The narrativity of narcissism: Cultural contexts of contemporary American metafiction

The purpose of the dissertation is to re-articulate the critical significance of the self-reflexive narrative turn in contemporary American metafiction, with particular reference to the works of Carole Maso. The predominantly Formalist approach adopted by existing critical appraisals of metafiction has lead to a marginalization of what Fredric Jameson would identify as "the political" dimension of metafictional novels. The dissertation attempts to extend the critical significance of metafictional self-reflexivity into that political domain. In order to revive the political dimensions of metafiction, The Narrativity of Narcissism situates the narrative material and idiosyncratic narrative strategies of metafiction within the combined contexts of psychoanalytic models of narcissism, narrative theory, and critical discourses that pertain to the articulation of gender and sexuality. As a result of this re-contextualization, both metafiction in general, and Maso's work in particular, emerge as a point cleans of cultural contestation in which the narrative strategies of metafictional texts operate to assert dissidant cultural values.;The dissertation is divided into three large chapters: Chapter One presents an overview and critical assessment of the prevailing statements and sentiments on the genre of metafiction; Chapter Two reviews the psychoanalytic literature on narcissism and, on the basis of that literature, forges a new critical model for the consideration and interpretation of the etiology, focalization, plot structure, and thematization of the reading process in metafictional works; Chapter Three focuses upon the five novels of Carole Maso and places the model developed in Chapter Two in conjunction with Maso's works in order to explore not only how the implications of narcissism resonate across those works at the thematic level of the plot or fabula, but also how those thematic resonances are embedded in and relate to the narcissistic implications of the diegetic structure or sjuzet of her novels.;Maso's novels recurrently examine how the conventions of narrative constrain the emergence of women's and lesbian subjectivities. By turning the self-reflexive gaze of metafiction back upon the conventions of narrative itself, Maso illustrates how the traditional ligature between narcissism and lesbian desire can be critically interrogated and refashioned. The metafictional impulse in Maso's novels suggests that her work can be read as part of an emancipatory project that seeks to re-articulate women's subjectivities and lesbian desire beyond the normative constraints that define narrative and language.;The Narrativity of Narcissism concludes by suggesting that the prevalence of metafictional devices in both contemporary American literature and popular American culture is an indication that metafiction is not a narrow literary phenomenon. Although metafiction is inextricably associated with the "death of the novel" debates that raged as the sixties closed, the metafictional impulse has become one of the powerful strategies of cultural critique and self-definition in the contemporary moment. The fact that Maso's metafictional works engage issues of such social importance reveals how metafiction is not merely an experiment with novelistic form. Rather, metafiction emerges, in The Narrativity of Narcissism, as a potent vehicle for cultural contestation.