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@marijeangalloway1560
2 жыл бұрын
One of the most deliberate examples of the metatextual in modern fiction is John Fowles' 1967 novel "The French Lieutenant's Woman." The novel is structured in such a way that chapters which tell a Hardyesque Viictorian story alternate with chapters commenting on the events in the story and comparing the differences between how the 19th and the 20th centuries approached various aspects of life. The book was a best seller, so naturally they immediately wanted to make it into a movie. But they could not figure out a way to do it, because the chapters containing the narrator's metatextual commentary were an essential part of the book. It took nearly 15 years before the film finally got made, and it was playwright Harold Pinter who came up with an ingenious screenplay that solved the problem: the film of "The French Lieutenant's Woman" must be ABOUT a fictional film crew making a film of "The French Lieutenant's Woman!" The film the fictional film crew were making depicted the Victorian story contained in the novel, while the metatextual contemporary commentary was now supplied by remarks and observations of the actors studying and researching their parts. The actual actors therefore played dual roles----the "actors" within the film, and the roles those actors were playing in the Victorian story, meaning that when the real actors were portraying the Victorian characters, they were doing so as actors TWICE OVER! So essentially you had rext, metatext, and a kind of super-metatext all at the same time. The resulting film is a fascinating piece of work, with a superlative cast led by Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons, and is an outstanding example of a film successfully incorporating the metatext of the source material it was adapting. Another example of creating metatext, this time from the world of theater, is found in the musical Man of La Mancha," which depicts the writer of "Don Quixote," Miguel de Cervantes, imprisoned by the Inquisition, and getting his fellow prisoners to aid him in performing his work about his "mad knight." Thus again you have the. "play within the play" telling the story of Don Quixote in song, but alternating with commentary on the story by its author and the other actor/prisoners, and on the grim reality of the Inquisition that they all are facing. It's an interesting addition to your own remarks on the metatextuality of "Don. Quixote" that the creators of this musical play from the 1960s also picked up on this in the novel, and took the concept a step further in this imaginative presentation of both Cervantes and his famous "knight errant."
@rollingwave2732
2 жыл бұрын
So interesting, thank you.
@rmarkread3750
2 жыл бұрын
Thank you!
@diananoss9931
2 жыл бұрын
I really enjoy how you didn’t edited out any of the moments, where you didn’t quite know, what word to use. It didn’t feel like lecture, but instead, like we’re working out the details together. Thank you 😊
@catherinewolf1103
2 жыл бұрын
The Tick Tick Boom movie contains the most meta textual layers that I've ever seen. It's a movie made by a Broadway composer about a different Broadway composer's life revolving around an actual play about him writing a different play and a commentary on how this real composer's fake real life was while he wrote another play that was performed in the first play while also commenting on how the composer's life actually ended up after he finished the play of the play that you're watching in the movie. Blows my mind.
@julecaesara482
2 жыл бұрын
me, studying German and English, frantically taking notes for the essay I need to write: THANK YOU MA'AM
@DrOctaviaCox
2 жыл бұрын
It's my pleasure. Good luck for your essay!
@davidwright7193
2 жыл бұрын
The most metatextual of Austin’s novels is of course Northanger Abbey which is a satire on the gothic novel and thus uses the metatextual commentary for similar purposes to Don Quixote. But I would also point out Tom Jones where every so often you get a metatextual chapter talking about the authors views on what a novel or story should be. The History of Tristam Shandy takes the concept to such an extreme that it never gets round to having much actual text. For a modern example there is adaptation which is a film about adapting a wholly unsuitable text into a film script as the only way the writers could turn a good book about the study of orchids into a watchable film.
@jillzolot1601
2 жыл бұрын
Another wonderful lecture. It reminded me of Brecht’s Epic theater where he wanted the audience to be aware that it was watching a play and not get so immersed in the story. I’ve read all of Jane Austen many times but I always learn something new from you. Going to read Don Quixote now. Thank you!
