Pale Fire And John Updike's Rabbit-Run

Metafiction is a literary theory that is present in several works of literature. According to the Oxford English Dictionary metafiction is, “Fiction in which the author self-consciously alludes to the artificiality or literariness of a work by parodying or departing from novelistic conventions (esp. naturalism) and narrative techniques; a fictional work in this genre or style.” In other words, Metafiction is exclusively fiction within fiction, or when the writer self-consciously reflects the writing upon itself. It uses both theory and criticism and creates biographies of imaginary writers. Metafiction is closely related to presentational theatre, metafiction does not let the reader forget they are reading a fictional work; where as presentational theatre does not let the audience forget it is viewing a play. It is otherwise known as Romantic irony in the context of Romantic works of literature, it portrays self-reflexive techniques to draw the reader’s awareness to itself as a work of art, while also revealing the “truth“ of a story. Valdamir Nabokov’s Pale Fire and John Updike’s Rabbit Run have both been recognized to be

Kinbote himself is like that of a mad hatter. He says that he is to be the exiled King of Zembla, a “distant northern land”, from which he has fled only to be chased by an assassin, named Jacques Gradus. He also believes himself to be a close associate of John Shade, the poem’s author, and the true target of the gunman who ultimately violates the nirvana of middle-American academia, though all of that too may prove misleading. Not to be forgotten about, Kinbote steals the manuscript of the poem and runs