[1] Metafiction is frequently used as a form of parody or a tool to undermine literary conventions and explore the relationship between literature and reality, life and art.
[2] Although metafiction is most commonly associated with postmodern literature that developed in the mid-20th century, its use can be traced back to much earlier works of fiction, such as The Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer, 1387), Don Quixote Part Two (Miguel de Cervantes, 1615), "Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz" (Johann Valentin Andreae, 1617), The Cloud Dream of the Nine (Kim Man-jung, 1687), The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Laurence Sterne, 1759), Sartor Resartus (Thomas Carlyle, 1833–34),[3] and Vanity Fair (William Makepeace Thackeray, 1847).
Metafiction became particularly prominent in the 1960s, with works such as Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth, Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov, "The Babysitter" and "The Magic Poker" by Robert Coover, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut,[4] The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles, The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, and Willie Master's Lonesome Wife by William H. Gass.
Since the 1980s, contemporary Latino literature has an abundance of self-reflexive, metafictional works, including novels and short stories by Junot Díaz (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao),[5] Sandra Cisneros (Caramelo),[6] Salvador Plascencia (The People of Paper),[7] Carmen Maria Machado (Her Body and Other Parties),[8] Rita Indiana (Tentacle),[9] and Valeria Luiselli (Lost Children Archive).
[12] These developments were part of a larger movement (arguably a meta referential turn[13]) which, approximately from the 1960s onwards, was the consequence of an increasing social and cultural self-consciousness, stemming from, as Patricia Waugh puts it, "a more general cultural interest in the problem of how human beings reflect, construct and mediate their experience in the world.
Robert Scholes identifies the time around 1970 as the peak of experimental fiction (of which metafiction is an instrumental part) and names a lack of commercial and critical success as reasons for its subsequent decline.
Others see the self-consciousness of fictional writing as a way to gain a deeper understanding of the medium and a path that leads to innovation that resulted in the emergence of new forms of literature, such as the historiographic novel by Linda Hutcheon.
Rather than commenting on the text, implicit metafiction foregrounds the medium or its status as an artifact through various, for example disruptive, techniques such as metalepsis.
In contrast to this, indirect metafiction consists in metareferences external to this text, such as reflections on other specific literary works or genres (as in parodies) and general discussions of an aesthetic issue.
Non-critical metafiction does not criticize or undermine the artificiality or fictionality of a text and can, for example, be used to "suggest that the story one is reading is authentic".
Cervantes produced the sequel partially because of his anger at a spurious Part Two that had appeared in 1614 written by Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda.
In particular, an unnamed Duke and Duchess are delighted at meeting the pair they have read about and use their wealth to devise elaborate tricks and practical jokes playing on their knowledge.
Well, then, consider that before the novel emerged as the dominant literary form, narrative literature dealt only with the extraordinary or the allegorical – with kings and queens, giants and dragons, sublime virtue and diabolic evil.
Third, he alludes to the notion that the capabilities of literature have been exhausted, and thus to the idea of the death of the novel (all of this is explicit, critical indirect metafiction).
However, as metalepsis is used as a plot device that has been introduced as part of the world of The Eyre Affair it can, in this instance, have the opposite effect and is compatible with immersion.
However, Flowey stops you, and directly asks you not to restart the game after the "True Pacifist" route, requesting you let the characters live their life in the best possible way.
Alongside the mystery plots, Horowitz mixes anecdotes about his own professional and personal life as a TV writer living in London.