Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Metafiction'

Many critics have examined metanarrative aspects of Dickens's writing, and many have studied Dickens's ethics. None, however, has yet assessed the ways in which Dickens's directly interrogates the ethics of fiction. Surprisingly philosophical treatments of the ethics of fiction take place in A Christmas Carol and A House to Let, both of which turn the ghost story of the traditional winter's tale to metafictional purposes. No one has yet dealt with Dickens's own meta-commentary on the ethics of fiction with the degree of philosophical nuance it deserves. Writings about the ethics of Dickens's fiction (and of fiction generally) often involves a simplistic separation of the real and the fictional: the text is ethical inasmuch as it effects positive change in the "real world." Yet Dickens constantly blurs the line between the real and the fictional. He adopts a somewhat Kantian stance, namely that both the real and the fictional are fundamentally imagined. Dickens reflexively makes the ghosts in A Christmas Carol embodiments of the fictional imagination, seen most explicitly in the Ghost of Christmas Past, who is closely associated with the narrator, with imagination, with memory, and with fiction. The other two spirits also personify aspects of the fictional imagination: that of Christmas Present embodies social imaginings; the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come embodies intentions. Dickens shows that these imagined realities are crucial parts of the real, proving that fiction cannot be defined as that which is merely "imagined." How, then, is "fiction" to be defined? Dickens's answer anticipates Levinas: the ethical encounter determines the real as real; its absence is what defines fiction. A House to Let is also strongly Levinasian: its very structure makes it a parable of the ethical relation. The plot centers on Sophonisba's "haunting" by an eye seen in the supposedly uninhabited house to let opposite. This "eye" and its effect are described in terms that equate it with the Levinasian "face," or the foundational ethical reality that precedes and conditions all discourse. Sophonisba reacts to this haunting by enlisting her closest male companions, Jarber and Trottle, to investigate the house. These two characters come to symbolize different general comportments by their reactions. The text unfavorably represents Jarber's primarily narrative orientation, and approves Trottle's response, which disrupts narrative self-satisfaction in favor of real-world intervention in behalf of the Other. There is a productive friction, then, between the metafictional message of A Christmas Carol (looking back to Kant and emphasizing fiction's positive effects) and that of A House to Let (looking forward to Levinas and emphasizing fiction's ethical dangers), evidencing Dickens's complex awareness of both narrative and pre-narrative levels of ethical reality.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2002.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis investigates the possibility that there are other ways in which to represent the past, not just the traditional way as practised by historians. For instance, other forms such as historical fiction in the historical novel, and therefore, narrative, can act as an important conduit for conveying historical meaning. Through the examination of the historiographic metafiction of the South African writer, Etienne Van Heerden, this study has concluded that through a reading of both the author's belletristic and theoretical texts, readers interested in history and literature will gain some understanding of the problems that come with writing up the past. At the same time, they will gain some knowledge of a different way of writing about South African history, because the author portrays the historical events in a refreshing, vivid and imaginative way. However, it needs to be said from the outset that in no way is the writer of this thesis neglecting the merits of traditional history or advocating its abolition, which is, ultimately, the scientific way of representing the past and remains sacred and paramount for the historian, both amateur and professional.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis ondersoek die moontlikheid dat die verlede volgens ander sienswyses voorgestel kan word en nie slegs volgens die tradisionele sienswyses van historici nie. Daar is byvoorbeeld ander vorme, soos historiese fiksie wat in historiese novelles gebruik word, en daarom kan die narratief as 'n belangrike kanaal dien om historiese betekenis mee oor te dra. Deur 'n ondersoek van die historiese metafiksie van die Suid-Afrikaanse skrywer, Etienne van Heerden, kom hierdie studie tot die gevolgtrekking dat deur die lees van beide die skrywer se belletristiese en teoretiese tekste, lesers wat in die geskiedenis en literatuur belangstel, 'n begrip sal kry van die problematiek wat gepaard gaan met die skryf van geskiedenis. Terselfdertyd sal hulle 'n begrip kry van 'n alternatiewe skryf van die Suid-Afrikaanse geskiedenis, omdat die skrywer historiese gegewens in 'n verfrissende, helder en verbeeldingryke wyse oordra. Dit moet egter beklemtoon word dat die skrywer van hierdie tesis geensins die meriete van tradisionele geskiedskrywing negeer of die afskaffing daarvan voorstaan nie, aangesien die wetenskaplike voorstelling van die verlede kosbaar en van kardinale belang vir beide amateur en professionele historici bly.

This study seeks to define a particular sub-genre of contemporary performance where self-awareness is a significant factor in the audience's experience. Exemplified in the development of a new performance work ('Spectate'), the term 'embodied metafiction' is proposed as a way of understanding the effect of highlighting an audience's presence and participation in the theatrical experience. Principles of 'embodied metafiction' are observed through 'Spectate' to demonstrate how an audience can be stimulated to experience a more vivid sense of the immediate present when their bodies and minds are positioned as part of a complex web of meaning.

