Fictionality

To be sure the anticipatory proleptics of the "historical survey in future-form" associated with pseudonymity rests upon the literary fiction of the pre-historicality of the revelation of these secrets; but this fictionality is intended to emphasize precisely by means of its esoteric quality that God will allow the elect righteous (cf. I Enoch 1:1) and wise persons (cf. I Enoch 100:6, 104:12) of the present day to participate already in his revelation that has proceeded from the mouths of the righteous and wise ones of pre-history, through the "literary" medium of the book.

But, of course, characters in postmodernist narrative fictions, too, can become aware of their own fictionality—characters such as Julia the policeman's wife, or the magazine-reader in Burroughs' Exterminator!, or the fictional author in Barth's "Life-Story."

As I discuss later, as well, authors within the realistic mode often encode their texts with markers of not only a self-conscious fictionality but also an irony regarding their projects that is, I would maintain, meant to be discovered.