Max Saunders
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199579761
- eISBN:
- 9780191722882
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579761.003.0013
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This shorter chapter is a coda considering the afterlife of modernism's engagements with life‐writings covered in Part II. It begins by sketching how the ideas traced in this study of imaginary ...
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This shorter chapter is a coda considering the afterlife of modernism's engagements with life‐writings covered in Part II. It begins by sketching how the ideas traced in this study of imaginary portraiture, imaginary self‐portraiture, and aesthetic autobiography figure in experiments in life‐writing by two authors coming after modernism: Jean‐Paul Sartre in Les Mots, and Vladimir Nabokov in Speak, Memory. The second section sketches ways in which postmodernism has drawn upon and extended the tradition of experimentations with life‐writing. Here the emphasis is on metafictional strategies, especially those of auto/biografiction and imaginary authorship. Auto/biografiction can be understood as a strand of what Linda Hutcheon defines as ‘historiographic metafiction’, focusing on the representations of individual life stories rather than on representations of historical crises or trauma. Modernist works explicitly thematizing their own processes of representation (such as Orlando or The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas) are reconsidered as pioneers of the postmodern development that might be termed ‘auto/biographic metafiction’. Key examples discussed are A. S. Byatt's Possession (as biographic metafiction); Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook (as autobiographic metafiction) and Nabokov's Pale Fire (as auto/biographic metafiction). Where historiographic metafiction represents a postmodernizing of the historical novel, auto/biographic metafiction represents a postmodernizing of auto/biography.Less
This shorter chapter is a coda considering the afterlife of modernism's engagements with life‐writings covered in Part II. It begins by sketching how the ideas traced in this study of imaginary portraiture, imaginary self‐portraiture, and aesthetic autobiography figure in experiments in life‐writing by two authors coming after modernism: Jean‐Paul Sartre in Les Mots, and Vladimir Nabokov in Speak, Memory. The second section sketches ways in which postmodernism has drawn upon and extended the tradition of experimentations with life‐writing. Here the emphasis is on metafictional strategies, especially those of auto/biografiction and imaginary authorship. Auto/biografiction can be understood as a strand of what Linda Hutcheon defines as ‘historiographic metafiction’, focusing on the representations of individual life stories rather than on representations of historical crises or trauma. Modernist works explicitly thematizing their own processes of representation (such as Orlando or The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas) are reconsidered as pioneers of the postmodern development that might be termed ‘auto/biographic metafiction’. Key examples discussed are A. S. Byatt's Possession (as biographic metafiction); Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook (as autobiographic metafiction) and Nabokov's Pale Fire (as auto/biographic metafiction). Where historiographic metafiction represents a postmodernizing of the historical novel, auto/biographic metafiction represents a postmodernizing of auto/biography.
David Shepherd
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198156666
- eISBN:
- 9780191673221
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198156666.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, Criticism/Theory
Although metafiction has been the subject of much critical and theoretical writing, this is the first full-length study of its place in Soviet literature. Focusing on metafictional works by Leonid ...
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Although metafiction has been the subject of much critical and theoretical writing, this is the first full-length study of its place in Soviet literature. Focusing on metafictional works by Leonid Leonov, Marietta Shaginyan, Konstantin Vaginov, and Veniamin Kaverin, it examines, within a broadly Bakhtinian theoretical framework, the relationship between their self-consciousness and their cultural and political context. The texts are shown to challenge notions about the nature and function of literature fundamental to both Soviet and Anglo-American criticism. In particular, although metafictional strategies may seem designed to confirm assumptions about the aesthetic autonomy of the literary text, their effect is to reveal the shortcomings of such assumptions. The texts discussed take us beyond conventional understandings of metafiction by highlighting the need for a theoretically informed account of the history and reception of Soviet literature in which the inescapability of politics and ideology is no longer acknowledged grudgingly, but is instead celebrated.Less
Although metafiction has been the subject of much critical and theoretical writing, this is the first full-length study of its place in Soviet literature. Focusing on metafictional works by Leonid Leonov, Marietta Shaginyan, Konstantin Vaginov, and Veniamin Kaverin, it examines, within a broadly Bakhtinian theoretical framework, the relationship between their self-consciousness and their cultural and political context. The texts are shown to challenge notions about the nature and function of literature fundamental to both Soviet and Anglo-American criticism. In particular, although metafictional strategies may seem designed to confirm assumptions about the aesthetic autonomy of the literary text, their effect is to reveal the shortcomings of such assumptions. The texts discussed take us beyond conventional understandings of metafiction by highlighting the need for a theoretically informed account of the history and reception of Soviet literature in which the inescapability of politics and ideology is no longer acknowledged grudgingly, but is instead celebrated.
