Definition of metafiction in English:

noun

• [mass noun] Fiction in which the author self-consciously alludes to the artificiality or literariness of a work by parodying or departing from novelistic conventions and traditional narrative techniques.

  ‘the followers of Borges had retreated into airless metafiction’

  [count noun] ‘David Copperfield is a metafiction in which Dickens shows the process of constructing a romance itself’

  More example sentences

  • ‘An investigation of transworld identity, historiographic metafiction, creative writing, postmodernism, and narrative voice.’
  • ‘The latter story, a somewhat incomplete-seeming outline of a tale, is as much an early exercise in metafiction and ghost-storytelling technique as a coherent narrative.’
  • ‘However, what is often overlooked is metafiction's inherent and inevitable preoccupation with the creative power of the author.’
  • ‘Fiction writers were influenced by the postmodern fabulism and metafiction of North and South America.’
  • ‘Their quest for ‘urban realism’ or neo-realism suggest that metafiction is not by definition incongruent with realism, and that referentiality remains a powerful preoccupation in many strands of postmodern fiction.’
  • ‘The mixing of fantastic and realistic modes and the ragged edges he makes between invention and representation, has been generally described as magical realism or metafiction.’
  • ‘The result has been a number of works of art in the distinctively postmodern genre of historiographical metafiction.’
  • ‘It may be metafiction, a technique seen in all his works.’
  • ‘The second narrative technique, metafiction, works in opposition to point-of-view narration to align the reader with the author at the expense of the fictional subject.’
  • ‘This kind of self-reflexiveness, through pastiche and quotation, is characteristic of metafiction and metafilm.’
  • ‘With its multi-tiered narrative and myriad metafiction conceits, the novel has all the makings of a literary event.’
  • ‘The delight He took in transposing Descartes into spoken French leaps off the page, and the result of his efforts is a hilarious novel of ideas and social manners, with metafiction present as well.’
  • ‘In fact, each story becomes a metafiction: they are about the process of telling war stories as much as they are war stories themselves.’
  • ‘In a New York Times Magazine article three years ago, Miller defined metafiction as ‘fiction that openly admits it is an artificial creation - as opposed to naturalism, in which art strives to represent real life.’’
  • ‘Second, it works as a metafilm and metafiction, employing sophisticated self-reflexive devices to tell a micro-historical story about film, film spectatorship and its relationship to modern Sicilian life.’
  • ‘Similarly, while metafiction in general allows, even demands, a new and more powerful role for the reader, it simultaneously demonstrates the continuing need for a consciously constructing authorial figure.’
  • ‘Most metafiction tends towards narcissistic tail-chasing, but let's keep going.’
  • ‘Technically it is, I believe, what is called in some quarters a metafiction: a book about a book.’
  • ‘It's got an interesting metafiction to the plot as well.’
  • ‘The content of the interview is a metafiction that navigates the cultural space between imagined signs and social truths.’