Fludernik Metanarrative

METANARRATIVE AND METAFICTIONAL COMMENTARY: From Metadiscursivity to
Metanarration and Metafiction

Author(s): Monika Fludernik
Source: Poetica , 2003, Vol. 35, No. 1/2 (2003), pp. 1-39
Published by: Brill
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43028318
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Monika Fludernik (Freiburg)
MET AN ARRATI VE AND METAFICTIONAL COMMENTARY:

From Metadiscursivity to Metanarration and Metafiction
In English narratological criticism, the terms metanarrative and metaficti

are on the whole used interchangeably. Even in German narratological di
course, the term metanarrative has failed to figure prominently. This situ
tion has now changed drastically in the wake of a landmark contribution t
narrative theory by Ansgar Nünning, the prominent German narratologis
Nünning' s seminal paper,1 published in the Festschrift for Wilhelm Füger
one of the doyens of German narratology, has put the subject of metanarr
tive on the map of narratological enquiry. It not only makes a case f
metanarrative as a key concept within narrative theory but additionally p
poses an extensive typology of different kinds of metanarrative.
This essay is designed as a response to Nünning' s piece. I will attempt
complement Nünning' s categories by focussing less on the extensiveness
and placing of metanarrative commentary in the text (as he does) than o
what precisely is metanarration, and how it can be distinguished from me
fiction. I will also be countering some of Nünning' s theoretical presupposi
tions. The article falls into four sections: (1) a summary of Nünning' s Ger
man piece; (2) remarks on the metanarrative/metafiction distinction; (3)
descriptive analysis of types of metanarration, proposing a new model an
some additional terminology; (4) a summary and outlook, focussing on th
remaining open questions, including a critique of Nünning' s concept
"Mimesis des Erzählens".
1 Ansgar Nünning, "Mimesis des Erzählens: Prolegomena zu einer Wirkungsästhetik,

Typologie und Funktionsgeschichte des Akts des Erzählens und der Metanarration",
in: Jörg Heibig (ed.), Erzählen und Erzähltheorie im 20. Jahrhundert. Festschrift für
Wilhelm Füger, Heidelberg 2001, pp. 13-48.

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2 Monika Fludernik
1. "Mimesis of Narrati
aesthetics, typology, f
metanarration"
As Nünning' s essay is written in German, it may be useful to the reader to

first have a summary of his major arguments. Since the publication of this
paper Nünning has produced at least one other piece of roughly the same
material2 which eliminates some errors and infelicities of the original paper3
and clarifies a number of the proposed categories by providing more exam-
ples. An English version is forthcoming in a proceedings volume from the
recent ESSE conference in Strasbourg.
Nünning starts out with a criticism of narratology for having largely
failed to consider the narrator as one of the central elements of fiction. Al-
though narrators have figured in the distinction between first-person and
third-person narrative, Nünning claims that - even in its latest theoretical
manifestations - narratology has never adequately described the importance
of the act of narration or bothered about metanarration at all.4 Nünning ex-
2
Ansgar Nünning, "Metanarration als Lakune der Erzähltheorie: Definition, Typologie
und Grundriß einer Funktionsgeschichte metanarrativer Erzähleräußerungen", Ar-
beiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 26/2001, pp. 125-164.
3 -
For
tran
ever
func
in: G
func
tion
tive
what
(Gen
are
dica
gani
sour
Gene
relat
narrational level on the other.
Nünning himself, in his Ph.D. dissertation (1989), has presented a much more exten-
sive model of narratorial functions, which he modestly does not mention in this con-
text. See Ansgar Nünning, Grundzüge eines kommunikationstheoretischen Modells
der erzählerischen Vermittlung. Die Funktionen der Erzählinstanz in den Romanen
George Eliot s , Trier 1989. See also Ansgar Nünning, "Die Funktionen von Erzählin-
stanzen: Analysekategorien und Modelle zur Beschreibung des Erzählerverhaltens",
Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 30/1997, pp. 323-349.

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Metanarrative and Metafictional Commentary 3
plains this blind spot as the after-effect of twentieth-centur

the authorial novel. He notes correctly5 that there has been a
narrative studies in the twentieth century along a scale fro
thropomorphization of the narrator figure to the radical cri
any anthropomorphic schemata (this was my own position
of Language6 and Towards a ' Natural ' Narratology1). As
the prototypical understanding of mimetic illusion invo
downtoning of narratorial mediation. In Werner Wolfs mag
anti-illusionistic techniques of narration, for instance, an ex
narratorial involvement are argued to equally undermine a
sionism.8
In reaction to this supposedly wilful neglect of the act of narration, Nün-
ning first proposes that the telling of the story should be regarded as the
primary mimetic illusion of fiction (neatly inverting the traditional hierar-
chy according to which the telling of the tale provides at best a secondary
mimetic illusion, Wolfs Sekundärillusion9). After all, all narratives are con-
stituted by an act of narration (Stanzel's mediacy). In continuing this line of
argument, Nünning ends up with a flexible scalar model according to which
narrative mimesis can tend either towards the pole of narrational or towards
the pole of diegetic (plot) illusionism. In other words, the realistic illusion-
ism produced by the (traditional) novel can consist in the evocation of a
communicational scenario (a narrator talking to the narratee), in the por-
trayal of a fictional world, or in the combination of both types of illusion
(as, for instance, in the authorial novel; compare Fielding's Tom Jones). The
illusion of participating in an act of communication and the resultant an-
thropomorphization of the teller figure are linked by Nünning to the tenets
of cogniti vist narratology (his characterization of my Towards a ' Natural '
Narratolo gy): textual signals alert the reader to the voice of the narrator fig-
ure, who is then invoked as a full-fledged human entity whose act of narra-
tion corresponds to familiar storytelling scripts or storytelling frames.
5 Nünning, "Mimesis des Erzählens" (cf. note 1), p. 18.

Monika Fludernik, The Fictions of Language and the Languages of Fiction. The Rep-
resentation of Speech and Thought in Language, London 1993.
Monika Fludernik, Towards a ' Natural * Narratology , London/New York 1996.
Werner Wolf, Ästhetische Illusion und Illusionsdurchbrechung in der Erzählkunst.
Theorie und Geschichte mit Schwerpunkt auf englischem illusionsstörenden Erzählen ,
Tübingen 1993, p. 307.
* P. 102.

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4 Monika Fludernik
Nünning then goes o

that narratology has s
the narratee but negl
following aspects of
narrational performan
(a) the appellative and
channel. On p. 34 he
that all narratorial fu
of communication are
(b) the manner of na
sive and associative a
delivery;
(c) the subjective or expressive function - the use of those markers of ex-
pressivity that establish a speaker in the text;
(d) generalizing remarks: gnomic utterances and evaluative remarks by the
narrator - these, according to Nünning, serve to narrow the distance be-
tween narrator and reader since the narrator engages the reader's views and
opinions and tries his persuasive charms on the textual recipient;
(e) metanarrative remarks: stage directions, references to previous or later
sections of the narrative, and self-reflexive passages - these all invoke the
narrator figure and the act of narration as well as the very process of narra-
tion.12
In the fourth section of his article Nünning proceeds to lay out a typology
and poetics of metanarration. He starts out from a distinction between
metanarration and metafiction, arguing that metanarration "thematizes the
act and/or process of narration", whereas metafiction "discloses the arte-
factual nature of the narrated or the act of narration" ("eine Bloßlegung der
Fiktionalität des Erzählten oder auch des Erzählens").13 Metanarrative
10 Nünning, "Mimesis des Erzählens" (cf. note 1), pp. 29-31.

11 Cf. note 6; p. 443.
I have here condensed Nünning' s seven categories, merging categories 2 and 3 as
function (a) and eliding category 1 - projection of the illusion of an anthropomorphic
narrator figure - because I find that it is all the categories together that produce this
illusion of the "Personalisierung der Erzählinstanz" (Nünning, "Mimesis des Er-
zählens" [cf. note 1], p. 29) as Nünning calls it.
I have translated Fiktionalität as "artefactuality" (fictivity) rather than "fictionality"
for the reasons given in my Towards a ' Natural ' Narratology [cf. note 7], pp. 38-43.
Nünning does not refer to the distinction between fictional vs. non-fictional prose
(autobiographies can contain metafictional comments if these relate to the construct-
edness of the narrative), that is to the real-life referential basis of a text; nor is he con-
cerned with the philosophical concept of existence (hypothetical vs. real entities) usu-
ally referred to as fictivity. What the German word fiktional implies is the constructed

178.24.249.95 on Mon, 20 Nov 2023 12:45:19 +00:00
commentary need not be metafictional, i.e. need no

illusionistic effect. On the contrary, as Nünning argu
comments may help to substantiate the illusion of authe
tries to create.14 Metanarrative passages can therefore eit
fabric of fiction"15 - in which case we are dealing with
tions ; or they do not undercut the fabric of fiction and th
reflexive narratives.16 Moreover, self-reflexivity is
metanarrative and non-metanarrative texts. Nünning giv
mise-en-abyme as an instance of a self-reflexive textual
metanarrative (since it does not involve a reference to t
narration). (Is this the case because the device cannot be
narrator's responsibility but has to be attributed to the [i
If I comprehend Nünning correctly, there are three cat
metanarrative passages; (b) metanarrative passages tha
tional ("self-conscious" texts); and (c) metafictional narra
contain metanarrative passages. We will return to th
metanarration distinction in section 2.2 and then deal wit
cal complications.
In outlining the various types of metanarrative, Nünnin
very detailed typology in "Modell 2" consisting of four
in turn give rise to subsidiary distinctions (described in
The four basic aspects are (I) formal, (II) structural, (III)
and (IV) reception-oriented types of metanarrative. In N
ration als Lakune der Erzähltheorie"18 this diagramme i
further subcategories.
nature of the literary artefact. This is dealt with in Wolf, Ästhet

8, here pp. 38-39) under the distinction between the fictio and th
rative fictionality. The uncovering of the fictio nature of narr
grounds the 'fictionalizing' quality of the narrative act, the p
whereas the fictum aspect refers to the inventedness, the counter
the narrative agents, the dialogue etc.
14 Nünning, "Mimesis des Erzählens" (cf. note 1), p. 33.
Seymour Chatman, Story and Discourse. Narrative Structure i
Ithaca, NY 1978, p. 248.
The latter term comes from Gerald Prince, A Dictionary of N
1987, p. 51, s.v. metanarrative ; compare Nünning, "Mimesis de
„ IX p. 33.
Nünning, "Mimesis des Erzählens" (cf. note 1), here pp. 36-3
below.
18 Cf. note 2, here pp. 148-150.

