Metafiction

Metafiction is a form of fiction that emphasizes its own narrative structure in a way that inherently reminds the audience that they are reading or viewing a fictional work. Metafiction is self-conscious about language, literary form, and story-telling, and works of metafiction directly or indirectly draw attention to their status as artifacts.^[1] Metafiction is frequently used as a form of parody or a tool to undermine literary conventions and explore the relationship between literature and reality, life, and art.^[2]

Although metafiction is most commonly associated with postmodern literature that developed in the mid-20th century, its use can be traced back to much earlier works of fiction, such as The Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer, 1387), Don Quixote Part Two (Miguel de Cervantes, 1615), "Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz" (Johann Valentin Andreae, 1617), The Cloud Dream of the Nine (Kim Man-jung, 1687), The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Laurence Sterne, 1759), Sartor Resartus (Thomas Carlyle, 1833–34),^[3] and Vanity Fair (William Makepeace Thackeray, 1847).

Metafiction became particularly prominent in the 1960s, with works such as Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth, Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov, "The Babysitter" and "The Magic Poker" by Robert Coover, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut,^[4] The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles, The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, and Willie Master's Lonesome Wife by William H. Gass.

Since the 1980s, contemporary Latino literature has an abundance of self-reflexive, metafictional works, including novels and short stories by Junot Díaz (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao),^[5] Sandra Cisneros (Caramelo),^[6] Salvador Plascencia (The People of Paper),^[7] Carmen Maria Machado (Her Body and Other Parties),^[8] Rita Indiana (Tentacle),^[9] and Valeria Luiselli (Lost Children Archive).^[7]

^ Waugh, Patricia (1984). Metafiction – The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction. London, New York: Routledge. p. 2.
^ Imhof, Rüdiger (1986). Contemporary Metafiction – A Poetological Study of Metafiction in English since 1939. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag. p. 9.
^ LaRocca, David (15 August 2017). "Translating Carlyle: Ruminating on the Models of Metafiction at the Emergence of an Emersonian Vernacular". Religions. 8 (8): 152. doi:10.3390/rel8080152. ISSN 2077-1444.
^ Jensen, Mikkel (2 January 2016). "Janus-Headed Postmodernism: The Opening Lines of Slaughterhouse-Five". The Explicator. 74 (1): 8–11. doi:10.1080/00144940.2015.1133546. ISSN 0014-4940. S2CID 162509316.
^ GONZÁLEZ, CHRISTOPHER (28 December 2015). Reading Junot Diaz. University of Pittsburgh Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctt19705td. ISBN 978-0-8229-8124-4.
^ González, Christopher (2017). Permissible narratives : the promise of Latino/a literature. Columbus. ISBN 978-0-8142-1350-6. OCLC 975447664.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^ ^a ^b Aldama, Frederick Luis. "All Shades of Brown: Latinx Literature Today". American Book Review. 41 (2.2).
^ "The metafictional, liminal, lyrical ways of writer Carmen Maria Machado". AL DÍA News. 3 December 2015. Retrieved 24 August 2020.
^ Jones, Ellen (13 December 2018). "Little Book with Big Ambitions: Rita Indiana's "Tentacle"". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 24 August 2020.

[auto2-1] Waugh, Patricia (1984). Metafiction – The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction. London, New York: Routledge. p. 2.

[2] Imhof, Rüdiger (1986). Contemporary Metafiction – A Poetological Study of Metafiction in English since 1939. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag. p. 9.

[3] LaRocca, David (15 August 2017). "Translating Carlyle: Ruminating on the Models of Metafiction at the Emergence of an Emersonian Vernacular". Religions. 8 (8): 152. doi:10.3390/rel8080152. ISSN 2077-1444.

[jensen-4] Jensen, Mikkel (2 January 2016). "Janus-Headed Postmodernism: The Opening Lines of Slaughterhouse-Five". The Explicator. 74 (1): 8–11. doi:10.1080/00144940.2015.1133546. ISSN 0014-4940. S2CID 162509316.

[5] GONZÁLEZ, CHRISTOPHER (28 December 2015). Reading Junot Diaz. University of Pittsburgh Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctt19705td. ISBN 978-0-8229-8124-4.

[6] González, Christopher (2017). Permissible narratives : the promise of Latino/a literature. Columbus. ISBN 978-0-8142-1350-6. OCLC 975447664.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

[:0-7] Aldama, Frederick Luis. "All Shades of Brown: Latinx Literature Today". American Book Review. 41 (2.2).

[8] "The metafictional, liminal, lyrical ways of writer Carmen Maria Machado". AL DÍA News. 3 December 2015. Retrieved 24 August 2020.

[9] Jones, Ellen (13 December 2018). "Little Book with Big Ambitions: Rita Indiana's "Tentacle"". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 24 August 2020.

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