The Quest for Identity and its Literary Representation through Metanarrative and Metafictional Elements in Kate Atkinson's Emotionally Weird and Human Croquet

摘要

This essay concerns itself with Kate Atkinson's use of the literary techniques of metafiction and metanarrative to emphasise the characters' loss and struggle for identity, focusing on two novels. It also stresses the thematic and narratological analogies and parallels between the different writings, drawing on recent trends within the field of research on identity. The essay addresses the relationship between fiction and reality and to what degree literary texts question ideas of identity.