Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 05:00, 12 August 2007

Metafiction is a type of fiction which self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction.

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.

Metafiction is primarily associated with Modernist and Postmodernist literature but can be found at least as far back as Cervantes' Don Quixote and even Chaucer's 14th Century Canterbury Tales.

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 genre and style and often included elements of metafiction.

It came to prominence in the 1960s through such authors as John Barth, Robert Coover, Kurt Vonnegut, 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, Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, and Gass's Willie Master's Lonesome Wife.

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, The Counterfeiters).
• 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, Slaughterhouse Five, Song of Susannah).
• 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 SG-1 during the episode "Chimera", or the second Collector from Demon Knight).
• 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, "The Great Good Thing", Puckoon, Spaceballs: the Movie, Deadpool, Uso Justo)
• 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, Breakfast of Champions)
• 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. (Gödel, 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.

It can be used in multiple ways within one work. For example, novelist Tim O'Brien, an actual Vietnam vet, writes in his novel/short story collection The Things They Carried about a character named Tim O'Brien and his experiences in Vietnam. The character Tim O'Brien as the narrator comments on the fictionality of some of the war stories, and comments on the "truth" behind the story, though all of it is fiction. Likewise, 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.

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.

Movies

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.

See also

• Metafilm
• List of metafictional texts
• Fourth wall
• Frame tale
• Fictional fictional character
• Story within a story
• Show within a show

Bibliography

• Hutcheon, Linda, Narcissistic Narrative. The Metafictional Paradox, Routledge 1984, ISBN 0-415-06567-4
• Waugh, Patricia, Metafiction. The Theory and Practice of Self-conscious Fiction, Routledge 1988, ISBN 0-415-03006-4

• Fiction
• Narratology
• Fiction by genre
• Metafiction