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6 Monika Fludernik
Aspect (I) includes the

paratextual metanarrativ
commentary on the st
paratextual features like
between explicit and im
der Erzähltheorie" Nün
metanarration - an insig
the description of the re
consuming a multiple-c
distinction between meta
Aspect (II) concerns the
metanarrative and non-m
Aspect (III) refers to t
cludes the referential pa
rative comment concern
rytelling in general, or
"Metanarration als Lakun
gories, including the d
metanarration. (Ill) also
rative section, i.e. wheth
munication or the narra
ries).
Aspect (IV), finally, concerns the functions of metanarrative commen-
tary. Nünning mentions two of these, the degree of anti-illusionism and the
extent to which metanarrative comment may enhance or narrow the distance
between the reader and the protagonists, and adds a third subcategory in
"Metanarration als Lakune der Erzähltheorie".
For those readers of this article who are able to read German, I print out
Nünning' s diagramme in full. Unfortunately Nünning in "Mimesis des Er-
zählens" does not provide any examples to illustrate these categories. I will
attempt some examples in section (3) below. Nünning' s "Metanarration als
Lakune der Erzähltheorie"20 is very helpful in elucidating a number of the
questions raised by "Mimesis des Erzählens" since this piece spends more
space on explaining and illustrating categories.
19 P. 138.
20
Cf. "Mimesis des Erzählens" (cf. note 1) and "Metanarration als Lakune der
Ezähltheorie" (cf. note 2).

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Diagramme 1 - Nünning' s "Modell 2: Unterformen bzw. Arten vo
Arten von Metanarration Kriterien zu deren Bestimmung
I. Formal bestimmte Arten von Kommunikationsebene und Vermittlungs-

Metanarration modus
1. Diegetisch vs. extradiegetisch vs. textuelle Eb

paratextuell vs. hypodiegetisch lens thematisie
vermittelbare Metanarration durch die Fig
Herausgeberebene, weitere Rahm
noptische Kapitelüberschriften
paratextuelle Elemente
2. Gleichgeordnete vs. metaleptische Überschrei

Formen von Metanarration extradiegetisch
der diegetischen Ebene des Ge
3. Verdeckte/implizite Metanarration Vermittlu
4. Metaphorische vs. nichtmeta- sprachliche

phorische Metanarration narration
II. Strukturell bestimmte Formen Quantitative und qualitative Relationen zu
von Metanarration den nichtmetanarrativen Teilen und
syntagmatische Integration der meta-
narrativen Äußerungen in den Kontext der
erzählten Geschichte
5. Marginale vs. zentrale Meta- Position der metanarrativen Äußerungen im

narration Romanganzen
6. Punktuelle vs. extensive Metanar- Frequenz und Um

ration Äußerungen in Relation zur erzählten
Geschichte
7. Integrierte vs. isolierte Meta- Grad der Einbindung in bzw. Abgrenzung der
narration metanarrativen Äußerungen von der erzählten
Geschichte
8. Motivierte bzw. funktionale vs. Grad der begründeten Anknüpfung an bzw.

unmotivierte bzw. ornamentale plausiblen Herleitung aus der erzählten
Metanarration Geschichte
9. Nichtdigressive vs. digressive vs. Grad und A

metadigressive Metanarration erzählten Ges
21
Nünning, "Modell 2" in "Metanarration als Lakune der Erzähltheorie" (cf. note 2), pp.
148-150.

178.24.249.95 on Mon, 20 Nov 2023 12:45:19 +00:00
8 Monika Fludernik
Arten von Metanarration Kriterien zu deren Bestimmung
III. Inhaltlich bestimmte For- Das jeweilige Objekt metanarrativ

men von Metanarration ßerungen
10. Selektive vs. umfassende Metanar- Skopus der metanarrativen Referenzen

ration
1 1 .Eigen- vs. Fremd- vs. Allgemein- Referenzbezug und Reichweite der meta-
metanarration sowie intratextuelle narrativen Äußerungen, d. h. das eigene Er-
vs. intertextuelle Metanarration zählen, die Erzählweise anderer Autor/Innen
oder Erzählen allgemein
12. Story- orientierte vs. discourse- dominante Bezugsgröße der metanarrativen

zentrierte Metanarration sowie ex- Äußerungen, d. h. Bezug zur Geschichte bzw.
pressive, phatische und appellative zur erzählerischen Vermittlung (erzähler-
Metanarration bezogene, kanalbezogene und leserbezogene
Formen von Metanarration)
13.Gattungs- bzw. textsortenspezifie- die Frage, ob durch metanarrative Äußerun-

rende Metanarration bzw. nichtspe- gen eine Erzählung als Ganzes im Hinblick
zifizierende Metanarration auf ihre Gattungs- bzw. Textsortenzugehörig-
keit charakterisiert wird
14. Affirmative vs. untermininierende Einschätzung der eigenen narrativen Kompe-

Metanarration tenz durch die Erzählinstanz
15. Kritische vs. nichtkritische Me- Bewertung der thematisi

tanarration
IV. Wirkungsästhetisch bzw. Das Wirkungs- und Funktionspotential

funktional bestimmte Formen metanarrativer Äußerungen
von Metanarration
16.MUndlichkeits- vs. schriftlichkeits- evozierte mediale Kommunikationssituation

fingierende Metanarration und implizierte Neutralisierungsschemata
17. Distanz verringernde vs. distanz- die Frage, ob metanarrative Äußerungen Re-
vergrößernde Metanarration zipienten dazu anregen, sich in die Figuren
einzufühlen oder Abstand zum erzählten Ge-
schehen zu gewinnen
18. Illusionskompatible vs. illusionsstö- Grad der Illusionsdurchbrechung meta-

rende Metanarration narrativer Äußerungen
In the final section of his paper22 Nünning summarizes his approach and
provides a brief survey of the prevalence of narratorial illusion in the history
of English fiction, sketching areas of future research within a cultural stud-
22
Nünning, "Mimesis des Erzählens" (cf. note 1), pp. 38-44.

178.24.249.95 on Mon, 20 Nov 2023 12:45:19 +00:00
ies framework of narrative theory. The historical survey

mon Victorian strategy of having the narrator and the
translated to the story level, where they seem to observe
tagonists as if narrator or narratee were metaleptically p
themselves; it also notes the fact that in postmodernist t
comment may display a whole spectrum of quite varied
preliminary insights already indicate that Nünning is exp
useful results from the kind of analyses that he proposes.
In "Metanarration als Lakune der Erzähltheorie" Nünni
vides a summary of the functions of metanarration in En
Elizabethan times to postmodernity.23 He distinguishes b
and anti-illusionistic functions of metanarration and gr
scale in his "Modell 3" (here reprinted as Diagramme 2). 24
tic end of the scale are placed the authenticating, cohere
mnemotechnic functions; the centre of the scale is take
communicative, suspension-inducing, didactic and comic
anti-illusionistic side comprises the parodie, poetological
functions as well as the anti-illusionistic function proper.
Diagramme 2: Nünning, "Modell 3: Skalierung der Funktionen metan

Erzähläußerungen"25
^ ^ ^ . o* ^ ^
/// // //
/ ./ // /
/ / / ./ /./ / / /
/ y / / / / / ■/ # / / /
•
/ / y / / s / / / / ■/ / / / / /
- •
illusionskompatible illusionsdurchbrechende
Metanarration Metanarration
To summarize: Nünning pr
the narratorial level into
claim that the narrative d
by narcologists by focus
23
Nünning, "Metanarration als Lakune der Erzähltheorie" (cf. note 2), pp. 150-159.
24 P. 152.
Nünning, "Modell 3" in: "Metanarration als Lakune der Erzähltheorie" (cf. note 2), p.
152.

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10 Monika Fludernik
quite true, has been lar

mixed up with metafict
Nünning' s re-balancin
act of narration and th
cognitivist narrative the
nication model. In this
a ' Natural ' Narratology
of Fiction throughout.2
seems to imply that th
was a dead alley from w
theoretical agreement,
which, I believe, are rai
any way meant to deni
should be read as a tribu
of current debates in na
issues of narrative theor
structure of the narcolo
2. Metanarrative vs. Metafiction

2.1. The Terminological Quagmire Surrounding Metanarrative and
Metafiction: German vs. English Configurations
Before turning to the major issues, I would like to preface my discussion by

pointing out the considerable terminological difficulties besetting a treat-
ment in English of the topic under consideration. Nünning' s essay reads
very smoothly and convincingly in German, but as I was paraphrasing his
arguments, I was stumped in several places since the German both provided
some easy distinctions unavailable in English and was glossing over differ-
entiations that are current in English criticism but seem to have no equiva-
lent lexical differentiation in traditional German terminology.
I already noted the problem with regard to the German Fiktionalität (see
footnote 13) which, although translatable as fictionality, bears less immedi-
26 "Mimesis des Erzählens" (cf. note 1), p. 29-31, in reference to Towards a ' Natural *
Narratology (cf. note 7), pp. 96-98, 275-278.
It is therefore astonishing that, in the final section of „Mimesis des Erzählens" (cf.
note 1), he devotes a full paragraph to a critique of Towards a * Natural ' Narratology
which he faults for deliberately ignoring the mimetic illusion of the narrational act.
Nünning, "Metanarration als Lakune der Erzähltheorie" (cf. note 2), by contrast, does
not include any criticism of Natural Narratology. In fact, Towards a ' Natural ' Narra-
tology' s frame of TELLING already anticipated Nünning' s mimesis of narration.

