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Linda Hutcheon, in this original study, examines the modes, forms and techniques of narcissistic fiction, that is, fiction which includes within itself some sort of commentary on its own narrative and/or linguistic nature. Her analysis is further extended to discuss the implications of such a development for both the theory of the novel and reading theory. Having placed this phenomenon in its historical context Linda Hutcheon uses the insights of various reader-response theories to explore the "paradox" created by metafiction: the reader is, at the same time, co-creator of the self-reflexive text and distanced from it because of its very self-reflexiveness. She illustrates her analysis through the works of novelists such as Fowles, Barth, Nabokov, Calvino, Borges, Carpentier, and Aquin. For the paperback edition of this important book a preface has been added which examines developments since first publication. Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- CHAPTER ONE: Modes and Forms of Narrative Narcissism: Introduction of a Typology -- CHAPTER TWO: Process and Product: The Implications of Metafiction for the Theory of the Novel as a Mimetic Genre -- CHAPTER THREE: Thematizing Narrative Artifice: Parody, Allegory, and the Mise En Abyme -- CHAPTER FOUR: Freedom Through Artifice: The French Lieutenant's Woman -- CHAPTER FIVE: Actualizing Narrative Structures: Detective Plot, Fantasy, Games, and the Erotic -- CHAPTER SIX: The Language of Fiction: Creating the Heterocosm of Fictive Referents -- CHAPTER SEVEN: The Theme of Linguistic Identity: La Macchina Mondiale -- CHAPTER EIGHT: Generative Word Play: The Outer Limits of the Novel Genre -- CHAPTER NINE: Composite Identity: The Reader, the Writer, the Critic -- Conclusion and Speculations -- Index of Subjects and Names -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Z.
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