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"Metafiction" refers to any novel that draws attention to its own fictional construction, something largely associated with the postmodern era. In this innovative new book Tabitha Sparks identifies a sustained pattern of metafiction in the Victorian novel that illuminates the art and intentions of its female practitioners. Novels written by many Victorian women shared a common but underexamined trope: the fictional characterization of the woman novelist or autobiographer. Victorian Metafiction reveals how these books systemically disputed the assumptions that women wrote primarily about their emotions or were restricted to trivial, sentimental plots. Rather, they used metafictional self-consciousness to draw the reader's attention to the book and not the novelist, dislodging the narrative from these cultural prescriptions and establishing their artistic integrity and professional authority.
About the author
Tabitha Sparks is Associate Professor of English at McGill University, the editor of several books, and the author of
The Doctor in the Victorian Novel: Family Practices.
Summary
Countering an established tradition that has read novels by women writers as heavily autobiographical and confessional, Tabitha Sparks identifies the literary technique of metafiction in numerous novels by women writers and argues that women used metafictional self-consciousness to draw the reader’s attention to the book and not the novelist.