David Roche
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496819161
- eISBN:
- 9781496819208
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496819161.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
An in-depth study of all Tarantino’s feature films to date (from Reservoir Dogs to The Hateful Eight), Quentin Tarantino: A Poetics and Politics of Cinematic Metafiction argues that, far from ...
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An in-depth study of all Tarantino’s feature films to date (from Reservoir Dogs to The Hateful Eight), Quentin Tarantino: A Poetics and Politics of Cinematic Metafiction argues that, far from wallowing in narcissism and solipsism, a charge directed not only at Tarantino but at metafiction in general, these self-conscious fictions do more than just reflexively foreground their status as artefacts; they offer metacommentaries that engage with the history of cultural representations and exalt the aesthetic, ethical and political potential of creation as re-recreation and resignification. By combining cultural studies and neo-formalist approaches, this book seeks to highlight how intimately the films’ poetics and politics are intertwined. Each chapter explores a specific salient feature, some of which have drawn much academic attention (history, race, gender, violence), others less so (narrative structure, style, music, theatricality). Ultimately, Quentin Tarantino: Poetics and Politics of Cinematic Metafiction places Tarantino’s films firmly in the legacy of Hawks, Godard, Leone and the New Hollywood, and revises the image of cool purveyor of pop culture the American director cultivated at the beginning of his career by foregrounding the breadth and layeredness of the films’ engagement with cultural history, high and low, screen and print, American, East Asian and European. The films produced by the Tarantino team are formal invitations for viewers to similarly engage with, and reflect on, the material, and delight in doing so.Less
An in-depth study of all Tarantino’s feature films to date (from Reservoir Dogs to The Hateful Eight), Quentin Tarantino: A Poetics and Politics of Cinematic Metafiction argues that, far from wallowing in narcissism and solipsism, a charge directed not only at Tarantino but at metafiction in general, these self-conscious fictions do more than just reflexively foreground their status as artefacts; they offer metacommentaries that engage with the history of cultural representations and exalt the aesthetic, ethical and political potential of creation as re-recreation and resignification. By combining cultural studies and neo-formalist approaches, this book seeks to highlight how intimately the films’ poetics and politics are intertwined. Each chapter explores a specific salient feature, some of which have drawn much academic attention (history, race, gender, violence), others less so (narrative structure, style, music, theatricality). Ultimately, Quentin Tarantino: Poetics and Politics of Cinematic Metafiction places Tarantino’s films firmly in the legacy of Hawks, Godard, Leone and the New Hollywood, and revises the image of cool purveyor of pop culture the American director cultivated at the beginning of his career by foregrounding the breadth and layeredness of the films’ engagement with cultural history, high and low, screen and print, American, East Asian and European. The films produced by the Tarantino team are formal invitations for viewers to similarly engage with, and reflect on, the material, and delight in doing so.
Jad Smith
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040634
- eISBN:
- 9780252099076
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040634.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Like Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein, science fiction author Alfred Bester started his career as a pulp writer and finished it as a Grand Master, but he followed a far more curious path to the ...
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Like Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein, science fiction author Alfred Bester started his career as a pulp writer and finished it as a Grand Master, but he followed a far more curious path to the field’s highest honor than either of his big-name contemporaries. He focused on SF only intermittently yet, as a result, developed a distinctive, outsider approach that opened up avenues for cutting-edge vanguards such as New Wave and cyberpunk. Making extensive use of Bester’s unpublished correspondence, this book carefully examines Bester’s entire career, giving particular attention to how his work across mediums, combined with his love of modernist and decadent authors, shaped his groundbreaking approach to science fiction. During the 1950s, Bester crossbred pulp aesthetics and high style to explosive effect, producing landmark novels and stories that crackled with excess and challenged the assumptions of Golden Age science fiction. His focus on language as a plot device and a tool for world-building, and his use of modernist style in the service of science-fictional extrapolation left the field changed forever. The book argues that what Bester brought to SF was not a radically new template but an idiosyncratic self-reflexivity about the writing and reading protocols of the genre that put the field into a highly productive and transformative dialogue with itself.Less
Like Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein, science fiction author Alfred Bester started his career as a pulp writer and finished it as a Grand Master, but he followed a far more curious path to the field’s highest honor than either of his big-name contemporaries. He focused on SF only intermittently yet, as a result, developed a distinctive, outsider approach that opened up avenues for cutting-edge vanguards such as New Wave and cyberpunk. Making extensive use of Bester’s unpublished correspondence, this book carefully examines Bester’s entire career, giving particular attention to how his work across mediums, combined with his love of modernist and decadent authors, shaped his groundbreaking approach to science fiction. During the 1950s, Bester crossbred pulp aesthetics and high style to explosive effect, producing landmark novels and stories that crackled with excess and challenged the assumptions of Golden Age science fiction. His focus on language as a plot device and a tool for world-building, and his use of modernist style in the service of science-fictional extrapolation left the field changed forever. The book argues that what Bester brought to SF was not a radically new template but an idiosyncratic self-reflexivity about the writing and reading protocols of the genre that put the field into a highly productive and transformative dialogue with itself.
