What is fiction and why does it matter? Metafiction addresses these questions. Metafiction is fiction about fiction, or fiction that is somehow self-reflective. This is a list of the most important metafictional texts and works that contain metafictional elements, including some metapoems and metaplays, with explanations of what makes them metafiction. For those who want to read more about certain selections, I have included links to relevant posts on my blog and outside sources. This list is not meant to be comprehensive but to give readers an idea of the range and richness of metafiction. Delicious! Enjoy! For a more selective list, see my post Top Twenty One Metafictional Works: The Story That Swallows Its Tale.
Andre Gide adopts the heraldic term mise en abyme, or a shield shown in the center of a shield, to describe a work within a work, like The Mousetrap in Hamlet, but Gide ultimately rejects such examples because The Mousetrap does not represent Hamlet as a whole, but only the actions of the characters within the play (as I discuss in Into the Abyss: The Mise en Abyme, the Art Work Within the Art Work). In turn Lucien Dällenbach challenges Gide’s metaphor of a shield within a shield, the heraldic device mise en abyme because the smaller shield does not represent the larger shield, but presents a new device. Dällenbach prefers the metaphor of a mirror, a metaphor Gide also use: “although Gide initially rejects the image of the mirror in favor of the one from heraldry, he later reverses this decision and enjoins us, if not purely and simply to substitute the idea of mirror reflection for that of the mise en abyme, at least to see the two terms as equivalent” (Dällenbach 34).
A book within a book, a play inside a play, a picture in a picture, these are examples of mise en abyme, a literary term the French writer André Gide borrowed from heraldry. Pronounced “meez en a-beem,” it literally means “placed in the abyss,” or, more simply, “placed in the middle,” and it was used to describe a shield in the middle of a shield, as in this coat of arms of the United Kingdom from 1816-1837. (Image from Wikipedia.)
You’ll notice that the shield inside the shield has another shield inside of it. You can imagine yet another inside that one and so on and so on, forever and ever, so I like to think of “mise en abyme” as “into the abyss.” The eye travels down the rabbit hole to infinity, as in this photo of a “Lost Wormhole” from Illuminaughty Boutique’s post “38 Mise en Abyme GIFs that Will Make Your Brain Bleed… OR WORSE.”
The Thunderbird Theatre Company has been producing wacky original comedies in San Francisco for 13 years, many with meta elements. For example in The Gloved Fist of Satan, a character starts the show by treating the audience as house guests, serving them cookies and forcing them to watch a slideshow. In Los 7 Magnificos, the character El Bandito, dressed like Pancho Villa, sits in the audience and heckles the performers: “Thees ees sooo stupid!” (I played a bad ass reverend in that play, head of the evil Quakers.) In Las Vega-nauts, Stan Schuster not only narrated but drunkenly engaged the audience. (I was a member of the Swiss Mafia.) Pride and Succubus also had a Jane Austin character, who not only narrated but then intervened with the plot ultimately to become the villain.