Metafiction

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For the album by Vic Mignogna, see Metafiction (album).

Metafiction, also known as romantic irony in the context of Romantic works of literature, uses self-reference to draw attention to itself as a work of art, while exposing the "truth" of a story. "Metafiction" is the literary term describing fictional writing that self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in posing questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, usually using irony and self-reflection. It can be compared to presentational theatre, which does not let the audience forget it is viewing a play; metafiction does not let the reader forget he or she is reading a fictional work.

Metafiction is primarily associated with Modernist literature and Postmodernist literature, but is found at least as early as Homer's Odyssey and Chaucer's 14th century Canterbury Tales. Cervantes' Don Quixote, published in the 17th century, is a metafictional novel and so is James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner published in 1824. The novels of Brian O'Nolan, written under the nom de plume Flann O'Brien, are considered to be examples of metafiction. In the 1950s several French novelists published works whose styles were collectively dubbed "nouveau roman". These "new novels" were characterized by the bending of genre and style and often included elements of metafiction. It became prominent in the 1960s, with authors and works such as John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse, Robert Coover's "The Babysitter" and "The Magic Poker", Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and William H. Gass's Willie Master's Lonesome Wife. William H. Gass coined the term “metafiction” in a 1970 essay entitled “Philosophy and the Form of Fiction”. Unlike the antinovel, or anti-fiction, metafiction is specifically fiction about fiction, i.e. fiction which self-consciously reflects upon itself.[1]

Various devices of metafiction

Some common metafictive devices in literature include:

Films which use metafictive devices include Adaptation, which wraps metafictively around the real-world non-fiction book The Orchid Thief, and Barton Fink, as well as the thrillers The Usual Suspects, Memento, and Inception. Examples of other media which take part in metafictiveness are Al Capp's Fearless Fosdick in Li'l Abner, the Tales of the Black Freighter in Watchmen, or the The Itchy & Scratchy Show within The Simpsons, as well as the computer game Myst, in which the player represents a person who has found a book named Myst and been transported inside it.

The theme of metafiction may be central to the work, such as in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759) and in Chapter XIV of Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man, in which the narrator talks about the literary devices used in the other chapters. As a literary device, metafiction has become a frequent feature of postmodernist literature. For example, Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler, "a novel about a person reading a novel", is an exercise in metafiction. Paul Auster has made metafiction the central focus of his writing and is probably the best known active novelist specialising in the genre. Often metafiction figures for only a moment in a story, as when "Roger" makes a brief appearance in Roger Zelazny's The Chronicles of Amber.

It can be used in multiple ways within one work. For example, novelist Tim O'Brien, a Vietnam War veteran, writes in his short story collection The Things They Carried about a character named "Tim O'Brien" and his war experiences in Vietnam. Tim O'Brien, as the narrator, comments on the fictionality of some of the war stories, commenting on the "truth" behind the story, though all of it is characterized as fiction. In the story chapter How to Tell a True War Story, O'Brien comments on the difficulty of capturing the truth while telling a war story. In Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, King himself appears as a pivotal character set with the task of writing The Dark Tower books so that the main characters can continue their quest. Other Stephen King books, and characters from them, are mentioned in the narrative. In an afterword to the series finale (The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower), King details why he chose to include himself in his novel. And in James Patterson's Alex Cross series, Along Came a Spider is both the book written by Patterson and a book written by Cross about the events depicted in the book.

One of the most sophisticated[citation needed] treatments of the concept of the novel in a novel occurs in Muriel Spark's debut novel, The Comforters. Spark imbues Caroline, her central character, with voices in her head which constitutes the narration Spark has just set down on the page. In the story Caroline is writing a critical work on the form of the novel when she begins to hear a tapping typewriter (accompanied by voices) through the wall of her house. The voices dictate a novel to her, in which she believes herself to be a character. The reader is thereby continually drawn to the narrative structure, which in turn is the story, i.e. a story about storytelling which itself disrupts the conventions of storytelling. At no point does Spark as author enter the narrative however, remaining omniscient throughout and adhering to the conventions of third-person narration.

According to Patricia Waugh "all fiction is . . . implicitly metafictional," since all works of literature are concerned with language and literature itself.[2] Some elements of metafiction are similar to devices used in metafilm techniques.