Torben Grodal
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159834
- eISBN:
- 9780191673719
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159834.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter analyses Godard's Pierrot le Fou, in order to show that changing the modal quality of the emotions is an important aspect of a metafictional laying-bare of devices. In recent decades, ...
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This chapter analyses Godard's Pierrot le Fou, in order to show that changing the modal quality of the emotions is an important aspect of a metafictional laying-bare of devices. In recent decades, popular fiction has also used metafictional devices to an increasing degree, and special formulas, for example certain cartoons, have used metafiction for an even longer period. The chapter illustrates the way in which metafiction is used in popular fiction by analysing the episode, The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice, from the television series Moonlighting, and then discussing the emotional function of ‘cliché’. First, however, it expands earlier descriptions of the means by which a metaframe, an awareness of ‘extradiegetic’ and ‘metafictional’ phenomena, influences the viewer's cognitive and emotional relation to the narrative.Less
This chapter analyses Godard's Pierrot le Fou, in order to show that changing the modal quality of the emotions is an important aspect of a metafictional laying-bare of devices. In recent decades, popular fiction has also used metafictional devices to an increasing degree, and special formulas, for example certain cartoons, have used metafiction for an even longer period. The chapter illustrates the way in which metafiction is used in popular fiction by analysing the episode, The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice, from the television series Moonlighting, and then discussing the emotional function of ‘cliché’. First, however, it expands earlier descriptions of the means by which a metaframe, an awareness of ‘extradiegetic’ and ‘metafictional’ phenomena, influences the viewer's cognitive and emotional relation to the narrative.
Daniel Marrone
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781496807311
- eISBN:
- 9781496807359
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496807311.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
The work of Canadian cartoonist Seth positions itself between history and memory, and in doing so gives rise to a range of ambivalent impulses, chief among them an ambivalent longing for the past. ...
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The work of Canadian cartoonist Seth positions itself between history and memory, and in doing so gives rise to a range of ambivalent impulses, chief among them an ambivalent longing for the past. Seth suggests that “the whole process of cartooning is dealing with memory,” and by consistently drawing attention to seams and borders, his comics invite the reader to examine the processes by which narratives of the past come to seem seamless.
Seth’s work exhibits a complicated nostalgia that is well aware of its own reactionary, restorative and nationalistic inclinations, and is able to channel them toward productive ends. His ironic, humorous, and metafictional approaches to memory, loss and longing for the past reveal that his attitude toward these closely related subjects is deeply ambivalent. Memory is here conceived not just as an invisible, ubiquitous mental phenomenon that reflects our experience of time and relation to the past, but as a medium, an art –one which is in many ways akin to cartooning.
The fundamental operation of comics as a visual medium initiates and makes space for narrative interpolations in a way that is not only comparable to but in a certain sense mimics the historical interpolations of memory; in both cases, longing is spurred by incompleteness. Seth turns the medium of memory on itself, using it as an instrument to examine the processes of remembrance and making history.Less
The work of Canadian cartoonist Seth positions itself between history and memory, and in doing so gives rise to a range of ambivalent impulses, chief among them an ambivalent longing for the past. Seth suggests that “the whole process of cartooning is dealing with memory,” and by consistently drawing attention to seams and borders, his comics invite the reader to examine the processes by which narratives of the past come to seem seamless.
Seth’s work exhibits a complicated nostalgia that is well aware of its own reactionary, restorative and nationalistic inclinations, and is able to channel them toward productive ends. His ironic, humorous, and metafictional approaches to memory, loss and longing for the past reveal that his attitude toward these closely related subjects is deeply ambivalent. Memory is here conceived not just as an invisible, ubiquitous mental phenomenon that reflects our experience of time and relation to the past, but as a medium, an art –one which is in many ways akin to cartooning.
The fundamental operation of comics as a visual medium initiates and makes space for narrative interpolations in a way that is not only comparable to but in a certain sense mimics the historical interpolations of memory; in both cases, longing is spurred by incompleteness. Seth turns the medium of memory on itself, using it as an instrument to examine the processes of remembrance and making history.
