A Return of the Avant-Garde: The Historical Horizon of Metanarrative and Umberto Eco's Conception of Literary Practice

The concept of "metanarrative" is employed as an avant-garde literary technique by the Italian scholar Umberto Eco in his postmodern novels. At the same time, it also functions as a paradigm of past knowledge, as described by Jean François Lyotard in The Postmodern Condition. In this concept, the core term "meta" which serves as a prefix has a long history—ranging from its ancient Greek usage to express time and space, to its association with transcendental knowledge about ontology, and more recently, to its use in describing the self-reflective logic in semiosis. The evolving meaning of "meta" reflects the development of human cognition, while also revealing two contrasting perspectives on history through its two Chinese translations, "元" and "后设". As a quintessential postmodern literary practice, "metafiction" subverts the structure of traditional narratives in a self-reflective manner, with the aim of revealing the order imposed by authoritative discourse. In Baudolino, Eco revisits the literary tradition of conversation through the "metanarrative" and transforms the self-reflection of metafiction's aesthetic forms into a conversational logic with a potential receiver. In this way, he revives the reflective and practical functions of literary works, helping participants in narratives construct the history they believe in to affirm their subjectivity, while enlightening and uniting another subject to act toward a shared transcendental purpose.