Introduction: Literary history and the theory of reflexive realism -- From digressions to intrusions : the historical paradox of authorial commentary -- Against sympathy : the self-examining heroine and the origins of free indirect discourse -- Interiority and the end of consciousness : from the conduct scene to the sex scene -- Dying to tell about it : the autothanatographic impulse of first-person narration -- Beyond the threshold : accounting for the self as other -- Conclusion: The exhaustion of fictionality : metamodernism and the (auto)fictional pact