Fiction about Fiction: Metafiction, Truth and Philosophy

Abstract

In this thesis I explore a style of fiction called metafiction and what it contributes to philosophical debates surrounding the question of truth in fiction. Metafiction is a piece of literature, play, or film which reflects on the nature of fiction from within the fictional form. Metafiction gained popularity in the 1960s with the rise of postmodernism and has had a substantial amount of literature dedicated to it from literary critics. It generally remains outside of philosophical discourse, aside from a recent conference which was held in April 2011 at the University of Cambridge. This conference shows that metafiction and philosophy do have important links which I hope to explore. I argue that metafiction is not as disconnected from truth and reality as many theorists claim. Metafiction not only reveals truths about the nature of fiction and postmodern reality but it also contributes to debates in the philosophy of art. Metafiction provides insights into the paradox of fiction and the nature of propositional truth in fiction, revealing that it is possible to be emotionally engaged in fiction whilst being aware of its fictionality, and that a theory of truth in fiction needs to account for paradoxical truths. I conclude with a discussion of how fiction can be philosophical and the way in which metafiction embodies philosophical ideas in the philosophy of literature through its self-reflexive form.