metafiction
nounEtymology From meta- + fiction, coined in 1970 by William H. Gass
1
Usually A form of self-referential literature concerned with the art and devices of fiction itself.
- Julian Barnes's Flaubert's Parrot (1984) and Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor and Chatterton may be described as accomplished examples of historiographic metafiction, the kind of self-conscious, heavily parodic and experimental historical […]1999, Susana Onega Jaén, Metafiction and Myth in the Novels of Peter Ackroyd, Camden House, →ISBN, page 1:
- In the previous chapter, I presented a heuristic explanation of the development of metafiction. In this chapter, I turn to some texts written before the 1980s to demonstrate that the binary between realism and metafiction is not fixed.2010, Evan Mwangi, Africa Writes Back to Self: Metafiction, Gender, Sexuality, SUNY Press, →ISBN, page 65:
- Derived terms
- historiographic metafiction, metafictionist
- Related terms
- metafictional, metafictive, midfiction, metatext, intertextuality