What is Metafiction? (Shawn)
While plumbing the depths of Wikipedia's lists of obscure genres, one caught my eye: metafiction. I admit that at first, I was simply intrigued by its prefix: meta. The prefix is derived from a Greek root meaning "after" or "beyond," and while traditionally used only to preface academic disciplines or terms, it has emerged as a an adjective on its own in recent times, describing works that utilizes transcendental humor or storytelling other form. In more academic terms, something described with the prefix "meta" is usually self-referential or self-descriptive. For example, metadata is simply data about data, and a metatheorem is a theorem about a theorem.
In this same vein, metafiction is simply fiction that is self-aware in some regards, drawing attention to the fact that it is fiction. Metafiction originally came about as part of the postmodernist movement and was largely in response to the "death of the novel" discussion in the 20th century, which was a debate regarding the value of the novel in a changing ideological and representational landscape. There was doubt over whether a stories told in a novel could really be meaningful or interesting. Some critics of novels argued that novels written by authors could not accurately represent or depict narratives and thus relied on illusions and deceit to present a story to a reader.
Metafiction aimed to counter these criticisms by exposing the flaws of fiction. It sometimes took the form of academic criticism of the work (imitated by the author) embedded within the novel while in other cases, it analyzed the characteristics of fiction itself. In addition, some metafictional works involved an imaginary writer and the works they produced.
One of my favorite subgenres of metafictiction is a historiographic metafiction. This subgenre combines elements of historical narratives with metafiction. It frequently alludes to other narratives in order to reinforce the sentiment that the perceptions of events and narratives are largely impacted by discourse.
What are your thoughts on metafiction? Have you ever read or written a metafictional work? Comment down below.
Johannes. "Metafiction." Geneseo College, n.d., https://www.geneseo.edu/~johannes/Metafiction.html. Accessed 9 Nov. 2020.
Klinkowitz, Jerome. "Metafiction." Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. July 26, 2017. Oxford University Press. Date of access 9 Nov. 2020, <https://oxfordre.com/literature/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.001.0001/acrefore-9780190201098-e-546>
Raju, Rinku Mary. "Historiographic Metafiction." St. Mary's College, July 15, 2015, https://www.slideshare.net/stmaryspg2014/historiographical-metafiction. Accessed 9 Nov. 2020.
I've never heard of or read any metafiction before but it sounds incredibly entertaining. You've done a great job of explaining what it is and I'm excited to go out and try a book or two, it sounds really cool.
ReplyDeleteMetafiction is something I've never heard of but it sounds interesting. And since everything on the internet is getting more and more meta in some way I guess it makes sense that it would also happen to books.
ReplyDeleteI have also never heard of metafiction, like the rest of the people in the comment section (it is an obscure genre after all). However, it does sound really interesting - fiction that knows that it's fiction. The subgenre (historical metafiction) that you brought up sounds even more intriguing, and I wonder how it would play out in an actual novel.
ReplyDeleteI think metafiction can be something hard to tackle. If done right, it could lead to some really interesting stories. When I read this article, the movie Stranger than Fiction came to mind. It deals with stories inside of stories, and a character becoming aware of his situation. Metafiction might actually be more common than we think. Any fictional movie or book that includes a narrator character could count as a metafiction.
ReplyDeleteI have never heard of or read metafiction in my entire life, but it sounds pretty interesting. I'm a bit intrigued on how historical metafiction would work out. Nice post!
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