MEGATRENDS AND MEDIA

MEGATRENDS AND MEDIA
it is a project of iction, an instrument the coverage of which includes,
from this moment, the ways of exceeding the rules of representation. So
Borges’ quest consists in breaking the rules that separate the world of
non-iction from the world of iction. It is only upon us to choose one of
the two tigers.
4 Metalepsis
The trope of metalepsis, which we found in the poem by Borges, was irst
identiied by the French narratologist Gérard Genette in the early 1970s 5
and have been expanded by himself in his book Métalepses in 2004.
Genette describes metalepsis as a type of language practice belonging
“simultaneously, or rather progressively and cumulatively, to the study
of igures and the analysis of narrative; yet in a way (I will describe what
way later) belonging to the theory of iction.” 6
Starting with the classical tradition, which understands metalepsis as
a frequently occurring type of metonymy based on the substitution of
cause and effect (for example the word laurel can stand for victory in a
text since the winner of a race is usually awarded with a laurel wreath),
Genette focuses on a speciic type of metalepsis also known as author’s
metalepsis. “It’s the case when the author (or his reader) introduces
himself into the ictive action of the narrative or when a character in
that iction intrudes into the extradiegetic existence of the author or
reader, such intrusions disturb, to say the least, the distinction between
levels, producing an effect of humour or the fantastic or some mixture
of the two, unless it functions as a igure of the creative imagination.” 7 In
other words, the author assumes the right to enter the story which he is
actually only the narrator of (a typical example of author’s metalepsis
can be found at the beginning of Italo Calvino’s book If on a winter’s night
a traveller (1979), in which the reader is asked to close the door and
turn of the TV). Thus we deine author’s metalepsis as a very speciic
handling of a causal relationship (metonymical representation of the
5 GENETTE, G.: Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ihaca : Cornell UP,
1980, p. 234-235.
6 GENETTE, G.: Métalepse. De la igure à la iction. Paris : Seuil, 2004, p. 5-6.
7 PIER, J.: Metalepsis. In: Hühn, Peter et al. (eds.): The living handbook of
narratology. Hamburg : Hamburg University. [online]. Available at: .
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