Download or read book The Metafictional Muse written by Larry McCaffery and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2010-10-12 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: McCaffery interprets the works of three major writers of radically experimental fiction: Robert Coover; Donald Barthelme; and Willam H. Gass. The term "metafiction" here refers to a strain in American writing where the self-concious approach to the art of fiction-making is a commentary on the nature of meaning itself.
Download or read book Metafiction written by Mark Currie and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-07-15 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Metafiction is one of the most distinctive features of postwar fiction, appearing in the work of novelists as varied as Eco, Borges, Martin Amis and Julian Barnes. It comprises two elements: firstly cause, the increasing interpenetration of professional literary criticism and the practice of writing; and secondly effect: an emphasis on the playing with styles and forms, resulting from an enhanced self-consciousness and awareness of the elusiveness of meaning and the limitations of the realist form. Dr Currie's volume examines first the two components of metafiction, with practical illustrations from the work of such writers as Derrida and Foucault. A final section then provides the view of metafiction as seen by metafictional writers themselves.
Download or read book The Meaning of Metafiction written by Inger Christensen and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 20th century literature, a kind of fiction has come much to the fore where the narrator discusses his own craft and frequently addresses the reader. However, Laurence Sterneʼs Tristram Shandy may serve as a striking example of the fact that metafiction is no modern phenomenon. Metafiction has been criticized for solipsism and regarded as a final proof of ʼthe novel no longer novelʼ. Discussing works of three contemporary novelists, Nobokov, Barth and Beckett, and Sterneʼs eighteenth century novel, the author argues that with their tricks, parodies and humour (humor) the metafictionists are concerned with a central human problem: communication. Should literature entertain, come up with ideas about the meaning of existence or give the reader a purely aesthetic experience? The four novelists examined in this study give different and rather exciting answers to these questions and to the problem of bringing their intentions across to the reader. Book cover.
Download or read book Forms and Functions of Metafiction written by Theresia Knuth and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2005-11-09 with total page 21 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, Free University of Berlin, course: Modern and Contemporary Short Stories, language: English, abstract: The Greek prepositionμet?(“meta”), which in this context takes on the meaning of “about”, and the literary term “fiction”, which refers to literary work based on imagination, together constitute the term “metafiction”. From the start metafiction has been described as fiction “somehow about fiction itself”. First mentioned at the end of the 1950s, it was further defined throughout the following three decades. Although the term has only been coined in the second half of the 20th century, it is not new to literature. The fiction described can already be found in much older works, such as Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales”, Cervantes’ “Don Quixote” and massively in Laurence Sterne’s “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman”. Today, metafiction is also common in other creative genres and is primarily associated with postmodernism, which came up during the 1960s. Selfreflexive narrators especially appear in works of postmodern writers such as Vladimir Nabokov, John Fowles, B.S. Johnson, Donald Barthelme, John Barth, Jorge Luis Borges, or Julian Barnes. The typically metafictional “Selbstbespiegeln der Literatur im Verein mit dem ständigen illusionsbrechenden Hervorkehren[der]Fiktionalität” represents an alternative to the continuation of realism, which, as postmodernist writers believe, has become impossible. Critics of metafiction deny it the ability to portray the real world because of its “decadent forms of self-absorption”. Behind the paramount purpose of metafiction, which is to lay bare its own status as fiction, a variety of metafictional devices emerged. Although most commonly found in novels, such devices are not unusual in short stories, as this seminar paper attempts to show.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to American Fiction After 1945 written by John N. Duvall and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive 2011 guide to the genres, historical contexts, cultural diversity and major authors of American fiction since the Second World War.
Download or read book Christie Malry s Own Double entry written by Bryan Stanley Johnson and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 1985 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A disaffected young man, Christie Malry, is a simple man who learns the principles of double-entry book-keeping while taking an evening class in accountancy and working in the local bank. He begins to apply these principles to his own life, revenging himself against society in an increasingly violent manner for perceived 'debits'. Debit: the unpleasantness of the bank manager is the first on an ever-growing list; Credit: scratching the façade of the office block. All accounts are settled in the most alarming way.
Download or read book The Woman Who Died a Lot written by Jasper Fforde and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The seventh installment in Jasper Fforde’s New York Times bestselling series follows literary detective Thursday Next on another adventure in her alternate reality of literature-obsessed England—from the author of Early Riser With more than one million books in print worldwide, Jasper Fforde’s beloved series charms a growing number of readers with each new adventure. In The Woman Who Died a Lot, Thursday Next faces her trickiest assignment yet. When her former SpecOps division is reinstated, Thursday assumes she’s the obvious choice to lead the Literary Detectives. Instead, she’s put in charge of the Swindon All-You-Can-Eat-at-Fatso’s Drink Not Included Library. But where Thursday goes, trouble follows. As the new Chief Librarian faces one-hundred-percent budget cuts and the ever-evil Jack Schitt, the Next children face their own career hiccups—and possible nonexistence.
