''The Magic Poker'', and Gass's ''Willie Master's Lonesome Wife''.{{GFDL}}+The theme of metafiction may be central to the work, as in ''[[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman]]'' (1759) or as in Herman Melville's ''[[The Confidence Man]]'', Chapter XIV, in which the narrator talks about the literary devices used in the other chapters. But as a literary device, metafiction has become a frequent feature of postmodernist literature. Examples such as ''[[If on a winter's night a traveler]]'' by [[Italo Calvino]], "a novel about a person reading a novel" is an exercise in metafiction. [[Paul Auster]] has made metafiction the central focus of his writing and is probably the best known active novelist specialising in the genre. Often metafiction figures for only a moment in a story, as when "Roger" makes a brief appearance in [[Roger Zelazny]]'s ''[[The Chronicles of Amber]]''.
 + 
 +It can be used in multiple ways within one work. For example, novelist [[Tim O'Brien (author)|Tim O'Brien]], a Vietnam War veteran, writes in his short story collection ''[[The Things They Carried]]'' about a character named "Tim O'Brien" and his war experiences in Vietnam. Tim O'Brien, as the narrator, comments on the fictionality of some of the war stories, commenting on the "truth" behind the story, though all of it is characterized as fiction. In the story chapter ''How to Tell a True War Story'', O'Brien comments on the difficulty of capturing the truth while telling a war story. In [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[The Dark Tower (series)|The Dark Tower]]'' series, King himself appears as a pivotal character set with the task of writing ''The Dark Tower'' books so that the main characters can continue their quest. Other Stephen King books, and characters from them, are mentioned in the narrative. In an afterword to the series finale (''[[The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower]]''), King details why he chose to include himself in his novel. And in [[James Patterson]]'s [[Alex Cross]] series, ''[[Along Came a Spider]]'' is both the book written by Patterson and a book written by Cross about the events depicted in the book.
 + 
 +One of the most sophisticated treatments of the concept of the novel ''in'' a novel occurs in [[Muriel Spark]]'s debut, ''The Comforters''. Spark imbues Caroline, her central character, with voices in her head which constitutes the narration Spark has just set down on the page. In the story Caroline is writing a critical work on the form of the novel when she begins to hear a tapping typewriter (accompanied by voices) through the wall of her house. The voices dictate a novel to her, in which she believes herself to be a character. The reader is thereby continually drawn to the narrative structure, which in turn ''is'' the story, i.e. a story about storytelling which itself disrupts the conventions of storytelling. At no point does Spark as author enter the narrative however, remaining omniscient throughout and adhering to the conventions of [[Third-person narrative#Third-person narrative mode|third-person]] narration.
 + 
 +According to [[Patricia Waugh]] "all fiction is .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. implicitly metafictional," since all works of literature are concerned with language and literature itself. Some elements of metafiction are similar to devices used in [[metafilm]] techniques.
 + 
 +==Film and television==
 +:''[[metafilm]], [[metatelevision]]''
 + 
 +*''[[Seinfeld]]'' uses this extensively in episodes revolving around the production of a show titled ''Jerry''.
 +*Screenwriter [[Charlie Kaufman]] often uses this narrative technique. In the film ''[[Adaptation (film)|Adaptation.]]'', his character Charlie Kaufman ([[Nicolas Cage]]) tortuously attempts to write a screenplay adapted from the book ''[[The Orchid Thief]]'', only to come to understand that such an adaptation is impossible. Many plot devices used throughout the film are uttered by Kaufman as he develops a screenplay, and the screenplay, which eventually results in ''Adaptation'' itself. In Kaufman's film ''[[Synecdoche, New York]]'', stage director Caden Cotard ([[Philip Seymour Hoffman]]) endeavors to create a vast theatrical project about the world around him, with actors playing himself and everyone in his life. Thus the film ''Synecdoche, New York'', a portrayal of the narrative of Caden's life, tells the story of a portrayal of the narrative of Caden's life.
