ABSTRACT
Linda Hutcheon's contention is that narcissistic or metafictional narrative is as mimetic as any other narrative genre, including classic realism. Central to her definition of the new genre is a rejection of the traditional definition of parody as a necessary movement away from mimesis and towards mockery, ridicule or mere destruction. Hutcheon also undertakes to refine Jean Ricardou's typology of metaficational modes. She proposes a typology based on a fourfold axis: overt and covert narcissism; linguistic and diegetic narcissism. Overt forms of narcissism are present in texts in which the self-consciousness and self-reflection are clearly evident, usually explicitly thematized or even allegorized within the 'fiction'. In its covert form, however, this process would be structuralized, internalized, actualized. Such a text would, in fact, be self-reflective, but not necessarily self-conscious. Jean Ricardou conveniently provides people with a horizontal and vertical auto-representational cross on which to crucify systematically metafictional modes.
