<i>Fantomina</i> Is a Theory of Fiction

This article argues that Eliza Haywood’s novella Fantomina; or, Love in a Maze (1725) presents a theory of fiction in its diegesis rather than in metafictional reflections. In other words, the protagonist engages in world-building actions—constructing a secret plot with a specific setting and a cast of different personas—that reveal the novella’s form to be evidence for the content of its theory. Resisting the critical tendency to read Fantomina as evidence for its historical context or as characteristic of a primitive stage in the novel’s rise, the author contends that the novella’s episodic, atemporal conception of fiction provides a model after which critics may construct more varied, maze-like, histories of the novel.