historiographic metafiction

English

Etymology

Coined by Canadian literary theorist Linda Hutcheon.

Noun

historiographic metafiction (usually uncountable, plural historiographic metafictions)

1. A type of postmodern historical fiction employing metafiction.
   • 2008, Markus Schneider, Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five” as Historiographic Metafiction, GRIN Verlag, →ISBN, page 1:

     This assumption leads us to historiographic metafiction, a style of writing that emerged during the postmodern era. If there is fiction in scholarly historiography, where is the difference between that and a novel that deals with history?

   • 2012, Joe Bray, Alison Gibbons, Brian McHale, editors, The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature, Routledge, →ISBN, page 137:

     Although works classified as “historiographic metafiction” have been seen by numerous critics as the continuation into the eighties of the work of Pynchon, Coover, Barth, and Gass, this application of the concept turns on metafiction's identification with its anti-mimetic, counter-realist self-descriptions. […] McHale identifies three devices in historiographic metafiction: —apocryphal history, creative anachronism, and historical fantasy […]

Further reading

• historiographic metafiction on Wikipedia.Wikipedia