The reader of a metafiction raises the question-which is the real world? The ontology of “any fiction is justified/validated/vindicated in the context of various theories of representation in the field of literary art and practice. Among these theories the seminal and the most influential is the mimetic theory. The theory of mimesis (imitation) posits that there is a world out there, a world in which we all live and act, which we call “the real world”. What fiction does (for that matter any art) is to try and (re) present this world using narrative techniques (or artistic techniques)” (Thaninayagam 12).
Historiographic metafiction is an offshoot of postmodern art form. The term historiographic metafiction was coined by Linda Hutcheon in her book A Poetics of Postmodernism : History, Theory, Fiction. According to Linda, historiographic metafictions are “those well-known and popular novels which are both intensely self-reflective and yet paradoxically also lay claim to historical events and personages” (5).
Historiographic metafictions self-consciously distort history by blending history and fantasy or with the help of apocryphal history and anachronisms. Such a fiction uses textual play, parody and historical re-presentation. “Traditionally history is considered to be an obsolete science having recourse to verifiable facts and a chronological record of events. But the postmodernist views history with a pinch of skepticism and as a form that is not entirely objective but highly informed by subjectivity. As a result, historiographic metafiction considers history to be a discourse, context – specific or context – bound” (Thaninayagam 20-21).
Some of the common metafictional devices include:
• A work of fiction within a fiction.
• A...
... middle of paper ...
... main character is Tyrone Slothrop, an American army lieutenant assigned to an Allied Intelligence Unit. Strangely, the pattern of his sexual conquests coincides with V-2 bombing sites, and his erections are good predictions of incoming rockets. Molly Hite observes:
Gravity’s Rainbow deals with the development during the Third Reich of the V-2 rocket, the prototype of all guided missiles, which would become the delivery system for the nuclear armaments being developed in the United States during the same period. The merging of the two technological “advances” culminates a “dream of annihilation” that according to Pynchon’s visionary historicism has obsessed Western civilization for centuries. Gravity’s Rainbow symbolizes both the arc of the rocket and the possible trajectory of civilization itself, as it proceeds toward seemingly inevitable self-destruction” (718).
...between the present and the past. Defining symbols, customs, and allegations of the past, both real and perceived, provoke a human battle between rival notions of an ideal present. Literary deconstruction approaches a text in much the same manner, confronting and dismantling fixed signs, traditions, and assertions. Yet like war, a deconstructive reading does not provide a final answer or the ultimate truth.
The black comedy follows the story of a paranoid U.S. Air Force Commander, General Ripper, who irrationally orders a group of patrol B-52 bombers to attack their targets in Russia. This character’s full name, Jack D. Ripper, is a parody of the notorious murderer of prostitutes, Jack The Ripper. The duration of the narrative involves the President and military personnel’s frantic effort to abort the attack. In conclusion, a single bomber follows through with the attack, triggering the detonation of Russia’s secret “Doomsday Device” and ending civilization.
An example of literature is brought up, where for no apparent reason the historical novel became a popular genre and everyone was reading and writing them despite the fact that the genre had been around for a very long time. He used this example to give a concrete example if his idea, and it appeals to the audience’s
Among its detractors, literary theory has a reputation for sinful ignorance of both literature and the outside world; literary critics either overemphasize the word at the expense of context (as in formalistic criticisms) or overemphasize context at the expense of the word (as in political and historical criticisms). However, deconstruction holds a particularly tenuous position among literary theories as a school that apparently commits both sins; while formalistically focusing on the words on the page, deconstruction subjects those words to unnatural abuse. Thus, deconstruction seems locked in the ivory tower, in the company of resentful New-Critical neighbors.
To unpack this we need to look at how literary precedents express the relationship between player and character—creator and creation—and the extent to which a creator and the society in which s/he lives prescribes the creation’s role. We also need to investigate how one’s role—and concomitantly, one’s creator and one’s society—limit our opportunities, or to put it in other terms, our personal plotlines and narrative possibi...
From the author of Gravity's Rainbow (1973), the famous apocalyptic novel of World War II, comes Vineland (1990), a trip into the California of 1984: a Reagan-era wasteland of yuppies, malls, food-preservatives and, above all, the Tube: the Cathode-Ray Tube. The opening line of Gravity's Rainbow, "A screaming comes across the sky," which describes a V-2 rocket on its lethal mission, finds a way into Pynchon's latest work, albeit transformed: "Desmond was out on the porch, hanging around his dish, which was always empty because of the blue jays who came screaming down out of the redwoods and carried off the food in it piece by piece."