The main task in this thesis is to define the relationship between the philosophical concept of “the end of history” and postmodernist understanding and critique of history in English “historiographic metafiction”. I consider the end of history both as an important feature of postmodern culture and a suitable topic through which contemporary fiction can be analysed. I refer to Alexandre Kojève’s reading of Hegelian dialectics and to Francis Fukuyama’s optimistic interpretation of the end of history in order to introduce the philosophical debate on the end of history and explain the context within which postmodern novelists write. The novelists I examine jettison the end of history thesis as a metanarrative and produce critical histories through postmodernist modes of representation. I dwell particularly on twelve novels and their different ways to represent history and its end.
L’obiettivo principale di questa tesi è definire il rapporto tra il concetto filosofico di “fine della storia” e il modo in cui la storia e la sua fine possono essere interpretate nella “historiographic metafiction” inglese. Considero la fine della storia sia come un aspetto caratteristico della cultura postmoderna sia come un valido argomento per analizzare la narrativa contemporanea. Prendo in esame la lettura della dialettica hegeliana da parte di Alexandre Kojève e l’interpretazione ottimistica della fine della storia di Francis Fukuyama al fine di introdurre il dibattito filosofico sulla fine della storia e di spiegare il contesto in cui scrivono gli scrittori postmoderni. Gli scrittori a cui ho rivolto la mia attenzione respingono la tesi della fine della storia e producono delle riscritture critiche della storia attraverso tecniche di rappresentazione postmoderne. Mi soffermo in particolare su dodici romanzi e sul loro modo di raccontare la storia e la sua fine.

Historiographic metafiction - self-reflexive postmodernist fiction which incorporates historical events and personages, according to Linda Hutcheon's definition - offers a parodic critique of the epistemology and narrative forms of traditional historiography and historical fiction. Calling into question the totalising grand narratives of "official" history, it refigures the past into self-consciously fictional forms that problematise the ontological boundary between the "real" and "fictional" and challenges the predominant cultural sense of History as the public actions of the Great. Hutcheon's original study of the form, however, devotes little attention to works of historiographic metafiction centred on the fictionalised inner life and private experience of a real-world historical individual. My thesis is an attempt to at least partially rectify this oversight by offering readings of three such texts: Michael Ondaatje's The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang and Don DeLillo's Libra. By way of comparison, I also offer a reading of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, an influential historiographic metafiction in which the incorporation of historical personages is objective and peripheral, but in which the fictional refiguration of public history is nevertheless highly individualistic. This thesis contends that while postmodernist theory and fiction typically contest liberal humanist conceptions of the individual subject as autonomous and unified, these works of historiographic metafiction nevertheless use narratives of individual subjectivity - fragmented and socio-historically situated, interior and experiential, domestic and private - to challenge traditional historical discourse's pri vileging of the public and the momentous. I argue that Ondaatje' s, Carey's and DeLillo's texts both utilise and subvert the conventions of historical documentation and realist fiction in order to expose the artificiality of their own apparently authentic representation; by foregrounding their own authorial acts of narrative power, they ultimately reveal the irreducible absence of the "real" historical individual from both historical and fictional texts.

Bibliography: leaves 190-201.
Despite the age of the fairy-tale tradition, and its focus on fairly primitive aspects of human experience, fairy tale is able to adapt itself to a range of cultures and contexts, including numerous examples in the twentieth century. Various authors and film-makers are reasserting the power and value of the fairy tale as a response even to the uncertain and ironic experience of contemporary culture. The suitability of fairy tale to modern texts rests partially in its qualities of inherentmetafictionality, the extent to which it self-consciously denies mimesis. This gives it particular relevance to postmodernism, as does the structuredness which facilitates self-aware play with genre. At the same time, the status of oral fairy tale as a folk form connects interestingly with postmodernism's blurring of the boundaries between high and low culture. This has particular implications for the presence of fairy tale within texts traditionally considered as popular culture, herethe fantasy/science fiction ghetto, and the Hollywood film. This thesis chooses to focus on texts which attempt to write actual fairy tale, rather than those which use fairy-tale motifs thematically. In making this distinction, attention is paid to particular aspects of recognisable fairy-tale texture, that is, overall effect, which relies on elements of pattern, structure, simplification, symbolism, ahistorisicim, the construction of a removed and marvellous world, and a tone of certainty which necessitates a response of accepting wonder in the reader.

This thesis concerns the novelist John Fowles and analyses his seven novels in the order in which they were written. The study reveals an emergent artistic trajectory, which has been variously categorized by literary critics as postmodern. However, I suggest that Fowles's work is more complex and significant than such a reductive and simplistic label would suggest. Specifically, this study argues that Fowles's work contributes to the reinvigoration of the novel form by a radical extension of the modernist project of the literary avant-garde, interrogating various conventions associated with both literary realism and the realism of the literary modernists while still managing to evade a subjective realism. Of particular interest to the study is Fowles's treatment of his female characters, which evolves over time, indicative of an emergent quasi-feminism. This study counters the claims of many contemporary literary critics that Fowles's work cannot be reconciled with any feminist ideology. Specifically, I highlight the increasing centrality of Fowles's female characters in his novels, accompanied by a growing focus on the mysterious and the uncanny. Fowles's work increasingly associates mystery with creativity, femininity, and the mythic, suggests that mystery is essential for growth and change, both in society and in the novel form itself, and implies that women, rather than men, are naturally predisposed to embrace it. Fowles's novels reflect a worldview that challenges an over-reliance on the empirical and rational to the exclusion of the mysterious and the intuitive. I suggest that Fowles's novels evince an increasingly mythopoeic realism, constantly testing the limits of what can be apprehended and articulated in language, striving towards a realism that is universal and transcendent.

This thesis examines the self-reflexive and metafictional aspects of Achilles Tatius’ Leukippe and Kleitophon. The aim is to map this self-reflexivity by examining the intricacy of its narrative structure, revealing the self-consciousness of the text, and thereby comment on the visibility of the author. Achilles Tatius is a notably difficult text. It presents a narrative of complexity, while appearing superficial. Scholars have recognised this complexity, but have yet to produce a clear analysis of how the text functions as a complete work. Through the discourse provided by the theory of ‘metafiction’, this complexity is able to be diagnosed and explored to its completion. It is only through the totality of the text that a complete understanding of Achilles’ novel becomes possible. In examining the text by book-pairs, a comprehensive and intelligent structure emerges, revealing a highly conscious text through its awareness of its own fictive structure. The consequence of providing a comprehensive analysis is that many of these insights cannot be explored to the extent they deserve, as more research remains to be done.