 +*''[[A Cock and Bull Story|Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story]]'' is a 2006 British comedy directed by [[Michael Winterbottom]]. It is a film-within-a-film based on a book-within-a-book, ''[[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman]]''. It features actors [[Steve Coogan]] and [[Rob Brydon]] playing themselves as egotistical actors during the making of a screen adaptation of [[Laurence Sterne]]'s 18th century novel Tristram Shandy, which is a fictional account of the narrator's attempt at writing an autobiography. [[Gillian Anderson]] and [[Keeley Hawes]] also play themselves in addition to their Tristram Shandy roles.
 +*Some episodes of the ''[[Star Trek]]'' series use the [[holodeck]] (or its Ferengi equivalent, a "holosuite") to tell a "story-within-a-story". The ''[[Deep Space Nine]]'' episode "[[Far Beyond the Stars]]" tells a similar story without such a high-tech plot device, as basically a work of metafiction, using the DS9 regular characters to tell a mid-20th century story, set in a science fiction publishing house in New York City. Similarly, the regular cast of ''[[Northern Exposure]]'' play other characters in two episodes set during the early days of the village of Cicely, the series's setting.
 +*A film in which a character reads a fictional story; e.g. ''[[The Princess Bride (film)|The Princess Bride]]'', [[Disney Channel]]'s ''[[Life is Ruff]]'', ''[[Bedtime Stories (film)|Bedtime Stories]]''.
 +*A film or television show in which a character hums, whistles, or hears (on a radio, etc.) the show or film's [[Theme music|theme song]]; e.g. the final scene of "[[Homer's Triple Bypass]]", from ''[[The Simpsons]]''; when [[Samantha Carter|Sam Carter]] hums the theme from ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' during the episode "[[Chimera (Stargate SG-1)|Chimera]]"; the second Collector from ''[[Demon Knight]]''; when [[Bulma]] hums "Romantikku Ageru Yo", the closing theme of ''[[Dragon Ball]]'', in the shower during the episode '"Midnight Callers"; when Mr. Incredible whistles theme music from ''[[The Incredibles]]''; when all the characters in the film ''[[Magnolia (film)|Magnolia]]'' begin to sing the background music - "Wise Up" by [[Aimee Mann]]; in [[Almost Famous]], when one character begins to sing the background music - "Tiny Dancer" by [[Elton John]] - and all of the other characters around him immediately pick it up and sing along as well; the moments when Sam Lowry of ''[[Brazil (film)|Brazil]]'' hums/listens to/sings the film's self-titled theme song; when Daryl Van Horne whistles theme music from ''[[The Witches of Eastwick (film)|The Witches of Eastwick]]''; in ''[[Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (film)|Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone]]'' when [[Rubeus Hagrid]] is briefly heard playing the main theme on a recorder; when Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson (as B.A. Baracus) hums the A-Team theme in the trailer for the A-Team movie (2010).
 +*Directly referencing another work that internally references the first work; e.g. [["Weird Al" Yankovic]], whose songs sometimes reference ''The Simpsons'', has appeared on ''[[The Simpsons]]''.
 +*Characters who do things because those actions are what they would expect from characters in a story; e.g. ''[[Scream (film)|Scream]]'', ''[[Who Framed Roger Rabbit]]'', ''[[The Last Unicorn]]'', ''[[The Long Goodbye (novel)|The Long Goodbye]]''.
 +*Characters who express awareness that they are in a work of fiction; e.g. ''[[Stranger than Fiction (2006 film)|Stranger Than Fiction]]'', ''The Great Good Thing'', ''[[Puckoon]]'', ''[[Spaceballs]]'', the [[Marvel Comics]] character [[Deadpool (comics)|Deadpool]], ''[[Illuminatus!]]'', ''[[Uso Justo]]'', ''[[1/0 (web comic)|1/0]]''. ''[[Bob and George]]'', ''[[Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead]]''.