@melissasaint3283
2 жыл бұрын
Because I did most of my reading outside a classroom, I was a young person who had never heard of metatext when I first read the English Patient, which performs such subtle magic tricks that I immediately had to find out what a "book about books" was called...leading you to think of Rebecca, then actually tucking an unquoted phrase from Rebecca into a sentence so that it leaps out at you and says "Ha! I read your mind!", and then finishing up with a flourish and having a physical copy of the book briefly turn up in the narrative. While the story itself is often brutal, painful and grotesque, I found his metatextual elements, by contrast, sparkling, mysterious, thought provoking and delightful.
@ezb6798
2 жыл бұрын
Anthony Trollope’s novels are, I think, fertile ground for finding the kind of sly and subtle metatextual passages like the ones you cite from Austen. In The Way We Live Now, for example, the subplot about Lady Carbury is full of very funny commentary on authors, publishers and critics. And in the Palliser novels, there are references to the other novels (“our old friend Planty Pall” or “as has been told in another chronicle”) to remind the reader that the novel she is reading is part of a series. Trollope even points out the connection between that series and the Barchester chronicles when he alludes to the extremely tame love affair between Mr. Palliser and Lady Dumbello.
@melanie62954
2 жыл бұрын
I read The Way We Live Now last year for the first time, and Lady Carbury's plotline was so funny that I wish it had been the main one! I believe it was Trollope's original intention, but he became more interested in other plotlines as he wrote. A bit of a false beginning since he started with what promised to be a satire of the literary community and then moved on to the Melmottes and the investment world.
@rmarkread3750
2 жыл бұрын
That is exactly why I love Trollope! In "Barchester Towers" not only does he, mid-novel, take the time to assure the reader that the heroine is not fated to marry the one of the villains, but the way he wryly introduces and describes the actions of the dreadful Mrs. Proudie and Mr. Slope keeps them from becoming the kind of irredeemable villains so present in Victorian fiction.
@DavidBrowningBYD
2 жыл бұрын
I was thinking this, too. Dr. Thorne is the first example that came to my mind.
@maggiebrinkley4760
2 жыл бұрын
@@rmarkread3750 There was a BBC tv series, a-many years ago, of 'Barchester Towers' wherein the odious Slope was played by a certain Alan Rickman. Who was superb, of course.
@rmarkread3750
2 жыл бұрын
@@maggiebrinkley4760 Thanks! I'll look for it. I totally agree with you about Alan Rickman.
@WinningSidekick
2 жыл бұрын
Oh, this ought to be good! I'm working with some autobiographical and semiautobiographical works for my MA thesis (and how a certain type of scene in coming-of-age narratives differs between the autobiographical and the purely fictional), so this might be a very useful resource. Thank you for uploading as always!
@DrOctaviaCox
2 жыл бұрын
That sounds like a brilliant MA thesis topic! The fictionalising of 'autobiographies' is a fascinating subject.
@CS-tq4er
2 жыл бұрын
I wrote my MA dissertation on the Homeric Sirens- a close reading of the passage reveals that the Siren song is nothing but a song about a song to come- I almost broke my head in half trying to make sense of this concept- and putting it into writing was even more demanding than making sense of it in the first place!
@RobynCoburn
2 жыл бұрын
There are some little moments in some of the Chronicles of Narnia where Lewis drops out of the narrative to refer to the characters (especially Lucy) telling him the story later. It’s rather sweet. There is also the famous discussion of novel reading in Northanger Abbey. I think that is meta within the narrative.
@emmad4152
2 жыл бұрын
Wow. I am speechless. Marvelous job! I didn't have such a wonderful writing class in a long time! Thank you!
@melissasaint3283
2 жыл бұрын
Seriously, wasnt this a treat?
@HRJohn1944
2 жыл бұрын
Thank you so much. I was slightly surprised that, at the end, you did not mention Brecht's theatre of alienation. I am not a great theatre-goer, but I can remember a production of "The Good Woman of Szechwan" at the National Theatre where audience participation in the intellectual/philosophical point of the play was specifically invited (the discussion that followed the performance which I saw was very interesting).
@bethanyperry5337
2 жыл бұрын
Reader, I married him.
