Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Fiction that deals, often playfully and self-referentially, with the writing of fiction or its conventions.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun a form of self-referential literature concerned with the art and devices of fiction itself

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Postmodern game playing and the juxtaposing of the supposedly real with the imaginary, are marked aspects of Auster's style; and there are those critics who dismiss him for what is usually termed metafiction, that is, fiction engaged in a dialogue with itself, a story which calls attention to the telling of the story.

    California Literary Review 2009

  • Postmodern game playing and the juxtaposing of the supposedly real with the imaginary, are marked aspects of Auster's style; and there are those critics who dismiss him for what is usually termed metafiction, that is, fiction engaged in a dialogue with itself, a story which calls attention to the telling of the story.

    California Literary Review 2009

  • Postmodern game playing and the juxtaposing of the supposedly real with the imaginary, are marked aspects of Auster's style; and there are those critics who dismiss him for what is usually termed metafiction, that is, fiction engaged in a dialogue with itself, a story which calls attention to the telling of the story.

    California Literary Review 2009

  • Postmodern game playing and the juxtaposing of the supposedly real with the imaginary, are marked aspects of Auster's style; and there are those critics who dismiss him for what is usually termed metafiction, that is, fiction engaged in a dialogue with itself, a story which calls attention to the telling of the story.

    California Literary Review 2009

  • And as we are brought back out to the stranger and the listener, the I and the You, that sneaky genre twist on metafiction is still at work.

    Archive 2008-02-01 Hal Duncan 2008

  • And as we are brought back out to the stranger and the listener, the I and the You, that sneaky genre twist on metafiction is still at work.

    Tim Pratt's "The Frozen One" Hal Duncan 2008

  • Yeah, metafiction is fiction about fiction, and it can pop up in all kinds of ways, from parodies like The Stinky Cheese Man, to books in which the author is a character (Chris Crutcher's The Sledding Hill) to books in which a character KNOWS he or she is a character.

    Life in the Old Girl Yet Roger Sutton 2006

  • Now we always hear the term, when we're talking about literary fiction, metafiction, which is basically fiction about fiction.

    Carry-On Books To Take You Up, Up And Away 2008

  • The fact that he brought a real person (not a "real" person, George, come on!) goes to show that he cannot comprehend the complexities of metafiction, which is exactly what Bush's stunt with Bridges attempted to pull off.

    Scott Thill: Truthiness and Consequences 2008

  • With his experimental "metafiction" - spoofing literary conventions, leaving sentences dangling, writing an entire novel ( "Gold Fools") in the form of questions - he seemed to place himself squarely in the postmodernist camp; but his ear for American, especially New York, speech, and his attention to the spirit of place and compassion for the average loser, all defined him as a kindred spirit of such great American humorists as Mark Twain and Peter De Vries.

    NYT > Home Page By ROGER BOYLAN 2010

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