Apocalyptic metafiction in four British novels (Graham Swift, David Lodge, Dennis Potter, Martin Amis)

A postmodern novel displays a self-conscious attitude toward its own fictional status. Elements of the text undermine the illusion of reality within that text. Until recently this type of narrative, sometimes referred to as metafiction, was less evident in the work of British novelists, who have tended to prefer traditional realism, than in fiction by their French and American counterparts. Four novels published in Britain within the last ten years, which are characterized to a varying extent by forms of metafictional expression, are: Waterland by Graham Swift, Small World by David Lodge, Blackeyes by Dennis Potter and London Fields by Martin Amis. Although the premise of realism in each novel is never fully relinquished, the technique of metafiction, as Patricia Waugh has commented, subverts purportedly objective realism in order to challenge the coercive rhetorical structures of literature, history and other texts whose agendas are supported by now suspect empirical assumptions (1-7).; This problematic effect also qualifies a variously manifested apocalyptic vision of cultural decadence and failure. The ultimate prospect of death looms over chaotic, indeterminate human affairs suggesting futility, absurdity or fatalism. Alienation portrayed in the novels as a response to a perceived absence of existential significance is tinged with irony, whether the mood is morbid or comic. The focus of this thesis will be on the fusion of metafiction to realism, which, in these otherwise arbitrarily chosen works, elicits irony in the depiction of an apocalyptic theme. An introductory chapter will discuss historical influences on these contemporary English novels pertaining to their self-conscious and apocalyptic aspects. The following four chapters will deal with each of the chosen novels in turn in order to explore their particular relationship to apocalyptic metafiction.