SOURCE: Herzberger, David K. “Metafiction and the Contemporary Spanish Novel.” In Selected Proceedings 32^nd Mountain Interstate Foreign Language Conference, edited by Gregorio C. Martin, pp. 145-54. Winston-Salem, N.C.: Wake Forest University, 1984.

In the following essay, Herzberger perceives the maturation of contemporary Spanish metafiction “as a condition of intrinsic literary factors.”

In its simplest and most common form, metafiction is fiction that reflects upon the nature of its own being: it is fiction used as an instrument of investigation into the nature of fiction. This kind of narrative generally casts aside the tenets of mimetic authenticity that shape the so-called realistic novel, and it eschews the pretentious charade in which fiction makes its claim as history rather than as make-believe. Metafiction seeks to reveal its inner workings rather than conceal them, and is designed to lay bare the conventions and machinations that define its essence as fiction. Of...