Metafiction

I am going to explore metafiction and narrative in this section to gain an understanding of its relation to the Kiss of the Spider women and how to apply it to my 1500 word analysis.

'Metafiction

A quality of Postmodern fiction whereby narrative reflects upon its own status as fictional .It can take the form of structural self-reflection or a "laying bare" of the devices by which novelists traditionally achieve their effects.A related term is Robert Scholes fabulation,which refers to the complex patterns and arrangements of language and image often found in Postmodern and Contemporary fiction'.(Castle (2008:316)

metafiction

'reflexive awareness of the conditions of meaning construction,any typological definition of metafiction rooted in objective characteristics or essences will contradict the linguistic philosophy that it attempts to describe.Above all metafiction is committed to the idea of constructed meaning's rather than the representable essences'.(Currie(1995:15)

'Metafiction is a term given to the fictional writing which self consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in order to pose questions about the relationships between fiction and reality.In providing a critique of their own methods of construction ,such writings not only examine the fundamental structures of narrative fiction ,they also explore the fictionality of the world outside the literary fictional text.

Novelists ...their novels have tended to embody dimensions of self reflexivity and formal uncertainty...they all explore the theory of fiction through the practice of writing fiction'.(Waugh 1996:2).

Terms definition

William .H.Gass (1970) -originator of the term metafiction

Meta-terms 'metafiction rests on a version of the Heisenbergian uncertainty principle :an awareness that 'for the smallest building  blocks of matter ,every process of observation causes a major disturbance '(Hesiensburg 1972:126) ,and that it is impossible to describe an objective world because the observer always changes the observed..In literary fiction it is ,in fact ,possibly only to represent discourse of the world'.

(Waugh (1996:3) Language generates its own meaning.

'Metafiction novels tend to be constructed on the principle of a fundamental and sustained opposition :the construction of a fictional illusion and the laying bare of that illusion.In other words ,the lowest common denominator of metafiction is simultaneously to create a fiction and to make a statement about the creation of that fiction.The two processes are held together in a formal tension which breaks down the distinction between 'creation' and 'crtiticsm' and merges them into the concepts of 'interpretations 'and 'deconstruction.'

(Waugh 1996:6)

'Contemporary meta fictional writing is both a response and a contribution to an even more thoroughgoing sense that reality or history are provisional :no longer a world of eternal verities but a series of

constructions ,artifices ,imperilment structures .The materialist ,positivist and empiricist world view on which realist fiction is premised no longer exists'.(Waugh 1996:7)    

'

The Literature of Exhaustion (John Barth)

'You who listen give me in a manner of speaking. I won't hold you responsible .My first words weren't my first words.I wish I'd begun differently.(Lost in the funhouse ,John Barth)

Fictionality of identity -Stories within stories -disturbs us metaphysically ,when the character in a work of fiction become readers or authors of fiction they are in.Where reminded of the fictitious aspect of our own existence.(Mirrors -Doubling)

Having read Barth's literature of exhaustion ,it is evident that he is challenging the concept of the way he regards that texts have been 'pedestrianised ' ,as in literary techniques have been used before ,notably the subject /metaphor topics. Thus I suppose in a way texts and' happenings' as in stage plays are following the traditional idea of the artist and he is in essence challenging this norm.he argues that in the west we culturally define the omniscient narrate as the accepted norm 'of older fiction ,but the very idea of the controlling artist has been condemned as  politically reactionary,even fascist.(Currie 1995:163)

'Metafictional strategies ,therefore ,are more than simply narcissistic,or at least they should be,for presenting the unrepresentable ,is an act of liberation.For Hutcheon,the metafiction aims to revolutionise literature as well as the society that produces it by forcing readers to look at language and texts in new ways:"the narcissistic novel as incitement to revolutionary activity would be the ultimate defence of self conscious fiction against claims of self preening introversion ". (Castle 1995:146)

Conclusion

What is evident is that lit texts are influenced by social and historical change and meta narratives to some extent are a basis of challenging the norm.In essence as Barth's puts it pedestrianised text,yet it makes us look deeper and examine the text outside its predestined box and reality and fiction become submerged.But this submergence is in particular in reference to Puig a tool of making us look deeper beyond the text,almost at a subconscious level.