Metafiction is one of the most distinctive features of postwar fiction, appearing in the work of novelists as varied as Eco, Borges, Martin Amis and Julian Barnes. It comprises two elements: firstly cause, the increasing interpenetration of...
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Metafiction is one of the most distinctive features of postwar fiction, appearing in the work of novelists as varied as Eco, Borges, Martin Amis and Julian Barnes. It comprises two elements: firstly cause, the increasing interpenetration of professional literary criticism and the practice of writing; and secondly effect: an emphasis on the playing with styles and forms, resulting from an enhanced self-consciousness and awareness of the elusiveness of meaning and the limitations of the realist form. Dr Currie's volume examines first the two components of metafiction, with practical illustration
Cover; Half Title; Title Page; Copyright Page; Table of Contents; General Editor's Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part One: Defining Metafiction; 1 Robert Scholes Metafiction; 2 Patricia Waugh What is metafiction and why are they saying such awful things about it?; 3 Gerald Prince Metanarrative signs; Part Two: Historiographic Metafiction; 4 Linda Hutcheon Historiographic metafiction; 5 Susana Onega British historiographic metafiction; 6 Hayden White The question of narrative in contemporary historical theory; Part Three: The Writer/Critic; 7 David Lodge The novel now
8 John Barth The literature of exhaustion9 Umberto Eco From Reflections on the Name of the Rose; Part Four: Readings of Metafiction; 10 Larry McCaffery The art of metafiction; 11 Raymond A. Mazurek Metafiction, the historical novel and Coover's The Public Burning; 12 Frederick M. Holmes The novel, illusion and reality: the paradox of omniscience in The French Lieutenant's Woman; 13 Elizabeth Dipple A novel which is a machine for generating interpretations; Bibliography; Index
