Self- Reflexivity and Parodic Intertextuality in Martin Amis's London Fields

Abstract

Martin Amis's London Fields is an attempt to represent the contemporary history of looming threat of nuclear war, socio-moral degradation and loss of humanity near the end of the twentieth century. Amis however creates a fictional plot and characters along with the narrator to represent the real crisis of the contemporary world. The characters in the novel suffer from dilemma because of the changing human norms and values along with the changing century and fear of the nuclear holocaust. They live in such situation where the catastrophe is approaching the world. To refer to the horrible atmosphere the writer brings the dreadful events from the past along with the mythical allusions of catastrophe. On the one hand he deals with the history while on the other; he takes the help of self-reflexive tendency of the metafiction. Amis while writing the history from imagination takes the help of self-critical tendency of metafiction to show the contradictions and multiplicity which resembles the Lyotardian notion of "incredulity towards metanarrative''.