 +*Characters in a film or a television series who mention and/or refer to the actors or actresses that portray themselves; e.g. Beatrice "Betty" Pengson from ''[[I Love Betty La Fea]]''; [[Bea Alonzo]], who played the role of the protagonist, also played herself as an Ecomoda model; coincidentally in the show, Betty wants to meet Bea Alonzo in person, an act of [[self-reference]]. In ''[[Ocean's Twelve]]'', Tess, played by [[Julia Roberts]], disguises herself to look like Julia Roberts. The other characters ironically recognize that she is in disguise. In ''[[Last Action Hero]]'', the title character of the inner movie ''Jack Slater IV'' comes to the 'real' world and tells his portrayer, [[Arnold Schwarzenegger]], "You've brought me nothing but pain."
 +*A real pre-existing piece of fiction X, being used within a new piece of fiction Y, to lend an air of authenticity to fiction Y, e.g. ''[[A Nightmare on Elm Street]]'' is discussed extensively in ''[[Wes Craven's New Nightmare]]'', while actors from the former star as "themselves" or ''[[Scream 3]]'' and ''[[Scream 4]]'', where characters discuss and know of films that are about the previous films' events; likewise are ''[[The Book of One Thousand and One Nights|The 1001 Nights]]'' put to use within ''[[If on a winter's night a traveler]]''.
 +*A story where the author is not a character, but interacts with the characters; e.g. ''[[She-Hulk]]'', ''[[Animal Man]]'', ''[[Betty Boop]]'', [[Daffy Duck]] in ''[[Duck Amuck]]'', ''[[Breakfast of Champions]]'', ''[[Excel Saga]]'' television shows.
 +*A story where the narrator is a character in the story, and interacts with himself as a different character; e.g. ''[[The Emperor's New Groove]]''.
 +*A story within which that story (or a story based on it) is a work of fiction; e.g. [[Stargate SG-1]]'s "[[Wormhole X-Treme!]]" or [[Supernatural (U.S. TV series)|Supernatural]]'s ''Supernatural'' novels.
 +*Acknowledging the tropes of the [[Horror fiction|Horror]] genre; e.g. ''[[Funny Games (2008 film)|Funny Games]]''.
 +*The acclaimed TV sitcom ''[[Arrested Development (TV series)|Arrested Development]]'' is widely recognised as a seminal work of televised metafiction; it not only is framed like a reality television show (when in fact it is anything but), but also is highly self-reflexive and intertextual. Examples of this include allusions to the series's own struggle for ratings, its competition with ''[[Sex and the City]]'' and the reduction of the second season from 22 to 18 episodes.
 +* ''[[The Cabin in the Woods]]'' (2012), a horror movie written by [[Joss Whedon]] and [[Drew Goddard]], was critically lauded for its metafictional elements.
 + 
 +== Metatheatre ==
 +:''[[metatheatre]], [[Six Characters in Search of an Author]], [[play-within-a-play]]''
 + 
 +'Metatheatre' can also include the use of the [[play within a play]], which provides an onstage [[microcosm]] of the theatrical situation, and such techniques as the use of parody and burlesque to draw attention to literary or theatrical [[Convention (norm)|conventions]], and the use of the [[theatrum mundi]] trope.
 + 
 +== Some more examples of metafiction ==
 + 
 +* [[Martin Amis]], ''Time's Arrow''
 +* [[Nicholson Baker]], ''The Mezzanine''
 +* [[Julian Barnes]], ''Flaubert's Parrot''
 +* [[John Barth]], ''Lost in the Funhouse''
 +* [[Jorge Luis Borges]], ''[[The Garden of Forking Paths]]''
 +* [[Italo Calvino]], ''If on a Winter's Night a Traveler''
 +* [[Mark Z. Danielewski]], ''[[House of Leaves]]''
 +* [[Dave Eggers]], ''A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius''
 +* [[William H. Gass]], ''The Tunnel''
 +* [[Vladimir Nabokov]], ''[[Pale Fire]]''
 +* [[Alain Robbe-Grillet]], ''[[La Jalousie]]''
 +* [[Kurt Vonnegut]], ''[[Breakfast of Champions]]''
 +* [[David Foster Wallace]], ''Brief Interviews with Hideous Men''
 + 
 +==See also==
 +*[[Metafilm]]
 +*[[List of metafictional texts]]
 +*[[Experimental fiction]]
 +*[[Fabulation]]
 +*[[Fourth wall]]
 +*[[Frame tale]]
 +*[[Fictional fictional character]]
 +*[[Fourth wall]]
 +*[[Hypostasis (literature)]]
 +*[[Postmodern fiction]]
 +*[[Self-consciousness]]
 +*[[Self-referentiality]]
 +*[[Story within a story]]
 +*[[Show within a show]]
 +*[[Historiographic metafiction]]
 +{{GFDL}}

