A collection of articles previously published in various sources, 1967-1990.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 246-248) and index.
1. Metafiction / Robert Scholes -- 2. What is metafiction and why are they saying such awful things about it? / Patricia Waugh -- 3. Metanarrative signs / Gerald Prince -- 4. Historiographic metafiction / Linda Hutcheon -- 5. British historiographic metafiction / Susana Onega -- 6. The question of narrative in contemporary historical theory / Hayden White -- 7. The novel now / David Lodge -- 8. The literature of exhaustion / John Barth -- 9. From Reflections on the Name of the Rose / Umberto Eco -- 10. The art of metafiction / Larry McCaffery -- 11. Metafiction, the historical novel and Coover's The Public Burning / Raymond A. Mazurek -- 12. The novel, illusion and reality: the paradox of omniscience in The French Lieutentant's Woman / Frederick M. Holmes -- 13. A novel which is a machine for generating interpretations / Elizabeth Dipple.
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This volume is the first to collect writings specifically on the subject of metafiction and brings together the best writing from literary criticism and theory on the topic. It offers a new definition of metafiction, moving away from the idea of it being fictional 'self-consciousness' and redefining it as a borderline territory between fiction and criticism. Following the proliferation of metafiction in the last two decades, with an increasing interpenetration of professional literary criticism and fictional writing, the book emphasises the importance of recent developments in literary theory, historiography and the philosophy of language.