Download or read book Self Reference in the Media written by Winfried Nöth and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2008-09-25 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates how the media have become self-referential or self-reflexive instead of mediating between the real or fictional worlds about which their messages pretend to be and between the audience that they wish to inform, counsel, or entertain. The concept of self-reference is viewed very broadly. Self-reflexivity, metatexts, metapictures, metamusic, metacommunication, as well as intertextual, and intermedial references are all conceived of as forms of self-reference, although to different degrees and levels. The contributions focus on the semiotic foundations of reference and self-reference, discuss the transdisciplinary context of self-reference in postmodern culture, and examine original studies from the worlds of print advertising, photography, film, television, computer games, media art, web art, and music. A wide range of different media products and topics are discussed including self-promotion on TV, the TV show Big Brother, the TV format "historytainment," media nostalgia, the documentation of documentation in documentary films, Marilyn Monroe in photographs, humor and paradox in animated films, metacommunication in computer games, metapictures, metafiction, metamusic, body art, and net art.
Download or read book Metafiction written by Patricia Waugh and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 1984-01-01 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Figures of Play written by Gregory W. Dobrov and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2001 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The book should be of particular interest to those working in Greek tragedy and comedy and classical literary theory."--Jacket.
Download or read book Postmodern Picturebooks written by Lawrence R. Sipe and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-04-26 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past 15 years, there has been a pronounced trend toward a particular type of picturebook that many would label "postmodern." Postmodern picturebooks have stretched our conventional notion of what constitutes a picturebook, as well as what it means to be an engaged reader of these texts. The international researchers and scholars included in this compelling collection of work critically examine and discuss postmodern picturebooks, and reflect upon their unique contributions to both the field of children’s literature and to the development of new literacies for child, adolescent, and adult readers.
Download or read book The Well of Lost Plots written by Jasper Fforde and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2004-08-03 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The third installment in Jasper Fforde’s New York Times bestselling series follows literary detective Thursday Next on another adventure in her alternate reality of literature-obsessed England—from the author of The Constant Rabbit Jasper Fforde has done it again in this genre-bending blend of crime fiction, fantasy, and top-drawer literary entertainment. After two rollicking New York Times bestselling adventures through Western literature, resourceful BookWorld literary detective Thursday Next definitely needs some downtime. And what better place for a respite than in the hidden depths of the Well of Lost Plots, where all unpublished books reside? But peace and quiet remain elusive for Thursday, who soon discovers that the Well is a veritable linguistic free-for-all, where grammasites run rampant, plot devices are hawked on the black market, and lousy books—like the one she has taken up residence in—are scrapped for salvage. To make matters worse, a murderer is stalking the personnel of Jurisfiction and it’s up to Thursday to save the day. A brilliant feat of literary showmanship filled with wit, fantasy, and effervescent originality, this Ffordian tour de force will appeal to fans of Douglas Adams and P. G. Wodehouse.
Download or read book Chimera written by John Barth and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2001 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In CHIMERAJohn Barth injects his signature wit into the tales of Scheherezade of the Thousand and One Nights, Perseus, the slayer of Medusa, and Bellerophon, who tamed the winged horse Pegasus. In a book that the Washington Post called "stylishly maned, tragically songful, and serpentinely elegant,” Barth retells these tales from varying perspectives, examining the myths’ relationship to reality and their resonance with the contemporary world. A winner of the National Book Award, this feisty, witty, sometimes bawdy book provoked Playboy to comment, "There’s every chance in the world that John Barth is a genius.”
Download or read book The Things They Carried written by Tim O'Brien and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Download or read book Snow White written by Donald Barthelme and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-01-29 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Eccentric, dazzling…the literary conversation piece of the year.” –San Francisco Chronicle An American short story writer and novelist acclaimed for his playful, postmodern style of short fiction, Barthelme’s first novel, Snow White, is a countercultural, experimental reconstruction of the Disney version of the traditional fairytale. In Barthelme’s modern day world, Snow White is a seductive woman waiting for her prince to return to New York. Pushing the bounds of fiction and form, Barthelme subverts the classic tale, prompting The New York Times to call him “a splendid practitioner at the peak of his power” and inspiring a new generation of authors including Charles Baxter, Dave Eggers, and David Gates.
Download or read book Metafiction written by Patricia Waugh and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-09-11 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Metafiction begins by surveying the state of contemporary fiction in Britain and America and explores the complex political, social and economic factors which influence critical judgment of fiction. The author shows how, as the novel has been eclipsed by the mass media, novelists have sought to retain and regain a wide readership by drawing on the themes and preoccupations of these forms. Making use of contemporary fiction by such writers as Fowles, Borges, Spark, Barthelme, Brautigan, Vonnegut and Barth, and drawing on Russian Formalist theories of literary evolution, the book argues that metafiction uses parody along with popular genres and non-literary forms as a way not only of exposing the inadequate and obsolescent conventions of the classic novel, but of stuggesting the lines along which fiction might develop in the future.
Download or read book The Self begetting Novel written by Steven G. Kellman and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1980 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