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Metanarrative and Metafictional Commentary 1 1
ate reference to the fiction/non-fiction distinction current

subliminally implied by the term. These kinds of faux amis
soon as one looks at the terminology for metafiction and Me
am advisedly using Nünning' s German term here). As Nünni
the current English translation for German metanarrativ (ad
tional .28
Now, Nünning is perfectly correct in saying that, due to the widespread

denigration of the narrator in Modernism and due to the critical hostility to-
wards the author and narrator under structuralism and poststructuralism, the
tendency has been to see narratorial comment as inherently harmful, as in-
terfering with mimetic illusionism and, therefore, as anti-illusionistic. (He is
also right to observe that the realist novel, that victim of enlightened critical
abuse, displays rather a lot of such narratorial interference - a contradiction
rarely faced by those engaging in wholesale condemnation of supposedly
facile Victorian realism which they oppose to more circumspect later prod-
ucts of the narrative genre.) Since metafiction is taken to be unalloyedly
anti-illusionistic, the tendency in English criticism to equate statements
about the narrative process with metafiction easily explains itself. In fact -
and again Nünning is quite correct to pillory this state of affairs - the term
metafiction has been used rather loosely and randomly in English critical
prose to refer to all sorts of techniques that explicitly or implicitly 'break'
what is called the mimetic illusion generated by fictional narrative. Meta-
fiction, in short, frequently includes anti-realist devices, parody, mise-en-
abyme , just anything that is not 'realist' (in the caricature sense of a verisi-
milar fictional representation of a fictional world that looks much like our
real world). A good example of the current English usage of the term is
provided by Jeremy Hawthorn's entry on metalanguage [sic] in his A Con-
cise Glossary of Contemporary Literary Theory :
Metafiction is, literally, fiction about fiction. To a certain extent the term overlaps
with metanarrative because any work which contains a metanarrative will contain
a metafictional element. It is generally used to indicate fiction including any self-
referential element (not necessarily resulting from a metanarrative: thematic pat-
ternings can also contribute to the formation of a metafictional effect in a work).
Metafiction typically involves games in which levels of narrative reality (and the
reader's perception of them) are confused, or in which traditional REALIST con-
ventions governing the separation of MIMETIC and DIEGETIC elements are
flouted and thwarted.
28
Nünning, "Metanarration als Lakune der Erzähltheorie" (cf. note 2), p. 129.
Jeremy Hawthorn, A Concise Glossary of Contemporary Literary Theory , London
1992, p. 104, s.v. metalanguage.

178.24.249.95 on Mon, 20 Nov 2023 12:45:19 +00:00
12 Monika Fludernik
Hawthorn's use of the te

'story within the story'
mise-en-abyme.
In German terminology
clear borrowing from th
borrowing from the Fre
man literary criticism, b
between the meaning of
devices'. The genuine Ge
Fiktionalität ) and the
German terms have an
metafictional collocates
metafictional prose. Nex
(or strategies) can be fo
ment or metafictional co
effect of the narratoria
comment itself was 'abou
Whereas the English
Wolfs31 terminology is
designates the effect of
an aspect of it), whereas
has to be 'a discourse or
is 'a discourse about na
available in English sinc
ally occurs only in collo
(where a good stylist wo
tional quality of Beckett
ality in English is not a
usage.
30
The English term seems to have first emerged in the wake of Robert Scholes's essay
"Metafiction" (The Iowa Review , Fall 1970) and of William Gass' s book Fiction and
the Figures of Life (New York 1970), although the first OED entry is from 1960
where the Times Literary Supplement referred to John Cowper Powys's All or Nothing
as a "metaphysical discourse, a mockery of nationalism, meta-fiction or space poetry"
(TLS 17/6/1960, pp. 381-383). The lexeme metafictional in the OED precedes the oc-
currence of metafictive in adjectival function.
31 *•
See Wolf, Ästhetisch
Selbstbezüglichkeit in
' mise en cadre ' und
rieim 20. Jahrhunder
Lately, Metafiktion al
tion' referring to a gen

178.24.249.95 on Mon, 20 Nov 2023 12:45:19 +00:00
The waters get even murkier when we turn to metanarrative

term has at least three different technical meanings. First, i
Genette for a story on the metadiegetic level, i.e. a story wi
This is the meaning that Hawthorn used, as we have seen. Seco
famously, the term refers to a 'narrative about narrative' as t
of Lyotard' s métarécit.34 This is the use of the term that Br
ploys in Constructing Postmodernism.35 Compare, for instan
sive is this apocalyptic metanarrative of the postmodernist b
[...]"36 And then there is the third non-Genettean narcologic
which I now turn.
The reader will have noticed that I have tended to translate Nünning' s
noun Metanarration with the English noun metanarrative and not with
metanarration (except where the process of narrating was implied rather
than the abstract concept). Although Gerald Prince37 is quoted approvingly
by Nünning for having included an entry on metanarrative in his Dictionary
of Narratology, the term metanarrative is actually little used in English, and
where it is used (so far as I am aware) almost never in the sense in which
Prince defines it. Prince's entry lexicalizes metanarrative as a noun and as a
specific noun at that: "a narrative referring to itself and to those elements by
which it is constituted and communicated, a narrative discussing itself, a
Self-Reflexive Narrative, is metanarrative."38 Prince's definition there-
fore does not refer to the abstract (as do Metafiktion and Metanarration ),
but to a specific 'narrative about narrative'. His identification of metanarra-
tive with a self-reflexive narrative therefore tends to equate it with metafic-
tion in the loose Anglo-American sense of the term. This is the case because
Prince's concept requires the defined entity to be a narrative itself, and a
whole narrative text can be metanarrative (i.e. about narrative) only by be-
ing in fact metafictional (even if individual statements and devices within
that text are properly metanarrative passages). Indeed, Prince's metanarra-
tive seems to be the mirror image of mise-en-abyme - according to Nün-
ning, "a self-reflexive but not metanarrative" device.39 Since Prince gives
33
Genette, Narrative Discourse (cf. note 3), p. 228, note 41.
34
Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1984),
transi. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi, foreword Frederic Jameson, 9th print-
ing, Minneapoli 1993, p. xxiii-xxiv. "I define postmodern as incredulity towards
metanarratives" (p. xxiv).
35
Brian McHale, Constructing Postmodernism , London 1992.
P. 23.
37 Cf. note 16.
P. 51; qtd. Nünning, "Mimesis des Erzählens" (cf. note 1), p. 33.
Nünning, "Mimesis des Erzählens" (cf. note 1), p. 35.

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14 Monika Fludernik
no examples, it is diff
was thinking about a n
scenario definitely incl
As Nünning notes him
reflexive narrative t
consciousness with me
dian academia, but sur
with it, and it is so in
its current usage in En
bite and that no distin
The term metanarrati
English. This is also du
or Erzählu n g is narr
is the equivalent of Er
ning, metanarrative w
tion.
Re-emerging from this cross-cultural terminological minefield, I would

like to emphasize that the above analysis was not meant as a facile criticism
of Nünning' s terms but as a taste of the linguistic divide that will, I much
fear, render Nünning' s proposals unpopular and difficult to appreciate by
Anglo-American critics. However, the great service that Nünning has per-
formed by foregrounding this very incompatibility lies in the revelation of
an Anglo-American failure to produce a consistent terminology on metafic-
tion which might lend itself to easy delimitation from metanarrative in the
way in which Metafiktion and Metanarration can be distinguished in Ger-
man. English usage does condone the collocation metanarrative comment ,
which is the topic that Nünning is most interested in, but for various reasons
(among which Genette' s metadiegetic level for the story within the story
concept needs to be emphasized), metanarrative as a noun and metanarra-
tion have not figured prominently in English. It is the structure of the Ger-
man language that enables Nünning to draw a distinction that so far has had
little idiomatic encouragement from English usage.
Nünning' s most important new term, however, is Mimesis des Erzählens ,
literally 'mimesis of narrating'. I have attempted a more idiomatic (if awk-
40
German also has the curious term Narrativik (*narrativics) which refers to narrative as
a literary genre. This term, apparently coined by Köttelwesch in 1977 (Clemens Köt-
telwesch [ed.], Bibliographie der deutschen Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft ,
Frankfurt 1977, p. 576), is listed as an entry in Gero von Wilperťs German reference
work Sachwörterbuch der Literatur from its seventh edition onwards (7th ed., Stutt-
gart 1989). Wilpert is the standard German equivalent of M.H. Abrams' A Glossary of
Literary Terms (7th ed., Fort Worth, TX 1999).

178.24.249.95 on Mon, 20 Nov 2023 12:45:19 +00:00
ward) formula with 'mimesis of the act of narration' in t

since it seems to me that this includes both the processua
Nünning intends and the implications of narratorial promi
fers to by way of expressive markers and evaluative com
again has a very broad spectrum of terms and can easily
pounds. For instance, English lacks the useful Erzählvo
narration') or the distinction recently proposed by Nünni
zählperspektive and Erzähle r perspektive (narrative perspe
rial perspective). In using the term Mimesis des Erzählens
ration) Nünning implies a contrast with Mimesis der Erzä
narrative), or perhaps Mimesis des Erzählten (mimesis
since mimesis traditionally has tended to refer to the leve
the fictional world.41 So thoroughly and so generally has
ism been focussed on the fictional protagonists and their a
of a novel and the verisimilitude of characters' dialogue,
proposal seems revolutionary. I will return to this new co
plications for narrative theory in the final section of the pre
2.2. Models of Meta-ization
The preceding discussion has uncovered a number of murky spots in the

conceptualization of metanarrative and metafiction that require further clari-
fication. Thus, most importantly, two issues are never explicitly dealt with
in the current definitions of meta-entities: the quality or hierarchical status
of the referents of metanarrative/metafiction; and the status or quality of
metanarrative/metafiction themselves.
Let me start with the second point. The terms metafiction and then
metanarrative are based on the model of metalanguage/metalinguistic, and
the meta-ization process has expanded to cover concepts like metadramay
metadiscourse or metahistory . Metalanguage refers to a language (system)
situated on a level above the ordinary use of words for referential purposes.
Metalanguage is an instance of mention rather than use. The concept relies
on Russell's solution of the paradox that statements like All Cretians are li-
ars, uttered by a Cretian, produce. The statement All Cretians are liars is to
41 French terminology, by contrast, is much clearer since it has a lexical set of three dif-
ferent terms: mimèse de narration, du récit, de l'histoire. Vivat Genette! Compare also
Hutcheon's distinction between "mimesis of process" and "mimesis of product"
(Linda Hutcheon, Narcissistic Narrative. The Metafictional Paradox , London 1984,
pp. 36-39).

