Where results make sense

About us   |   Why use us?   |   Reviews   |   PR   |   Contact us

Spivak1.html Critics of post-modern metafiction claim that it marks the death or exhaustion of the novel as a genre, while advocates argue that it signals the novel's rebirth. In her review of Patricia Waugh's Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-conscious Fiction (1984), Ann Jefferson argues that "the trouble is that Waugh cannot have it both ways, and present metafiction both as an inherent characteristic of narrative fiction and as a response to the contemporary social and cultural vision" (574). Metafictional works, she suggests, are those which "explore a theory of writing fiction through the practice of writing fiction" (2). www.english.emory.edu /Bahri/Metafiction.html   (1623 words)

Youth Metafiction Home Metafiction is a 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. In metafiction, the ontological flap between fiction and reality is made explicit; that is, the fictionality of the events, characters and objects referred to is foregrounded. Metafictive children's texts can foster an awareness of how a story works and implicitly teach readers how texts are structured through specific codes and conventions. www.english.ilstu.edu /students/jmklass/metafictionhome.htm   (193 words)

Metafiction and the Modern German Novel Metafiction, as Waugh writes, "self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artefact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality." [9] In other words, by making the very nature of fiction a theme within itself, the nouveau roman can consider what traditional novels perhaps cannot. Many critics seem to be content to trace the theoretical importance of metafiction without applying their critiques to the practice of modern novels; still others focus on the function of reflexivity within a particular novel but fail to elaborate on the particular forms this self-reference can assume. To be noted here is also the autonomous nature of most metafiction: instead of obliging itself to mirror nature, the self-conscious novel "asserts instead that art has virtues of its own to admire," [14] and that art is an entity in and of itself. www.nthuleen.com /papers/636Metapaper.html   (3110 words)

Metafiction: The ABCs of Reality Construction by R.J. Hembree Metafiction is the needle that burst the balloon in the late 1960s. When a writer, within the text, discusses his thought process or methods in writing the novel, or if the reader is spoken to by the author or one of his characters; self consciousness in writing is anything that draws attention to the fact that it is an invented reality: the conventions are exposed, laid bare. The lesson of metafiction is that reality has evolved into a combination of the two, and that our individual reality constructs have the ability to influence and improve the larger frames in which we live in. www.writersvillage.com /preview/Metafiction.htm   (2470 words)

Metafiction and Intertextuality Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox, concurs, but nonetheless presents a more elaborate definition of metafiction, one that differentiates among its separate modes. Overt forms of narcissism [or textual self-awareness] are present in texts in which the self-consciousness and self-reflection are clearly evident, usually explicitly thematized or even allegorized within the “fiction.”  In its covert form, however, this process would be structuralized, internalized, actualized. Whereas metafiction acknowledges its own textual constructedness and draws attention to that very fact, intertextuality is a reference to texts beyond the immediate instance. faculty.tamu-commerce.edu /droyal/metafiction.htm   (621 words)

Historiographic Metafiction Historiographic metafiction shows fiction to be historically conditioned and history to be discursively structured. Historiographic metafiction is one kind of postmodern novel which rejects projecting present beliefs and standards onto the past and asserts the specificity and particularity of the individual past event. Finally, Historiographic metafiction often points to the fact by using the paratextual conventions of historiography to both inscribe and undermine the authority and objectivity of historical sources and explanations. faculty.tamu-commerce.edu /droyal/597-metafiction-detective.htm   (500 words)

Don Quixote Book Notes Summary by Miguel de Cervantes: Topic Tracking: Metafiction Metafiction 6: The cathedral priest points out that these books of chivalry don't even attempt to follow their own plot lines, let alone any rules of fiction writing. Metafiction 7: The author states that although he currently has no information on Don Quijote's third foray into the world as a knight errant; some documents have been found that have been given to a professor to decipher who plans to release his findings very soon. Metafiction 8: Cervantes compares Avellaneda's attempt at making a book (pseudonym of author of ersatz Volume Two) to that of a lunatic who blew up dogs by inserting a musical pipe into their anuses. www.bookrags.com /notes/dq/TOP5.htm   (579 words)

Metafiction Employing the term "metafiction" to refer to modern works that are radically self-reflexive as well as to works that contain only a few lines of self-consciousness creates ambiguitity. They suggest that metafiction display "a self-reflexivity prompted by the author's awareness of the theory underlying the construction of fictional works," without dividing contemporary metafiction from older works containing similar self-reflexive techniques (Waugh 2). Although characteristics of metafiction vary as widely as the spectrum of techniques used within them, a pattern of several common traits can be traced. www.geneseo.edu /~johannes/Metafiction.html   (656 words)

