Metafiction, also known as Romantic irony in the context of Romantic works of literature, is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion.

Metafiction is primarily associated with Modernist literature and Postmodernist literature, but is found at least as early as Homer's Odyssey and Chaucer's 14th century Canterbury Tales.

Metafiction is often employed to undermine the authority of the author, for unexpected narrative shifts, to advance a story in a unique way, for emotional distance, or to comment on the act of storytelling.

More abstract theories of metafiction, such as those expressed in Patricia Waugh's book Metafiction, would argue that fiction simply has the capacity to represent that which is not real at all ( i. e., both St.

Metafiction uses techniques to draw attention to itself as a work of art, while exposing the " truth " of a story.

While sovereignty has roots in antiquity, in its present usage it is essentially modern.

Professionally a lawyer, that is to say associated with dignity, reserve, discipline, with much that is essentially middle-class, he is compelled by an impossible love to exhibit himself dressed up, disguised -- that is, paradoxically, revealed -- as a child, and, worse, as a whore masquerading as a child.

The Connally amendment says that the United States, rather than the court, shall determine whether a matter is essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of the United States in a case before the World Court to which the United States is a party.

It is not essentially different from a memorandum of an attorney in the Department of Justice, of which the Attorney General receives many, and to which he may give his approval or rejection.

Roy Mason is essentially a landscape painter whose style and direction has a kinship with the English watercolorists of the early nineteenth century, especially the beautifully patterned art of John Sell Cotman.

The direct evidence on the micrometeorite environment near the Earth is obtained from piezoelectric sensors ( essentially microphones ) and from wire gages ; ;

There is some reason to think that thyroglobulin synthesis may proceed independently of iodination, for in certain transplantable tumours of the rat thyroid containing essentially no iodinated thyroglobulin, a protein that appears to be thyroglobulin has been observed in ultracentrifuge experiments ( Wolff, Robbins and Rall, 1959 ).

From these results, one sees that the study of linear operators on vector spaces over an algebraically closed field is essentially reduced to the study of nilpotent operators.

For internal political reasons, the union asks for ( and accepts ) increases in the basic wage rate, and would vigorously oppose a reduction in this rate, but the adjustment of the basic wage rate upwards is essentially up to the discretion of the companies of the industry.

Here the problem is essentially one of defining the word `` filling ''.

It is absurd to speak of philosophy as a superior enterprise to sociology, since the former is a logical, rational discipline, where sociology is essentially descriptive and empirical.

In addition to the incompleteness of science and the completeness of metaphysics, they differ in that science is essentially descriptive, while philosophy in its inherited forms, tends to be goal-oriented, teleological and prescriptive.

It is as follows: `` The usual sensitivity tests showed that the specific qualities of skin-perceptiveness ( pressure, pain, temperature ), as well as the kinesthetic sensations ( muscular feelings, feelings in the tendons and joints ), were, as such, essentially intact, although they seemed, in comparison with normal reactions, to be somewhat diminished over the entire body.

If the argument is accepted as essentially sound up to this point, it remains for us to consider whether the patient's difficulties in orienting himself spatially and in locating objects in space with the sense of touch can be explained by his defective visual condition.

the `` sober opinion '' of his letter to Noyes, written when Hardy was eighty years old, is essentially that of his first `` philosophical '' notebook entry, made when he was twenty-five: `` The world does not despise us: it only neglects us '' ( Early Life, p. 63 ).

The index is essentially a new treatment of previously compiled morphological data.

The instrument is shown in Fig. 1 and consists essentially of a hard, sharp, tungsten carbide knife which is pushed along the substrate to remove the coating.

It is an understandable paradox that most American history and most American literature is today written from an essentially egocentric and isolationistic point of view at the very time America is spreading her dominion over palm and pine.

It is interesting, however, that despite this strong upsurge in Southern writing, almost none of the writers has forsaken the firmly entrenched concept of the white-suited big-daddy colonel sipping a mint julep as he silently recounts the revenue from the season's cotton and tobacco crops ; ;

I knew that a conversation with the author would not settle such questions, because a man is not the same as his writing: in the last analysis, the questions had to be settled by the work itself.

And the life they lead is undisciplined and for the most part unproductive, even though they make a fetish of devoting themselves to some creative pursuit -- writing, painting, music.

And if I have gone into so much detail about so small a work, that is because it is also so typical a work, representing the germinal form of a conflict which remains essential in Mann's writing: the crude sketch of Piepsam contains, in its critical, destructive and self-destructive tendencies, much that is enlarged and illuminated in the figures of, for instance, Naphta and Leverkuhn.

It is most probable that Freud and the Oedipus complex never entered his head in the writing of this story.

It is notable that at this time he was writing with admiration of Cimabue's and Poussin's way of filling space.

Evidence is plentiful that early and later also he has been indebted to the Gothic romancers, who deal in extravagant horror, to the symbolists writing at the end of the preceding century, and in particular to the stream-of-consciousness novelists, Henry James and James Joyce among them.

There is essential pleasantness in reading the writing of men who are not angry, who can contend without quarreling.

Steele's purpose is to present a general defense of his political writing and a resume of the themes which had occupied him in the Englishman ; ;

This is the principal point made in this final section of Englishman No. 57, and it caps Steele's efforts in his other writing of these months to counteract the notion of the Tories as a `` Church Party '' supported by the body of the clergy.

In looking back over the volumes, it is possible to find errors of interpretation, some of which were not so evident at the time of writing.

I know you are very busy now, you are writing a great deal & your book is coming out, isn't it??

What makes the current phenomenon unique is that so many science-fiction writers have reversed a trend and turned to writing works critical of the impact of science and technology on human life.

If we are to believe the list of titles printed in Malraux's latest book, La Metamorphose Des Dieux, Vol. 1 ( ( 1957 ), he is still engaged in writing a large novel under his original title.

Lawrence Ferlenghetti and Bruce Lippincott have concentrated on writing a new poetry for reading with jazz that is very closely related to both the musical forms of jazz, and the vocabulary of the musician.

This involves a shift in Patchen's attitude and it is a first step toward writing a new jazz poetry.

Through all this raving, Krim is performing a traditional and by now boring rite, the attack on intelligence, upon the largely successful attempt of the magazines he castigates to liberate American writing from local color and other varieties of romantic corn.

The most obvious characteristic of contemporary American writing, apart from the beat nonsense, is its cosmopolitanism.

Letter writing is a dying art.

The appointment of U Thant of Burma as the U.N.'s Acting Secretary General -- at this writing, the choice appears to be certain -- offers further proof that in politics it is more important to have no influential enemies than to have influential friends.

It is both great writing and profound religion.

N.C.'s editorial `` Confrontation '' is a stunning piece of writing.

in the case of any assignment of an award, or any part thereof, which is made in writing and duly acknowledged and filed, after such award is certified to the Secretary of the Treasury, payment may, in the discretion of the Secretary of the Treasury, be made to the assignee, as his interest may appear.