LisbethOvergaardNielsenPhd

etingelser og processer i selve værket” 89. Metafiktionen er i dag en naturlig effekt,
der bruges til at selvironisere som det ofte ses i farcen, mens det omvendt kan
styrke værkets etos og troværdighed, hvis det benyttes som en erklæring i form af
værkets bekendende karakter: Dette er fiktion (og hævder ikke andet). Eller som
Patricia Waugh udtrykker det: “Comtemporary metafictional writing is both a
response and a contribution to an even more thoroughgoing sense that reality or
history is provisional: no longer a world of eternal verities but a series of
constructions, artifices, impermanent structures. The materialist, positivist and
empiricist world-view on which realistic fiction is premised no longer exists”. 90
Patricia Waugh, der med bogen Metaficition. The Theory and Practice of Self-
conscious Fiction (1984), er blandt de teoretikere, der har beskæftiget sig med
metafiktion i lyset af postmodernismen, definerer metafiktion således:
Metafiction is a term given to fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically
draws attention to its status as an artefact in order top pose questions about the
relationship between fiction and reality. In providing a critique of their own methods of
construction, such writings not only examine the fundamental structures of narrative
fiction, they also explore the possible fictionality of the world outside the literary fictional
text. 91
Også Waugh beskriver, hvorledes der i den samtidige kultur synes at være en
stigende opmærksomhed overfor metaniveauer- og strategier.
The present increased awareness of ‘meta’ levels of discourse and experience is partly a
consequence of an increased social and cultural self-consciousness. Beyond this, however,
it also reflects a greater awareness within comtemporary culture of the function of language
in constructing and maintaining our sense of everydag ‘reality’. The simple notion that
language passively reflects a coherent, meaningful and ‘objective’ world is no longer
tenable. Language is an independent, self-contained system which generates its own
‘meanings’. 92
89 Haastrup (1995), s. 23
90 Waugh (1984), s. 7
91 Waugh (1984), s. 3
92 Waugh (1984), s. 3
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