Original scientific paper

https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.22210/ur.2025.070.1/04

Fictional Self-Theorising across Literary History

Anja Müller-Wood ; Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz

Abstract

Based on the assumption that all fictional literature contains its own reading instructions, I argue in this article that two literary works written at great historical distance, Evelyn Waugh’s short novel "The Loved One" (1948) and John Milton’s pastoral elegy “Lycidas” (1638), are “critical” fictions in this sense, that is, texts reflecting upon themselves and (thereby) literary art more generally. I treat these seemingly incongruous works as companion pieces in the way they make each author’s experience of modernity their topic and present responses to this experience that appear strikingly similar. My comparative reading reveals how similar mindsets manifest themselves across historical periods and ideological divides, revealing both continuities and culturally specific differences. As Waugh’s and Milton’s works reveal, modernity is a recurring event realised in literature in multifarious ways, both a matter of continuity and creative difference.

Keywords

John Milton, Evelyn Waugh, self-referentiality, metafiction, modernity, experimentalism, authorship

Hrčak ID:

349192

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/349192

Publication date:

13.7.2026.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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