This thesis examines the romantic thrillers of Mary Stewart, which were internationally bestselling novels in the post-war British fiction marketplace. Through my reading of Stewart, I nuance current critical perceptions of the mid-twentieth century middlebrow novel, which, I argue, is characterised in part by a self-conscious investigation of its position within the parameters of highbrow literature and popular fiction. As a critical category which is defined by its relation to literary value, I argue that works considered to be middlebrow are inherently self-reflective and metafictive, seeking to discreetly undermine the hierarchical structures which attempt to contain them. I posit the term ‘soft-metafiction’ to describe this; as opposed to ‘hard’ metafiction, which explicitly and insistently proclaims its self-awareness, soft-metafiction is involved in an understated, often sub-textual, exploration of its status as text. I argue that Stewart’s work is characterised by frequent use of intertextual reference and metafictive reflection on the nature and purpose of text as a concept. In Chapter One, I discuss Stewart’s engagement with notions of canonicity and literary value, showing how she defends the reading of middlebrow fiction against such figures as Q.D. Leavis, and how she challenges the position of women within the masculinised canon. In Chapter Two, I demonstrate how Stewart reflects upon the generic conventions of romance, fairytale, crime and gothic fiction to raise questions about gender and genre. Chapter Three explores how Stewart reflects on the nature of texts, and how they function in relation to history (both personal and national), memory, and identity. Throughout, I demonstrate Stewart’s interest in the various ways that text is categorised: generically, hierarchically and canonically. In doing so, I demonstrate that Stewart’s novels are more than, as one reviewer writes, ‘charming little love stor[ies]’: rather, they are intellectually searching, self-aware works, with a serious interest in their wider literary context. By mapping Stewart’s work in terms of the soft-metafictive, I aim to open this term up as a wider area for study within the middlebrow, and to prompt a recalibration of critical understandings of the British fiction marketplace in the mid-twentieth century.

The thesis examines the potentialities offered by social networking websites for constructing original metafictional narratives. It comprises a novel, a critical exegesis, and three Facebook pages which are attributed to fictional characters and used as a plot-development tool. Readers ‘befriend’ the characters and place themselves within the fabric of the fictional narrative. The result is a collaborative storytelling experience which evolves in real time and forms the basis of the print novel Esc&Ctrl. The exegesis places the creative piece into a contemporary research context. In chapter one I provide an account of the evolution of metafiction and the selfbegetting novel with reference to the works of William H. Gass, Steven Kellman and Patricia Waugh. I also account for the problem of authenticity in fiction, and use Paul Ricoeur’s Time and Narrative to demonstrate the ways in which the temporal spectrum of an online narrative differs from that of traditional print text. Chapter two argues that the evolution of the internet offers a new set of conditions that necessitate a radical overhaul of the ways in which postmodernity tends to be theorised, and according to which postmodern theories may be reconfigured. Referencing Jean-Francois Lyotard, I discuss the micronarratives of the internet and how these lead to the formation of an online ‘self’ which is necessarily different from a self located in the offline realm. Jean Baudrillard’s concept of the loss of the real is extrapolated in order to show that the internet, and particularly social networking sites, are representative of a simulated culture. The chapter ends with a definition of what I have called ‘metafictional virtuality’ and a summary of how it could be said to impact postmodern consciousness. Chapter three examines the new creative vistas opened up by hypertext, social networking and transmedia fiction for metafiction and the self-begetting novel. Referencing the works of Wayne C. Booth, Wolfgang Iser and Stanley Fish, I explore the role of the reader in attributing meaning to hypertext. I then examine the advantages and shortcomings of using social networking to tell stories, with specific reference to the critical work of Ruth Page and the practical example of the online counterpart to Esc&Ctrl. Chapter four provides an account of the mechanics of setting up, maintaining and operating the Facebook pages I used in the project. It ends with a statistical analysis of reader-engagement throughout the eight days that the project was live. I conclude by evaluating the strengths and shortcomings of the social networking narrative and account for how its basic principles might be applied to newly-emerging technologies such as the soon-to-be-released Google Glass.

Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch and BS Johnson’s The Unfortunates depict the effects of loss on self-perception in a way that is informed by these books’ unconventional physical structures. Both are interactive texts that identify the fragmentation of the self as a key feature of grief and their aleatory, randomizable structures perform the involuntary and disruptive nature that Susan Brison identifies as characteristic of traumatic memory. These experimental books thus call attention to the physicality of reading and to the reader’s role as an active participant who is responsible for the construction of meaning that arises from physically ordering each text. The fragmentary nature of the grieving subject is embodied by chapter divisions, which in both texts act as the primary sites of randomization. In this respect, the chapters of these books can be productively understood using the framework of Derridean citationality, as their ability to be re-ordered in different contexts enables a multiplicity of potential meanings. The metafictional themes of both books further destabilize clear divisions between author and reader, with the texts ultimately suggesting that grief involves a disruption of the individual’s ability to position themselves within organizational frameworks such as causality that would enable straightforward comprehension of the self in relation to the world.
Arts, Faculty of
English, Department of
Graduate

ix, 106 p.
This thesis focuses on the metafictional elements in selected works of the contemporary Chinese authors Gao Xingjian, Huang Jinshu, and Wang Xiaobo. I define metafiction as both a formal feature inherent in the text and the result of an approach towards that text. I argue that metafiction confronts us with the (postmodern) issues of 1) the ontological status of the text, 2) the figure of the author and reader, and 3) the (ambiguous) relationship between fiction and reality. Simultaneously, it accepts and celebrates this self-conscious and ambiguous character, encouraging readers to do the same. By combining elements from the indigenous literary tradition and international literary movements, contemporary Chinese metafiction is a valuable contribution to the study of metafiction. Ultimately, it shows what it means to write and read in a Chinese as well as in a global context.
Committee in charge: Prof. Alison Groppe, Chairperson; Prof. Maram Epstein, Member; Prof. Xiaoquan Raphael Zhang, Member

