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.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
If asked to point out the similarities amongst this disconcerting selection of quotations, most readers would immediately list two or three of the following: a celebration of the power of the creative imagination together with an uncertainty about the validity of its representations; an extreme self-consciousness about language, literary form and the act of writing fictions; a pervasive insecurity about the relationship of fiction to reality; a parodic, playful, excessive or deceptively naive style of writing. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
metafictional writers, metafictional writing, metafictional novels, metafictional texts, metafictional strategies, formalist theory, literary evolution, omniscient author, outer frame Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
John Barth, John Fowles, Muriel Spark, The French Lieutenant's Woman, Tristram Shandy, Gilbert Sorrentino, Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing, John Irving, Roland Barthes, Christine Brooke-Rose, Donald Barthelme, Iris Murdoch, Raymond Federman, Richard Brautigan, City Life, Robert Coover, Ronald Sukenick, Vladimir Nabokov, Winter's Night, David Lodge, The Black Prince, The History Man, Albert Angelo, Jane Eyre New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
If asked to point out the similarities amongst this disconcerting selection of quotations, most readers would immediately list two or three of the following: a celebration of the power of the creative imagination together with an uncertainty about the validity of its representations; an extreme self-consciousness about language, literary form and the act of writing fictions; a pervasive insecurity about the relationship of fiction to reality; a parodic, playful, excessive or deceptively naive style of writing. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
metafictional writers, metafictional writing, metafictional novels, metafictional texts, metafictional strategies, formalist theory, literary evolution, omniscient author, outer frame Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
John Barth, John Fowles, Muriel Spark, The French Lieutenant's Woman, Tristram Shandy, Gilbert Sorrentino, Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing, John Irving, Roland Barthes, Christine Brooke-Rose, Donald Barthelme, Iris Murdoch, Raymond Federman, Richard Brautigan, City Life, Robert Coover, Ronald Sukenick, Vladimir Nabokov, Winter's Night, David Lodge, The Black Prince, The History Man, Albert Angelo, Jane Eyre New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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This book cites 100
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100
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- Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov on 5 pages
- In Transit: An Heroi-Cyclic Novel (Irish Literature Series) by Brigid Brophy on 4 pages
- History Man by Malcolm Bradbury on 4 pages
- Alphabetical Africa (New Directions Books) by Walter Abish on page 22, page 47, and Back Matter
- The Book of Daniel by E. L. Doctorow on page 105, page 107, and Back Matter
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- Theory and the Novel: Narrative Reflexivity in the British Tradition (Literature, Culture, Theory) by Jeffrey Williams in Front Matter, page 27, and Back Matter
- Lawrence Durrell, Postmodernism And The Ethics Of Alterity.(Postmodern Studies 26) by Stefan Herbrechter on page 49, page 144, and Back Matter
- Postmodernity in Latin America: The Argentine Paradigm (Post-Contemporary Interventions) by Santiago Colás in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- The Vonnegut Chronicles: Interviews and Essays (Contributions to the Study of World Literature) by Peter J. Reed on page 182, and page 203
- Concept of Modernism by Astradur Eysteinsson on page 110, and Back Matter
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