metafiktio

Metafiktio, or metafiction in English, refers to a mode of narrative that deliberately foregrounds its status as a constructed artifact. The term combines meta- from Greek meaning "self-referential" with fiction, and it is used across literary traditions to signal self-conscious storytelling.

Characteristic features include self-reflexivity, narration that questions or reveals its own fictionality, and disruptions of the illusion of seamless reality. Common techniques are direct address to the reader, frame narratives, embedded texts, explicit commentary on the act of writing, unreliable narrators, and intertextuality that acknowledges other works. Metafiktio often uses metalepsis, crossing the boundaries between the fictional world and the reader’s reality to highlight artificiality.

Historically, metafiktio arose in postwar and postmodern literature as a critique of realism and an exploration of how stories are made. It serves to question authorial authority, examine the processes of meaning-making, and invite readers to participate in constructing narrative significance rather than passively consuming a closed plot.

Prominent examples include Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler, which centers on a reader seeking a story; Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire, with an annotated text that becomes part of the fiction; and Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, whose typographic form mirrors its nested narration. Other writers associated with metafiktio include John Fowles and Thomas Pynchon.

In other media, metafiktio-like techniques appear in films and television that self-consciously address storytelling conventions. In narratology, metafiktio relates to concepts such as metanarrative and self-referential narration.