Metafiction
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Metafiction is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction. It 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, irony and self-reflection. In a sense, it can be compared to presentational theatre, that does not let the audience forget they are viewing a play; metafiction does not let the reader forget he or she is reading a fictional work.
Metafiction is primarily associated with Modernist and Postmodernist literature, but is found at least as early as the 9th century One Thousand and One Nights, Cervantes' Don Quixote and Chaucer's 14th Century Canterbury Tales.
In the 1950s, several French novelists published works whose styles were collectively dubbed "nouveau roman" ("new novel"). These "new novels" were characterized by their bending of genre and style and often included elements of metafiction. It became prominent in the 1960s, with authors such as John Barth, Robert Coover, Kurt Vonnegut, and William H. Gass. Important American examples from that time include: Barth's Lost in the Funhouse, Coover's The Babysitter and The Magic Poker, Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, and Gass's Willie Master's Lonesome Wife.
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Metatheatre
Various devices of metafiction
Some common metafictive devices include:
- A work of fiction within a fiction (e.g. Hamlet, The Laughing Man, The Crying of Lot 49)
- A novel about a person writing a novel (e.g. Secret Window, Secret Garden, At Swim-Two-Birds, Atonement, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time).
- A novel about a person reading a novel (e.g. Neverending Story, If On a Winter's Night a Traveler).
- A novel which itself is within the novel (e.g. Sophie's World).
- A story that addresses the specific conventions of story, such as title, paragraphing or plots. (e.g. Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth)
- A non-linear novel, which can be read in some order other than beginning to end (e.g. The Unfortunates by B. S. Johnson, Rayuela by Julio Cortazar).
- Narrative footnotes, which continue the story while commenting on it (e.g. Pale Fire, House of Leaves).
- A novel in which the author (not merely the narrator) is a character (e.g. A Series of Unfortunate Events, Life of Pi, Everything Is Illuminated, The People of Paper, Breakfast of Champions).
- A movie in which a character reads a fictional story (e.g. The Princess Bride, Disney Channel's Life is Ruff)
- A movie or television show in which a character begins humming, whistling, or listening to (on a radio, etc), the show or movie's theme song (e.g. the final scene of "Homer's Triple Bypass", from The Simpsons, or when Sam Carter hums the theme from Stargate SG1 during the episode "Chimera").
- A parallel novel which has the same setting and time period as a previous work, and many of the same characters, but is told from a different perspective (e.g. Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard, Grendel by John Gardner).
- A story that anticipates the reader's reaction to the story.
- Characters who do things because those actions are what they would expect from characters in a story. (e.g. Scream, Who Framed Roger Rabbit)
- Characters who express awareness that they are in a work of fiction (e.g. Stranger than Fiction, Puckoon, Spaceballs: the Movie, Deadpool)
- A real pre-existing piece of fiction X, being used within a new piece of fiction Y, to give the illusion that Y's fictional world is "our world", e.g. the scene in Clerks when Dante Hicks and Randal Graves discuss the Star Wars saga.
- A fictional character interacting with the author. (e.g. She-Hulk, Animal Man, Betty Boop, Daffy Duck in Duck Amuck)
- A dialogue between two characters who interact within the dialogue with the author himself, who enters the dialogue he is writing as a character created by him. (Godel, Escher, Bach)
Contemporary author Paul Auster has made metafiction the central focus of his writing and is probably the best known active novelist specialising in the genre.
Metafiction may figure for only a moment in a story, as when "Roger" makes a brief appearance in Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber, or it may be central to the work, as in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.
Metafiction is a device heavily involved in postmodernist literature. Examples such as If On a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino, "a novel about a person reading a novel" as above, can be seen as exercises in metafiction.
According to Paul de Man all fiction is 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.
Metafilm
Charlie Kaufman is a screenwriter who often uses this narrative technique. In the film Adaptation, his character Charlie Kaufman (played by Nicolas Cage) tortuously attempts to write a screenplay adapted from the book The Orchid Thief, only to come to the realization that such an adaptation is impossible. Many plot devices used throughout the film are verbalized by Kaufman as he develops a screenplay, and the screenplay which eventually results is Adaptation itself.
Some more examples of metafiction
- Rabih Alameddine, I, the Divine
- Martin Amis, Time's Arrow
- Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine
- John Barnes, One for the Morning Glory
- Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot
- John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse
- Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths
- Richard Brautigan, Sombrero Fallout
- 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
- William Goldman, The Princess Bride
- Larry Heinemann, Paco's Story
- Charlie Kaufman, screenplay for Adaptation
- Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
- Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce, screenplay for Moulin Rouge!
- Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
- Alain Robbe-Grillet, La Jalousie
- Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy
- Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
- David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
- Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry
- Alasdair Gray, Lanark
See also
- Metafilm
- List of metafictional texts
- Experimental fiction
- Fabulation
- Fourth wall
- Frame tale
- Fictional fictional character
- Fourth wall
- Postmodern fiction
- Self-consciousness
- Self-referentiality
- Story within a story
- Show within a show