The aim of this bachelor’s thesis is to discuss, and attempt to confirm, that Ian McEwan’s Atonement (2001) lacks closure. Since the novel has an unreliable narrator who offers her readers several credible endings to her narrative, and who also acts as the fictitious author of the story, unreliability and metafiction are claimed to be the main underlying causes of this deprivation of closure. The discussion in the first section of the analysis is based on the plot development depicted in Gustav Freytag’s Pyramid, and the second part is focused on Victoria Orlowski’s four metafictional characteristics denoting ways in which writers of metafiction transgress narrative levels. The claim is concluded to be partly fulfilled, since Atonement is regarded as lacking closure in terms of narrative structure but not in a philosophical and moral sense.

Orientador: Ana Maria Carlos
Banca: Daniela Mantarro Calippo
Banca: Márcio Natalino Thamos
Resumo: Pretendemos examinar o conceito de metaficção, mais precisamente sua ligação com o teatro representacional, presente na minissérie Capitu, dirigida por Luiz Fernando Carvalho e exibida pela Rede Globo em 2008, uma adaptação do romance Dom Casmurro (1899), de Machado de Assis, evento promovido para homenagear o centenário de morte do escritor. Assim, correlacionaremos a linguagem intimista e dialógica que o narrador machadiano mantém com o leitor na obra literária com os aspectos metaficcionais presentes no meio audiovisual, mostrando que o novo molde estético adotado pelo diretor da minissérie busca ligações com o estilo machadiano: o de negação das ferramentas narrativas que criam a ilusão de realidade, deixando claro que suas palavras são conscientemente elaboradas e que o romance não é mais do que uma construção
Abstract: The goal is to examine the concept of metafiction, more precisely its connection with the representation theater present in the miniseries Capitu, from director Luiz Fernando Carvalho and aired by Globo in 2008, an adaptation of the romance Dom Casmurro (1899), Machado de Assis, part of an event celebrating the centenary of the writer's death. we intend to correlate the intimate and dialogic language that the narrator keeps with the reader in the literary work with the metafictional aspects presented in the audiovisual medium, showing that the new aesthetic mold adopted by the director searches links with Machado's style: the denial of the narrative tool that create the illusion of reality, making it clear that his words are consciously elaborated and that the romance is nothing but a construction
Mestre

This dissertation presents research into the aesthetics of Christa Wolf's prose. As a post-World War II writer, Wolf sets out to practise in her prose a new aesthetic which rids itself of the modernist detachment from the object of discourse. Searching to involve herself as a writer in her art she initiates a humane aesthetic which ignores the ontological barrier between fictitious and real-life discourse. The relationship between the two discourses is explored by Jurgen Peterson in Erzahlsysteme: eine Poetik epischer Texte (1993) and Fiktionalitat und Asthetik: eine Philosophie det Dichtung (1996). Taking as my starting-point some of the theoretical considerations set out by Peterson, I analyse the narrators' frequent interventions from the time in which the text is being written in the context of Wolf's aesthetics. The risk inherent in disrupting a coherent fictional discourse with metafiction is, according to Petersen, that the reader will switch to the perception mode used for matters of fact. The three texts chosen for this study, Nachdenken uber Christa T. (1968), Sommerstuck (1989) and especially Kindheitmuster (1976), have sections which deliberately gravitate towards the genre of essayistic literature. The argument of the dissertation is that, although the narrative is subverted by these metafictional interventions, particularly by the profound moral concerns they embody, the construction of the texts proves sufficiently sophisticated to absorb the real-life content back into fiction. My dissertation focuses therefore on the narrative structure of Wolf's texts, attempting to trace back the overall aesthetic to the narrative techniques employed in the text. The desire to respond to the post-war loss of faith in humanity with an aesthetic which safeguards and enhances sensitivity towards the humane in readers is in itself admirable, even though it challenges the concept of fiction. The originality of Wolf's ambitious aesthetics is particularly striking when viewed in comparison to the aesthetics of Virginia Woolf and Jurek Becker, which incorporate traumatic experience in a rather different way. The method of comparative study is also employed to shed light on the question of where is Wolf is to be situated in the spectrum of contemporary writing styles.

This thesis is an exploration of three interrelated modes - the psychological, the religious or mythopoeic, and the metafictional - in the early novels of Russell Hoban. It investigates the relationship between Hoban's religious vision and his literary style, through the lens of his 'fictional philosophy' as it is presented in his essay collection The Moment under the Moment. In Chapter One, Kleinzeit is analysed to illustrate Hoban's portrayal of a contemporary crisis of meaning. It includes an introduction to the pattern of individuation and an exposition of Hoban's unique notion of heroism as embodied in Kleinzeit's journey of self-discovery. Hoban's mythopoeic impulse is elucidated with particular reference to his use of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth. Finally, in an attempt to demonstrate Hoban's ideas on the relationship between language and reality, various metafictional techniques are examined, especially in relation to the theme of transcendence. In Chapter Two, the individuation theme in The Medusa Frequenry is considered as a work of mourning, portraying Herman Orfrs movement towards reconciliation and creative renewal. Following Paul Ricoeur, the Orpheus and Eurydice myth is seen as a myth of fault, embodying a primal transgression, and a source of the creative arts. The metafictional style is examined, especially the narrative mode, in order to show how Hoban dissolves the everyday world of reality into a fantastic realm of myth. Chapter Three focuses on the individuation pattern as initiation in Riddley Walker, charting the hero's growth into adulthood. Various myths in the text are analysed to show how they portray human development and the nuclear catastrophe as a mythic Fall. The chapter argues that through Riddley's quest Hoban evokes a redemptive and regenerative fertility myth. The unique literary style of the novel, including the characteristics of 'Riddleyspeak' and the complexity of the process of interpretation is studied. In Chapter Four, which deals with Pilgermann, the final phase of individuation - preparation for death - is discussed. Hoban's religious vision is dissected in relation to his mystical impulse as exemplified in the construction of the Hidden Lion pattern. Hoban's notion of God is investigated in relation to the philosophical problem of evil and suffering. Finally, Pilger mann is shown to be Hoban's mOSt experimental literary novel as it activates his recurring meta fictional techniques, investigations into narrative, and the relationship between language and the sacred. This thesis concludes that Hoban's fiction is best understood holistically with both his religious and literary concerns inextricably entwined. Throughout his novels Hoban explores the human condition in modernity affirming the paradoxical, dialectical and mysterious nature of being.
KMBT_363
Adobe Acrobat 9.54 Paper Capture Plug-in

