Comparing Metafictional Traits with Elements of Realism Essay -- compa

Metafictional Traits Metafictional Traits found in Flauberts Parrot and in John Fowles The French Lieutenants Woman, before comparing these with the elements of world in Isaac Singers The Family Moskat. For some, Life is rich and creamy ... plot of land artwork is a pallid commercial confection ... For others, Art is the truer thing, full, bustling and emotionally satisfying, while Life is worse than the poorest novel devoid of narrative, peopled by bores and rogues, brusk on wit ... and leading to a painfully predictable denouement.1 Thus Barnes compares Life and Art in Flauberts Parrot but these lecture could just as easily refer to the different perspectives of realist and metafictional writers. Bearing these perspectives in mind, this essay will examine the metafictional traits found in Flauberts Parrot and in John Fowles The French Lieutenants Woman, before comparing these with the elements of realism in Isaac Singers The Family Moskat. By considering the advantages and disadvantages of these novelistic schools of thought, it shall then be demonstrated that the readers own views on Life and Art may determine the value one assigns to these alternative styles. When Braithwaite muses, If I were a dictator of fiction,2 the process of creating fiction itself becomes the subject matter of the narrative. Barnes himself is clear a dictator in the sense that he has control all over the content of his own novel, but in this instance, Braithwaite is referring to all fiction. This reference to the outturn of fiction is a common quality of metafiction, and it recurs frequently in Flauberts Parrot. The subject field is picked up later when Braithwaite says, Many critics would like to be dictators of literature,... ...out, for example, p. 87. 19 Ibid., throughout, for example, p. 108. 20 Ibid., p. 97. 21 Ibid., p. 261. 22 Ibid., pp. 262-4. 23 Ibid., p. 59. 24 Ibid., p. 98. 25 Barnes, p. 47. 26 Ibid., p. 169. 27 Ibid., pp. 50-2. 28 Ibid., pp. 160-70. 29 Ibi d., p. 87. 30 Ibid., p. 108. 31 Fowles, p. 390. 32 Barnes, p. 88. 33 Ibid., p. 68. 34 Ibid., p. 88. 35 Singer, Isaac Bashevis, The Family Moskat, translated by Gross, A. H., Penguin, London, 1980, p. 582. 36 Ibid., p. 193. 37 Ibid., p. 606. 38 Ibid., p. 179. 39 Ibid., p. 636. 40 Ibid., pp. 132, 490, 543. 41 See Barnes, p. 46. 42 See Fowles, p. 268. 43 Ibid., p. 98. 44 Barnes, pp. 49-65. 45 For example, Singer, pp. 239-242 (Letter from Adele to her mother), 444-52 (Hadassahs diary entries). 46 Barnes, p. 88.