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16 Monika Fludernik
be situated on a meta-l
to specific referential
of) statements qualifies
On that pattern, me
tion(ality), and metana
Prince's definition is
metafiction as 'self-ref
use of metafiction , bas
focusses exclusively on
the narrational level of
The main definitional
cerns the location of m
the functions of narrat
it needs to be located o
comment, by contrast,
histoire ), on the discou
paratextual level (comm
textual or intermedial
novel and society, on p
out from a reconsidera
metanarrative on the discourse level.
Unter dem Begriff der metanarrativen Erzähleräußerungen sind also diejenigen

Kommentare und Reflexionen einer Erzählinstanz zu subsumieren, die Aspekte des
Erzählens in selbstreflexiver Form thematisieren und damit die Aufmerksamkeit
auf den Erzählvorgang richten.
'Metanarrativ' in einem weiteren Sinne sind daher alle vermittlungsbezogenen
Funktionen von Erzählinstanzen, d.h. Erzähleräußerungen mit primärem Bezug
zum Erzählvorgang bzw. zur Kommunikationssituation auf der Ebene der er-
zählerischen Vermittlung. / Diese Definition verdeutlicht außerdem, daß keines-
wegs alle Formen selbstreflexiven Erzählens als metanarrativ zu bezeichnen
• a 44
sind. • a
42
Nünning, "Die Funktionen von Erzählinstanzen" (cf. note 4), pp. 334, 340.
Nünning, "Mimesis des Erzählens" (cf. note 1), pp. 33-34. 'The label metanarrative
narratorial comments comprises all comments and reflections of the narrating in-
stance which self-reflexively thematize and foreground the narrational process.' (my
translation).
P. 34. 'Metanarrative in a more extended sense are also all narratorial functions that
relate to the mediation (of the story), for instance narratorial comments on the process
of narration or on the communicative situation between narrator and narratee./ This
definition moreover clarifies that not all forms of self-reflexive narration are auto-
matically metanarrative.' (my translation).

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In fact, traditionally, metanarrative commentary has been sub

the evaluative and explanatory functions of narratorial discour
Conversely, metanarrative comment in the sense of self-re
egy - whether by linguistic or non-linguistic means, whether
plicit - can be positioned on several planes. The story can com
by means of a mise-en-abyme ; the framing of the story by mea
prefaces can imply a comment on the text, as can photograp
and diagrammes. Juxtaposition and collage are powerful tech
plicit authentification or de-authentification of texts. The r
raising this issue relates to the fact that Nünning' s essay, in
of metanarrative and metafiction, suggests that, as with me
vices, metanarrative may involve several levels of a narr
metanarrative strategies need not all be linguistic devices.
Nünning' s "Modell 2" (= our Diagramme 1) does not clarify
Thus, in Nünning' s first category, which refers to the "tex
which the act of narration is thematized, i.e. mediation on t
characters, the level of the narrator's discourse, the level of t
marks or that of other frames like synoptic chapter hea
paratextual elements",46 it is quite open from the mere defi
metanarrative thematized on the character level means that th
their dialogue or in their hypodiegetic acts of narration, them
narration (my preferred reading), or whether it is the plot th
matizing (this interpretation would seem to be corroborated b
of implicit metanarration in the second slot - cp. Diagramm
above).47
45
Compare Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction. Contemporary Poetics , Lon-
don 1983, pp. 96-100; Franz K. Stanzel, A Theory of Narrative, trans. Charlotte Goed-
sche, Cambridge 1984, pp. 22-26, 37-38, 143-152; Nünning, Grundzüge eines kom-
munikationstheoretischen Modells (cf. note 4), pp. 84-123; Nünning, "Die Funktionen
von Erzählinstanzen" (cf. note 4), pp. 334-342; Werner Wolf, "Erzählerische Objek-
tivität, 'Authorial Intrusions' und Englischer Realismus", Poetica 27/1995, pp. 314-
338, here pp. 322-331.
46
Nünning, "Mimesis des Erzählens" (cf. note 1), p. 36.
It also remains a puzzle to me what "critical and non-critical metanarration" (defined
as having as its object the "evaluation of the thematized forms of narrative [or narra-
tion?]") could refer to. One example which perhaps suggests itself is the title of Book
I, chapter 13 of Fielding's Jonathan Wild: "A chapter of which we are extremely vain,
and which indeed we look on as our chef d'oeuvre [...]" (Henry Fielding, Jonathan
Wild [1743], London 1986, p. 72). Nünning, "Metanarration als Lakune der Er-
zähltheorie" (cf. note 2, p. 146) supplies some examples that suggest a different read-
ing, namely a thematization of the norms of narrative conventions and the narrative
persona' s ironic or openly critical reference to them. The issue is complicated by the
fact that Nünning takes his categories from Wolf (implicit vs. explicit metafiction,

178.24.249.95 on Mon, 20 Nov 2023 12:45:19 +00:00
1 8 Monika Fludernik
The question is whether

histoire level, the discou
toire/discours/narration
it seems to me the term has been used to refer to the discours/narration
level only, and metafictional has been used to designate comments on the
plotting of the tale. Nünning48 explicitly says that category 1.1 of his dia-
gramme concerns metanarration on the extradiegetic, the diegetic or para-
diegetic levels, and gives as example characters that tell their own lives in
embedded tales.49 That definition seems to relate to the plot and not to the
narrative discourse of the intra-diegetic narrators; it therefore jibes with the
definition quoted earlier which focussed on "commentaries and reflections
on the part of narrative instances ".50 What I am saying is that Nünning' s
schema is ambiguous between a definition of metanarrative as, on the one
hand, one type of narratorial commentary , and, on the other, a function of
narrative which can be manifested in narrative discourse but also on other
levels.
Nünning distinguishes very clearly between metanarrative and metafic-
tion, defining metafiction as the disclosing of fictionality (here he agrees
with Wolf), but discussing metanarrative as the thematization of narrating
(i.e. the act of narration). He therefore distinguishes between the reference
of a metanarrative statement (it's about narration) and its function or effect
(it tends to make the reader aware of the fictionality of the act of narra-
tion/the story). He then proceeds to argue further that there are metanarra-
tive statements that do not have a metafictional effect and metafictional
(self-reflexive) strategies that do not use metanarrative but other fictional
techniques to create their specific undermining of the mimetic illusion.51
Nünning' s model therefore implies a tripartite structure of self-reflexivity
(self-reflexive texts?):
critical/non-critical metafiction, etc.), and critical metafiction criticizes the fictionality

of the narrative - but can metanarration criticize the 'narration of the narrative'? Cf.
Wolf, Ästhetische Illusion (cf. note 8), d. 220-265.
48 1
Nünning
"Beispiel
Figuren i
erzählen
Richards
letts The
kune der
the Nove
Nünning
M PP. 33

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Metanarratíve and Metafictional Commentary 19
Diagramme 3 - Nünning on Metanarratíve vs. Metafiction
self-reflexive
pure metanarration metafictional metanarration pure metafiction

(= Chatman's
self-conscious narrative)
My question mark concerning self-reflexivity refers to the fact that mise-en-

abyme does not necessarily correspond to a narrator's utterance but to a
constructional point. The first two items are therefore narratorial statements
with or without metafictional effect ; metafiction that is not metanarrative is
also not a narratorial statement, apparently, but something else. Let us now
turn to Werner Wolfs proposals. Wolf defines metafiction as
[...] ein[en] Sammelbegriff für selbstreflexive "Aussagen und Elemente einer [fik-
tiven] Erzählung, die nicht auf Inhaltliches als scheinbare Wirklichkeit abheben,
sondern den Rezipienten Textualität und 'Fiktionalität' im Sinne von 'Künstlich-
keit, Gemachtheit' oder 'Erfundenheit' und damit zusammenhängende Phänomene
zu Bewußtsein bringen"52 (my emphasis).
Wolf, like Nünning, allows for metafictional narrative statements53 and has
an equivalent non-narratorial category (the "elements" of the above quota-
tion).
Wolfs definition of metafiction as a "thematization of fictionality"54
moreover emphasizes that metafiction and anti-illusionism do not com-
pletely overlap either: there are metafictional comments by the narrator that
52
Werner Wolf, "Metafiktion", in: Ansgar Nünning (ed.), Metzler Lexikon der Litera-
tur- und Kulturtheorie , Stuttgart 1998, p. 362; qtd. Wolf, "Formen literarischer
Selbstbezüglichkeit" (cf. note 31), p. 71. The first square brackets in this quotation are
Wolf's. '[Metafiction is] a hypernym designating all sorts of self-reflective " utter-
ances and elements of a fictional narrative which do not treat their referent as apparent
reality but foreground for the reader the textuality and fictionality of the narrative in
terms of its artefactuality, fictivity or inventedness [...]'" (my translation).
53 ~
"Metafiktionale Kommentare beziehen sich nicht auf Erzählinhalte als scheinbare
Wirklichkeit, sondern implizieren immer eine mehr oder weniger deutliche Thema-
tisierung von Fiktionalität." (Werner Wolf, "Metafiktion. Formen und Funktionen
eines Merkmals postmodernistischen Erzählens. Eine Einführung und ein Beispiel.
John Barth, Life Story", Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 30/1997, pp. 31-50,
here p. 35).
Wolf, "Ästhetische Illusion" (cf. note 8), p. 224.