When Ursula K. LeGuin revisited the world of Earthsea with Tehanu (1990), her return to an established classic of the fantasy genre came with a powerful desire to revisit its construction and reinterpret its assumptions from a female perspective. Drawn to the side of her dying former tutor, protagonist Tenar is repeatedly posed with the question of what to do with his lore books, which could never offer to her what they had his conventionally male students. Even if this time-honored tradition excludes her, however, Tenar cannot bring herself to discard or abandon the books, for all that they seem "nothing to her, big leather boxes full of paper." Traveling on foot, forced often to flee for her life and pack light, she feels compelled to carry these book on her back. For Tenar, the tomes are a considerably "heavy burden," and, given the context in which this novel appears, this female protagonist's struggle with the weight of traditional, respected patriarchal male text is particularly significant. In LeGuin's fantasy, the image of Tenar traversing her story with Ogion's great "lore-books" strapped to her back is emblematic of the struggle many authors have faced in negotiating the received texts and tropes of their generic inheritance in order to create female-centered fantasy. Indeed, the transformation of Ogion's great lore-books into Tenar's conflicted baggage literalizes what many other texts have more figuratively confronted. My dissertation, "A Noted Departure: Metafiction and Feminist Revision within a Tradition of Fantasy Writing," considers the compelling frequency of such self-conscious textual moments in female-centered fantasy of the 80s and 90s and argues for their importance as a writing strategy that challenges the assumptions of more formulaic fantasy texts and tropes, especially those that inform expectations about roles for women. Examining this moment in which the legacy of a revisionist feminist impulse converges with a post-modern, post-structural metafictional critique of traditional narrative forms and the ideologies they encode, my dissertation sheds light on many critically ignored self-conscious fantasy texts which feature heroines whose critical, textual negotiations bring readers to reconsider the nature of fantasy and the danger and wonder, the limits and liberty, of fictional representation. Taken together, as important and largely overlooked entries in a genre which thrives on the tension between tradition and innovation, these works represent a significant transitional moment in the fantasy genre, bridging the gap between a relatively limited female presence and a more contemporary diversity. My first chapter, "Doing the "Not Done": Wrede's 'Improper' Princess and her Whimsical Revision of Fairy-Tale Expectation and Convention," demonstrates the fluid link between the established tradition of feminist fairy tale revision and the self-critical generic departure my dissertation presents as an important literary moment in the fantasy genre. As the archive my dissertation constitutes might be understood as the answer to Angela Carter's frustrated plea that we must "move beyond revision," this chapter acknowledges the fairy tale's potency as a purveyor of romantic archetypes and, thereby, of cultural precepts for young women in a reading of The Enchanted Forest Chronicles (1990-5). In threading seemingly simple and conventional plotlines together with unexpected and innovative departures, Wrede upsets narrative expectation and undercuts generic convention, particularly those associated with the 'princess' trope. Achieving her critical commentary on the commonplaces of the genre by first invoking the traditional before establishing a heroine who positions herself against it, Wrede's plot also reveals the importance of textual negotiation and interpretation, and this chapter underscores the generative relationship this kind of critical interplay bears on the need for new plots and narrative options. Chapter two, "'In Search of 'Something New': Metafiction as Critical and Creative Discourse" offers a sustained discussion of the theoretical work of metafiction. Opening with an examination of the historical precedent of feminist metafiction and its desire to create an alternative tradition to a limited masculinist tradition in the 60s, 70s and early 80s, I demonstrate how aptly feminist metafiction aligns with a fantasist's impulse to challenge the same constraints within genre. Examining how metafiction can function as a critical and creative narrative strategy within a generic context, I adapt the conceptions of theorists such as Roland Barthes, Jean Genette, Gayle Greene, Amie A. Doughty, and Brian Stonehill to an understanding of how metafiction functions in fantasy. "Plotting Change, Imagining Alternatives: Metafiction as Revision in Feminist Fantasy," argues that while thematic or plot-based investigations into feminist fantasy are useful, understanding the way in which generic push-back occurs requires closer attention to the writing strategies which articulate such artistic feats and aesthetic negotiations. This third chapter examines several significant but critically ignored fantasy works which demonstrate how writers of this period signal their departure from generic tradition through key metafictional moments in which a heroine herself invokes text or turns, within her own story, to a text that exists within her own world. Alanna of Trebond in The Song of the Lioness series (1983, 84, 86, 88), Daikin of The Farthest Away Mountain (1976), and Talia in The Heralds of Valdemaar series ("Arrows Trilogy," 1987-88) all experience transformative and liberatory adventures that afford a break with tradition that is drawn along lines of both gender and narrative. Thus, texts occupy a central role in these adventures, providing opportunities to investigate the cultural role they play and the tensions they surface between providing inspiration and motivation on the one hand and limitations that must be overcome on the other. As revisionist quest-narratives which are also deeply internal feminist Bildungsroman, the frequently close relationship between heroine and text in these works is deeply telling; such metafictional moments allow their adventures to advance not only plot or individual story, but a critical conversation about the literary conventions and cultural traditions which condition their representation. In calling attention to the critical work of these metafictional moments, I reveal that the most fruitful feminist fantasy criticism must not be only about plot, but the possibility of plot. Indeed, as these heroines become legends themselves, their narratives not only deconstruct traditional discourses, engaging with the need to re-write tradition, to counter narrative expectation and convention with the creation of new stories; they also more collectively re-mythologize. In creating new stories and new patterns of storytelling, this chapter reveals how these writers do not just expose the cultural power of tradition and myth and critique the representation of women within them, but counter its absences and suppressions with their own mythopoesis. Taken together, such a wealth of significant but critically ignored examples demonstrates how writers employ metafiction as a strategy to enact criticism and imagine alternatives in the fantasy genre, particularly in terms of expanding narrative possibilities for heroines. My fourth chapter, "Convention Undone: UnLunDun's Unchosen Heroine and Narrative (Re)Vision," examines China Miéville's UnLunDun (2007) as a deliberate response to a tradition of fantasy writing, lampooning, in particular, the portal-quest fantasy. Revealing narrative adherence to traditional patterns as false and hollow, and those who trust them uncritically as foolishly naïve, Miéville reminds readers of the importance of innovation, of critical interaction with narrative tradition, and the unfinished nature of both narrative and identity. In a tour-de-force of a self-and-genre-conscious metafictionality, Miéville explores the pit-falls of expectation and the potential which comes from the creation of an alternative narrative--and with it, an alternative heroine in Deeba, whose journey works both with and against the perspective traditions of 'The Book' (a talking tome whose authority proves less than accurate). Ultimately, I argue that Deeba's quest and her transformation into a celebrated, unchosen heroine reveals the degree to which success lies in making the old useful again, and the narrative she reshapes is a vivid illustration of both what it means to revise or reimagine and the necessity of such a critical process. In a world of fragments and the discarded, this book speaks to the genre at large, asking what might be constructed from the inherited baggage of traditional understandings, and what can be done in spite of their limitations and previously established identities or functions. Commonly engaged in the construction of questioning, questing stories, the writers I study have crafted pioneering, uncertain heroines who act out a self-conscious awareness that presses against the genre's limits. As these writers must struggle with the loaded material they wish to weave into new story shapes, so, too, do their fictional creations meditate upon the way in which their journey or character diverges from the expected. These are heroines in the making, heroines whose identities are not fixed easily in text but who must constitute it through an engagement with texts both familiar and new. As books which are also about books, as stories which take story as explicit subject matter, these works feature textual negotiation as a necessary critical process at the level of plot. Moreover, in presenting such metafictions as a critical, questioning comparison to a traditional norm, generic expectation, or narrative inheritance experienced as limited or confining, these works also shed light on the possibility of alternative plots and call special attention to the kinds of artistic and ideological negotiations necessary for such stories to be told in our own realistic worlds as well as in our fantasies. Thus, my dissertation highlights the importance of a writer's impulse to reflect and revise the tradition in which they participate and underscores the creative and critical potential of furthering dialogue between texts and conventions. As my readings demonstrate, the fascination fantasy holds as an enduring art form may well be contingent upon the genre's potential for self-conscious interplay and its protean capacity to refigure narration as a meaningful form of discourse.