Revision as of 09:59, 12 February 2017

 This page Metafiction is part of the meta series. Illustration: Reverse Side of a Painting (1670) by Cornelis Norbertus Gysbrechts, an example of metapainting.
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This page Metafiction is part of the meta series.
Illustration: Reverse Side of a Painting (1670) by Cornelis Norbertus Gysbrechts, an example of metapainting.

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Metafiction is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion. Metafiction uses techniques to draw attention to itself as a work of art, while exposing the "truth" of a story. "Metafiction" is the literary term describing fictional writing that self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in posing questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, usually using irony and self-reflection. It can be compared to presentational theatre, which does not let the audience forget it is viewing a play; metafiction does not let the reader forget he or she is reading a fictional work.

Contents

History

Metafiction is primarily associated with modernist literature and postmodernist literature, but is found at least as early as Homer's Odyssey and Chaucer's 14th century Canterbury Tales. Cervantes' Don Quixote is a metafictional novel published in the 17th century, and so is James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner published in 1824. The novels of Brian O'Nolan, written under the nom de plume Flann O'Brien, are considered to be examples of metafiction. In the 1950s several French novelists published works whose styles were collectively dubbed "nouveau roman". These "new novels" were characterized by the bending of genre and style and often included elements of metafiction. It became prominent in the 1960s, with authors and works such as John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse, Robert Coover's "The Babysitter" and "The Magic Poker", Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and William H. Gass's Willie Master's Lonesome Wife.

Unlike the antinovel, or anti-fiction, metafiction is specifically fiction about fiction, i.e. fiction which self-consciously reflects upon itself.

Etymology

William H. Gass coined the term “metafiction” in a 1970 essay entitled “Philosophy and the Form of Fiction”.

Various devices of metafiction

Some common metafictive devices in literature include:

Films which use metafictive devices include Adaptation, which wraps metafictively around the real-world non-fiction book The Orchid Thief, and Barton Fink, as well as the thrillers The Usual Suspects, Memento and Inception. Examples of other media which take part in metafictiveness are Al Capp's Fearless Fosdick in Li'l Abner, the Tales of the Black Freighter in Watchmen, or the Itchy and Scratchy Show within The Simpsons, as well as the computer game Myst in which the player represents a person who has found a book named Myst and been transported inside it.

The theme of metafiction may be central to the work, as in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759) or as in Herman Melville's The Confidence Man, Chapter XIV, in which the narrator talks about the literary devices used in the other chapters. But as a literary device, metafiction has become a frequent feature of postmodernist literature. Examples such as If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino, "a novel about a person reading a novel" is an exercise in metafiction. Paul Auster has made metafiction the central focus of his writing and is probably the best known active novelist specialising in the genre. Often metafiction figures for only a moment in a story, as when "Roger" makes a brief appearance in Roger Zelazny's The Chronicles of Amber.

It can be used in multiple ways within one work. For example, novelist Tim O'Brien, a Vietnam War veteran, writes in his short story collection The Things They Carried about a character named "Tim O'Brien" and his war experiences in Vietnam. Tim O'Brien, as the narrator, comments on the fictionality of some of the war stories, commenting on the "truth" behind the story, though all of it is characterized as fiction. In the story chapter How to Tell a True War Story, O'Brien comments on the difficulty of capturing the truth while telling a war story. In Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, King himself appears as a pivotal character set with the task of writing The Dark Tower books so that the main characters can continue their quest. Other Stephen King books, and characters from them, are mentioned in the narrative. In an afterword to the series finale (The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower), King details why he chose to include himself in his novel. And in James Patterson's Alex Cross series, Along Came a Spider is both the book written by Patterson and a book written by Cross about the events depicted in the book.

One of the most sophisticated treatments of the concept of the novel in a novel occurs in Muriel Spark's debut, The Comforters. Spark imbues Caroline, her central character, with voices in her head which constitutes the narration Spark has just set down on the page. In the story Caroline is writing a critical work on the form of the novel when she begins to hear a tapping typewriter (accompanied by voices) through the wall of her house. The voices dictate a novel to her, in which she believes herself to be a character. The reader is thereby continually drawn to the narrative structure, which in turn is the story, i.e. a story about storytelling which itself disrupts the conventions of storytelling. At no point does Spark as author enter the narrative however, remaining omniscient throughout and adhering to the conventions of third-person narration.

According to Patricia Waugh "all fiction is . . . implicitly metafictional," since all works of literature are concerned with language and literature itself. Some elements of metafiction are similar to devices used in metafilm techniques.

Film and television

metafilm, metatelevision

Metatheatre

metatheatre, Six Characters in Search of an Author, play-within-a-play

'Metatheatre' can also include the use of the play within a play, which provides an onstage microcosm of the theatrical situation, and such techniques as the use of parody and burlesque to draw attention to literary or theatrical conventions, and the use of the theatrum mundi trope.

Some more examples of metafiction

See also




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Metafiction" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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