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Metafiction begins by surveying the state of contemporary fiction in Britain and America and explores the complex political, social and economic factors which influence critical judgment of fiction. The author shows how, as the novel has been eclipsed by the mass media, novelists have sought to retain and regain a wide readership by drawing on the themes and preoccupations of these forms. Making use of contemporary fiction by such writers as Fowles, Borges, Spark, Barthelme, Brautigan, Vonnegut and Barth, and drawing on Russian Formalist theories of literary evolution, the book argues that metafiction uses parody along with popular genres and non-literary forms as a way not only of exposing the inadequate and obsolescent conventions of the classic novel, but of stuggesting the lines along which fiction might develop in the future.
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First Sentence
If asked to point out the similarities amongst this disconcerting selection of quotations, most readers would immediately list two or three of the following: a celebration of the power of the creative imagination together with an uncertainty about the validity of its representations; an extreme self-consciousness about language, literary form and the act of writing fictions; a pervasive insecurity about the relationship of fiction to reality; a parodic, playful, excessive or deceptively naive style of writing. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
If asked to point out the similarities amongst this disconcerting selection of quotations, most readers would immediately list two or three of the following: a celebration of the power of the creative imagination together with an uncertainty about the validity of its representations; an extreme self-consciousness about language, literary form and the act of writing fictions; a pervasive insecurity about the relationship of fiction to reality; a parodic, playful, excessive or deceptively naive style of writing. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
To anyone used to the social realism of the novels that top the fiction charts, this critical discussion is upsetting, challenging, and thrilling. When I first read it, I had headaches for two weeks while I fought against the new ideas; now, I refer to it constantly to keep my ideas fresh and well-grounded. The aim of metafictional novels - such as John Fowles' "The French Lieutenant's Woman" - is to challenge the way "reality" is created in books, and to reveal that it's not a mirror-image of reality at all, but a set of literary constructions. The same ideas can be applied to the ways we reconstruct our *own* realities - challenging not only our sense of what books are and do, but also of what reality is, and what it's made of.
Waugh's clarity and interest remain lively throughout the book, and her theoretical grounding is indisputable. Any writer, or reader, who wishes to be modern, should read this.
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