Historical Metafiction: The Case Study of “The Lizzard that Swallowed the Moon”

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Abstract

Metafiction is a postmodern form of story-telling that sometimes narrates history fictively in order to call into question the historical facts. This is done by revealing the secrets and devices of the story. “The Lizard that Swallowed the Moon” is a Persian metafiction in which falsification of historical facts, anachronism as well as uses of irony and intertextuality are of major significance. This paper, based on theory of Linda Hutcheon, concludes that the postmodern structure of this novel distorts the historical facts of Qājār and Pahlavi dynastis and thus depicts another picture of these periods.

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