Self-Reflexivity and Inter-textuality: A Study of Jostein Gaarder 's Sophie's World as a Meta-fictional Work
Bushra Osman Sidiq
University of Garmian- College of Education- English Department
Ansam Riyadh Abdullah
Tikrit University- College of Education for Women- English Department
DOI: https://doi.org/10.25130/jls.7.1.9
Keywords: Meta-fiction, Self-Reflexivity, Inter-textuality, Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
Abstract
Jostein Gaarder (1952- ) is a Norwegian thinker and author of a great number of novels, short stories, and children's books among them Sophie's World. This novel deals with a number of issues, and uses a lot of postmodern techniques like meta-fiction. This paper is to explain the use of meta-fiction in the concerned novel to the readers as a postmodern element. Sophie's World, besides being a great philosophical one, it contains several meta-fictional elements like: the story has another story within, commenting on the story while telling it; the narrator exposes himself as both: a character and the narrator, and many more elements. The paper is divided into two sections and a conclusion. Section one deals theoretically with meta-fiction, self-reflexivity and inter-textuality as postmodern techniques. Section two is the analysis of the novel. At the end of the paper is the conclusion which will show the findings of the analysis. The paper end with the works cited.