@Khatoon170
2 жыл бұрын
How are you doing dr octavia happy valentine day we really appreciate your great efforts as foreigners subscribers as overseas students want to increase our cultural level improve our English language as well and also lovers of literature as always iam gathering main information about topics you mentioned briefly here it’s meta text is kind of Greek choursior internal narrator that speaks about main action that taking place the word meta text simply means secondary text talks about main text used for linking ideas or building up an argument and meta fiction is style of prose narrative in which attention is directed to process of fiction composition for example story that. Explores how stories are made by commenting on character type Shakespeare play hamlet can be considered meta fiction meta theatre Greek word meaning after meta means or beyond that refers to comment upon itself Shakespeare play mid summer night dream makes play meta theatre because device where by play comments on itself drawing attention to literal circumstances of its own production thank you for your your wonderful cultural channel iwish for your channel more success and progress stay safe blessed best wishes for you your dearest ones
@rmarkread3750
2 жыл бұрын
It seems to me that the idea of "meta-theatre" is directly descends from Bertolt Brecht's "alienation effect," which uses an array of devices to constantly remind the audience that they are watching a play, to engage their ongoing critique of what they are watching and free them from the overwhelming, naturalistic "gesamtkunst" theatre produced by David Belasco, Max Reinhardt and Constantin Stanislavski at the time.
@DrOctaviaCox
2 жыл бұрын
Do you have any of your own fabulous examples of meta-text?
@WinningSidekick
2 жыл бұрын
Pippin the Musical was always one of the most fascinating musicals out there to me, and I now realize that's because it uses the metatheatrical for horror: the show's finale (and by that I do mean the show within the show) is meant to be Pippin burning alive, and when he refuses the Leading Player is outraged. The Leading Player (what an excellent name for an antagonist!) demands the stage lights be turned off, Pippin's costume be stripped from him and his make-up wiped away. They then angrily tell Pippin to "try singing with no music, honey" and storm off. The whole show leads up to this grand finale; the troupe is essentially trying to convince Pippin to self-destruct. The audience is told that it's his first performance, implying that they have successfully performed the show as it ought to be performed-- self-immolation and all-- every night up until this point. I used to find it so fascinating. I hadn’t thought about the play in such a long time, but this video really brought it to mind! Definitely one of the more explicitly metatextual dramatic work I've come across.
@theloverlyladylo9158
2 жыл бұрын
I have a soft spot for meta-textual songs, my favorite being Eric Nam’s “This Is Not A Love Song”, which started out as a love song for his girlfriend, but then the relationship ended before he finished it, so now he’s wondering what to do with this half-done song that isn’t a love song anymore.
@eskina1
2 жыл бұрын
Charlotte Brontë, in Jane eyre, often addresses the "reader", but one metatextual paragraph is my favorite, when she describes her pupil Adele, in a rather cool and objective manner. Then turns to the reader and says: "This, par parenthese, will be thought cool language by persons who entertain solemn doctrines about the angelic nature of children, and the duty of those charged with their education to conceive for them an idolatrous devotion. But I am not writing to flatter parental egotism, to echo cant, or prop up humbug, I am merely telling the truth."
@eskina1
2 жыл бұрын
Brontë is already anticipating her (many) critics, while writing her novel...
@AuntieDawnsKitchen
2 жыл бұрын
When Kipling refers to himself in his poem “Undertaker’s Horse” thus: “It could be you wait your time, beast ‘Til I write my last bad rhyme, beast” Kind of endearing
@kryscall4544
2 жыл бұрын
If it is not too personal a question, what do you like most about reading fiction when you read it simply for your own enjoyment? Your widespread knowledge of literature is astonishing. Thankk you for all the knowledge you seemingly so easily impart. Regarding meta text, it seems like as soon as anyone sets out to put anything in writing, that author, even of a grocery list, has already engaged metacognition, so metatext would be a natural result for those addressing a reader other than themselves, but as you say, it might be jumping over the boundaries of some genres as Austen does with her wandering narrator, who sometimes is omniscient, sometimes only records whar characters state themselves, and sometimes engages in indirect discourse. But what do you yourself like as a format of fiction? Since I'm a writer anda great admirer of your mind and delightful lectures, this is a burning question for me. to write with someone oof your intellect in mind would greatly inspire improvement.
