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Metafiction is a kind of fiction which self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction. It usually involves irony and is self-reflective. It can be compared to presentational theatre in a sense; presentational theatre does not let the audience forget they are viewing a play, and metafiction does not let the readers forget they are reading a work of fiction. Metafiction is primarily associated with postmodern literature.
Some common metafictive devices include:
- A novel about a person writing a novel.
- A novel about a person reading a novel.
- A story that addresses the specific conventions of story, such as title, paragraphing or plots.
- A non-linear novel, which can be read in some order other than beginning to end.
- Narrative footnotes, which continue the story while commenting on it.
- A novel in which the author is a character.
- A story that anticipates the reader's reaction to the story.
- Characters who do things because those actions are what they would expect from characters in a story.
- Characters who express awareness that they are in a work of fiction.
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 Tristram Shandy.
Examples of metafiction
- Richard Adams, The Plague Dogs
- Rabih Alameddine, I, the Divine
- Felipe Alfau, Locos: A Comedy of Gestures
- Martin Amis, Time's Arrow
- Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine
- John Barnes, One for the Morning Glory
- Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot
- John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse
- Samuel Beckett, Watt
- Thomas Bernhardt, Wittgensteins Neffe
- Jorge Luis Borges, "The Garden of Forking Paths"
- Jorge Luis Borges, "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius"
- Berke Breathed, Bloom County
- Michel Butor, La Modification
- Richard Brautigan, Sombrero Fallout
- Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Tres tristes tigres
- Italo Calvino, If On a Winter's Night a Traveler
- Peter Carey, Illywhacker
- John Crowley, Little, Big
- Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
- Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
- Raymond Federman, Twofold Vibration
- Raymond Federman, Smiles on Washington Square
- Raymond Federman, Take It Or Leave It
- Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair
- William H. Gass, The Tunnel
- William Goldman, The Princess Bride
- Alasdair Gray, Lanark
- Larry Heinemann, Paco's Story
- Douglas Hofstadter, dialogues in Gödel, Escher, Bach
- Nick Hornby, Fever Pitch
- John Irving, The World According to Garp
- Charlie Kaufman, screenplay for Adaptation
- Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
- Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce, screenplay for Moulin Rouge!
- Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
- Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds
- Alain Robbe-Grillet, La Jalousie
- Alain Robbe-Grillet, La maison de rendez-vous
- José Saramago, Ensaio sobre a Cegueira , A Caverna , O Homem Duplicado
- Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy
- Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
- David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
- Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry
- Gene Wolfe, The Fifth Head of Cerberus
- Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography
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