metatextuality
Writing examining writing
Metatextuality is a text's awareness of or commentary on its own nature as a text.
A novel whose narrator addresses the reader directly, a film where characters acknowledge they're in a movie, or a poem about the difficulty of writing poetry all exhibit metatextuality.
The term appears in literary criticism and media studies: The show's metatextuality includes jokes about its own low budget.
Related to but distinct from intertextuality, which concerns relationships between different texts.
Imitative artistic tribute
- bricolageConstruction from available materials
- hyperrealityRepresentations supplanting the genuine
- simulacrumImitative stand-in for reality
- parodySatirical imitation
fragmentation · irony · playfulness · eclecticism · juxtaposition · palimpsest · rhizome · simulacra
Storyteller whose credibility wavers
- authorial intrusionWriter commenting within narrative
- narratorOne who tells events
- metafictionLiterature aware of itself
- digressionVeering off topic
footnotes · direct address · Don Quixote · Borges · Nabokov · self-referential
Methodical study of parts
- interpretationAssigned meaning
- hermeneuticsStudy of interpretation methods
- semioticsStudy of signs, symbols
- exegesisCritical textual interpretation
commentary · evaluation · literary theory · close reading · contextualization · scholarship · critical apparatus · annotation
Meaning-bearing form
- signifiedExpressed meaning symbolically
- traceMinute remnant or pursue
- disseminationWide distribution of information
- DerridaGrammatology's French author
Pointing to oneself
- self-consciousnessUncomfortable awareness of oneself
- self-awarenessInsight into one's psyche
- recursionProcess invoking itself
- mirroringReproducing an image identically
self-reflection · laying bare · foregrounding · defamiliarization · estrangement · artifice · self-critique · reflective
pastiche
Imitative artistic tribute
- bricolageConstruction from available materials
- hyperrealityRepresentations supplanting the genuine
- simulacrumImitative stand-in for reality
parody · fragmentation · irony · playfulness · eclecticism · juxtaposition · palimpsest · rhizome · simulacra · deconstruction
unreliable narrator
Storyteller whose credibility wavers
- authorial intrusionWriter commenting within narrative
- narratorOne who tells events
- metafictionLiterature aware of itself
digression · footnotes · direct address · Don Quixote · Borges · Nabokov · self-referential
analysis
Methodical study of parts
- interpretationAssigned meaning
- hermeneuticsStudy of interpretation methods
- semioticsStudy of signs, symbols
exegesis · commentary · evaluation · literary theory · close reading · contextualization · scholarship · critical apparatus · annotation · marginalia
signifier
Meaning-bearing form
- signifiedExpressed meaning symbolically
- traceMinute remnant or pursue
- disseminationWide distribution of information
self-reference
Pointing to oneself
- self-consciousnessUncomfortable awareness of oneself
- self-awarenessInsight into one's psyche
- recursionProcess invoking itself
mirroring · self-reflection · laying bare · foregrounding · defamiliarization · estrangement · artifice · self-critique · reflective
metatextualityimmersion
State of being submerged
literary realism · illusionism · suspension of disbelief · absorption · naturalism
meta, text, textual, texts, textually, texture, textile, context, contextual