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August 29, 2022

What Is Metatextuality: Examples and Purpose

Literature

book, creativity, fiction, literature, writing

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“What is metatextuality?” There’s a question many students of literature ask. “How about intertextuality vs metatextuality?” is another valid question. Though some definitions can be offered, they are unnecessarily complicated, as we’ll see. Inevitably, the hapless student then comes back with a timid suggestion: “Can you just give me some metatextuality examples?”

This is precisely what I’ll be doing in this post. Funnily enough, I recently realized with some trepidation that metatextuality is a topic I haven’t properly examined in all these years Home for Fiction has been online. Except for one post on metatextuality in Dracula, there hasn’t been a proper analysis of this fascinating topic.

So let’s see what metatextuality is – with examples – what literary purpose it serves, and overall why we need to care, as readers and writers. Here’s a warning, however: As I often do, I will mention “official definitions” only to disregard them; I will present the established way of doing things, only to place it on the sacrificial pyre. After all, it’s about understanding metatextuality in practical terms, rather than repeating vague academic words.

metatextuality examples
Each novel exists not in a vacuum but as part of a larger ecosystem of words, ideas, and culture. Metatextuality is the way all these connect to one another.
(Image made with Mandelbulber; based on the Krzysztof Marczak collection – CC BY 4.0)

Metatextuality: The Overloaded Theoretical Foundations

I recently had an interesting discussion – with my friend Igor, whose many fascinating texts you can read on the blog – about the concept of simplicity in writing. We reached the conclusion that, though art is complex, it doesn’t need to be complicated. Indeed, as I argued, it strikes me how in academic contexts in particular, we seem to become enamored with unnecessary complication.

I’m afraid metatextuality is such a topic.

In more detail, one of the reasons students become confused by metatextuality is, I believe, the way the umbrella term, transtextuality is overloaded. Here’s an excerpt from the Wikipedia article, linked just before:

[Gérard] Genette provided five subtypes of transtextuality, namely: intertextuality, paratextuality, architextuality, metatextuality, and hypertextuality (also known as hypotextuality).
[…]
• Intertextuality could be in the form of quotation, plagiarism, or allusion.
• Paratextuality is the relation between one text and its paratext that surrounds the main body of the text. Examples are titles, headings, and prefaces.
• Architextuality is the designation of a text as a part of a genre or genres.
• Metatextuality is the explicit or implicit critical commentary of one text on another text.
• Hypotextuality or hypertextuality is the relation between a text and a preceding ‘hypotext’ – a text or genre on which it is based but which it transforms, modifies, elaborates or extends. Examples are parody, spoof, sequel, and translation. In information technology, hypertextuality is a text that takes the reader directly to other texts.

Yikes. That’s a lot to digest. No wonder students (not to mention lay readers) become confused. A skillful reader could also offer – convincingly, I’d say – an argument on the unnecessary overlap of some of the above. I mean, based on the above definitions, what is the practical difference between metatextuality and architextuality or hypo/hypertextuality?

In any case, none of the above is important in terms of understanding the core concept of metatextuality. And for that, I’d like to offer my own definition.

Definition of Metatextuality (Home-for-Fiction style)

As I always do on Home for Fiction (and often elsewhere), I’ll do things my way. So let me pull up a quote from Illiterary Fiction. In this excerpt, a guy asks Paul, the protagonist, for help regarding this very topic, metatextuality. This is how Paul responds:

It refers to the way novels coexist. Think of each book as a tree. You can focus on the leaves, the trunk, or the roots, but there’s also an ecosystem around the single tree. There are other trees, the earth, animals… These are the other books, and understanding them and their interconnected relations can help you understand individual works as well.

I should also add that this definition of metatextuality is the one offered by one of my academic mentors – who clearly knew how to explain complex things in a simple manner.

And so with this in mind, and before I offer you some metatextuality examples, here’s my own definition of metatextuality: Metatextuality refers to the way a novel implicitly acknowledges itself as a literary work, while at the same time signalling its connection to other works.

I’m sure there’s some academic (no pun intended) interest in the rest of the terms Genette offers, but when it comes to understanding the crux of metatextuality, we can go far with the definition I just offered you.

Is it “metatextuality”? “Transtextuality”? Something else? What difference does it make – we could call it “DonaldDuckxtuality” for all I care. Let’s agree to call it metatextuality, because it’s the meta– aspect that’s important; a sense of “something” beyond (above/under/whatever) the text that talks about the text itself.

And with the theoretical part out of the way, let’s move on to more practical matters, starting from metatextuality examples.

metatextuality examples
(Image made with Mandelbulber; based on the Krzysztof Marczak collection – CC BY 4.0)

Metatextuality Examples

Since I mentioned Illiterary Fiction, let’s start with that. I mean, the entire book is one giant example of metatextuality, in that its plot revolves around issues relevant to the acts of reading and writing. It also contains a large number of excerpts from other texts – since its protagonist needs to read them for other characters.

