metafiction

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Metafiction is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion. 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. 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.

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 and Chaucer's 14th century Canterbury Tales. Cervantes' Don Quixote is a metafictional novel. In the 1950s, several French novelists published works whose styles were collectively dubbed "nouveau roman". 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 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. William H. Gass coined the term “metafiction” in an 1970 essay entitled “Philosophy and the Form of Fiction”. Unlike the antinovel, or anti-fiction, metafiction is specifically fiction about fiction, i.e. fiction which self-consciously reflects upon itself.^[1]

Various devices of metafiction

Some common metafictive devices in novels include:

• A novel about a writer creating a story (e.g. Misery, Secret Window, Secret Garden, At Swim-Two-Birds, Atonement, The Counterfeiters, The World According to Garp, Barton Fink, Adaptation., and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man).
• A novel about a reader reading a novel (e.g. The Neverending Story, If On a Winter's Night a Traveler, The Historian)
• A novel which features itself as its own prop or McGuffin (e.g. The Adventures of the Imagination of Periphery Stowe, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Jamais Vu Papers)
• A novel or other work of fiction within the novel (e.g. The Laughing Man, The Crying of Lot 49, Sophie's World, Pale Fire, The Princess Bride, The Island of the Day Before, Steppenwolf, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay).
• 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, Drawers & Booths by Ara 13, The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle or 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, Mister B. Gone, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, BFG).
• A novel in which the book itself seeks interaction with the reader (e.g., Willie Masters' Lonely Wife by William H. Gass or House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski).
• A non-linear novel, which can be read in any order other than from beginning to end (e.g. The Unfortunates by B. S. Johnson, Rayuela by Julio Cortázar, Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs, Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore, Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany).
• Narrative footnotes, which continue the story while commenting on it (e.g. Pale Fire, House of Leaves, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, From Hell by Alan Moore, Cable & Deadpool by Fabian Nicieza, An Abundance of Katherines by John Green, An Early History of Ambergris by Jeff VanderMeer, and the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett).
• A novel wherein the author (not merely the narrator) is a character (e.g. Valis and Radio Free Albemuth by Phillip K. Dick, The Razor's Edge, The Dark Tower, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Life of Pi, Everything Is Illuminated, The People of Paper, Breakfast of Champions, Slaughterhouse Five , Money, Time and Again, The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah, Lanark: A Life in Four Books, JPod, The Monkey Wrench Gang, Osama Van Halen by Michael Muhammad Knight, City of Glass by Paul Auster and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues).
• A novel in which the author/narrator spends the entire book comparing life notes with an author-ghost from another era. (e.g.,"A Visit from Voltaire", by Dinah Lee Küng).
• 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. The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell, Wicked by Gregory Maguire, The Wind Done Gone by Alice Randall, Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys,Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard, Grendel by John Gardner, Foe by J.M. Coetzee, Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card, Only Revolutions by Mark Z. Danielewski).
• Magic realism (e.g. works by Salman Rushdie, John Irving, D. M. Thomas)

The play "The King in Yellow"'s existence as a work of fiction is referred to in the real-world short story collection named The King in Yellow.

Metafictive devices in other media include 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, and 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. 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. 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.

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.^[2] Some elements of metafiction are similar to devices used in metafilm techniques.

Film and television

• Charlie Kaufman is a screenwriter who often uses this narrative technique. In the 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.
• 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 in 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.
• A film in which a character reads a fictional story (e.g. The Princess Bride, Disney Channel's Life is Ruff, Bedtime Stories).
• A film or television show in which a character begins humming, whistling, or listening to (on a radio, etc), the show or film's theme song (e.g. the final scene of "Homer's Triple Bypass", from The Simpsons; when Sam Carter hums the theme from Stargate SG-1 during the episode "Chimera"; the second Collector from Demon Knight; when Mr. Incredible whistles theme music from The Incredibles; when all the characters in the 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 hums/listens to/sings the film's self-titled theme song) or when Daryl Van Horne whistles theme music from The Witches of Eastwick).
• Directly referencing another work that internally references the first work. (e.g. "Weird Al" Yankovic appearing on The Simpsons, when he himself sings songs that reference The Simpsons).
• Characters who do things because those actions are what they would expect from characters in a story. (e.g. Scream, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Last Unicorn, "The Long Goodbye").
• Characters who express awareness that they are in a work of fiction (e.g. Stranger Than Fiction, "The Great Good Thing", Puckoon, Spaceballs, the Marvel Comics character Deadpool, Illuminatus!, Uso Justo, 1/0. "Bob and George").
• 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 a Ecomoda model; coincidentally in the show, Betty wants to meet Bea Alonzo in person, an act of self-reference.)
• 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"; likewise are 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 within which the very story itself (or a story based on it) is a work of fiction (e.g. Stargate SG-1's "Wormhole X-Treme!" or Supernatural's Supernatural novels.)

See also

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
• Engler, Bernd. "Metafiction". The Literary Encyclopedia. 17 December 2004.accessed 23 April 2009.

Notes

1. ^ Engler, Burnd, "Metafiction" The Literary Encyclopedia, http://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=715, retrieved 2009-04-23 
2. ^ Waugh, Patricia, Metafiction. The Theory and Practice of Self-conscious Fiction, Routledge 1988,148