The problematization of dichotomies in a plural, heterogeneous, and contradictory world, whose socio-artistic-cultural borders are questioned and confronted, motivates the artist to look for aesthetical regimes that may appropriately face these questions. Metafiction, as an intentionally auto-referential and auto-reflexive aesthetical phenomenon, is adequate to cope with the requirements of the contemporary art. Associated with parody, metafiction produces an artistic form that asks for a sophisticated reading and also demands for new critical and theoretical approaches that could deal with such complexity. For the present analyses, we select the scene of the fountain in Ian McEwan's novel Atonement and its correspondent in the film adaptation, by the director Joe Wright. With the objective of reflecting about the dis-placed site and sight of the character-writer Briony Tallis and her consequent effort to perform her auto-justification, we investigate the elaboration of metafictional narratives in the selected material and we notice that the conflict between ethics and aesthetics results in the configuration of the other's space.
metafiction; parody; Atonement; film; alterity; space.