Metafiction and Happy Endings (Margaret Atwood)
Metafiction and Happy Endings (Margaret Atwood)
METAFICTION
A. Definition:
The narrator of a metafictional work will call attention to the writing process itself.
The reader is never to forget that what she is reading is constructed--not natural, not " real." She is never to get "lost" in the story.
B. Possible Contents: intruding to comment on writing involving his or herself with fictional characters directly addressing the reader openly questioning how narrative assumptions and conventions transform and filter reality, trying to ultimately prove that no singular truths or meanings exist
C. General Characteristics
Metafiction often employs intertextual references and allusions by: examining fictional systems; incorporating aspects of both theory and criticism; creating biographies of imaginary writers; presenting and discussing fictional works of an imaginary character.
Authors of metafiction often violate narrative levels by: intruding to comment on writing; involving his or herself with fictional characters; directly addressing the reader; openly questioning how narrative assumptions and conventions transform and filter reality, trying to ultimately prove that no singular truths or meanings exist
Metafiction also uses unconventional and experimental techniques by: rejecting conventional plot; refusing to attempt to become “real life”; subverting conventions to transform reality into a highly suspect concept; flaunting and exaggerating foundations of their instability; displaying reflexivity (the dimension present in all literary texts and also central to all literary analysis, a function which enables the reader to understand the processes by which he or she reads the world as a text).
It also poses questions about the relationship between fiction and reality by drawing attention to its characteristic as an artifact by itself.
No sense of reality in its entire spectrum as a genre even though the extremes of each end are
METAFICTION
A. Definition:
The narrator of a metafictional work will call attention to the writing process itself.
The reader is never to forget that what she is reading is constructed--not natural, not " real." She is never to get "lost" in the story.
B. Possible Contents: intruding to comment on writing involving his or herself with fictional characters directly addressing the reader openly questioning how narrative assumptions and conventions transform and filter reality, trying to ultimately prove that no singular truths or meanings exist
C. General Characteristics
Metafiction often employs intertextual references and allusions by: examining fictional systems; incorporating aspects of both theory and criticism; creating biographies of imaginary writers; presenting and discussing fictional works of an imaginary character.
Authors of metafiction often violate narrative levels by: intruding to comment on writing; involving his or herself with fictional characters; directly addressing the reader; openly questioning how narrative assumptions and conventions transform and filter reality, trying to ultimately prove that no singular truths or meanings exist
Metafiction also uses unconventional and experimental techniques by: rejecting conventional plot; refusing to attempt to become “real life”; subverting conventions to transform reality into a highly suspect concept; flaunting and exaggerating foundations of their instability; displaying reflexivity (the dimension present in all literary texts and also central to all literary analysis, a function which enables the reader to understand the processes by which he or she reads the world as a text).
It also poses questions about the relationship between fiction and reality by drawing attention to its characteristic as an artifact by itself.
No sense of reality in its entire spectrum as a genre even though the extremes of each end are