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20 Monika Fludernik
tend to enhance the illus

techniques that do not th
tion, however, is that be
closer inspection, turns o
thematizations of fictional
Diagramme 4 - Wolf on Meta

metafiction
explicit implicit
(= narratorial)
fictio fictum story discourse
Wolfs explicit metafiction therefor

that thematizes the narrative's fict
discovery of implicit metafiction re
This takes me to the next point. In
can refer to the fictionality of the
of the narrative, or to the fictiona
histoire, fictum quality). In the con
fictionality' ( Fiktionsironie ) Wolf
centred and discourse-centred metaf
fore seem that Nünning' s metanar
tional function is equivalent to Wo
gramme.
Before going on to present my ow
3.2, let us now turn to some textua
than top-down theorizing.
55 P. 255.
56 P. 227.
57 PP. 226-236.
58 PP. 236-238.

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3.1. Metadiscursi vity and Metacompositionality
I recently did an analysis of narrative directives (which are

rative).59 Some of these were 'mere' directives like " We g
ment to the preceding night, to account for Henchard's att
ers were clearly metafictional since they involved meta
thinks I hear the old shepherd Dorus calling me to tell you
hopeful adventures."61 However, a large number of eighte
teenth-century phrases were, I thought, incipiently metaf
clearly so. Compare, for instance:
As we cannot therefore at present get Mr. Joseph out of the inn, we
in it, and carry our reader on after Parson Adams [...]
This is neither unequivocally metanarrative nor unequi

tional. To the extent that the narrator manages a scene shif
metanarrative; to the extent that this scene shift is clearly
foregrounds the constructedness of the narrative text and h
load. The decision between the two options may have some
the reader's metaphoric or non-metaphoric interpretation of
eral meaning of the phrase, the narrator metaleptically tra
istential divide between story and narration, a strategy that
categorized as a metafictional one; on the other hand, when
humorous alternative to 'Let's leave Joseph behind and tur
ams', the phrase appears to be metanarrative but not really
In the paper to which I was referring I also remarked on
of metaleptic and metanarrative aspects in the narrative c
Genette first discussed: " While the venerable churchman c
of the Angoulême, it is not useless to explain the network
which he was going to set foot."63 Here the metaleptic asp
59
Monika Fludernik, "The Diachronization of Narrative", Narrative 1 1/3 (forthcoming
in 2003).
hO
Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Harmondsworth 1986, p. 218.
Compare also "We must now go back a little in our story" (Anthony Trollope, The
Way We Live Now [1875], Oxford 1989, p. 429). All emphases are my own.
01 Sir Philip Sidney, The Old Arcadia (1590), Oxford 1994, p. 162.
Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews , London 1977, p. 104; also qtd. Wilhelm Füger, Die
Entstehung des historischen Romans aus der fiktiven Biographie in Frankreich und
England unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Courtilz de Sandras und Daniel De-
foe , Ph.D. Dissertation, Univ. Munich 1963, p. 124.
Honoré de Balzac, Les souffrances de l'inventeur , qtd. Genette, Narrative Discourse
(cf. note 3), pp. 68, 235.

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22 Monika Fludernik
temporal parallelization
uses the supposed simul
of delayed orientation.
Leaving it [the coach] to pu

mentioned [...] this narrativ
dition of Sir Mulberry Ha
from the injuries consequen
circumstances already deta
And so, with consent of bo
because it fell out in this ti
tle our shepherds while th
• i 65
occupied. • i
These English examples both return to a different set of characters by ex-

plicitly foregrounding the narratorial gear-shifting. In addition, they meta-
leptically imply the narrator's freedom to turn to other topics when nothing
noteworthy is happening regarding the subject at hand. Both passages have
an implicit metafictional effect. I will return to a proposal for linking
metanarrative, metafiction and metalepsis below, combining my sugges-
tions with Nünning' s typology.
Let me first turn to narrative commentary as such. Since metanarration
can take a variety of forms, I would now like to use two example texts and
inductively establish some types of metanarration. The example texts are
Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now (1873-1874), popularized by the
recent BBC1 production, and Henry Fielding's Jonathan Wild (1743). In the
following remarks I will use a broad definition of metanarrative, allowing
comments on the novel as a whole, on the discourse, the plot and on the act
of narration.
Let us start with the title, The Way We Live Now. This can certainly be
taken as a comment on and an evaluation of the novel as a whole (cp. Dick-
ens's Hard Times). I wonder whether or not to see it as properly metanarra-
tive. Are not all titles metanarrative? (The Ambassadors is just as appropri-
ate as a characterization of the meaning of that novel.) Besides, no fictional
persona (narrator or editor), but the author is ultimately responsible for the
title (though it is certainly part of the text, if on a paratextual level). The ex-
ample Nünning quotes ( Vanity Fair : A Novel without a hero) is a self-
reflexive title. I would therefore hesitate to ascribe a clear metanarrative
character to this title. At most, it is implicitly metanarrative.
The novel's first chapter, titled "Three Editors", starts with
64 Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839), Oxford 1982, p. 488.

Sidney, Old Arcadia (cf. note 61), p. 212.

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Let the reader be introduced to Lady Carbury, upon whose charact

much will depend of whatever interest these pages may have, as s
writing-table in her own room, in her own house in Welbeck" Street.66
This sentence contains two metanarrative features - a reference to the fact

that the reader needs to be introduced to one of the major characters, and a
reference to "these pages". One could additionally regard as metanarrative
the remark that Lady Carbury is a central character of the book. The title
and this orientational passage both correspond to what in natural narrative
would be called the abstract of a story (This is a story about camping, and
how Julie was frightened out of her wits').
First conclusion: If material that goes into the abstract is supposed to be
metanarrative (this is a story about ...), then titles could be argued to be im-
plicitly metanarrative too.
Second insight: The phrase "the reader" (as the reader will note) is a sign
of metanarrativity, unlike perhaps a direct 'Dear reader' formula.
Third thesis: Metanarrative statements referring to the ordering of dis-
cursive elements in the text will be called metadiscursive. Metanarrative
statements addressing the narrational process and its participants will be
called metanarrational.
Fourth point: Only explicit metanarrative statements by a narrator are

properly metadiscursive/metanarrational.
Let us turn to another passage:
Lady Carbury in her letter had called herself an old woman, but she was satisfied
to do so by a conviction that no one else regarded her in that light. Her age shall be
no secret to the reader, though to her most intimate friends, even to Mr. Broune, it
had never been divulged.
Although suitably stilted, this conveys as much as, 'but I will tell you what
her age is', and that promise is kept in the next sentence. This directing
strategy corresponds to the mechanics of textual deixis and constitutes, I
posit, a separate category of meta-statements, namely one in which the or-
der of enunciation on the discourse level is the object of the metanarrative
comment. Genette has labelled this "advance notices and recalls".68 Genette,
too, denies the reader the benefit of examples, but I presume he prefers
phrases like: As we will see in the next chapter or as we saw at the outset of
66 Trollope, The Way We Live Now (cf. note 60), p. 1.

67 P. 3.
Genette, Narrative Discourse (cf. note 3), p. 257.

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24 Monika Fludernik
our tale.69 I label such

the textual ordering me
One reason why we chose t
was, that we are now oblig
ent from what we have hit
mortals who are in contem
by nature with the same d
order to be devoured by th
Trollope's novel is studd

comments in the gnom
nently emphasize the a
since they are not self-
remarks after Mr. Brou
tive:
When a man has kissed a woman, it goes against the grain with him to say the very
next moment that he is sorry for what he has done. It is as much as to declare that
the kiss had not answered his expectation.71
The comment explains by a general remark how Mr. Broune felt after the
kiss. Here is another gnomic passage:
The caricaturist who draws only caricatures, is held to be justifiable, let him take
what Überties he may with a man's face and person. It is his trade, and his business
calls upon him to vilify all that he touches. [...] Mr. Alf never made enemies, for he
praised no one [...]
As a comment on the genre of caricature this is not narrowly meianarrative

since caricature belongs to a different (not necessarily narrative) medium.
However, if one assumes the comment to suggest that The Way We Live
Now is to be compared to a piece of caricature, and that its author is pursu-
ing the very strategy here attributed to Mr. Alf, then the comment becomes
self-reflexive (at least implicitly so) and can be argued to be a metanarrative
comment. Nünning' s insightful distinction between Eigenmetanarration
(proprio-metanarration), Fremdmetanarration (allo-metanarration) and All-
gemeinmetanarration (general metanarration) allows one to describe the
69
I take it that Genette is consistent about the extranarrative function and would place a
phrase like In later years she would come to regret her decision as a real prolepsis
among the properly narrative (diegetic) functions of the narrative discourse.
70 Fielding, Jonathan Wild (cf. note 47), book H, ch. i, p. 83.
Trollope, The Way We Live Now (cf. note 60), p. 4.
72 P. 8.

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passage as a move from alio- to proprio-metanarration.73 Let

with a passage in Lady Carbury's letter to Mr. Alf, in which
I have no patience with the pretensions of would-be poets who contri
ing and underground influences to get their volumes placed on ev
room table.
The passage continues with more of the same outrage at achieving an unde-
served reputation by what she calls "puffing".75 These remarks strike the
reader as supremely ironic since the very letter in which they occur is, pre-
cisely, an exercise in puffing or toadying, trying to get Mr. Alf to give her
book (of whose mediocre quality the narrator has left the reader in no
doubt) a good review in his literary magazine. The passage is self-reflexive
not in relation to the story-level but by means of a comment situated on the
embedded (hypodiegetic) level which implicitly refers to the fictional situa-
tion on the story level, thereby resembling the device of mise-en-abyme.
Lady Carbury gives herself away (she is an unreliable narrator in her epis-
tolary writing) and supplies an effect of irony. Would Nünning categorize
this as implicit metanarrative located on the hypodiegetic level in reference
to the actions of Lady Carbury on the diegetic level? Or would he say that
this is a case of allo-metanarrative on the hypodiegetic level (Lady Carbury
on other people's toadying) which functions as a (non-metanarrative) mise-
en-abyme for the diegetic level? As Wolf already remarked with regard to
metafiction, implicitness directly depends on interpretation.76
A clearly metanarrative passage occurs at the beginning of the next
chapter:
Something of herself and her condition Lady Carbury has told the reader
in the letters given in the former chapter, but more must be added. She has
declared she had been cruelly slandered; but she has also shown that she
was not a woman whose words about herself could be taken with much con-
fidence. If the reader does not understand so much from her letters to the
three editors they have been written in vain.77
73
These distinctions are loaned from Werner Wolfs Eigenmetafiktion , Fremdmetafik-
tion and Allgemeinmetafiktion (Wolf, Ästhetische Illusion [cf. note 8], pp. 250-251).
In Nünning, "Metanarration als Lakune der Erzähltheorie" (cf. note 2; p. 134), Nün-
ning acknowledges this debt. The passage is indeed a good example of Wolfs
Fremdmetafiktion/ Eigenmetafiktion and it very clearly demonstrates the problematics
of distinguishing between meta narrative and meta fiction.
Trollope, The Way We Live Now (cf. note 60), p. 9.
° P. 10.
76 Wolf, Ästhetische Illusion (cf. note 8), pp. 235-236.
Trollope, The Way We Live Now (cf. note 60), ch. ii, p. 1 1.