David Shepherd
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198156666
- eISBN:
- 9780191673221
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198156666.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, Criticism/Theory
This introduction chapter explains the coverage of this book, which is about metafiction and self-consciousness in Soviet literature. Metafiction is a term used to refer to fictional writing which ...
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This introduction chapter explains the coverage of this book, which is about metafiction and self-consciousness in Soviet literature. Metafiction is a term used to refer to fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artefact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality. This book examines the metafictional works of several Soviet authors including Leonid Leonov, Marietta Shaginyan, Konstantin Vaginov, and Veniamin Kaverin.Less
This introduction chapter explains the coverage of this book, which is about metafiction and self-consciousness in Soviet literature. Metafiction is a term used to refer to fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artefact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality. This book examines the metafictional works of several Soviet authors including Leonid Leonov, Marietta Shaginyan, Konstantin Vaginov, and Veniamin Kaverin.
David Shepherd
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198156666
- eISBN:
- 9780191673221
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198156666.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter examines the metafictional works of Soviet author Leonid Leonov. The River Sot, Leonov's third novel, was one of the earliest Soviet works in the theme of industrialization and it was ...
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This chapter examines the metafictional works of Soviet author Leonid Leonov. The River Sot, Leonov's third novel, was one of the earliest Soviet works in the theme of industrialization and it was based on the author's first-hand experience of Soviet construction projects. This novel, together with Leonov's other work The Thief, provided the direction that Soviet literature should take. These novels were both influenced by the October Revolution.Less
This chapter examines the metafictional works of Soviet author Leonid Leonov. The River Sot, Leonov's third novel, was one of the earliest Soviet works in the theme of industrialization and it was based on the author's first-hand experience of Soviet construction projects. This novel, together with Leonov's other work The Thief, provided the direction that Soviet literature should take. These novels were both influenced by the October Revolution.
David Shepherd
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198156666
- eISBN:
- 9780191673221
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198156666.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter examines Marietta Shaginyan's metafiction titled Kik. This short novel played a large part in installing and maintaining the perception of Shaginyan as a stolid, uncritical supported of ...
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This chapter examines Marietta Shaginyan's metafiction titled Kik. This short novel played a large part in installing and maintaining the perception of Shaginyan as a stolid, uncritical supported of the Soviet Union's literary and political institutions. The dominant mode in this work is hyperbolic stylization of familiar but anachronistic genres and this novel was characterized by the constant interplay of the literary versions of event with a reality whose own status is subtly called into question.Less
This chapter examines Marietta Shaginyan's metafiction titled Kik. This short novel played a large part in installing and maintaining the perception of Shaginyan as a stolid, uncritical supported of the Soviet Union's literary and political institutions. The dominant mode in this work is hyperbolic stylization of familiar but anachronistic genres and this novel was characterized by the constant interplay of the literary versions of event with a reality whose own status is subtly called into question.
David Shepherd
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198156666
- eISBN:
- 9780191673221
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198156666.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter examines the metafictions of Soviet writer Konstantin Vaginov. The position of Vaginov in relation to the dominant literary trends in the 1920s is as marginal as Leonid Leonov's or ...
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This chapter examines the metafictions of Soviet writer Konstantin Vaginov. The position of Vaginov in relation to the dominant literary trends in the 1920s is as marginal as Leonid Leonov's or Marietta Shaginyan's seems central. His major works include The Goat's Song, Experiments in Connecting Words by Means of Rhythm, and The Works and Days of Svistonov. His third novel placed emphasis of authorly autonomy and its relation to cultural traditional and continuity and its metafictional strategies provided a particularly defamiliarizing angle of vision on these matters.Less
This chapter examines the metafictions of Soviet writer Konstantin Vaginov. The position of Vaginov in relation to the dominant literary trends in the 1920s is as marginal as Leonid Leonov's or Marietta Shaginyan's seems central. His major works include The Goat's Song, Experiments in Connecting Words by Means of Rhythm, and The Works and Days of Svistonov. His third novel placed emphasis of authorly autonomy and its relation to cultural traditional and continuity and its metafictional strategies provided a particularly defamiliarizing angle of vision on these matters.
David Shepherd
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198156666
- eISBN:
- 9780191673221
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198156666.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter examines the metafictional works of Soviet author Veniamin Kaverin. Kaverin was prominent in protesting publicly against the time-serving conformism or forced capitulation often ...
