262 Pages
by Routledge

262 Pages
by Routledge

262 Pages
by Routledge

Metafiction is one of the most distinctive features of postwar fiction, appearing in the work of novelists as varied as Eco, Borges, Martin Amis and Julian Barnes. It comprises two elements: firstly cause, the increasing interpenetration of professional literary criticism and the practice of writing; and secondly effect: an emphasis on the playing with styles and forms, resulting from an enhanced... Read more
General Editor's Preface  Acknowledgements  Introduction  Part One: Defining Metafiction  1. Metafiction  2. What is metafiction and why are they saying such awful things about it?  3. Metanarrative signs  Part Two: Historiographic Metafiction  4. Historiographic metafiction  5. British historiographic metafiction  6. The question of narrative in contemporary historical theory  Part Three: The writer/critic  7. The novel now  8. The literature of exhaustion  9. From Reflections on the "Name of the Rose"  Part Four: Readings of Metafiction  10.The art of metafiction  11. Metafiction, the historical novel and Coover's "The Public Burning"  12. The Novel, illusion and reality: the paradox of omniscience in "The French Lieutenant's Women" 13. A novel which is a machine for generating interpretations  Bibliography  Index

Biography

Mark Currie is Professor of Contemporary Literature at Queen Mary University of London.