Surface Disturbances: A Reading of Raymond Federman's Surfictions as Historiographic Radical Metafictions

This MA thesis presents close readings of two of Raymond Federman's surfictional novels, with specific focus on how the past is approached and represented in his postmodern autobiographical accounts. Disagreeing with Linda Hutcheon, the thesis proposes that Federman's surfictions be read as historiographic metafictions, though clearly a more radical variant of this type of novel. Through numerous textual examples, Federman's writing is shown to be strongly imbued with oppositional impulses characteristic of postmodern practices. Moreover, the thesis comprises a vast theoretical framework with chapters on concepts such as postmodernism, poststructuralism, (radical) metafiction, and historiographic metafiction.