Through this sympathetic faculty, a writer is able to give flesh, authenticity and a genuine perspective to the imagined. It is only in this manner that the goal of creating living beings may be realized. Anything short of this becomes an exercise in image and in Kundera’s words, produces an immoral novel (3). The antithesis of liv... ...
The Postmodernist movement begun after World War II in which, high and low culture are questionable in the view of society and Art. The postmodernist movement in literature creates a new set of ideals for fiction, such as the metafiction, the fable like representation in novels, the pastiche, irony, and satire. Fredric Jameson speaks about the movement and its theory in his essay “Postmodernism and Consumer Society”. He questions postmodernism in society as it creates the new societal norm of popular culture. On the other hand, Jean Baudrillard analyzes the simulacra of postmodernism in “The Precession of Simulacra”. Baudrillard speaks of the “truth” and “reality” also as a questionable representation for the reader. Yet, both critics agree that postmodernist literature is depthless. Spiegelman’s Maus series is a metafiction, which tells the story of Art Spiegelman’s journey of writing this novel through the present-day retelling of Vladek Spiegelman’s life during the Holocaust. However, as a postmodernist text, Jameson and Baudrillard calls it depthless and an “unreal” representation. Nevertheless, the representation of Maus presents the characteristics of a postmodernist text, but argues that it is not depthless because of the representation of an authoritative view, a historical continuum, and the text does not depict itself as a mode of pop culture.
Another important sign of postmodernism in literature is the abandonment of strict time lines, sometimes called discontinuous time. Often an author will construct a sequence of events that have no time relationships to e...
Metafiction is fiction that deals, often playfully and self-referentially, with the writing of fiction or its conventions (website 1). Margaret Atwood is clearly mocking the conventions of romantic fiction throughout the entire story, beginning with the third line "if you want a happy ending, try A." Each scenario includes the idea that "you'll still end up with A" despite the rest of the story, and this indicates that romantic fiction lacks creativity and gives us the ending we want and expect; a happy one. Atwood is also taking a stab at the readers of this genre, who are not only satisfied, but blissfully content with an ending that may not be realistic, but is easy and fun to take in. With statements like "this is the thin part of the plot, but it can be dealt with later" in scenario C, she demonstrates how romantic fiction is full of fluff. In scenario D she writes "they clasp each other, wet and dripping and grateful" a wonderfully hokey idea. Situation E clearly shows how this genre lacks character development, and one could fill in the blanks with manufactured ideas to form a piece of work. She considers romantic fiction and the belief that these lame stories are realistic, ridiculous.
Since his arrival in the mid-seventies, Martin Amis has been the enfant terrible of the British lit scene. Many critics consider him to be a masterful writer enginned by a banal, unoriginal mind, while others think he is simply one step ahead. The same critics would probably argue that style and technique supersedes feeling, sensibility and morality in Time's Arrow. Indeed, there are occasions when Amis' cleverness does undercut the moralism he is trying to convey, but that is not due to faulty morals, but to the extraordinary flair that he possesses. Even if you don't want to hear what Amis has to say about the holocaust, read this book - if nothing else, going through time backwards might just teach you the good parts of life that people tend to miss going forwards.
Weixlmann, Joe. "Dealing with the Demands of an Expanding Literary Canon." College English 50 (1988) 273-283
History is no more confined to a monolithic collection of facts and their hegemonic interpretations but has found a prominent space in narratives. The recent surge in using narrative in contemporary history has given historical fiction a space in historiography. With Hayden White’s definition of history as a “verbal structure in the form of a narrative prose discourse” literature is perceived to be closer to historiography, in the present age (ix). History has regained acceptance and popularity in the guise of fiction, as signified by the rising status of historical fiction in the post colonial literary world.
Postmodern literary criticism asserts that art, author, and audience can only be approached through a series of mediating contexts. "Novels, poems, and plays are neither timeless nor transcendent" (Jehlen 264). Even questions of canon must be considered within a such contexts. "Literature is not only a question of what we read but of who reads and who writes, and in what social circumstances...The canon itself is an historical event; it belongs to the history of the school" (Guillory 238,44).
Raman Selden, Peter Widdowson, and Peter Brooker. A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory. 4th ed. London: Prentice Hall and Harvester Wheatrsheaf. 1997.