Metafiction : the theory and practice of self-conscious fiction
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Metafiction : the theory and practice of self-conscious fiction
（New accents）
Routledge, 1988, c1984
- : pbk
Related Bibliography 1 items
Available at 22 libraries
Note
Reprint. Originally published: London : Methuen, 1984
Bibliography: p. [155]-171
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Metafiction begins by surveying the state of contemporary fiction in Britain and America and explores the complex political, social and economic factors which influence critical judgment of fiction. The author shows how, as the novel has been eclipsed by the mass media, novelists have sought to retain and regain a wide readership by drawing on the themes and preoccupations of these forms. Making use of contemporary fiction by such writers as Fowles, Borges, Spark, Barthelme, Brautigan, Vonnegut and Barth, and drawing on Russian Formalist theories of literary evolution, the book argues that metafiction uses parody along with popular genres and non-literary forms as a way not only of exposing the inadequate and obsolescent conventions of the classic novel, but of stuggesting the lines along which fiction might develop in the future.
Table of Contents
General editor's preface. Acknowledgements. 1. What is metafiction and why are they saying such awful things about it? 2. Literary self-consciousness: developments 3. Literary evolution: the place of parody 4. Are novelists liars? The ontological status of literary-fictional discourse 5. Fictionality and context: from role-playing to language games Notes. Bibliography. Further reading.
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