An Analysis of Metafictional Devices in The Hours

As a successful rewriting of British novelist Virginia Woolf's Mrs.Dalloway,The Hours written by American contemporary writer Michael Cunningham is the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner.The novel is not merely a gloss on or homage to the hypotext,but a postmodernist work with its own unique identity,which has been mainly reflected in the three metafictional devices adopted,i.e.self-reflexivity,parody and stories within stories.These devices play significant roles in deepening and broadening the theme of the text.