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Postmodernist metafictional writing, by reflecting on itself, that is, by showing how it is structured, how it has come into being, openly displays its artificial character [...] In doing so, these works expressly deny that they are trying to project a reality by offering a credible story. These …

The historical period we are living through has been singularly uncertain, insecure, self-questioning and culturally pluralistic. Contemporary fiction clearly reflects this dissatisfaction with, and breakdown of, traditional values. Previously, as in the case of nineteenth-century realism, the fo…

'Oh God comma I abhor self-consciousness.' This sentence from John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse is emblematic of the reflexive irony of Barth's fiction: it professes an aversion to self-reflectivity, while actually wallowing in it. [...]

[...] These two literary trends can be seen to represent the two senses in which the term postmodernism is most often employed: on the one hand, a theoretical postmodernism, signifying a predominantly 'academic' problematization and subversion of beliefs considered to be central to modernist though…

In A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius the critique of the ironic attitude is most evident in the passages concerning Might Magazine. As mentioned in the previous section, the book offers a positive portrayal of the original (however vague) ambitions of the magazine. But soon these ambiti…