Historically there has been a great deal of confusion between metafiction and postmodernism. Metafiction, or fiction that is about fiction, is not at all a new development in literature. Authors have been using metafiction for centuries. In other words, postmodernists' use of metafiction is a "continuation of an already existing narcissistic trend in the novel as it began parodically in Don Quijote and was handed on, through eighteenth-century critical self-awareness to nineteenth-century self-mirroring" (Hutcheon, 1980, 153). Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy and Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author are other examples of metafictive works that are by no means postmodern. They predate postmodernism. Hence, the simple presence of metafiction in a text does not make the text postmodern. Postmodernists distinguish themselves from their predecessors not by using metafiction per se but by the way in which they use metafiction. Postmodernists use metafiction to explore ontological issues.

Each of the five novels I consider in this project is indisputably metafictive. What is more noteworthy, however, is the repeated pattern of metamorphosis that consistently emerges through the authors' use of metafiction. In this chapter I will show that postmodernist metamorphosis reliably breaks down into four characteristic features: the description of two ontologically distinct worlds, frequent transgressions of the membrane between the two worlds, resistance to permeating the membrane between the two worlds, and a major instance of metalepsis in which a character or narrator permanently transcends the membrane. Conveniently, the Norwegian band A-ha's 1985 video "Take on Me" demonstrates precisely these same four features of postmodern metamorphosis. And what more postmodern approach to literary theory could there be than an early MTV video? Readers can view the video at http://www.mtv.com and follow along with this discussion, whether or not they have read the Norwegian and Finnish novels I discuss...