Film and television

Main article: Metafilm
  • Seinfeld uses this extensively in episodes revolving around the production of a show titled Jerry.
  • Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman often uses this narrative technique. In the film Adaptation., his character Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) tortuously attempts to write a screenplay adapted from the book The Orchid Thief, only to come to understand that such an adaptation is impossible. Many plot devices used throughout the film are uttered by Kaufman as he develops a screenplay, and the screenplay eventually results in Adaptation itself. In Kaufman's film Synecdoche, New York, stage director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) endeavors to create a vast theatrical project about the world around him, with actors playing himself and everyone in his life. Thus the film Synecdoche, New York, a portrayal of the narrative of Caden's life, tells the story of a portrayal of the narrative of Caden's life.
  • Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story is a 2006 British comedy directed by Michael Winterbottom. It is a film-within-a-film based on a book-within-a-book, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. It features actors Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon playing themselves as egotistical actors during the making of a screen adaptation of Laurence Sterne's 18th century novel Tristram Shandy, which is a fictional account of the narrator's attempt at writing an autobiography. Gillian Anderson and Keeley Hawes also play themselves in addition to their Tristram Shandy roles.
  • Some episodes of the Star Trek series use the holodeck (or its Ferengi equivalent, a "holosuite") to tell a "story-within-a-story". The Deep Space Nine episode "Far Beyond the Stars" tells a similar story without such a high-tech plot device, as basically a work of metafiction, using the DS9 regular characters to tell a mid-20th century story, set in a science fiction publishing house in New York City. Similarly, the regular cast of Northern Exposure play other characters in two episodes set during the early days of the village of Cicely, the series' setting.
  • There are some films in which a character reads a fictional story; e.g. The Princess Bride, Disney Channel's Life is Ruff, Bedtime Stories.
  • There are some films and television shows in which a character hums, whistles, or hears (on a radio, etc.) the show or film's theme song; e.g. The Simpsons (in the final scene of "Homer's Triple Bypass"); Stargate SG-1 (when Sam Carter hums the show's theme during the episode "Chimera"); Demon Knight (in which the second collector whistles the theme to Tales from the Crypt, a show related to the movie); Dragon Ball (when Bulma hums "Romantikku Ageru Yo", the show's closing theme, in the shower during the episode '"Midnight Callers"); The Incredibles (when Mr. Incredible whistles theme music); Magnolia (when all the characters in the film begin to sing the background music - "Wise Up" by Aimee Mann); Almost Famous (when one character begins to sing the background music - "Tiny Dancer" by Elton John - and all of the other characters around him immediately pick it up and sing along as well); Brazil (in which Sam Lowry occasionally hums/listens to/sings the film's self-titled theme song); The Witches of Eastwick (when Daryl Van Horne whistles theme music); Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (when Rubeus Hagrid is briefly heard playing the main theme on a recorder); the 2010 A-Team film (when Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson, as B.A. Baracus, hums the A-Team theme in the trailer); Wild Kratts (when in one episode, Chris wakes up the other characters by trumpeting the theme song, and then explains that he "heard the song somewhere")[citation needed]; Arthur (when in the episode "Brother Can You Spare a Clarinet?" Binky recites a line of the song without singing it, Arthur asks where it came from, and Binky replies that he "heard it in a song somewhere"); and Urusei Yatsura (in which the only music featured is the theme song).
  • Directly referencing another work that internally references the first work; e.g. "Weird Al" Yankovic, whose songs sometimes reference The Simpsons, has appeared on The Simpsons.
  • Characters who do things because those actions are what they would expect from characters in a story; e.g. Scream, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Last Unicorn, The Long Goodbye.
  • Characters who express awareness that they are in a work of fiction; e.g. Stranger Than Fiction, The Great Good Thing,[3] Puckoon, Spaceballs, the Marvel Comics character Deadpool, Illuminatus!, Uso Justo, 1/0, Bob and George, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, the character Guy Fleegman in Galaxy Quest, who asks incredulously, about the dangers facing minor characters in the TV series come-to-life within the movie, "Didn't you guys ever watch the show?"
  • Characters in a film or a television series who mention and/or refer to the actors or actresses that portray themselves; e.g. Beatrice "Betty" Pengson from I Love Betty La Fea; Bea Alonzo, who played the role of the protagonist, also played herself as an Ecomoda model; coincidentally in the show, Betty wants to meet Bea Alonzo in person, an act of self-reference. In Ocean's Twelve, Tess, played by Julia Roberts, disguises herself to look like Julia Roberts. The other characters ironically recognize that she is in disguise. In Last Action Hero, the title character of the inner movie Jack Slater IV comes to the 'real' world and tells his portrayer, Arnold Schwarzenegger, "You've brought me nothing but pain." In His Girl Friday, the character Bruce Baldwin, played by Ralph Bellamy, is described as "[looking] like that actor, Ralph Bellamy." Additionally, Cary Grant's character, Walter Burns, responds to a comment with "the last man that said that to me was Archie Leach just a week before he cut his throat." Archibald "Archie" Leach is Cary Grant's given name.
  • A real pre-existing piece of fiction X, being used within a new piece of fiction Y, to lend an air of authenticity to fiction Y, e.g. A Nightmare on Elm Street is discussed extensively in Wes Craven's New Nightmare, while actors from the former star as "themselves" or Scream 3 and Scream 4, where characters discuss and know of films that are about the previous films' events; likewise are The 1001 Nights put to use within If on a winter's night a traveler.
  • A story where the author is not a character, but interacts with the characters; e.g. She-Hulk, Animal Man, Betty Boop, Daffy Duck in Duck Amuck, Breakfast of Champions, Excel Saga television shows.
  • A story where the narrator is a character in the story, and interacts with himself as a different character; e.g. The Emperor's New Groove.
  • A story within which that story (or a story based on it) is a work of fiction; e.g. Stargate SG-1's "Wormhole X-Treme!" or Supernatural's Supernatural novels.
  • Acknowledging the tropes of the Horror genre; e.g. Funny Games.
  • The acclaimed TV sitcom Arrested Development is widely recognised as a seminal work of televised metafiction; not only is it framed like a reality television show, but it is also highly self-reflexive and intertextual. Some examples of the shows metafictional techniques are the ways that it alludes to its own struggle for ratings, to its competition with Sex and the City, and to the reduction of the second season from 22 to 18 episodes.
  • The TV sitcom Community uses metafictional elements to both use and subvert standard television and film tropes and genres. Episodes like "Cooperative Calligraphy" and "Paradigms of Human Memory" draw attention to the bottle episode and clip show standard episodes of sitcoms, respectively. Thematic references and meta indicators are often provided by Abed Nadir, who sees the world through a lens of television, movies, and other media.
  • "Clark: A gonzomentary" (2012), an independent gonzo mockumentary uses metafictional techniques.
  • The Cabin in the Woods (2012), a horror movie written by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard, was critically lauded for its metafictional elements.
  • Rubber (2010) includes an audience with binoculars who watch the movie as a live performance. The sheriff character knows he is in a movie, and there is a monologue in the beginning about the way that many of the things that happen in films happen for "no reason", and this monologue states that the film will be a tribute to this "no reason". There is a subplot about the sheriff working with the audience's host to poison and kill them, and when he thinks the audience is dead he tries to convince the other characters in the movie that nothing is real and they can stop now.