Dissertação(mestrado) - Universidade Federal do Rio Grande, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras, Instituto de Letras e Artes, 2009.
Submitted by Cristiane Silva (cristiane_gomides@hotmail.com) on 2012-11-05T11:51:42Z No. of bitstreams: 1 taisepossani.pdf: 883825 bytes, checksum: f18956565c6595cd58af0c5692ba564f (MD5)
Approved for entry into archive by Bruna Vieira(bruninha_vieira@ibest.com.br) on 2012-11-06T17:59:37Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 taisepossani.pdf: 883825 bytes, checksum: f18956565c6595cd58af0c5692ba564f (MD5)
Made available in DSpace on 2012-11-06T17:59:37Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 taisepossani.pdf: 883825 bytes, checksum: f18956565c6595cd58af0c5692ba564f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009
A novela Clarice (1996), de Ana Mirada, completa o conjunto de obras nas quais a narradora fabula a vida de autores do cânone literário brasileiro. Com essas ficções, Miranda enquadra-se em uma tendência da literatura contemporânea que cria biografias ficcionais de escritores ou artistas. Nesse sentido, a presente dissertação integra um comentário das obras de Miranda enquadradas no gênero metaficcional historiográfico e uma leitura interpretativa de Clarice, foco deste estudo. Para tanto, são pensadas questões relativas à literatura e sua relação com a história. Logo, apresenta-se uma visão de conjunto das narrativas de Ana Miranda que tematizam a história da literatura brasileira, aprofundando-se nos conceitos de ficção, metaficção e metaficção historiográfica. No contexto geral, relativo aos problemas de tipologia e poética narrativa, desenvolve-se a análise literária de Clarice, encaminhando a leitura para a constituição da obra, sobretudo no que tem a ver com suas estratégias intertextuais, no caso presente, a ficção de Clarice Lispector, o que motiva a reflexão em torno da escrita e da leitura literária.
The novel Clarice (1996), by Ana Miranda, completes the series of works, in which the narrator creates the authors’ of the Brazilian literary canon life. With those fictions, Miranda became part of a tendency in the contemporary literature that creates fictional biographies of writers or artists. In that sense, the present dissertation integrates a discussion of Miranda’s works included in the genre known as historiographic metafiction and also integrates an interpretative reading of Clarice, the study’s focus narrative. So, questions related to literature are thought in relationship with the history. Therefore, it shows a vision of group of Ana Miranda’s narratives that talk about the history of the Brazilian literature, being deepened in the concepts of fiction, metafiction and historiographic metafiction. In this general context, which deals with typology problems and poetic narrative, it grows Clarice’s literary analysis that directs the reading for the constitution of the work, concerning to the intertextual strategies, in this case Clarice Lispector’s fiction, which motivates the reflection around literary strategies as reading and writing.