But here’s a funny thing: A couple of those texts aren’t quite what Illiterary Fiction presents them as. One such example would be an excerpt of a book by “someone who died unknown, but [who is] respected nowadays”, as the protagonist informs his readers – and mine; readers of Illiterary Fiction, that is. The hilarious detail of course, to anyone familiar with my work, is that the excerpt is from my novel The Other Side of Dreams, and I assure you, I haven’t died yet (as I’m writing these lines, anyway).

But there’s more. How about a metatextuality example concerning a book that is even less what it’s supposed to be?

Metatextuality Examples of a… Pseudo Kind

In Illiterary Fiction, there are ample references to Walking Away from a Burning Sunset, by Hiroki Kitagawa. Indeed, this book and what occurs in it become central to the narrative of Illiterary Fiction, for reasons you can read about in more detail in my post on foreshadowing. But here’s the short version: The story of Walking Away from a Burning Sunset foreshadows what will occur (in terms of meaning, rather than plot) in Illiterary Fiction, too.

Of course, as someone attempting to look for Kitagawa’s novel will discover, there isn’t a book called Walking Away From a Burning Sunset and there isn’t an author called Hiroki Kitagawa. I made them both up for the purposes of Illiterary Fiction.

Shall we create yet another subcategory and call it “pseudotextuality”? Nah, let’s instead see more metatextuality examples – this time from other authors; enough egotism for a day!

Frankenstein: Metatextuality as a Concept Element

If you haven’t read Mary Shelley’s novel, it begins with a quotation:

Did I request thee, Maker, from my
clay
To mould Me man? Did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?

Paradise Lost, X, 743–45

In a novel such as Shelley’s, where the themes of creation (literal as well as literary), religious authority, and knowledge – just to name three – are central, this quotation is certainly not accidental. Frankenstein creates a metatextual bridge for conceptual purposes, that is, as a way of emphasizing the importance and affective impact of these themes.

In simpler words, by displaying awareness of Paradise Lost – one that echoes elsewhere in the novel, too – Frankenstein underlines its own investment in the topics both texts explore. Naturally, it also highlights their timelessness as well as the peculiar status of an author as a creator (with all the repercussions this involves).

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From Metatextuality Examples to a Structured Purpose

After seeing these metatextuality examples, we can have a certain idea of what the purpose of metatextuality is. Nonetheless, for this post to have a practical purpose to you – as a reader or writer – it’s important to be explicit. So let’s revisit some of the ways metatextuality works, as these examples showcased, and supplement them with others.

No Book Is an Island

Is the heading an example of metatextuality? I’d have to say it isn’t. John Donne’s Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, from where “no man is an Iland [sic]” is often quoted, has nothing to do with literary creation or the philosophy of art. It’s simply a treatise on death, rebirth, and sickness.

Metatextuality is not just any kind of link between texts. It needs purpose, symbolic/conceptual undertones, as well as a propensity for self-reference.

Still, despite its inability to function as an example-in-itself, the heading does convey what metatextuality is about: No book is an island. That is, no book exists in isolation from other books, the way each one of us doesn’t think in neatly isolated bubbles of ideology.

To put it simply, we all affect one another – consciously or subconsciously – all the time. Finding connections in literature, both intra- and interwork-wise, is only a natural consequence of our societies.

2 Comments

  1. Heraclitóris Heraclitóris

    What fascinates me in this discussion are the examples that go along the line of Illiterary Fiction and Frankenstein. Not least because they show that we can read literature as if it was discussing itself, even if through indirect evidence. Mary Shelley’s novel is, strictly speaking, about life, science, death, prejudice, love, and life in society. But once we gather such information, we start to link it with itself, and we soon realize it also is — or can be — about the prejudice of that era’s society against women’s creativity (in the arts or other fields of action). This fact — that we can take language to always be discussing (or exemplifying) itself — fascinates me. And the fact that you’re discussing other posts and novels you authored, makes this very post metatextual. Truly astonishing.

    1. Chris🚩 Chris

      I think it’s precisely this multi-leveled nature of metatextuality what’s so fascinating about it. It’s a very clear indication of how everything is interconnected – I believe we’ve had such a discussion earlier (another meta- element!)

      It’s like when you go to Wikipedia to read about, say, the Vietnam War, and 4 clicks laters you’re reading about some lake in Mongolia. It’s because everything is interconnected through degrees of meaning/relevance (and the Wikipedia editors do a great job of bringing them to the surface).

      It’s the same with books. Truly, it’s impossible to isolate them from one another (and from writing/reading).


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