Extended Essays 2021

Metafiction

Metafiction is a postmodern technique in which the author purposefully draws attention to the

fact that a novel is fictional. By parodying traditional, historical novelistic conventions and

techniques, an author can allude to the fictionality of their novel. Historical author-centred

approaches were challenged by many contemporary literary theorists including Wimsatt and

Beardsley 8 . They concluded that the text was not owned by the author, rather it was ‘detached

from the author at birth and goes around the world beyond his power to intend or control it’.

Metafiction is about tampering with the form of a novel and externalising the role of the

contemporary author, as Wimsatt and Beardsley described. In this contemporary approach, the

externalisation of the novel from its author allows for the ‘mult iplicity of interpretations that

readers can generate’ 9 , which Calvino and Mitchell encourage through their use of an

unreliable narrator.

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller ( IOAWNAT ) is in the form of a single-ended framed

narrative. In the first line of IOAWNAT , Calvino writes “ you are about to start reading Italo

Calvino’s new novel. Relax, concentrate, dispel every other thought. Let the world around you

fade ” 10 . From the beginning of the novel Calvino is utilising metafiction. Before setting the

story or embracing the fictional world the reader is about to explore, he links the real world

into the novel. Between each chapter Calvino switches between second person, addressing

“ you ” , and novel storytelling, which is done in subjective, omnipresent, first person. These

‘novel’ chapters are chapters from the book “ you ” are reading, Calvino uses a narrator with a

zero-focalisation viewpoint. In historical centred approaches, zero-focalised narrators were

8 The Intentional Fallacy. Wimsatt and Beardsley, 1998 9 Approaches to Reading Practices. QCAA, 2011 10 If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller . Italo Calvino, 1979 – Page 1

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