In this trenchant and lively study Brian McHale undertakes to construct a version of postmodernist fiction which encompasses forms as wide-ranging as North American metafiction, Latin American magic realism, the French New New Novel, concrete prose and science fiction. Considering a variety of theoretical approaches including those of Ingarden, Eco, Dolezel, Pavel, and Hrushovski, McHale shows that the common denominator is postmodernist fiction's ability to thrust its own ontological status into the foreground and to raise questions about the world (or worlds) in which we live. Exploiting various theoretical approaches to literary ontology - those of Ingarden, Eco, Dolezel, Pavel, Hrushovski and others - and ranging widely over contemporary world literature, McHale assembles a comprehensive repertoire of postmodernist fiction's strategies of world-making and -unmaking.
- ISBN10 0416364004
- ISBN13 9780416364002
- Publish Date July 1987 (first published 1 January 1987)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 12 February 1993
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Egmont UK Ltd
- Imprint Methuen young books
- Format Paperback
- Pages 300
- Language English