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26 Monika Fludernik
The passage continues

The heavy-handed explic
here, only the remark ab
rator's writing of Chapt
has been made to write these three letters to the editors in order that the
reader recognize her insincerity. The passage is therefore both metanarrative
(referring to the narrative discourse level) and metafictional since it implies
that she did not write these letters, but that the narrator-qua-author arranged
for her to do so. Moreover, this passage discusses the construction of the
narrative discourse not in terms of metadiscursivity but in terms of the deci-
sion of what topics and elements to include in the narrative account on the
discourse level.
Fifth point: Besides metadiscursivity I introduce the term metacomposi-
tionality which relates to the fictio (rather than fictum) status of the narrative
discourse.78
The following passage refers to the narrator's decision on what to put
into the narrative and what to leave out. It is therefore clearly metanarrative
in the sense of metacompositional.
He [Miles] did, however, go to Germany, finding that a temporary absence from
England would be comfortable to him in more respects than one -, and need not be
heard of again in these pages.
Such compositional references to the selection mechanisms at work in the

story frequently acquire a clearly metafictional emphasis and often combine
with metaleptic devices:
This was so cruel a disappointment to Wild and so sensibly affects us, as no doubt
it will the reader, that, as it must disqualify us both from proceeding any further at
present, we will now take a little breath and therefore we shall here close this
book80
Compare the conclusion to chapter xcix of The Way We Live Now , where
the metanarrative comment includes a Fielding-like "carry" that might be
interpreted metaleptically if we were to take it as a literal remark:
The writer of the present chronicle may so far look forward, - carrying his reader
with him, - as to declare that Marie Melmotte did become Mrs. Fisker very soon
after her arrival at San Francisco.
78 Wolf, Ästhetische Illusion (cf. note 8), pp. 38-40.

Trollope, The Way We Live Now (cf. note 60), ch. xcii, p. 400.
Fielding, Jonathan Wild (cf. note 47), book I, ch. xiv, p. 80-81.
Trollope, The Way We Live Now (cf. note 60), ch. xcviii p. 457.

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The reader is here confronted with an omniscient narrator,

knows the outcome of the story. By metacompositionally re
proleptic faculties, the narrator thematizes his role as omnisc
The metanarrative quality of the passage is additionally enh
narrator's metadiscursive self-reference as "writer of the pr
Similarly opaque metanarrativity arises in connection with fo
address:
At three o'clock in the morning, Sir Felix had lost over a hundred pounds in ready
money. On the following night about one he had lost a further sum of two hundred
pounds. The reader will remember that he should at that time have been in the ho-
tel at Liverpool.
Here the veiled address to the reader implies that the reader has earlier read
a passage about Sir Felix's schedule for that evening. Although a point of
time is mentioned, the passage mainly has a metadiscursive function.
The above examples naturally cannot exhaust the full range of possibili-
ties. What they do show, however, is the strong prevalence of directive
metanarrative passages, which I have dubbed metadiscursive, and also how
metanarrative aspects link with chapter beginnings and chapter endings and
how they get integrated into the ongoing text as appendices to evaluation or
generalizing commentary. It is this last aspect which particularly deserves
the notice of future narcological research. In addition, I have introduced
the term metacompositionality to account for numerous structural references
which are neither properly metadiscursive nor plot-oriented. In what fol-
lows, some additional finetuning will be presented.
3.2. A New Model
On the basis of the above discussion, I wish to propose an alternative

schema linking metafiction, metanarrative and metalepsis.
This alternative schema answers more to the practical micro-textual em-
phasis of my own work. In this schema I start by setting self-reflexive nar-
rative strategies on the topline of my diagramme and subdividing self-
reflexive devices into those touching on the discourse and narration levels
of a narrative and those touching on the plot level.
82 Ch. xlix, p. 467.

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28 Monika Fludernik
Diagramme 5 - A new mo
narrational level structural / thematic / symbolic level
self-reflexive function
metanarrative metafiction non-narrational self-reflexivity

(Wolfs explicit (Wolfs implicit
metafiction) metafiction)
a) plot construction: plot construction:

fictio fictum (inventedness)
• metacompositional • mise-en-abyme etc.

• illustrations
• metaleptic plot configurations
b) discourse/narration:
• metadiscursive
• metanarrational
• meta-aesthetic
The self-reflexive strategies considered in the left-most column here ex-

clude those outside narratorial language. It would then make sense to label
as metanarrative all self-reflexive statements referring to the discourse and
its constructedness. The term metafiction , by contrast, is here limited to self-
reflexive statements about the inventedness of the story. It therefore coin-
cides with Wolfs explicit metafiction. This curtailing of the meaning of
metafiction has the advantage of circumventing the problem that we en-
countered most frequently in this essay - whether or not a given metanarra-
tive passage was or was not metafictional. In each and every case the issue
was related to an exposure of selection mechanisms, the ordering of ele-
ments, evaluative aspects and the like, but never to th e fictum quality of the
narrative.

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The model therefore agrees with Nünning' s diagramme "M

Diagramme 2 above) that sees metafìction as one of the
metanarrative statements. By redefining metafìction as one o
self-reflexivity, the metanarrative, and the metafictional - wi
of self-reflexivity relegated to yet another column -, my pro
to downplay the metanarrative vs. metafìction conundrum w
setting me throughout this article.
Secondly, while metanarrative statements need not have an
effect on the aesthetic illusion projected by the narrative, m
statements in the given definition do seriously impair the mi
is for this reason, indeed, that I have placed metalepsis in th
metanarration and metafìction. This device clearly draws atte
alistic impossibility in logical terms, but many passages actu
stroy the mimetic effect in the manner frequently discusse
metafìction. What I see as a particularly exciting area of fut
the combination of metaleptic techniques with mimesis-enhan
rative. Metalepsis of course frequently remains a strong ind
fictionality, and it figures prominently as an independent s
strategy in the third column. This third column, which I hav
narrational self-reflexivity, basically corresponds to Wolfs i
fiction. It consists of mise-en-abyme (a story within the stor
theme echoes those of the embedding narrative), visual parate
such as illustrations or typographic arrangements echoing the
tale, as well as metaleptic plot configurations which involve
of narrative levels (characters talking to their authors, narrat
their heroine, etc.). This last category, incidentally, is not d
narrative setting. All these devices can occur in drama, poetry
artistic media.
Third, I have subdivided the metanarrative side of the diagramme into

metadiscursive, metanarrational and meta-aesthetic slots. My reasons for
doing so relate to my impression that references to the articulative level of
the discourse (the narrational text-deixis, if you want) constitute a group by
themselves, and that narratorial disquisitions on generic peculiarities, the
reader's response to the text, production-related issues, politeness83 and
authorial intention likewise involve a separate realm of reflection that does
not often overlap with the main narrational category and therefore could be
awarded a separate term (the meta-aesthetic). This middle and most exten-
sive metanarrational slot then includes all references to the utterances and
83
Cp. "concluding with a phrase too coarse to be inserted in a history of this kind"
(Fielding, Jonathan Wild [cf. note 47], book I, ch. xii, p. 71).

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30 Monika Fludernik
disquisitions of the narr

pressive and conative ty
tional process:
[...] and thus the poor lady
passions distracting and tea
the conscience, where honou
another. - If it was only ou
many more to this purpose
therefore see a little after
. 84
pain.
As discussed above, I have also added a metacompositional slot t

comments relating to plot construction, or the temporal relati
story and discourse and the problems of representation. This c
includes titles, prefaces in so far as they contain narrative statem
not merely visual paratexts like title pages and illustrations.
One of the advantages of the proposed diagramme lies in its av
privileging narrative realism. In fact, I hope that it opens the
lysing the combination between realistic techniques and in prin
illusionistic strategies. Much work will still have to be done on
the functions of metanarrative comment which are now sudde
to Wolf and Nünning - looking much less clear than they used
while ago.
It also seems to me that what this entire project is moving t
réévaluation of the term realism in the sense of Ian Watt. It is hi
the rather impressionistic labels used to 'define' realism be rep
textually more precise set of definors. Metanarrative may well b
terms rising to prominence in the course of these efforts. Victor
in any case due for a renaissance, and with the current emphasis
studies, such a renaissance may well be in the offing at last.
4. Conclusions and Outlook: Mimesis of Narration
In summary of these pages, I would like to begin by acknowledging that one

has to be grateful to Ansgar Nünning for discovering another lacuna in nar-
rative theorizing. The extensiveness and variety of metanarrative commen-
tary has certainly so far been undervalued in the theoretical work of narra-
tologists, and the evocation of an act of narration in fictional texts was fo-
cussed on too sparsely. Having said that, much work still needs to be done
84
Fielding, Joseph Andrews (cf. note 62 ), book I, ch. ix, pp. 62f.

