Fictional narrative as history: Reflection and deflection

Since cultural studies take narratives as one of the forms through which a culture understands itself and its past, this essay explores two Chinese novellas, 'The True Story of Ah Q' by Lu Xun and 'Yang Zhi Sells His Knife' by Tan Ge, and proposes that while the first-order narrative code (narrating) assumes to reflect and deflect history, the second-order narrative code (commenting) by the implied author 'undercuts the fabric of fiction' in unexpected ways. One of the important types of narrative comments is metalinguistic and meta-discursive, which linguistically technicalizes narratives as artistic accounts of true historical events. Although. metalinguistic and meta-discursive comments carry personal and evaluative burdens, quite a large number of such 'self-conscious narrations' do not necessarily 'go beyond narrating, describing, or identifying.' While constituting a special register in narratives by conglomerating showing and telling on the implied authorial level, they both reflect and deflect history.