| Self-consciousness is as much a part of human existence as any other mode of thought. For the human who is on the threshold of the twenty-first century, the process of considering one's own existence in light of the overwhelming external factors of "reality" is actually necessary to the fundamental well-being of the human, and this situation has always been the case during the evolution of humanity. One must only look at the great body of mythological, religious, and philosophical literature (and the immense body of literature itself) to determine that humans have always been a self-conscious species, concerned about how and why humans exist in the first place.;Nobody should wonder, then, that our stories, too, become as self-conscious as humans. When a story shows self-awareness, which it can do through a variety of narrative techniques, it becomes metafictional. In this dissertation, I explore the reasons that, in the past century, both our societies and the literature coming out of those societies have moved toward an extreme self-consciousness. In particular, I limit the type of literature to those forms which scholars call the "fantastic," including myths, legends, and folktales. The ultimate goal of this dissertation is to show the way that contemporary fantasy fiction is moving toward an extreme self-consciousness, as exemplified by the works of Peter S. Beagle.;In the first chapter of this dissertation, I explore metafiction and the ways in which a narrative achieves self-consciousness. Also, I attempt to define various forms of fantastical narratives, such as myths, legends, and the differing types of folktales. In the second chapter, then, I survey the occurrence of metafiction throughout fantastical literature in our Western tradition. The third chapter is devoted to one of the most popular myths of our century, J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth saga, while the fourth chapter takes a look at C. S. Lewis' works of fantasy fiction. The final chapter takes into account the three highly metafictional fantasy novels of Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn (1968), The Folk of the Air (1986), and The Innkeeper's Song (1993). A brief conclusion ends the dissertation. |
