| Metafiction,also known as post-novel,anti-fiction,self-consciousness fiction,non-realistic fiction,experimental fiction,and self-generated fiction,etc.,emerged in the field of Western literature in the 1960 s and 1970 s.The concept of metafiction was first put forward by the American post-modernist writer William Gass in 1970.The so-called metafiction is not limited to "discussing the works in the works",which can only be regarded as the “formal” metafiction.The metafiction,to be more precise,is to use the novel as the material for further creation.Metafiction itself as the object,reflects a high degree of self-awareness,with writing strategies and narrative techniques often used trace,parody,collage and other techniques,and the purpose is to reveal the nature of the novel fiction,to treat the text as a product of pure language,and to combine narrative and critical technique to reflect the relations between art and reality while also revealing the regularity of novel creation.This definition is inherited and used by later generations.Metafiction is one of the important forms of postmodern fiction novel,which shows the questioning and innovation of traditional novel creation.To some extent,Metafiction also enlarged the space of reality represented by literature works,to form a new concept of “real”,marks the awakening of self consciousness in novel creation.So it has an important contribution to the continuous development of the art form of fiction,and at the same time it also has a strong realistic value.Therefore the novel creation appears a new form and enters a new stage.As a characteristic novel creation style or genre,the development of metafiction in the West and China has both connections and differences.The connection lies in the fact that the development of metafiction in the West is relatively earlier,while the creation of metafiction and the development of metafiction theory in China are the continuation of the same theoretical context following the pace of the creation and research in the West.But at the same time,it should be noted that the cultural soil of literary creation is different between China and the West,and there are some differences in the narrative methods,expression forms,language styles and many creative elements of the metafiction.This has led to the question of why Chinese metafiction differs so markedly from that of the West,in what ways these differences are manifested,what the specific causes of these differences are,and in what direction the creative and theoretical development of Chinese metafiction will continue to evolve in the future.These are the key questions that this paper will attempt to explain.The exploration of Chinese scholars in the theory of metafiction and its creation methods has never been interrupted.The reason for this uninterrupted exploration is mainly because the creation activities of China’s Metafiction have never stopped,but it is worth noting that the starting point of China’s Metafiction creation is intrinsically closely related to the theory and works of western metafiction,and even to some extent,the creation of Chinese metafiction is an imitation and recreation of similar works of the West,so that traces of western metafiction have been revealed in our country from time to time.Based on this close connection in the creation practice,the theoretical research and creative method research of Chinese metafiction have hardly broken out of the framework of western metafiction theory and practice,which makes it difficult to set up a new school.It is not close enough to combine with the Chinese creative soil.Based on this consideration,to trace the source of Chinese and Western metafiction theories,and to make a comparative study of modern metafiction works,is conducive to revealing the deficiencies of Chinese meta-fiction theories and creative methods,and to supplement a theoretical basis for improving the level of Chinese metafiction creation.To this end,the research is divided into five parts:The first part focuses on defining the concept of metafiction,comparing the concept of metafiction with that of other fictions,and combining it with the creation practice of Chinese metafiction to propose a basic concept of metafiction that conforms to the soil of China.It is further revealed that the emergence of metafiction is related to the change of western cultural thinking,the development and evolution of modern linguistic theories,and the western philosophical foundation.These factors,together with the self-consciousness of the subjective consciousness of novel creators,give rise to the emergence of metafiction.Moreover,in this part,the development track and context of Chinese and Western metafiction theory and creation practice will be reviewed and compared.The purpose is to compare the similarities and differences between the two in the context of development,and verify the close connection between Chinese metafiction theory and creation practice and that of the West.The second part focuses on the analysis of the four important characteristics of metafiction,namely the use of language games,the revelation of fictionality,the combination of both narrative and critical discourse logic,as well as the selfawakening consciousness of metafiction.Based on previous studies,this part divides metafiction into three categories: reflexive,pre-textual and texture-like.Of course,the most important content of this part is to discuss how to realize The sanitization of metafiction and how it emerged suddenly as a singularity in the field of Chinese literary creation.To explain this problem,the author uses four sections: first,to classify and introduce translated works of early Chinese Metafictions;second,to discuss the naming of metafictions;third,to explain what process the chinization of metafictions has gone through;fourth,to predict what direction the metafiction may develop in the future.The third part: to deeply explain the similarities and differences between Chinese and Western metafictions,we choose the comparative dimension of the differences in creation and narrative strategy.On thinking analysis,this article starts from four metafiction narrative strategy: revealing,parody,collage and time-space shifting.The foreign work,the French Lieutenant’s Woman and the domestic work The Pioneer Novels of Mayuan,will be analyzed and discussed respectively,comparing the characteristic difference of Chinese and western novel works from the concept and practice of the work creation process This part is divided into three sections,which are analyzed from three levels: meta-narrative,meta-story,meta-value.The fourth part: the analysis still adopts the method of comparison,comparing and analyzing the social and cultural value differences between Chinese and Western metafictions.On this basis,from a forward-looking perspective,we will explore what difficulties the future development of metafiction faces.In the analysis of cultural values,it focuses on the analysis of the cultural representation of Chinese and Western metafictions,as well as the impact of metafictions on the development of their respective cultures and the role of promoting.The analysis of the development dilemma focuses on the formalism in the creation and the lack of unified views on the creation of Chinese and Western metafictions.Meanwhile,it also analyzes the problem that readers do not have a high degree of recognition for metafictions.The fifth part: this part is the conclusion of the article,focusing on revealing the limitations of metafiction research,combing and summarizing the research viewpoints of this paper,and predicting the overall trend of meta-fiction development in the future. |
PDF Full Text Request