The Public Burning: A Postmodern Myth and A Metafiction

In his novel The Public Burning, Robert Coover, American postmodernist novelist, organically interweaves facts and inventions together and mythicizes history, thus having made up a contemporary myth which reveals the truth of history with its invented text; parodies the form of novel and narrative itself by using metafiction, transforming the historical events into a language system called a novel, exposing the mirages of the novel at the same time as constructing them, which makes the reader realize that the novel is not at all a copy of real life but only a story invented by the writer, consequently having caused disintegration of traditional novel and its narrative in form and language. These two artistic forms reveal that, like the novel text, history and reality are also fabricated, also man-made products.