The Metafictioning Manifold: Stories that Matter

This book argues that metafiction should not be understood as a self-contained textual technique but as an active practice. Moving from foundational accounts of metafiction to sustained readings of modern and recent experimental narratives, the book develops a methodological model informed by performative, neocybernetic, agential realist, and diffractive theories. It shows how metafiction functions as an ethical, relational, and material practice, reconfiguring relationships between people, technologies, and societies. By reframing metafiction as a dynamic process rather than a static object, this study opens new ways of thinking about materiality, agency, responsibility, and meaning. It calls for renewed attention to metafiction as a form of storytelling that matters in the world, shaping us as much as we shape our stories. It is relevant to students and scholars in literature and critical theory.

John Wolfgang Roberts is Foreign Teacher of English, Writing, and British and American Literature at the Faculty of Education, Mie University, Japan. His research focuses on metafiction and narratives at the intersections of literature, science, posthumanities, and narrative ethics. He received his PhD in 2020 from the University of Birmingham.

John Wolfgang Roberts is Foreign Teacher of English, Writing, and British and American Literature at the Faculty of Education, Mie University, Japan. His research focuses on metafiction and narratives at the intersections of literature, science, posthumanities, and narrative ethics. He received his PhD in 2020 from the University of Birmingham.