This thesis aims to demonstrate the interrelatedness of the rebellious form and content of Pilar MirO's first six films - La petición (1976), El crimen de Cuenca (1979), Gary Cooper gue estás en los cielos (1980), Hablamos esta noche (1982), Werther (1986) and Beltenebros (1991). The Introduction provides a brief outline of the director's life and an insight into some of the core themes of her cinema, summaries of relevant theoretical arguments from psychoanalysis and gender theory in the context of sociology and film studies and an outline of the situation of men and women in Spain vis-à-vis the law, social prejudices, attitudes to sexuality and work. Part I (chapters 1-6) examines gender issues and character portrayal in each of the films in chronological order using these theories. Part II deals with the metafictional textual strategies of Miró's works. Chapter 7 outlines features of metafiction, such as stylistic intertextuality, literal intertextuality, mise-en-abime devices and other cinematic strategies which highlight the constructed nature of the films by laying bare the processes of fictional creation and disturb the viewer, making him or her an active reader, who cannot acquiesce in a passive spectatorial position. It also discusses the issue of authorship in film to posit that Miró abdicates from the position of onmiscient auteur through intertextuality and her use of assistant authors, another strategy of metafictional, postmodern art. Chapters 8 and 9 look at specific examples of intertextuality. The first section of chapter 8 examines the thematic and stylistic influence of the American artist, Edward Hopper, on the setting of Beltenebros and José Gutiérrez Solana's tremendista paintings as a visual reference for El crimen de Cuenca: the chapter also takes into account the joint stylistic influence of Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949) on Beltenebros. The second section of chapter 8 applies theories of historiographic metafiction and intrahistory to Miró's depiction of a miscarriage of justice in the Spanish legal system and the imprisonment of two innocent men in El crimen de Cuenca. Chapter 9 outlines a special instance of intertextuality in Miró's employment of stars. Using recent work in star studies, I consider the contributions and implications of her choice of two actresses - Ana Belén and Patsy Kensit - to La petición and Beltenebros. The conclusion suggests that, while Miró demonstrates an active interest in and sympathy for the victims of oppression, her use of intertextuality may be unconscious and that this thesis presents just one possible argument or interpretation. An interview with Miró in 1995 is included in an Appendix, as are relevant stills of Ana Belén.

In order to define an aesthetics of ethical, self-aware fiction, and to outline the ethics implicit in an aesthetic understanding of narrative, this thesis utilizes narrative theory in a close analysis of four relatively contemporary novels by Atwood, McEwan, Foer, and Rushdie. I examine the tension between ontological and epistemological concerns within the four novels in light of their critical backgrounds and narrative structures, and outline the interface between ethics and aesthetics present in each narrative. It is my contention that unreliable writer characters, a newly-identified category of narrator, dramatize aesthetic and ethical engagements with narrative. As a result, they render story and discourse as components of one another, and provide a fruitful exploration of the self-aware mediations between narrative theory and literary fiction in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Self-reflexivity, unreliability, aesthetics, and ethics are all central concerns of these four novels. The consequences of fictional engagements with history via unreliable narratives and writer characters, are also explored in light of autobiographical and possible worlds theories. Both the persistent presence of texts-within-texts, and the fictional dramatization of creating text, serves to defamiliarize the mimetic functions of the novel. This narrative logic is completely undermined in self-reflexive fiction. The perspectives on narrative creation, interpretation, and communication implicitly and explicitly represented by the writer characters in these novels are primary ingredients in novelistic discourse. This struggle is mirrored by the process of reading their complex narratives. The apparently slippery categories of author/writer and novel/narrative in the four works of fiction that form this investigation neatly dovetail with elements of Bakhtin’s literary project. Unreliable narrators and self-referential narratives compound the desire for truth by explicitly acknowledging it within their narrative, and at the same time demonstrating its objective impossibility.

In order to explore the range of indirect metafiction as presented in three exemplary novels, this dissertation begins by examining how the assumptions of "realism" on the one hand and "postmodernism" on the other relate to the paradigmatic triad of story-teller, story, and audience. From this context emerges the view that the range of metafiction is determined by how it reveals the processes and nature of fiction according to a spectrum of mediation: that of the writer between his "raw materials" and the text, that of the text between writer and reader, and that of the reader between the text and his interpretation. Indirect metafiction (or "pretend realism") mediates between realism and postmodernism, revealing without breaking the illusions of realism. Each of the next three chapters, after initially placing the key novel within the context of the author's work as a whole, discusses in detail a novel whose metafictional focus is on one of the three mediations. Accordingly, Chapter II focusses on Randolph Stow's The Girl Green as Elderflower (1980) and on the way it reveals the mediation of the author by presenting a writer's fiction as a synthesis of his personal and literary experiences. Chapter III notes how M. K. Joseph's A Soldier's Tale (1976) reflects the mediation of the reader by depicting a writer's interpretation and literary redaction of an oral tale. And Chapter IV shows how Timothy Findley's Famous Last Words (1981) demonstrates the mediation of the text by presenting a writer whose text "crystallizes" the illusions of fiction, then undercuts and exposes them. The analyses of the key texts employ both postmodern and traditional critical approaches, demonstrating them to be complementary; by noting the interpenetration of metafictional and traditional import and significance, the analyses also highlight the mediary nature of indirect metafiction. The fifth chapter draws theoretical conclusions from ideas in the practical chapters: from metafictional revelations through the paradigm of mediation comes an "anatomy" of fiction, delineating its elements; from a sense of how the mind "structures" experience through "fictional" representations of both "reality" and fictional texts comes a "physiology," a sense of how fiction works through language. This discussion leads to definitions of realistic, unrealistic, and self-conscious fiction, and of metafiction, both direct and indirect; the dissertation concludes by remarking on the inter-relations of language, "fiction," and "reality."
Arts, Faculty of
English, Department of
Graduate

