different between fiction vs metafiction

English

Etymology

From Middle English ficcioun, from Old French ficcion (“dissimulation, ruse, invention”), from Latin ficti? (“a making, fashioning, a feigning, a rhetorical or legal fiction”), from fing? (“to form, mold, shape, devise, feign”).

Pronunciation

• enPR: f?k?-sh?n, IPA^(key): /?f?k.??n/
• Hyphenation: fic?tion

• Rhymes: -?k??n

Noun

fiction (countable and uncountable, plural fictions)

1. Literary type using invented or imaginative writing, instead of real facts, usually written as prose.
2. (uncountable) A verbal or written account that is not based on actual events (often intended to mislead).

3. (law) A legal fiction.

Synonyms

• fabrication
• figment

Antonyms

• documentary
• fact
• non-fiction
• truth

Hypernyms

• literary type

Hyponyms

• science fiction
• speculative fiction

Derived terms

• fictitious
• fictional
• non-fiction

Related terms

• fiction section

Descendants

• ? Irish: ficsean
• ? Scottish Gaelic: ficsean

Translations

Further reading

• fiction in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• fiction in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• fiction at OneLook Dictionary Search
• "fiction" in Raymond Williams, Keywords (revised), 1983, Fontana Press, page 134.

French

Etymology

From Old French, borrowed from Latin fictionem (nominative of fictio).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fik.sj??/

Noun

fiction f (plural fictions)

1. fiction

Related terms

• fictif
• science-fiction

Further reading

• “fiction” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

English

Etymology

meta- +? fiction, coined in 1970 by William H. Gass

Noun

metafiction (usually uncountable, plural metafictions)

1. A form of self-referential literature concerned with the art and devices of fiction itself.
   • 1999, Susana Onega Jaén, Metafiction and Myth in the Novels of Peter Ackroyd, Camden House (?ISBN), page 1:

     Julian Barnes's Flaubert's Parrot (1984) and Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor and Chatterton may be described as accomplished examples of historiographic metafiction, the kind of self-conscious, heavily parodic and experimental historical […]

   • 2010, Evan Mwangi, Africa Writes Back to Self: Metafiction, Gender, Sexuality, SUNY Press (?ISBN), page 65:

     In the previous chapter, I presented a heuristic explanation of the development of metafiction. In this chapter, I turn to some texts written before the 1980s to demonstrate that the binary between realism and metafiction is not fixed.

Related terms

• metafictional
• metafictive

Translations

See also

• metatext
• intertextuality

Further reading

• metafiction on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

References