Fiction in which the author self-consciously alludes to the artificiality or literariness of a work by parodying or departing from novelistic conventions (especially naturalism) and traditional narrative techniques.
‘the followers of Borges had retreated into airless metafiction’
‘David Copperfield is a metafiction in which Dickens shows the process of constructing a romance itself’
‘The second narrative technique, metafiction, works in opposition to point-of-view narration to align the reader with the author at the expense of the fictional subject.’
‘The latter story, a somewhat incomplete-seeming outline of a tale, is as much an early exercise in metafiction and ghost-storytelling technique as a coherent narrative.’
‘It may be metafiction, a technique seen in all his works.’
‘Fiction writers were influenced by the postmodern fabulism and metafiction of North and South America.’
‘In a New York Times Magazine article three years ago, Miller defined metafiction as ‘fiction that openly admits it is an artificial creation - as opposed to naturalism, in which art strives to represent real life.’’
‘The mixing of fantastic and realistic modes and the ragged edges he makes between invention and representation, has been generally described as magical realism or metafiction.’
‘With its multi-tiered narrative and myriad metafiction conceits, the novel has all the makings of a literary event.’
‘Their quest for ‘urban realism’ or neo-realism suggest that metafiction is not by definition incongruent with realism, and that referentiality remains a powerful preoccupation in many strands of postmodern fiction.’
‘Similarly, while metafiction in general allows, even demands, a new and more powerful role for the reader, it simultaneously demonstrates the continuing need for a consciously constructing authorial figure.’
‘However, what is often overlooked is metafiction's inherent and inevitable preoccupation with the creative power of the author.’
‘The result has been a number of works of art in the distinctively postmodern genre of historiographical metafiction.’
‘This kind of self-reflexiveness, through pastiche and quotation, is characteristic of metafiction and metafilm.’
‘An investigation of transworld identity, historiographic metafiction, creative writing, postmodernism, and narrative voice.’
‘Second, it works as a metafilm and metafiction, employing sophisticated self-reflexive devices to tell a micro-historical story about film, film spectatorship and its relationship to modern Sicilian life.’
‘The delight He took in transposing Descartes into spoken French leaps off the page, and the result of his efforts is a hilarious novel of ideas and social manners, with metafiction present as well.’
‘Most metafiction tends towards narcissistic tail-chasing, but let's keep going.’
‘In fact, each story becomes a metafiction: they are about the process of telling war stories as much as they are war stories themselves.’
‘It's got an interesting metafiction to the plot as well.’
‘The content of the interview is a metafiction that navigates the cultural space between imagined signs and social truths.’
‘Technically it is, I believe, what is called in some quarters a metafiction: a book about a book.’
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