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 2005.
Title from title page screen, viewed on April 16, 2007. Dissertation Committee: Robert McLaughlin (chair), Lynn Worsham, Sally Parry. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 312-331) and abstract. Also available in print.

This thesis contains an original feature screenplay entitled Gurov and Anna, and an accompanying scholarly essay. The essay examines some of the themes found in my screenplay, with a focus on anxiety about the creation and consumption of narratives, and situates them within a grander literary, dramatic, and cinematic tradition, as well as in relation to the scholarly writings of Patricia Waugh and Peter Brooks.
Cette thèse contient un scénario original intitulé Gurov and Anna, ainsi qu'un texte d'accompagnement. Le texte d'accompagnement décrit quelques-uns des thèmes présents dans mon scénario, en mettant l'accent sur l'anxiété liée à la création et la lecture de récits et les situe dans un contexte étendu de traditions littéraires, dramatiques, et cinématographiques, ainsi qu'en relation avec les textes de Patricia Waugh et Peter Brooks.

This practice-based research project consists of a 33,000-word novella, "Folly", and a 50,000-word exegesis that examines the principles of historiographic metafiction (HMF), the recontextualisation of historical figures and scenarios, and other narratological concepts that inform my creative practice. As an emerging sub-genre of historical fiction, HMF is one aspect of a national and international discourse about historical fiction in the fields of literature, history, and politics. Leading theorists discussed below include Linda Hutcheon and Ansgar Nünning, along with the recent critically-acclaimed work of contemporary Australian writers, Richard Flanagan, Kate Grenville, and Louis Nowra. "Folly" traces a number of periods in the lives of fictional versions of the researcher and his eighteenthcentury Irish relative, and experiments with concepts of historiographic metafiction, the recontextualisation of historical figures and scenarios, and the act of narratorial manipulation, specifically focalisation, voice, and point of view. The key findings of this research include: identifying the principles and ideas that support writing work of historiographic metafiction; a determination as to the value of recontextualisation of historical figures and scenarios, and narratorial manipulation, in the writing of historiographic metafiction; an account of the challenges facing an emerging writer of historiographic metafiction, and their resulting solutions (where these could be established); and, finally, some possible directions for future research.

This thesis traces the influence of postmodernism on picturebooks. Through a review of current scholarship on both postmodernism and postmodern literature it examines the multiple ways in which picturebooks have responded to the influence of postmodernism. The thesis is predominantly located in the field of Cultural and Literary Studies, which informs the ways in which children’s literature is positioned within contemporary culture and how it responds to the influences which shape its production and reception. Cultural and Literary Studies also offers a useful theoretical frame for analysing issues of textuality, ideology, and originality, as well as social and political comment in the focus texts. The thesis utilises the theoretical contributions by, in particular, Linda Hutcheon, Brian McHale, and Fredric Jameson as well as reference to children’s literature studies. This thesis makes a significant contribution to the development of an understanding of the place of the postmodern picturebook within the cultural context of postmodernism. It adds to the field of children’s literature research through an awareness of the (continuing) evolution of the postmodern picturebook particularly as the current scholarship on the postmodernism picturebook does not engage with the changing form and significance of the postmodern picturebook to the same extent as this thesis. This study is significant from a methodological perspective as it draws on a wide range of theoretical perspectives across literary studies, visual semiotics, philosophy, cultural studies, and history to develop a tripartite methodological framework that utilises the methods of postclassical narratology, semiotics, and metafictive strategies to carry out the textual analysis of the focus texts. The three analysis chapters examine twenty-two picturebooks in detail with respect to the ways in which the conventions of narrative are subverted and how dominant discourses are interrogated. Chapter 4: Subverting Narrative Processes includes analysis of narrative point of view, modes of representation, and characters and the problems of identity and subjectivity. Chapter 5: Challenging Truth, History, and Unity examines questions of ontology, the difficulties of representing history, and addresses issues of difference and ‘otherness’. The final textual analysis chapter, Chapter 6: Engaging with Postmodernity, critiques texts which engage with issues of globalisation, mass media, and consumerism. Brief discussion of a further fifteen picturebooks throughout the thesis provides additional support. Children’s texts have a tradition of being both resistant and compliant. Its resistance has made a space for the development of the postmodern picturebook; its compliance is evident in its tendency to take a route around a truly radical or iconoclastic position. This thesis posits that children’s postmodern picturebooks adopt what suits their form and purposes by drawing from and reflecting on some influences of postmodernism while disregarding those that seem irrelevant to its direction. Furthermore, the thesis identifies a shift in the focus of a number of postmodern picturebooks produced since the turn of the twenty-first century. This trend has seen a shift from texts which interrogate discourses of liberal humanism to those that engage with aspects of postmodernity. These texts, postmodernesque picturebooks, offer contradictory perspectives on aspects of society emanating from the rise in global trends mentioned above.