fiction about fiction

by e_dog

Posted to WritersAndGenres on 2004-05-03 12:14:00

Parent message is 643352
there are of course multiple ways to combine these concepts so really we could generate a rather complicate taxonomy of subvarieties, but of course no one would follow it for long.

so i think, firsty’s point was that metafiction (1) is fiction that self-refers to its own particular narrative(ity).

whereas a fiction about fiction (2) as such might be about the concept of fiction in general or about other particular fictions. so, the movie Big Fish, for example, is sort of metanarrative (not in the postmodernist sense) as aficiton aboiut fiction insofar as it is contstrued about the naure of legends and tales and storytelling as such. but that is rather common, the difference is a matter of emphasis, because almost any, say, Southern novel will be in part about narrativity b/c there are always character’s that tell stories. on the other hand, the narrative that is self-referential (or reflexive, as you put it i believe) is ALL TOO common too b/c many stories invoke such devices to call attentio to themselves.

finally the ficiton WITHIN a fiction (3) is a rather common device too, certainly there are plenty of plays within plays, movies where the character is an author, etc. etc.