The thesis aims to explore the phenomenon of metafiction in literature and film by examining the case of a novel by Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and its film adaptation, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, directed by Michael Winterbottom. Even though today metafiction in terms of "fiction about fiction" is perceived primarily as one of the main forms of postmodern literature it is actually a phenomenon accompanying literature since antiquity. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman from the mid-18th century is considered one of the most typical examples of early metafiction and contains a series of metafictional techniques, ranging from more explicit ones, such as direct addresses to the reader and replacements of words and letters with graphic symbols, to those more implicit, including parody and intertextuality. Michael Winterbottom's film adaptation stems from the fact that Stern's novel gives priority to form over substance. That is why the film Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2005) radically changes the novel's plot, but succeeds in preserving the playful metafictional spirit of the original in the new medium. Winterbottom adds his own self-referential frame and adapts the iv story of a writer incapable of telling his life story by turning it into the story of a director who cannot successfully adapt this writer's biography to the screen. Instead of making a classical film adaptation Winterbottom therefore creates a metafilm, a film that promises the spectator a view to the backstage of filmmaking. The film divides its reality into three levels (external, internal and meta-level), which are constantly in dialogue, so that the spectator can never wholly immerse himself in any of them but rather becomes fully aware of all of them. Not only is the whole film designed in a typical metafictional mise en abyme structure, but we are also confronted with many instances of one level of reality being infected by another: the actor is gazing at the camera and speaking directly to the spectator, the characters have mirror images of themselves, the characters also reflect on the world of independent filmmaking and the process of shooting a film adaptation, there are genre parodies, quotations and allusions on different levels of cinematic language (sound, dialogue, visuals). The novel and its film adaptation therefore provide great examples of how metafiction operates in two different media as well as of the mechanisms by which it is being established.
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