Metafiction

A work of fiction that focuses on the nature or creation of fiction itself. Writers of the 1960’s did much to develop this experimental form of writing, also known as self-reflexive fiction.

Origins and History

Because traditional literary forms did not adequately reflect the social upheaval of the 1960’s, experimental authors chose to go beyond the idea that fiction should mimic reality. Instead, postmodernist writers embraced a kind of self-conscious fiction that examined the very process by which fiction is created. Few notable examples of metafiction existed before the late 1950’s. One rare early model is Tristram Shandy (1759-1767) by Laurence Sterne. André Gide's seminal novel The Counterfeiters (1926) uses a predecessor to postmodernist experimentalism, the mise-en-abyme method (a method in which a continual internal duplication exists within a literary work).

Metafiction in the United States was inspired by work in nonliterary artistic fields. In visual art, cubists, Dadaists, and expressionists provided impetus for metafictional writers by seeking to obliterate the paradoxical falsity of reality in their art, just as metafictional writers wanted to tear away facades in their fiction. In philosophy, eighteenth century philosopher Immanuel Kant's suggestion that humanity’s relationship to the world is defined by subjective sensory perceptions and that humans create their own reality prompted writers to diverge from traditional realistic fiction. Epistemological theories based on Kant pointed out that empirical evidence cannot exist, and thus life itself becomes a form of metafiction. These ideas impelled European authors such as Franz Kafka, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Samuel Beckett to focus on existentialism and literature of the absurd; they in turn were catalysts for the experimental fiction movement in the United States. United States writers William Gaddis and John Hawks worked with experimental forms and influenced later writers in the metafictional vein, contributing to the scant metafictional canon before 1960.

The heyday of postmodernist experimental fiction began as a reflection of social turbulence; novelists who felt that absolute truth was too elusive to be fettered by realistic writing turned inward and explored a personal version of reality. The chaos of that personal reality was mimicked in the antinovel (an experimental novel that dispenses with traditional elements such as characterization and a sequential plot) by an increasing emphasis on internal fictional technique. Some authors highlighted the concept that fiction resembles a game, illustrating its playful quality by writing stories sustained by an internally supported system of logic without ever linking their words to a universal reality (mainly because metafictional writers believed that truth can be grounded only in personal sensory experiences and thus does not exist universally). In other words, the fiction’s style became superior to its plot and characters; the manner of writing evolved into the theme and meaning of the story.

Ficciones served as one of the most notable models of metafiction and broadened its influence as a genre. In 1963, Thomas Pynchon published V., a masterful example of self-reflexive technique that stylistically resembles a series of mazes. In 1966, John Barth published Giles Goat-Boy, a sweeping allegory set in the world of academia. Barth’s short work, “Lost in the Funhouse” (1968), a much anthologized piece depicting the mind of a fiction writer, is a textbook example of metafiction technique. Two other writers, Donald Barthelme and Robert Coover, helped shape experimental fiction. Barthelme’s collection, Come Back, Dr. Caligari (1964) played with narrative voice and irony in mimetic prose, and Coover’s novel The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. (1968) dealt with fantasy and its role in creating and sustaining fiction. Other notable authors working with metafiction in the 1960’s, such as Richard Fariña, Gilbert Sorrentino, William Gass, Joseph McElroy, and George Herbert, contributed to the mood of metasensibility.

Impact

The experimental writers once shunned by the academic mainstream soon found their way into the traditional intellectual community. Once established as a legitimate genre, metafiction merged with other experimental techniques and with traditional literary methods. New structural devices in fiction the use of typography as a literary tool, the portrayal of accepted reality as fantasy, the inclination of authors to freely exhibit their fictional natures, and the introduction of multiple and paradoxical viewpoints became more conventional. This medley of literary styles generated a resurgence of romanticism and renewed dependence on personal insight for creative inspiration.

Subsequent Events

Experimental writers who had first published in the 1960’s continued to contribute to the growing canon of metafiction in subsequent decades. Gass objectified some ideas about the nature of metafiction in his Fiction and the Figures of Life (1970), a text that legitimized the innovative fiction techniques of the 1960’s and became an important reference for critics of self-reflexive fiction. Pynchon published another experimental novel, Gravity’s Rainbow (1973). Sorrentino’s Mulligan Stew (1979) portrayed the author as a character surrounded by other writers who were aware that they were characters in that novel. Coover’s controversial The Public Burning (1977) examined the association between humankind’s fictional schemes and reality.

Additional Information

A study of modern experimental fiction with an emphasis on metafiction can be found in Fabulation and Metafiction (1979), by Robert Scholes. Larry McCaffery’s The Metafictional Muse (1982) focuses specifically on the works of Coover, Barthelme, and Gass. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (1990), by Chris Baldick, and A Handbook to Literature (1992), edited by C. Hugh Holman and William Harmon, offer basic definitions of metafiction.