[d_aan]

Hello there, could somebody help clear this up?

If there is a narrator who is telling a story about himself when he was younger, this counts as a double framed narrative, right? I'm studying Spies and The Kite Runner, and I just wanted some clarification, thanks

[evantej]

(Original post by d_aan)
Hello there, could somebody help clear this up?

If there is a narrator who is telling a story about himself when he was younger, this counts as a double framed narrative, right? I'm studying Spies and The Kite Runner, and I just wanted some clarification, thanks

I do not know precisely what you mean by 'doubled frame narrative'. But your example is not what constitutes metafiction. Metafiction is when an author's writing self-consciously alludes to the fictionality of the writing itself.

For example, Fyodor Dostoevsky's Poor Folk (1846) is a novella made up entirely of letters, which at the time of publication was an outdated form to use, so to make the entire novella out of letters was a deliberate choice on Dostoevsky's part. In these letters Dostoevsky alludes to the fictionality of the characters by having them allude - not always consciously, but it would have been conscious to the reader - to the works of previous writers like Lermontov and Pushkin.

So you have characters writing letters about their experiences which allude to the experiences of fictional characters in previous works of literature. What makes this work is that the characters do not always realise that their experiences are carbon copies of the same experience, and also the naturalistic backdrop to Poor Folk. If you are teasing out points about a characters lack of freedom from a fictional perspective, imagine how this counterpoints their lack of freedom in the 'real' world (i.e. they have no freedom because they are 'poor folk'). If the character believes that the only freedom they have or can exercise is to write letters, and Dostoevsky points out that these letters and the characters themselves are fictional (archetypes in some cases), then it becomes very...!

The idea of metafiction can become quite convoluted, especially with more recent fiction, so I would be wary of writing about it. Discuss this further with your teacher.

[Miss Scarlett]

(Original post by d_aan)
Hello there, could somebody help clear this up?

If there is a narrator who is telling a story about himself when he was younger, this counts as a double framed narrative, right? I'm studying Spies and The Kite Runner, and I just wanted some clarification, thanks

If the man is simply saying "When I was younger, this happened", that's a retrospective narrative. If his older self actually has a plot thread, this thread would act as the frame story.

Metafiction is fiction about fiction, so it highlights the artificiality of the work. The French Lieutenant's Woman is a good example.