Lodge, D: The Art of Fiction.Penguin Books.England.1992.

Metafiction (Chapter 46)

Metafiction is fiction about fiction: novels and stories that call attention to their fictional status and their own
compositional procedures. The granddaddy of all metafictional novels was Tristram Shandy, whose narrators
dialogues with his imaginary readers are only one of the many ways in which Sterne foregrounds the gap between
art and life that conventional realism seeks to conceal. Metafiction, then, is not a modern iinvention; but it is a mode
that many contemporary writers find particularly appealing, wieghted down, as they are, by their awareness of their
literary antecedents, oppressed by the fear that whatever they might have to say hass been said before, and
condemned to selfconsciousness by the climate of modern culture.
!n the work of "nglish novelists, metafictional discourse most commonly occurs in the form of #asides$ in novels
primarily focused on the tradidional novelist task of describing character and action.
%...&
'ith other modernist writers, mostly non.(ritish the )rgentinian (orges, the !talian *alvino and the )merican
+ohn (arth come to mind, though +ohn ,owles also belongs to this company metafictional discourse is not so much
a loophole or alibi by means of which the writer can occasionaly escape the constrains of tradidional realism; rather,
it is a central preoccupation and source of inspiration.
Lodge, D: The Art of Fiction.Penguin Books.England.1992.
Metafiction (Chapter 46)
Metafiction is fiction about fiction: novels and stories that call attention to their fictional status and their own
compositional procedures. The granddaddy of all metafictional novels was Tristram Shandy, whose narrators
dialogues with his imaginary readers are only one of the many ways in which Sterne foregrounds the gap between
art and life that conventional realism seeks to conceal. Metafiction, then, is not a modern iinvention; but it is a mode
that many contemporary writers find particularly appealing, wieghted down, as they are, by their awareness of their
literary antecedents, oppressed by the fear that whatever they might have to say hass been said before, and
condemned to selfconsciousness by the climate of modern culture.
!n the work of "nglish novelists, metafictional discourse most commonly occurs in the form of #asides$ in novels
primarily focused on the tradidional novelist task of describing character and action.
%...&
'ith other modernist writers, mostly non.(ritish the )rgentinian (orges, the !talian *alvino and the )merican
+ohn (arth come to mind, though +ohn ,owles also belongs to this company metafictional discourse is not so much
a loophole or alibi by means of which the writer can occasionaly escape the constrains of tradidional realism; rather,
it is a central preoccupation and source of inspiration.
Lodge, D: The Art of Fiction.Penguin Books.England.1992.
Metafiction (Chapter 46)
Metafiction is fiction about fiction: novels and stories that call attention to their fictional status and their own
compositional procedures. The granddaddy of all metafictional novels was Tristram Shandy, whose narrators
dialogues with his imaginary readers are only one of the many ways in which Sterne foregrounds the gap between
art and life that conventional realism seeks to conceal. Metafiction, then, is not a modern iinvention; but it is a mode
that many contemporary writers find particularly appealing, wieghted down, as they are, by their awareness of their
literary antecedents, oppressed by the fear that whatever they might have to say hass been said before, and
condemned to selfconsciousness by the climate of modern culture.
!n the work of "nglish novelists, metafictional discourse most commonly occurs in the form of #asides$ in novels
primarily focused on the tradidional novelist task of describing character and action.
%...&
'ith other modernist writers, mostly non.(ritish the )rgentinian (orges, the !talian *alvino and the )merican
+ohn (arth come to mind, though +ohn ,owles also belongs to this company metafictional discourse is not so much
a loophole or alibi by means of which the writer can occasionaly escape the constrains of tradidional realism; rather,
it is a central preoccupation and source of inspiration.