This section contains 3,709 words (approx. 13 pages at 300 words per page) |
SOURCE: "Metafiction as Genre," in her Black Metafiction: Self-Consciousness in African American Literature, University of Iowa Press, 1997, pp. 139-65.
In the following excerpt, Jablon analyzes how Butler has transformed the science-fiction genre by subverting its standard formula with Parable of the Sower.
Linda Hutcheon identifies detective fiction, fantasy, and erotic fiction as genres of metafiction. Although she omits science fiction from her list, it is included here, for it best exemplifies the self-reflexiveness resulting from the invention of an alternate reality. Furthermore, much of what Hutcheon says about fantasy literature is applicable to science fiction, a classification that is often considered a subgenre of fantasy. In these genres of covert diegetic self-reflexiveness, the "act of reading becomes one of actualizing textual structures." Because the reader is familiar with the "story-making rules" of these genres, his or her understanding of a work results from appreciation of it within the...
This section contains 3,709 words (approx. 13 pages at 300 words per page) |