@djdjdj242
5 ай бұрын
Stylish Transient is the ultimate work of meta-nonfiction!!!
@nancycollins4014
2 жыл бұрын
Really enjoyed this; thank you so much!😊
@georgeminkoff524
2 жыл бұрын
I happen to own the watercolor you used for your mega text discussion. No I am not trying to sell you the original watercolor. It’s part of my collection of the artist. I would like to speak to you about William Shakespeare. And my book, oral book, about the lost years, entitled the secrets only secrets know: I suggest you look me up on the Internet and the reviews in the magazine historical fiction, published in London. The review of the last book in the trilogy would be insightful. Thank you I remain George Robert Minkoff
@habituscraeftig
2 жыл бұрын
Phillip Pullman has a beautiful set of essays addressing his preference for a (usually heavily situated) third person narrator with its own personality, independent of the author's. The example he gives in one case is that he wants his narrator to be able to call the main character (whose thoughts are accessible) a brat. I love that. A fallible or biased third person narration plays again with both realism and the metatextual.
@richardwestwood8212
2 жыл бұрын
Diderot's Jacques le Fataliste et son Maître is a good example for metatext; the characters talking about different ways of telling a story, the reader interrupts the author, and the author suggesting possible developments of the story, etc. Even in the Indian epic Ramayana, Sita brings her two children to Valmiki, the author of the epic, before she undergoes her ordeal to prove her innocence, thus the poet is an active observer Who is involved in the unfolding of the events and writing about them. Baudelaire wrote many poems about how to write poetry, thousands of examples from world literature..... PS, in philosophy, perhaps following your definition all philosophy is metaphilosophy, because all the philosophers reflected about how to philosophize; especially Kierkegaard Who wrote under different pseudonyms and these authors were attacking one another and suggesting different ways of creating concepts from various, even opposite perspectives (Johannes did silencio, Climachus, Anticlimachus, etc) love from New York Thanks for posting this lecture
@larusafox
2 жыл бұрын
Thanks!
@shakespearaamina9117
21 күн бұрын
Thank you
@Ritercrazy
2 ай бұрын
Very helpful.
@montanalilac
2 жыл бұрын
so if I understand correctly, would a movie about a movie be considered meta script? I'm specifically thinking of "Paris When It Sizzles" with Audrey Hepburn, where she and William Holden's characters work on writing a film script. Is that right?
@secondstar4170
2 жыл бұрын
Thanks!
@RobynCoburn
2 жыл бұрын
Oh I have thought of another I think - “My Career Goes Bung” - the follow up to “My Brilliant Career”.
@sdustin7986
2 жыл бұрын
Why is this important ? With any creative work, there is the Author. What happens when the Author shows up, and makes the Reader aware the text (content) doesn’t exist in a vacuum? Self referential humor. Etc. Good to know , if you are creating content. Good job.
@joejoew54
2 жыл бұрын
So, Dr. Cox, a novel in which the author warns the reader that it is a fiction that hides a true story that the author could not explicitly tell. Is it a meta-fiction? Thank you so much.
@tangentreverent4821
2 жыл бұрын
Oh yeah. Tv tropes and idioms article on genre savviness mentions that Gilgamesh rejected Ishtar (?) on the basis that he had heard the stories about Her lovers.
@barbarahuff117
2 жыл бұрын
Good job. Total novice.
@signespencer6887
2 жыл бұрын
So are the old Andy Rooney movies what they say ‘Lets put on a show!” A meta-play?
@Midorikonokami
2 жыл бұрын
I had to click out. Sorry, I respect your knowledge of literally anything literature but the correct pronunciation of foreign words is just a Google search away. I couldn't hear you butchering Don Quixote any longer than 8 minutes.
@ad6417
Жыл бұрын
She said it correctly. Perhaps your hearing is off a touch.
@Midorikonokami
Жыл бұрын
@@ad6417 no, she did not.
@barb.knapki
11 ай бұрын
That's what had me thinking as well. I've been thought totally different pronunciation in my Polish school. Is it proper English version? Every country has its own, hasn't it? But it sounds hilarious for sure 😂
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