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‘Metafiction’ Means Something Powerful
Insights from ‘Black Metafiction’ by Madelyn Jablon
Madelyn Jablon’s 1997 book Black Metafiction: Self-Consciousness in African American Literature teaches about novels and what “metafiction” means.
Black fiction, Jablon writes, has a “tradition of self-consciousness.” She cites the theorists Robert Scholes (Fabulation and Metafiction) and Linda Hutcheon (Narcissistic Narrative), who acknowledge a couple individual Black writers of metafiction but not a metafictional tradition specific to Black writers. She finds a similar omission in Patricia Waugh (Metafiction). Jablon therefore also turns to Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (The Signifying Monkey) and Houston Baker, Jr. (Workings of the Spirit) who are Black scholars studying Black literature.
What Is Metafiction?
William Gass coined the term in Fiction and the Figures of Life, saying that it “draws attention to itself as artefact to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality.” Different theorists have offered various interpretations. Generally, metafiction can be self-absorbed and can manifest through talking-out-loud self-consciousness. More specifically, it can involve “the suggestion of a relationship with a literary forerunner,” such as a dialogue with a historical author. It often…