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This chapter examines the metafictional works of Soviet author Veniamin Kaverin. Kaverin was prominent in protesting publicly against the time-serving conformism or forced capitulation often detectable in military career patterns and in defending a writerly autonomy understood as freedom to pursue the writer's traditional role as independent moral guide and arbiter. This chapter analyses the metafictional style of his The Trouble Maker, Artist Unkown, and The Two Captains.Less
This chapter examines the metafictional works of Soviet author Veniamin Kaverin. Kaverin was prominent in protesting publicly against the time-serving conformism or forced capitulation often detectable in military career patterns and in defending a writerly autonomy understood as freedom to pursue the writer's traditional role as independent moral guide and arbiter. This chapter analyses the metafictional style of his The Trouble Maker, Artist Unkown, and The Two Captains.
David Shepherd
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198156666
- eISBN:
- 9780191673221
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198156666.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on Soviet metafiction. It suggests that Soviet metafiction compel readers to recognize that contexts are no less important than texts and discusses ...
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This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on Soviet metafiction. It suggests that Soviet metafiction compel readers to recognize that contexts are no less important than texts and discusses the case of socially situated readers. It shows how far beyond established notions of metafiction self-conscious Soviet writing takes its readers. It concludes that it is important for readers to be concerned about the factors commonly held to be extraneous or even inimical to the proper functions of literature.Less
This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on Soviet metafiction. It suggests that Soviet metafiction compel readers to recognize that contexts are no less important than texts and discusses the case of socially situated readers. It shows how far beyond established notions of metafiction self-conscious Soviet writing takes its readers. It concludes that it is important for readers to be concerned about the factors commonly held to be extraneous or even inimical to the proper functions of literature.
Natasha Alden
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780719088933
- eISBN:
- 9781781706367
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719088933.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This study applies the concept of postmemory, developed in Holocaust studies, to novels by contemporary British writers. The first monograph-length study of postmemory in British fiction, it focuses ...
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This study applies the concept of postmemory, developed in Holocaust studies, to novels by contemporary British writers. The first monograph-length study of postmemory in British fiction, it focuses on a group of texts about the World Wars. Building upon current work on historical fiction, specifically historiographical metafiction and memory studies, this work extends this field by exploring the ways in which the use of historical research within fiction illuminates the ways in which we remember and recreate the past. Using the framework of postmemory to consider the evolutionary development of historiographical metafiction, Alden provides a ground-breaking analysis of the nature and potential of contemporary historical fiction, and the relationship between postmemory and ‘the real’. As well as asking how postmemory can unlock the significance of the transgenerational aspects of these novels, this study also analyses how authors use historical research in their work and demonstrates, on a very concrete level, the ways in which we remember and recreate the past. Tracing the ‘translation’ of source material as it moves from historical record to historical fiction, Alden offers a taxonomy of the uses of the past in contemporary historical fiction, analysing the ways in which authors adopt, adapt, appropriate, elide, augment, edit and transpose elements found such material. Asking to what extent such writing is, necessarily metafictional, and what motivates the decisions these novelists make about their use of the past, the study offers an updated answer to the question historical fiction has always posed: what can fiction do with history that history cannot?Less
This study applies the concept of postmemory, developed in Holocaust studies, to novels by contemporary British writers. The first monograph-length study of postmemory in British fiction, it focuses on a group of texts about the World Wars. Building upon current work on historical fiction, specifically historiographical metafiction and memory studies, this work extends this field by exploring the ways in which the use of historical research within fiction illuminates the ways in which we remember and recreate the past. Using the framework of postmemory to consider the evolutionary development of historiographical metafiction, Alden provides a ground-breaking analysis of the nature and potential of contemporary historical fiction, and the relationship between postmemory and ‘the real’. As well as asking how postmemory can unlock the significance of the transgenerational aspects of these novels, this study also analyses how authors use historical research in their work and demonstrates, on a very concrete level, the ways in which we remember and recreate the past. Tracing the ‘translation’ of source material as it moves from historical record to historical fiction, Alden offers a taxonomy of the uses of the past in contemporary historical fiction, analysing the ways in which authors adopt, adapt, appropriate, elide, augment, edit and transpose elements found such material. Asking to what extent such writing is, necessarily metafictional, and what motivates the decisions these novelists make about their use of the past, the study offers an updated answer to the question historical fiction has always posed: what can fiction do with history that history cannot?
Casie Hermansson
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474413565
- eISBN:
- 9781474460088
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474413565.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Children’s metafictions have their roots in literacy pedagogy and entertainment, and remain enormously popular both with authors, readers, and teachers. But they pose a number of unique challenges to ...
