Changing Tendencies in Self-Conscious Narratives: A Contrastive Interpretation

• Thesis title in Czech: Proměny tendencí v sebereflexivním vyprávění: kontrastivní studie.
• Thesis title in English: Changing Tendencies in Self-Conscious Narratives: A Contrastive Interpretation
• Key words: metafikce|sebereflexivní|vyprávění|Cervantes|Fielding|Sterne|Barthelme|Vonnegut|Barth|narativní teorie
• English key words: metafiction|self-conscious|self-aware|self-reflexive|narrative|Cervantes|Fielding|Sterne|Barthelme|Vonnegut|Barth|narrative theory
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2016/2017
• Thesis type: diploma thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: prof. PhDr. Martin Procházka, CSc.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 07.11.2016
• Date of assignment: 07.11.2016
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 09.11.2016
• Date and time of defence: 05.09.2017 00:00
• Date of electronic submission: 08.08.2017
• Date of proceeded defence: 05.09.2017
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: David Lee Robbins, Ph.D.

Guidelines

The objective of this thesis is to map correlations between narratology and metafiction in a selection of self-reflexive texts. According to Mark Currie, metafiction is a genre located between fiction and critical writing; a unique status which enables it to thematize the process of writing. Some of the selected texts overtly refer to the process of creation and include the character of the writer, by which they stress the fiction’s artificiality and undermine its realism. Other recurring metafictional elements include frame stories (fiction within fiction), or addressing and disputing literary conventions. While metafiction is generally associated with the 20^th century, Linda Hutcheon contends that all fiction is inherently self-conscious; the difference between an openly metafictional and a non-metafictional text is therefore that of degree, instead of kind. This thesis traces the metafictional elements in a compilation of earlier texts and subsequently contrasts them with a selection of American post-War metafiction.
After presenting the aim of this thesis, the introductory chapter sets the theoretical framework: from the field of metafictional studies, it draws mainly on the theoretical works of Linda Hutcheon and Patricia Waugh, and on Gerard Genette and Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan from the field of narratology (taking James Phelan into account). The chapter also foreshadows the problematic areas and proceeds to present the primary texts: Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions, John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse, and John Gardner’s Grendel. The selection represents a coherent body of work from a particular period, and illustrates distinctions between various aspects of metafiction (e.g. overt and covert self-consciousness, as propounded by Hutcheon).
The thesis then proceeds to provide a brief historical survey of pre-20^th century texts with metafictional elements, not only from the Anglophone canon (Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair), but from world literature as well (Cervantes’s Don Quijote). These prose texts are chosen as representatives of self-reflexive tendencies in the earlier days of the novel and most importantly, they provide a point of departure for the study of historical development of metafiction. The chapter also touches upon self-awareness in other forms of art (film, photography, painting).
The following chapter draws upon Hutcheon’s and Waugh’s theory and applies it to the selected texts. It examines and contrasts metafictional narrative tendencies in the earlier and later texts and traces the development of similar features (e.g. Thackeray’s and Barth’s addressing the reader, Sterne’s and Vonnegut’s usage of extralinguistic means).
The final chapter emphasizes the process of interpretation, not only in relation to the reader, but also in relation to the historical development of self-conscious fiction. Hutcheon contends that the reader becomes the co-creator of the fictional universe and is given equal, if not superior creative force as the real-life author; a tendency reflected in the post-War cultural context (the debate over the death of the novel and the author). This is a problematic area and begs the following question: in terms of self-awareness, in what are the pre-20^th century texts different from their modern day counterparts? Although metafiction has received considerable attention in the last three decades, there is no narratological survey examining the relation between 20^th century metafictions and their pre-20^th century predecessors. Along with the emphasis placed on the process of interpretation, it is this contrastive approach that constitutes the focal point of this thesis.

References

Bibliography:
Primary texts:
Barth, John. Lost in the Funhouse: Fiction for Print, Tape, Live Voice. New York: Doubleday, 1988.
Fielding, Henry. The History of Tom Jones. Ed. R. P. C. Mutter. London: Penguin Books, 1987.
Gardner, John. Grendel. New York: Knopf, 1973.
Saavedra, Miguel de Cervantes. The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Tran. by John Rutherford. London: Penguin Books, 2003.
Sterne, Laurence. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Ed. Melvyn New and Joan New. London: Penguin Classics, 1997.
Thackeray, William Makepeace. Vanity Fair. Ed. J. I. M. Stewart. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971.
Vonnegut, Kurt. Breakfast of Champions. New York: Dell Publ., 1980.
Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five or the Children’s Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death. New York: Delacorte Press, 1994.
Secondary texts:
Alter, Robert. Partial Magic: The Novel as a Self-Conscious Genre. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.
Barthes, Roland. “Death of the Author.” In Image Music Text. Translated by Stephen Heath. Fontana Press: London, 1977. 142 – 148.
Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Translated by Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang, 1974.
Booth, Wayne C. “The Self-Conscious Narrator in Comic Fiction before Tristram Shandy.” In Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 67. 1952. 163 – 85.
Fludernik, Monika. “Metanarrative and Metafictional Commentary: From Metadiscursivity to Metanarration and Metafiction. Poetica 35. 2003. 1 – 39.
Gass, William H. Fiction and Figures of Life. Boston: Godine, 1989.
Genette, Gerárd. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Translated by Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980.

Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism. London: Routledge, 1988.
Hutcheon, Linda. “Historiographic Metafiction.” Intertextuality and Contemporary American Fiction. Ed. P. O’Donnell and Robert Con Davis. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1989. University of Toronto, 2015. 3 – 12. 14 Oct 2016.
Hutcheon, Linda. Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1986.
McHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction. New York: Methuen, 1987.
Nünning Ansgar. “Towards a Definition, a Typology and an Outline of the Functions of Metanarrative Comentary.” Ed. J. Pier. The Dynamics of Narrative Form: Studies in Anglo-American Narratology. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004. 11 – 57.
Phelan, James. Living to Tell About It: A Rhetoric and Ethics of Character Narration. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005.
Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith. Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. London: Routledge, 1988.
Shklovsky, Victor. “Sterne’s Tristram Shandy: Stylistic Commentary.” Ed. L. Lemon and M. Reis. Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965. 25 – 57.
Waugh, Patricia. Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction. London: Routledge, 1984.