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in close textual analysis that carefully distinguishes dif

metanarrative and different uses and functions of these - over
function of enhancing or undermining aesthetic illusion
scalar model (here Diagramme 2) and his stunning range of
Diagramme 1) will provide a necessary starting point for su
Nevertheless, a few additional points should be consid
questions clarified. For one, the discussion seems to me to
distinction between first-person and third-person texts. In f
a great deal of sense to preliminarily focus on heterodiege
comparisons with homodiegetic narratives until later. The m
pect has been neglected most thoroughly in the omniscient n
of Victorian realism, and this is where one should perhaps
less, the limitations of metanarrativity in the first-person
tant to register and describe.
Secondly, despite Nünning' s presentation of a lucid d
promises complete satisfaction in terms of terminologi
categorizational practicability, I do not myself find this tabl
sorting the passages that I have collected, nor does this sch
the functional level of metanarrative relates to the numero
subcategories proposed.
By way of an outlook I would now like to turn to issues w
paper raises and which have larger implications for narrativ
In his article Nünning extends traditional conceptualizati
by proposing a new type of mimesis which he calls 'mime
narration'. This section is concerned with the narcologi
of this extension of the notion of mimesis, and it attempts
ning' s proposals with the fundamental story/discourse di
'narratorless narrative' issue.
Traditionally, narratology defines narrative as - in Prince's words - the
"recounting (as product and process, object and art, structure and structura-
tion) of one or more real or fictitious events communicated by one, two, or
several (more or less overt) NARRATORS, to one, two, or several (more or
less overt) Narratees".85 In this formula both the narrating and the nar-
rated are present in equal measure. These traditional definitions are accen-
tuated in Franz K. Stanzel's narrative theory86 since he makes mediation
through the narrative discourse ( mediacy ) a constitutive element of narra-
tive, contrasting it with drama, in which the story (histoire) is not mediated
by a narrative discourse. In Stanzel's schema even so-called reflector narra-
85
Prince, A Dictionary of Narratology (cf. note 16), p. 58.
Stanzel, A Theory of Narrative (cf. note 45).

178.24.249.95 on Mon, 20 Nov 2023 12:45:19 +00:00
32 Monika Fludernik
tives that do not have a pr

try to achieve an illusion o
discourse. Stanzel's narrat
narration in the centre of
that foreground an active
spite having a mediating n
world 'directly' through t
sciousness (Stephen Daedal
Mrs. Dalloway in Virginia
genuous on Nünning' s pa
pletely failing to take the
its mimetic qualities. In fi
tion ( Tom Jones), mimes
certainly been a subject o
the emphasis in Stanzel an
the narrator and the narra
It is also true that narrat
Seymour Chatman and Mi
cartoons and other media
sions have understandably
constitutive element of n
verbal types of presentati
One of the most heated d
sparked by Ann Banfield i
of free indirect discourse
sentences of represented
that of the protagonist wh
trast, sentences of narrat
(as do sentences of discou
sented speech and though
center of the fictional pro
87 See Chatman, Story and D

to Terms. The Rhetoric of Na
Bal, Narratology. Introduct
(11985).
See Chatman, Coming to Terms (cf. note 87).
Ann Banfield, Unspeakable Sentences. Narration and Representation in the Language
of Fiction, Boston 1982.

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in detail here,90 except to note that Banfield's examples were

what Stanzel calls reflector mode narrative in which the narrative discourse
is backgrounded to allow an illusion of immediacy to arise. Banfield in her
corpus failed to include any eighteenth-century novels in which prominent
narrator figures clearly falsify any notion of 'unspeakable' sentences.
The question after Banfield has therefore been to what extent "there ex-
ists a narrator" in texts like A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Chat-
man, Stanzel and, I believe, Nünning would argue that a "covert" narrator is
at work in the narrative discourse of these novels even though the text does
not display any indications of such a narrator figure. (Compare all the fea-
tures that Nünning notes on p. 29-3 191 and which I summarized above - ex-
pressive, appellative, directional, metanarrative functions of the narrator's
discourse). My own position, by contrast, was and still is to argue that to
hypostatize the existence of an anthrophomorphized narrator figure in re-
flector mode narratives is a type of naturalization on the part of literary
critics. Like ordinary readers, critics import a scenario of 'somebody must
be telling this story' into the text - which is quite O.K. as a reading strategy
- but then go on to raise this narrator figure on the theoretical plane of nar-
rative theory, thereby positing that we always have a communicational basic
frame, that there always is a narrator figure even if the narrative pretends
hard that there is not.92
Now it is in relation to this very specific context , namely the example of
reflector mode narratives, that I have argued against a universal communi-
cational frame in narrative theory: "One can therefore explain the entire
communicative analysis of fiction as an (illicit) transferrai of the frame of
real-life conversational narrative onto literary personae and constructed en-
tities."93 All I was saying in this remark is that it is of course the case that
90
See Brian McHale, "Unspeakable Sentences, Unnatural Acts. Linguistics and Poetics
Revisited", Poetics Today 4/1983, pp. 17-45, and Fludernik, The Fictions of Language
(cf. note 6), for discussions.
Nünning, "Mimesis des Erzählens" (cf. note 1), ch. 7.
See Klaus Weimar, "Wo und was ist der Erzähler?", Modern Language Notes
109/1994, pp. 495-506, for a highly entertaining version of the same argument. For a
critic sharing my misgivings about the communicational model see Richard Walsh,
"Who Is the Narrator?", Poetics Today 18/1997, pp. 495-513.
93 -
Flude
Erzäh
remar
ratolo
sidedl
scenar
Towar

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34 Monika Fludernik
readers, in narrativizin
scripts and frames, b
cally? Just because read
every text as emanating
Portrait of the Artist a
as a source for the disc
After all, it was Nünni
with much the same ar
zation of the level at w
not the same be said fo
should not as a matter
originator of that disco
The central issue is indeed whether or not - on the theoretical level -
there needs to be a communicational framework or whether one always has
to assume mediacy and, if so, always as communicational mediacy. This is-
sue is related to an ideological point, namely to the point whether the theo-
retical models of narratology need to be realistic or not. What I mean by this
is that if one assumes a scenario of communication on the theoretical level
of narratology, this implies that the cognitive strategies of natural narratol-
ogy are located not only in the text (produced by writers) and in the reading
process (readers also being humans) but also on the level of theorizing
about those cognitive parameters. This issue is an ideological one in the
sense that it presupposes a commonsense (no-nonsense) model of the disci-
pline and assents to the tenets of realism throughout even on the theoretical
level. A contrary view sees theory as precisely not getting trapped (or at
least trying not to) in the same categories that it is proposing,94 and it also
insists on narrative fiction as ultimately resisting a completely realistic re-
cuperation. Cognitive models used to narrativize fiction, in my view, never
exhaust their potential meanings, and it is precisely those texts that engen-
der ambiguity and do not allow for clear-cut resolutions that tend to have
the highest literary quality. Nünning' s emphasis on communication, there-
fore, backgrounds all the typically literary and non-natural features of the
literary artefact and leaves too little space for poststructuralist, symbolic or
ideological approaches which I would like to be combinable with natural
narratology.
of constituting mediatory consciousness. Of these four basic modes of constituting

mediacy, two relate to a prominent teller figure (Telling and Reflecting) - and
these are the two that Nünning unaccountably elides from discussion.
See Monika Fludernik, "Cognitive Narratology: Natural Narratology and Cognitive
Parameters", in: David Herman (ed.), Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences ,
Stanford (forthcoming in 2003), for an extensive treatment of this issue.

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The most important questions raised by Nünning' s article

late to the process of mediation itself - does mediation alway
ate by means of a teller-narrator? - and to the centrality
discourse distinction, or, in other words, to the question to w
(communicational) distinction between story and discourse m
to affect all other narcological categories on the theoretical
On p. 20-22 of his article95 Nünning argues - quite logical
should foreground the mediation of the story through a teller f
the act of narration, since, after all, there would not be any
the telling of it. This useful reminder clearly points up a ma
tion of standard narcological models, namely the assumption
though, in reading a narrative, we first get the discourse and
construct from it what the story is - the discourse is mere
structure manifestation of the deep-structure, the plot. This
lates to three factors: (a) the fact that the same story may be
ferent ways; (b) the fact that the story may be "real" in hist
(and is therefore prior to textual renderings); and (c) the vi
writer , who supposedly first encounters the story materia
around on how to put it into language. There is thus a concep
story over discourse, enhanced by the realist tradition in cri
phasizes unproblematic access to the fictional world. Alth
narrators are felt to be marring the realist illusion, the aut
nevertheless is taken to be the guarantor of fictional meani
trustworthy guide of the reader.
Nünning is quite correct in pointing out that - despite the
of the authorial narrator in the wake of Booth's Rhetoric of
rative theory has never quite come to terms with the contr
sketched. Indeed, the advent of postmodernism has tended to
facile equation of realism with mimetic naivety.97 My questio
to what extent Nünning' s emphasis on the reader decoding t
95
Nünning, "Mimesis des Erzählens" (cf. note 1).
Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961), Chicago 1983.
Nünning is also correct in pointing out that studies like Wolfs magisterial treatment
of illusionism and anti-illusionism fail to do full justice to the ways in which the
authorial narrator and the other aspects of narratorial discourse can be enhancing
rather than destroying the illusionistic quality of the narrative. Actually, Wolf explic-
itly included affirmations of authenticity among the metafictional devices, and em-
phasized that metafiction could not automatically be equated with anti-illusionism
(Wolf, Ästhetische Illusion [cf. note 8], pp. 224, 255). Moreover, in a later article
("Erzählerische Objektivität", cf. note 45), Wolf significantly revalorizes the authorial
narrator as a mimesis-enhancing device.

