Meta-reference

Meta-reference, a metafiction technique, is a situation in a work of fiction whereby characters display an awareness that they are in such a work, such as a film, television show or book, and possibly that they are being observed by an audience. Sometimes it may even just be a form of editing or film-making technique that comments on the programme/film/book itself.

Meta-reference in fiction can sometimes be jarring to the reader and sometimes comical, such as in Jasper Fforde's novel Lost in a Good Book. The character Thursday Next remarks to her husband that she feels uncomfortable having sex in front of so many people; he is confused since they are alone in their bedroom, so she explains, "all the people reading us". There are several occasions of metareference in Fforde's work. In The Fourth Bear, two characters lament over a bad joke made by the author, saying, "I can't believe he gets away with that." Some novels with first person narration contain instances when the narrator addresses the reader directly, which is one form of metareference. Examples of this type of metareference can be seen in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, and in Philip Reeve's Larklight.

Aspects of a play that draw attention to its nature as drama or theatre, or to the circumstances of its performance, can be called instances of metatheatre or metadrama.

These may include: the direct address of the audience (especially in soliloquies, asides, prologues, and epilogues); expression of an awareness of the presence of the audience (whether they are addressed directly or not); an acknowledgement of the fact that the people performing are actors (and not actually the characters they are playing); an element whose meaning depends on the difference between the represented time and place of the drama (the fictional world) and the time and place of its theatrical presentation (the reality of the theatre event); plays-within-plays (or masques, spectacles, or other forms of performance within the drama); references to acting, theatre, dramatic writing, spectatorship, and the frequently employed metaphor according to which "all the world's a stage" (Theatrum mundi); scenes involving eavesdropping or other situations in which one or several characters observe another or others, such that the former relate to the behaviour of the latter as if it were a staged performance for their benefit.

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