meta commentary
Work discussing itself
Meta commentary is discussion or analysis that refers to itself or to the medium containing it.
A novel's narrator commenting on the act of writing the novel is meta commentary, as is a film character acknowledging they're in a movie.
The term applies broadly: The director's meta commentary on Hollywood appears throughout the film.
Any work that steps outside itself to examine its own nature or conventions engages in meta commentary.
- self-referentialAlluding to itself
- fourth-wallConceptual stage boundary
- breaking the fourth wallAcknowledging fictional boundaries
- ironyMeaning opposite to words
- critiqueDetailed evaluative analysis
wink at the camera · analysis · navel-gazing · wink · postmodern · parody · lampshade · hat tip · deconstruction · authorial · author's voice · introspection · reflexive · satirical · subtext · narrative · aside · voiceover
- fandomfandom, fandoms, fan club, fan base, fanbase
- Self-referenceself-reference, self-referential, recursion, recursive, infinite regress
- meta humorfourth wall break, lampshading
- ironyverbal irony, dramatic irony, situational irony, Socratic irony, cosmic irony
meta commentarylinear narrative
Story following chronological order
immersive storytelling · traditional storytelling · realist fiction · genre fiction
meta commentaryfourth wall
Invisible stage-audience barrier
suspension of disbelief · verisimilitude · realism · naturalism
meta, commentary, comment, comments, commented, commenting, commenter, commenters, commentate