Metafiction is fiction that knows it is fiction and transforms it into narrative matter. The founding example of Western literature is in Don Quixote.
The definition
Metafiction is the work that draws attention to the condition of the work itself: characters who know they are in a book, narrators who comment on the narration, stories who discuss how they are told. Instead of hiding the illusion, metafiction exposes it.
Don Quixote, the founding case
In the second part of Don Quixote (1615), the characters discover that their adventures have been published and that there are readers. Don Quixote talks to people who have read it, and even rejects a false sequel that was circulating about it. Fiction enters fiction.
Why does this matter
By breaking the illusion, metafiction forces the reader to think about what it means to narrate and how identity depends on the stories they tell about us. It is the terrain that centuries later philosophy would call the problem of public identity.
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What is metafiction?
It's fiction that knows it's fiction and uses that as a theme: characters who know they're in a book, narrators who comment on the story, works that talk about themselves.
Is Don Quixote metafiction?
Yes. The second part, from 1615, is one of the first and greatest examples: the characters know that they have already been published and read.
What are modern examples of metafiction?
Works by Pirandello, Borges, Italo Calvino and Machado de Assis use metafictional resources. The seed, however, is already in Cervantes.
Continue: Don Quixote, Part 2: summary and analysis · One, None and One Hundred Thousand and identity · Clavileño: the flying wooden horse
Source class (YouTube): Dom Quixote, Parte Dois (NousCast)