Metafiction

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Bernd Engler (Eberhard-Karls Universitat Tubingen)
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  • The Literary Encyclopedia. WORLD HISTORY AND IDEAS: A CROSS-CULTURAL VOLUME.

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The term “metafiction” has remained enigmatic and vague since it was coined in 1970 by William H. Gass in an essay entitled “Philosophy and the Form of Fiction”. Commenting on American fiction of the 1960s, Gass pointed out that a new term was needed for the emerging genre of experimental texts that openly broke with the tradition of literary realism still dominant in post-WW II American literature. Established terms like “antinovel” or “antifiction” failed to characterize the radical narrative innovations of American writers such as John Barth, Donald Barthelme, Raymond Federman, or Ronald Sukenick because these writers did not only violate or subvert the dominant conventions of novel writing, but also explicitly discussed the act of experimentation while they performed…

3723 words

Citation: Engler, Bernd. "Metafiction". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 December 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=715, accessed 29 March 2024.]

715 Metafiction 2 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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