从元小说的自我意识视角解读《处心积虑》

es as biographies of imaginary writers...or even as autobiographicalreflections of the authors themselves.”(McCaffery,1995:183)It is exactly the habitualform of metafiction.Loitering with Intent adopts the combination of autobiography andfiction.Fleur is not only the narrator of the autobiography,but also the protagonist of thenovel.The story is told by the first-person narrator.In short,she is a self-conscious narrator.As narrator,Fleur narrates an autobiographical narrative.While as the protagonist,shewrites Warrender Chase.She reads her creation to a listener,who narrates it to others andfeels free to confiscate it,while other readers manipulate and distort it.Critics read andcondemn it,publishers see and reject it,and characters possess and rewrite it,or rewritethemselves in it.Finally,the story has come full circle with the publication of Fleur’s text.In effect,Fleur’s experience of struggle offers the autobiographical reflections of Spark.Therefore,Loitering with Intent can also be seen as Spark’s autobiographical novel.Just asCarruthers says:“Spark’s part in the post-war London literary scene...refracted in anotherdeliciously barbed‘historical novel’by spark,Loitering with Intent,which would make anexcellent starting point in such a project.”(Carruthers,2022:3)Spark herself has talkedabout the planned novel that is to be“in the form of an autobiography...called Loiteringwith Intent which is sort of sums up my life.”(Glendinning,1979:47)

2.2 The Insertion of Criticism

Patricia Waugh points out that metafictional writers often explore the theory of fictionthrough the practice of writing fiction.In Loitering with Intent,literary criticism is insertedinto the text.On the one hand,it breaks the traditional boundary between narrative andcriticism and combine them two together.On the other hand,it shows some views on 2.2 The Insertion of CriticismPatricia Waugh points out that metafictional writers often explore the theory of fictionthrough the practice of writing fiction.In Loitering with Intent,literary criticism is insertedinto the text.On the one hand,it breaks the traditional boundary between narrative andcriticism and combine them two together.On the other hand,it shows some views on.

In Loitering with Intent,there are two narrative voices.The first belongs to thestoryteller who let the reader know what happened in a particular time.The second belongsto the critic who evaluates the creation of the novel.But the narrator and critic is the sameperson.Spark,through the words of heroine Fleur,is both the creator and a critic of thenovel.Therefore,in the text,the heroine Fleur becomes a self-conscious narrator.Thecoexistence of the two voices in the novel verify the features of the metafiction.

Chapter Three The Nihilistic Consciousness in Loitering with Intent ..... 42

3.1 The Relation between Reality and Fiction ...................... 43

3.1.1 Reality’s Imitation of Fiction ............................... 44

3.1.2 The Exposure of Artificiality .......................... 50 

Conclusion ............................. 61

Chapter Three The Nihilistic Consciousness inLoitering with Intent

3.1 The Relation between Reality and Fiction

The relation between reality and fiction is the focus of metafiction.Patricia Waughdeclares that“the main concern of metafiction is precisely the implications of the shiftfrom the context of‘reality’to that of‘fiction’and the complicated interpenetration of thetwo”(Waugh,1984:36).Therefore,this part will discuss the relation between them two.

Before analyzing the relation between them two,it is necessary to know what isreality and what is fiction in the text analysis.As for ordinary novels,the distinctionbetween them two is simple.Reality usually refers to the real world we lived in and fictionrefers to the novel world.But as for Loitering with Intent,the state of reality and fiction israther complicated,because it adopts framing devices of“stories within stories”and hasthree layers of narrative.So first of