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Children’s metafictions have their roots in literacy pedagogy and entertainment, and remain enormously popular both with authors, readers, and teachers. But they pose a number of unique challenges to screen adaptation. While – arguably – audiences of children’s adaptations prefer that the adaptation adhere to the source as closely as possible, in the case of metafiction its defining ‘meta’ element does not directly transmediate. Yet a more direct filmic equivalence for metafiction – metafilm – reflects filmicity rather than bookishness.
This book studies first what children’s metafiction purports to be and to do for the youth reader (infants to young adults). The second chapter examines the distinctive challenges in adapting children’s metafiction to film. The third chapter presents a number of children’s films, adaptations and not, featuring ‘bookish’ themes, characters, settings, and symbols, and develops a ‘film grammar’ for how these are traditionally depicted. The fourth chapter discusses children’s metafilm and draws from a selection of these films. The final, fifth, chapter presents a sub-type of children’s metafilm adaptations which ‘break the fifth wall’ by reflexively focusing not on a single medium (literature or film) but rather on the adaptation processes themselves. These adaptations are meta-adaptations.
The book contains over fifty film stills and a glossary of terms. It discusses works like Inkheart, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, The Spiderwick Chronicles, and the Harry Potter series and the Series of Unfortunate Events. It is grounded in and contributes to contemporary adaptation criticism and theory.Less
Children’s metafictions have their roots in literacy pedagogy and entertainment, and remain enormously popular both with authors, readers, and teachers. But they pose a number of unique challenges to screen adaptation. While – arguably – audiences of children’s adaptations prefer that the adaptation adhere to the source as closely as possible, in the case of metafiction its defining ‘meta’ element does not directly transmediate. Yet a more direct filmic equivalence for metafiction – metafilm – reflects filmicity rather than bookishness.
This book studies first what children’s metafiction purports to be and to do for the youth reader (infants to young adults). The second chapter examines the distinctive challenges in adapting children’s metafiction to film. The third chapter presents a number of children’s films, adaptations and not, featuring ‘bookish’ themes, characters, settings, and symbols, and develops a ‘film grammar’ for how these are traditionally depicted. The fourth chapter discusses children’s metafilm and draws from a selection of these films. The final, fifth, chapter presents a sub-type of children’s metafilm adaptations which ‘break the fifth wall’ by reflexively focusing not on a single medium (literature or film) but rather on the adaptation processes themselves. These adaptations are meta-adaptations.
The book contains over fifty film stills and a glossary of terms. It discusses works like Inkheart, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, The Spiderwick Chronicles, and the Harry Potter series and the Series of Unfortunate Events. It is grounded in and contributes to contemporary adaptation criticism and theory.
Peter Wright
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780853238188
- eISBN:
- 9781846312618
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780853238188.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Attending Daedalus is the first book-length study of Gene Wolfe's four-volume The Book of the New Sun and its sequel, The Urth of the New Sun, known collectively as ‘The Urth Cycle’. Rejecting the ...
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Attending Daedalus is the first book-length study of Gene Wolfe's four-volume The Book of the New Sun and its sequel, The Urth of the New Sun, known collectively as ‘The Urth Cycle’. Rejecting the conventional spiritual reading of the text, the book employs evolutionary theory to argue for a controversial secular reception of a narrative in which Wolfe plays an elaborate game with his reader. After exposing the concealed story at the heart of Wolfe's novels, it adopts a variety of approaches to establish Wolfe as the designer of an intricate textual labyrinth intended to extend into the reading experience his thematic preoccupations with subjectivity, the unreliability of memory, the manipulation of individuals by social and political systems, and the psychological potency of myth, faith and symbolism. Drawing evidence not only from the first thirty years of Wolfe's career but from sources as diverse as reception theory, palaeontology, the Renaissance Hermetic tradition, mythology and science fiction's subgenre of dying sun literature, the book provides a comprehensive and closely argued analysis of one of the key works of twentieth-century science fiction.Less
Attending Daedalus is the first book-length study of Gene Wolfe's four-volume The Book of the New Sun and its sequel, The Urth of the New Sun, known collectively as ‘The Urth Cycle’. Rejecting the conventional spiritual reading of the text, the book employs evolutionary theory to argue for a controversial secular reception of a narrative in which Wolfe plays an elaborate game with his reader. After exposing the concealed story at the heart of Wolfe's novels, it adopts a variety of approaches to establish Wolfe as the designer of an intricate textual labyrinth intended to extend into the reading experience his thematic preoccupations with subjectivity, the unreliability of memory, the manipulation of individuals by social and political systems, and the psychological potency of myth, faith and symbolism. Drawing evidence not only from the first thirty years of Wolfe's career but from sources as diverse as reception theory, palaeontology, the Renaissance Hermetic tradition, mythology and science fiction's subgenre of dying sun literature, the book provides a comprehensive and closely argued analysis of one of the key works of twentieth-century science fiction.