CONTEXT: Christopher Sorrentino Reading B. S. Johnson The prevailing sentiment is that metafiction's a kind of trick; an escape from the supposedly more stringent discipline of naturalistic or realistic fiction. But (maybe) the reviewers can't be blamed 100%: the roots of their midget opinions, the severest excesses of this metafiction boom, can be seen in the commercials that shrug and wink as they disclose their attempt to defraud. A book with chapter divisions, a lap dissolve in a movie, a fade-out on a record--all are metafictional; i.e., not only are they patently neither life nor a barroom anecdote nor a campfire sing, but they aren't even trying to appear to be. www.centerforbookculture.org /context/no5/sorrentino.html   (1455 words)

Applied Hermeneutics   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09) Particularly under the classification of "metafiction," the force with which the text dictates as such can be felt more clearly. The distinguishing characteristics of metafiction are multiple; two of them, however, exemplify this question of hermeneutic approach. Metafiction, then, is not easily viewed through the lens of either conservative or critical hermeneutics. www.philosophy.ucf.edu /ahlit3decon.html   (518 words)

Metafiction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 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. Some elements of metafiction are similar to devices used in metafilm techniques. Metafiction is also the title of an album produced by Vic Mignogna. en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Metafiction   (547 words)

Metafiction   Since about 1970, the term metafiction has been used widely to discuss works of post-modern fiction and has been the source of heated debate on whether its employ marks the death or the rebirth of the novel.             While metafiction is often the focus of post-modern works, it is important to avoid classifying them as one in the same.             Coetzee's novel fits cleanly into a further subset of metafiction, and that is the concept of historiographic metafiction, which essentially is metafictional works that concentrate on histories and the historical. www.msu.edu /~tremonte/metafiction.html   (445 words)

Applied Hermeneutics   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09) And as history is not a stable continuum in many of these texts, it is not necessary to think about the cultural and social background that might surround the text; this social and cultural background is disrupted by the text, and is therefore not meant to be pieced back together. Rather, one might look at metafiction from the question of "how" -- the ways in which the author achieves the deconstruction of the text, and the ways in which this deconstruction implicates the reader as well. This is the self-reflexivity of metafiction; being written through a particular method, the text calls attention to that very method and forces it to be deconstructed by the reader. www.philosophy.ucf.edu /ahlit3meta.html   (524 words)

reading time : metafiction as counterfeit money Thus, the medium of metafiction allows language to subvert and tells truths via the power of lies or imagination; thus metafiction is often employed in post-colonial writing to speak about 'unspeakable' truths that have been silenced by the dominant culture. Unlike in other texts, the conventions evident in a metafiction cannot be relied upon, because it is the very nature of a metafiction to distort and reshape these conventions. Although a metafiction does not embody the criminal intent to deceive implicit in counterfeit money, the phenomena are closely aligned - fiction is passed off as truth and potentially dupes the reader not merely the narrator. www.emsah.uq.edu.au /courses/engl6080/readingtime/metafiction.htm   (1256 words)

Telepathic Jellyfish Strike Back in New 'Preternatural' Book   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09) Good metafiction -- fiction about fiction -- is hard to write, a matter of juggling the literal plot with the commentary one wishes to make about the genre. One key feature of metafiction is characters who are self-aware of their narrative nature, and Karen fits the bill perfectly. Metafiction exposes the seams of fiction, and shows how it represents reality rather than being reality. www.space.com /sciencefiction/books/preternatural_too_000524.html   (708 words)

Beyond Romance: Metafiction in Persiles, by Amy R. Williamsen It seems to be an oft-cited commonplace of contemporary metafictional theory that only in the twentieth century does the emphasis shift from “unmasking the conventions to foregrounding the process of creating fiction”; (Spires, 16). In his study of metafiction, Spires notes that both the grotesque and the marvelous share a close affinity with the metafictional mode for the grotesque “. If, as Hutcheon contends, metafictional narrative represents the hallmark of post-modernist literary creation, reflective of one of our time's greatest philosophical preoccupations, then perhaps current interest in metafiction will help lead to the recognition of Persiles as an integral part of Cervantes' canon, as the masterwork he proclaimed it to be rather than an anomaly. www.h-net.org /~cervantes/csa/artics90/williamsen.htm   (2921 words)

Metafiction Metafiction typically involves games in which levels of narrative reality (and the reader's perception of them) are confused, or in which traditional realist conventions governing the separation of 'mimetic' and 'diegetic' elements are flouted and thwarted. The VFI have two documents in their possession which discuss "The Falls" as a piece of metafiction. Sometimes called 'metafiction' or 'fabulation' and other times lumped with 'structuralist' art, there is a common thread through the creations of following artists which, to my knowledge, hasn't been fully explored in any cross-disiplinary study. www.btinternet.com /~paul.melia/meta1.html   (939 words)

