Metafiction (Identities and Issues in Literature)
Metafiction, a work of fiction concerned with the nature of fiction, is a running theme in much postmodern literature. Metafictional literature allows the artist to relinquish control of the narrative to chance configurations. In metafiction, the author grants higher privileges to ontology than to epistemology. The fictional world is constructed in a collaborative effort with the reader. All fictions do this, but in metafiction it is done consciously and with the reader’s full knowledge. As the reader concentrates on the text, the world-making operation of the author is suspended. The...
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