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36 Monika Fludernik
the narrational process

has repercussions on th
in effect is that all nar
therefore all narrative i
rative texts purvey not
- and not merely secon
There is no disagreemen
in Stanzel and in my o
tions of the Freiburg r
lishes an illusion of oral
person narrators (reliab
presented as the focal
they tell any at all - tak
of communication with
tives in which the illus
monologue novels, radi
gets at best the remna
features - except when t
basis of 'every text has
this discourse'.
Secondly, but more importantly, the status of the authorial (extradiegetic)
narrator versus the first-person narrator has to be considered. It should be
fairly obvious that first-person narratives have a much more extensive mi-
metic potential since the existential link between the experiencing and the
narrating self helps to give flesh to the act of narration, foregrounding the
narrative's "confessional increment"100 and testimonial function.101 In fact,
Genette in his Nouveau discours du récit explicitly admitted that the testi-
monial function really only occurs in first-person texts.102 The case is more
98
SFB 321 "Ubergänge und Spannungsfelder zwischen Mündlichkeit und Schrift-
lichkeit", see e.g. Paul Goetsch, "Fingierte Mündlichkeit in der Erzählkunst entwick-
elter Schriftkulturen", Poetica 17/1985, pp. 202-218, and various other volumes in
the series ScriptOralia, published in Tübingen.
99
Compare Monika Fludernik, "Second-Person Narrative as a Test-Case for Narratol-
ogy: The Limits of Realism", Style 28/1994, pp. 445-479, and Fludernik, Towards a
' Natural ' Narratology (cf. note 7), pp. 274-278, where I even questioned the useful-
ness of the story/discourse distinction for such texts.
100
David Goldknopf, "The Confessional Increment: A New Look at the I-Narrator",
Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 28/1969, pp. 13-21.
Yet in first-person reflector mode texts and in neutral narrative on the Hemingway or
Chandler model that "I" does not acquire such a narratorial function.
102
Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse Revisited (1983), transi. Jane E. Lewin, Ithaca,
NY 1988, pp. 130-131.

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complex with the extradiegetic narrator figure in, say, Tom

ning' s examples nearly all relate to heterodiegetic narrative,
narrator figure. We presumably all agree that in a novel like
exists a pronounced illusionistic evocation of the act of narr
theless, it has to be observed that this illusion fails to invok
world because we learn next to nothing about the narrator a
do we know where he is doing the writing, whether he has a
job is, etc., or when precisely the text was written. The mim
the act of narration - even in those texts where it exists in full manifestation
- is therefore significantly curtailed. It relates to the act of narration, in-
cluding the narrator's evaluation of the fictional world, but excludes those
cognitive schemata that involve embodiment.103 Narratorial illusionism is
therefore different in quality from the illusionism attaching to the represen-
tation of the fictional world.
Nünning proposes to treat the two kinds of illusionism on a scale, pre-
sumably locating cases of texts with a preponderant illusion of the act of
narration at one end of the scale, both types of illusion in the middle, and a
preponderant illusion of the fictional world at the other end. However, this
scale puts both types of illusionism on the same level. From the reader's
perspective, this may even be adequate, but it is not from the writer's per-
spective, nor should it be from the narcologist's. As long as the text pur-
veys a clear distinction between story and discourse, the nature of the nar-
ratorial illusion will be secondary. It is only in anti-illusionistic texts in
which the discourse is the story that the act of narration starts to substitute
for the story level and then begins to acquire the very features denied to the
authorial narrator: a specific setting, embodiment, even a minimal plot.
Moreover, Nünning' s schema in fact relies on the dichotomy of story vs.
discourse in its explication of mimetic illusionism. It thereby splits up what
used to be a category seemingly unaffected by the story/discourse distinc-
tion - a text was supposed to be 'realistic', enhancing mimetic illusion, as a
whole - into two levels, providing for two objects of mimetic illusionism
([a] the story; and [b] its framing and transmission). In traditional narratol-
ogy, I take it, the mimetic illusion was seen as being sometimes expanded to
include the frame as well as the inset (editor's prefaces, etc.), but it would
be part of the same kind of mimetic illusion. What Nünning seems to have
in mind is a different type of illusionism. The illusionism related to the act
of narration is two-fold: it realistically evokes a storytelling scenario; but it
103
There are, of course, exceptions to this rule, for instance in postmodernist texts like
John Barth's "Life Story" (in: J.B., Lost in the Funhouse , New York 1968, pp. 116-
129).

178.24.249.95 on Mon, 20 Nov 2023 12:45:19 +00:00
38 Monika Fludernik
also authenticates (or do

ness of the story. It can
on the story level. For t
traditional concept of
level.
Where Nünning' s prop

ing this hierarchy of p
that the creation of a te
ciation of realistic narr
a neccessary) constituen
historiography concur s
plotment. Such a recrui
premium on common-s
niques like reflector-m
techniques do not f that
What Nünning' s mode
lutary and a deleterious
sionism into the hands o
figure no longer imme
does so only when using
Victorian pompous mor
with the reader's apprec
means that the determination of whether or not a text is illusionistic is
clearly influenced by historical changes in taste. For a culturalist narratol-
ogy this is certainly good news, widening its horizons. As a drawback, it
also narrows the range of formal items whose presence or absence would
allow one to make incontrovertible statements about the quality of a text. As
with Nünning' s superb treatment of unreliable narration, it is ultimately
readerly norms that determine the definition of narratological concepts.
Summarizing the arguments in this final section, I wish to point out that
Nünning' s radical reconception of mimesis has great persuasiveness and
develops and refines his previous cognitivist and culturalist preoccupations
(as in his work on unreliability and perspective structure105). However, the
price that has to be paid for the reconceptualization of mimesis involves the
transfer of the story/discourse distinction from the how of narrative to the
104
Remember: Never trust the teller, trust the tale.
Ansgar Nünning (ed.), ť Unreliable Narration 'ģ Studien zur Theorie und Praxis un-
glaubwürdigen Erzählens in der englischsprachigen Erzählliteratur , Trier 1998;
Ansgar Nünning/V era Nünning (ed.), Multiperspektivisches Erzählen. Zur Theorie
und Geschichte der Perspektivenstruktur im englischen Roman des 18. bis 20.
Jahrhunderts , Trier 2000.

178.24.249.95 on Mon, 20 Nov 2023 12:45:19 +00:00
what of narrative. It also conveys a resolutely realistic mod

fiction which can treat experimental texts only as deviations
istic norm. However, Nünning' s extensions of the schema in
als Lakune der Erzähltheorie"106 include a diagramme ("
printed as Diagramme 2 above) in which a scale of metanarr
is outlined and which places the authenticating and empathy-
tions of metanarration on the 'illusionistic' end of the scale
distic, metafictional and anti-illusionistic types of metanarr
other end. This diagramme and the historical comments to
rise107 significantly compensate for any deficiencies of the
vide an exciting starting point for further analysis. Moreover
concept of narrational or narratorial mimesis, this category
in significant ways, for instance to cover the illusionism of
experienced by readers of second-person texts.108
Metanarrative - for many years the stepchild of narrativ
now acquired narcological legitimacy. Nünning' s seminal co
the reintroduction of the teller into focal position in narra
timely intervention into current debates and promises to b
further searching questions and major narratological revisio
to have contributed to these larger and more long-term pro
liminary sketch of a number of problem areas and an emph
textual evidence which, as usual, proves to be much less neat
retical schémas illusionistically suggest. Much more and mo
evidence is needed for a thorough evaluation of theoreti
Nünning, it seems, will keep narcologists in business fo
come.
106 a. note 2, p. 152.

107 PP. 151-154.
1 0x
Fludernik, Towards a ' Natural ' Narratology (cf. note 7), pp. 223-230.

178.24.249.95 on Mon, 20 Nov 2023 12:45:19 +00:00

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METANARRATIVE AND METAFICTIONAL COMMENTARY: From Metadiscursivity to

Metanarration and Metafiction

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43028318

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MET AN ARRATI VE AND METAFICTIONAL COMMENTARY:

In English narratological criticism, the terms metanarrative and metaficti

1 Ansgar Nünning, "Mimesis des Erzählens: Prolegomena zu einer Wirkungsästhetik,

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As Nünning' s essay is written in German, it may be useful to the reader to

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plains this blind spot as the after-effect of twentieth-centur

5 Nünning, "Mimesis des Erzählens" (cf. note 1), p. 18.

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Nünning then goes o

10 Nünning, "Mimesis des Erzählens" (cf. note 1), pp. 29-31.

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commentary need not be metafictional, i.e. need no

nature of the literary artefact. This is dealt with in Wolf, Ästhet

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Aspect (I) includes the

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Diagramme 1 - Nünning' s "Modell 2: Unterformen bzw. Arten vo

Arten von Metanarration Kriterien zu deren Bestimmung

I. Formal bestimmte Arten von Kommunikationsebene und Vermittlungs-

1. Diegetisch vs. extradiegetisch vs. textuelle Eb

2. Gleichgeordnete vs. metaleptische Überschrei

3. Verdeckte/implizite Metanarration Vermittlu

4. Metaphorische vs. nichtmeta- sprachliche

5. Marginale vs. zentrale Meta- Position der metanarrativen Äußerungen im

6. Punktuelle vs. extensive Metanar- Frequenz und Um

8. Motivierte bzw. funktionale vs. Grad der begründeten Anknüpfung an bzw.

9. Nichtdigressive vs. digressive vs. Grad und A

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Arten von Metanarration Kriterien zu deren Bestimmung

III. Inhaltlich bestimmte For- Das jeweilige Objekt metanarrativ

10. Selektive vs. umfassende Metanar- Skopus der metanarrativen Referenzen

12. Story- orientierte vs. discourse- dominante Bezugsgröße der metanarrativen

13.Gattungs- bzw. textsortenspezifie- die Frage, ob durch metanarrative Äußerun-

14. Affirmative vs. untermininierende Einschätzung der eigenen narrativen Kompe-

15. Kritische vs. nichtkritische Me- Bewertung der thematisi

IV. Wirkungsästhetisch bzw. Das Wirkungs- und Funktionspotential

16.MUndlichkeits- vs. schriftlichkeits- evozierte mediale Kommunikationssituation

18. Illusionskompatible vs. illusionsstö- Grad der Illusionsdurchbrechung meta-

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ies framework of narrative theory. The historical survey

Diagramme 2: Nünning, "Modell 3: Skalierung der Funktionen metan

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quite true, has been lar

2. Metanarrative vs. Metafiction

Before turning to the major issues, I would like to preface my discussion by

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ate reference to the fiction/non-fiction distinction current

Now, Nünning is perfectly correct in saying that, due to the widespread

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Hawthorn's use of the te

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The waters get even murkier when we turn to metanarrative

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Re-emerging from this cross-cultural terminological minefield, I would

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ward) formula with 'mimesis of the act of narration' in t

2.2. Models of Meta-ization

The preceding discussion has uncovered a number of murky spots in the

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