The Cultural Contexts of American Metafiction   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09) Because the genre of the novel shapes and embodies issues of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, or identity (to name only a few obvious elements), the self-reflexive turn of metafiction can provide a means of interrogating the manner in which the conventions of the novel circumscribe these and other important cultural elements. The relationships between the conventions of the novel, the ideological content inherent within novelistic conventions, and the elements of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, or identity which are bounded by these conventions are what I mean to suggest under the rubric the "cultural contexts" of American metafiction. Prospective panelists need not be members of the NEMLA to submit a proposal; but selected panelists must be members of the NEMLA by November 1, 1996 in order to have their names included in the convention program. www.csun.edu /~hfspc002/96/cfp/X0009_960915.metafic.html   (201 words)

This Is An Attention-Grabbing Headline   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09) That's a common metafictional device: a fictional character realizing he is part of a fictional story. Metafictional devices have been around at least since the time of William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes, although observers then didn't call it metafiction. The children's book "The Three Pigs," which won The Caldecott Medal in 2002, is excellent meta, as is the old HBO series "The Larry Sanders Show." Metafiction even creeps onto the comics page when "Family Circus" creator Bil Keane goes on vacation and one of the strip's characters fills in for him. www.tbo.com /entertainment/fridayextra/MGB23MT7BUE.html   (489 words)

Postmodernism Metafiction, or fiction that is about fiction, is not at all a new development in literature. In other words, postmodernists' use of metafiction is a "continuation of an already existing narcissistic trend in the novel as it began parodically in Don Quijote and was handed on, through eighteenth-century critical self-awareness to nineteenth-century self-mirroring" (Hutcheon, 1980, 153). Postmodernists distinguish themselves from their predecessors not by using metafiction per se but by the way in which they use metafiction. www.seanet.com /~macki/chace/academic/narr1.html   (365 words)

The Reading Experience: Metafiction As I wrote my own doctoral dissertation on the "rise of metafiction," I do feel I have a familiarity with the subject that is sufficiently informed that my comments amount to more than just superficial impressions or an unexamined enthusiasm. Borges's influence on Barth, for one, was profound, and Borges's fiction is certainly metafiction, although some might say that in his case that is a fairly constrictive label. Furthermore, it seems clear to me that what many people dislike about metafiction is the fact that it doesn't wear its moral or ethical values on its sleeve and often seems nihilistic in its celebration of aesthetic highjinks above all (John Gardner's On Moral Fiction is of course the classic example of this assessment). noggs.typepad.com /the_reading_experience/2004/08/metafiction.html   (1618 words)

The Valve - A Literary Organ | The Ubiquity of Metafiction What metafiction does is precisely attempt to realize these virtues by means of genre. It’s metafictional in that it was - its editor informs us - inspired by a piece entitled ‘how to write an epic fantasy’ that somehow did a good ‘bigger on the inside than the outside’ trick by producing the flavor of epic at only short story length. I thought, a la Susanna Clark, a mash-up was by definition (assuming it has a definition) metafictional, in that part of what is getting “mashed” into the story is an awareness of the conventions of the genre of the story. www.thevalve.org /go/valve/article/the_ubiquity_of_metafiction   (2897 words)

Historiographical metafiction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia According to Hutcheon, from "A Poetics of Postmodernism", historiographic metafictional works are "those well-known and popular novels which are both intensely self-reflexive and yet paradoxically also lay claim to historical events and personages". One author often associated with historigraphic metafiction is Michael Ondaatje, in works such as Running in the Family, In the Skin of a Lion, The English Patient, and Coming Through Slaughter. Definition of Metafiction at Emory.edu An example of Historiographic metafiction is Daphne Marlatt's novel _Ana Historic_. en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Historiographical_metafiction   (321 words)

metafiction Spectrum: Metafiction is thus an elastic term which cover a wide range of fictions. There are those novels at one end of the spectrum which take fictionality as a theme to be explored. metafiction's continuous involvement in -- and meditation of -- reality through linguistic structures and preexistent texts. www.eng.fju.edu.tw /Literary_Criticism/postmodernism/metafiction.htm   (501 words)

Metafiction   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09) Although metafiction became popular in the postmodernist novels of the mid to late twentieth century, the conventions used have a deeper history dating back to some much earlier works of fiction which were written for the stage. Perhaps even more important than the metafictional techniques themselves are the ideas which spurned them in the first place. Elizabethan theatre and the Renaissance brought about a fairly new interest in the sciences, and as British history progressed to the Victorian era, the old ways of thinking about the universe were beginning to crumble. www2.gvsu.edu /~bomhofr/metafiction/mf.html   (495 words)

Try your search on: Qwika (all wikis)

About us   |   Why use us?   |   Reviews   |   Press   |   Contact us   Copyright © 2005-2007 www.factbites.com Usage implies agreement with terms.