REGINE MAY
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199202928
- eISBN:
- 9780191707957
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199202928.003.0006
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Plays and Playwrights: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Several studies in recent years have dealt with the theatricality of the inset tale of Aristomenes and Socrates, the first tale of the novel, told to Lucius by Aristomenes himself (Met. 1.5--20). ...
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Several studies in recent years have dealt with the theatricality of the inset tale of Aristomenes and Socrates, the first tale of the novel, told to Lucius by Aristomenes himself (Met. 1.5--20). Thus it sets the mood of theatricality for the whole novel after the prologue. Keulen most recently stressed the visuality in the vocabulary from the very beginning, for example Met. 1.6.5 ‘miserum aerumnae spectaculum’ (‘the wretched sight [lit. ‘spectacle’] of his hardships’). Many more studies concentrate on the obvious parallels between Socrates and Lucius, and Keulen studies Socrates as Lucius’ alter ego and ‘programmatic anticipation’ in terms of how both are narrators and storytellers. This chapter discusses the tale’s theatricality as an introduction to Lucius’ characterization and to the novel as a whole through spectacle and particularly drama, which is influential in helping to define Lucius’ character as partly derived from dramatic genres. Keulen primarily compares Apuleius’ Socrates with the portrait of the philosopher in Aristophanes’ Clouds and the Cynics. The chapter focuses on some of the wider tragic and comic imagery linked with Socrates and Aristomenes.Less
Several studies in recent years have dealt with the theatricality of the inset tale of Aristomenes and Socrates, the first tale of the novel, told to Lucius by Aristomenes himself (Met. 1.5--20). Thus it sets the mood of theatricality for the whole novel after the prologue. Keulen most recently stressed the visuality in the vocabulary from the very beginning, for example Met. 1.6.5 ‘miserum aerumnae spectaculum’ (‘the wretched sight [lit. ‘spectacle’] of his hardships’). Many more studies concentrate on the obvious parallels between Socrates and Lucius, and Keulen studies Socrates as Lucius’ alter ego and ‘programmatic anticipation’ in terms of how both are narrators and storytellers. This chapter discusses the tale’s theatricality as an introduction to Lucius’ characterization and to the novel as a whole through spectacle and particularly drama, which is influential in helping to define Lucius’ character as partly derived from dramatic genres. Keulen primarily compares Apuleius’ Socrates with the portrait of the philosopher in Aristophanes’ Clouds and the Cynics. The chapter focuses on some of the wider tragic and comic imagery linked with Socrates and Aristomenes.
Gavin Miller
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620603
- eISBN:
- 9781789623758
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620603.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
For the purposes of this book, science fiction is defined broadly in the terms advanced by Darko Suvin, with a focus on the genre from the late nineteenth century onwards. Psychology is conceived as ...
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For the purposes of this book, science fiction is defined broadly in the terms advanced by Darko Suvin, with a focus on the genre from the late nineteenth century onwards. Psychology is conceived as the modern Western discipline, running from the origins of experimental psychology in the late nineteenth century to the ascendance of neuroscience as a disciplinary rival in the late twentieth century. Five different functions for psychological discourses in science fiction are proposed. The didactic-futurological function educates the non-specialist through extrapolation of psychological technologies, teaching within the context of futurological forecasting. The utopianfunction anchors in historical possibility the imagining of a currently non-existent society, whether utopian or dystopian. The cognitive-estranging function defamiliarizes and denaturalizes social reality by extrapolating current social tendencies and/or construct unsettling fictional analogues of the reader’s world. The metafictional function self-consciously thematizes within narrative fiction the psychological origins, nature, and function of science fiction as a genre. The reflexive function addresses the construction of individuals and groups who have reflexively adopted the ‘truth’ of psychological knowledge.Less
For the purposes of this book, science fiction is defined broadly in the terms advanced by Darko Suvin, with a focus on the genre from the late nineteenth century onwards. Psychology is conceived as the modern Western discipline, running from the origins of experimental psychology in the late nineteenth century to the ascendance of neuroscience as a disciplinary rival in the late twentieth century. Five different functions for psychological discourses in science fiction are proposed. The didactic-futurological function educates the non-specialist through extrapolation of psychological technologies, teaching within the context of futurological forecasting. The utopianfunction anchors in historical possibility the imagining of a currently non-existent society, whether utopian or dystopian. The cognitive-estranging function defamiliarizes and denaturalizes social reality by extrapolating current social tendencies and/or construct unsettling fictional analogues of the reader’s world. The metafictional function self-consciously thematizes within narrative fiction the psychological origins, nature, and function of science fiction as a genre. The reflexive function addresses the construction of individuals and groups who have reflexively adopted the ‘truth’ of psychological knowledge.