Use in popular culture

Other examples of the use of metafiction in popular culture:

  • "These Words", a song by Natasha Bedingfield ("These words are my own / From my heart flow").
  • "You're So Vain", a song by Carly Simon ("You're so vain, I bet you think this song is about you").
  • "Your Song", a song by Elton John ("My gift is my song and this one's for you / And you can tell everybody this is your song").
  • "An Elpee's Worth of Toons", a song by Todd Rundgren
  • "The Worst Band in the World", a song by 10cc
  • "Someone Else's Song", a song by Wilco ("I know it sounds like someone else's song from along time ago").
  • "Cosmic", a song by Kylie Minogue, opening with the line "I wanted to write a song called 'Cosmic'".
  • The Bard's Tale, an action role-playing game by InXile Entertainment which satirizes the narrative conventions of role-playing video games and which frequently breaks the fourth wall by addressing the narrator directly.[4]
  • "The Monster at The End of This Book", the eighteenth episode of the fourth season of the television series Supernatural; this entire episode is dedicated to metafiction.
  • "Glass Onion" by The Beatles; this is a song from their 1968 self-titled album known colloquially as The White Album that contains allusions to previous works by the band.

References

  1. ↑ Engler, Burnd (17 December 2004). "Metafiction". The Literary Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2010-04-27. 
  2. ↑ Waugh, Patricia (1988). Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-conscious Fiction. New York: Routledge. p. 148. ISBN 0-415-03006-4. 
  3. ↑ Townley, Roderick, The Great Good Thing
  4. ↑ http://mro.massey.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10179/3350/02_whole.pdf?sequence=1

Further reading

  • Heginbotham, Thomas "The Art of Artifice: Barth, Barthelme and the metafictional tradition" (2009) PDF
  • Hutcheon, Linda, Narcissistic Narrative. The Metafictional Paradox, Routledge 1984, ISBN 0-415-06567-4
  • Levinson, Julie, “Adaptation, Metafiction, Self-Creation,” Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture. Spring 2007, vol. 40: 1.
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