Daniel Marrone (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496815118
- eISBN:
- 9781496815156
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496815118.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
This chapter considers the comics of Kate Beaton as “historiographic metafiction,” which is a mode of literature that works to uncover the various processes that construct the past. Beaton’s ...
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This chapter considers the comics of Kate Beaton as “historiographic metafiction,” which is a mode of literature that works to uncover the various processes that construct the past. Beaton’s distinctive comedic tone – at once dry and ridiculous – is matched by a finely modulated drawing style, which even at its most polished exudes a kind of sketchbook energy. Her nimble cartooning renders familiar historical figures as vivid characters whose circumstances become not only humorous but strikingly immediate. Ultimately, it is Beaton’s keen sense of absurdity that animates her literary and historical interventions. The juxtaposition of contemporary sensibilities with historical events engenders a fruitful disorientation, which casts the past and its preservation in particularly sharp relief.Less
This chapter considers the comics of Kate Beaton as “historiographic metafiction,” which is a mode of literature that works to uncover the various processes that construct the past. Beaton’s distinctive comedic tone – at once dry and ridiculous – is matched by a finely modulated drawing style, which even at its most polished exudes a kind of sketchbook energy. Her nimble cartooning renders familiar historical figures as vivid characters whose circumstances become not only humorous but strikingly immediate. Ultimately, it is Beaton’s keen sense of absurdity that animates her literary and historical interventions. The juxtaposition of contemporary sensibilities with historical events engenders a fruitful disorientation, which casts the past and its preservation in particularly sharp relief.
Bruce Clarke
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823228508
- eISBN:
- 9780823240999
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823228508.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Embedding is an articulation of the most essential property of all narrative. By telling the story of another narrative, the first narrative achieves its fundamental theme. Narrative embedding is the ...
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Embedding is an articulation of the most essential property of all narrative. By telling the story of another narrative, the first narrative achieves its fundamental theme. Narrative embedding is the primary textual analog of systemic self-reference. The play and sequence of embedded and embedding narrative frames reenacts the essential paradoxicality in the operation of observing systems. Systems theory reconceives form not as the mere shape of things but by which thoughts or things are distinguished and observed. The embedded and embedding narrative frames assume precisely the self-referential form of any form by marking the virtual edges of narrative structures. John Barth, an American author, has meditated both metafictively and critically on the matter of embedded narration. Barth's metafiction is an especially spectacular instance of the way a narrative embedding put self-referential processes into literary operation.Less
Embedding is an articulation of the most essential property of all narrative. By telling the story of another narrative, the first narrative achieves its fundamental theme. Narrative embedding is the primary textual analog of systemic self-reference. The play and sequence of embedded and embedding narrative frames reenacts the essential paradoxicality in the operation of observing systems. Systems theory reconceives form not as the mere shape of things but by which thoughts or things are distinguished and observed. The embedded and embedding narrative frames assume precisely the self-referential form of any form by marking the virtual edges of narrative structures. John Barth, an American author, has meditated both metafictively and critically on the matter of embedded narration. Barth's metafiction is an especially spectacular instance of the way a narrative embedding put self-referential processes into literary operation.
Lee Spinks
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719066320
- eISBN:
- 9781781703113
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719066320.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter studies Ondaatje's long poem, the highly successful The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, stating that this volume served as a turning point in Ondaatje's career, and focusing on Billy ...
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This chapter studies Ondaatje's long poem, the highly successful The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, stating that this volume served as a turning point in Ondaatje's career, and focusing on Billy the Kid's final outlaw year on the New Mexico frontier. It shows that Billy the Kid combines a wide range of different registers, including historical romance and oral anecdote. The chapter then discusses Ondaatje's intertextual vision of Billy's legend, as well as its similarities with the genre of ‘historiographic metafiction’. It determines that Ondaatje's true interest in this novel was the hint of a vision unconstrained by social norms or a moral image of life.Less
This chapter studies Ondaatje's long poem, the highly successful The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, stating that this volume served as a turning point in Ondaatje's career, and focusing on Billy the Kid's final outlaw year on the New Mexico frontier. It shows that Billy the Kid combines a wide range of different registers, including historical romance and oral anecdote. The chapter then discusses Ondaatje's intertextual vision of Billy's legend, as well as its similarities with the genre of ‘historiographic metafiction’. It determines that Ondaatje's true interest in this novel was the hint of a vision unconstrained by social norms or a moral image of life.
