Roghie Forough Ebrahimi - M.A Department of Literature and Foreign Languages, Faculty of Humanities, Payam-e-Noor University, Tehran
Mojgan Eyvazi - Phd Department of Literature and Foreign Languages, Faculty of Humanities, Payam-e-Noor University,Tehran,
MohammadAli Alaeddini - Phd Department of Literature and Foreign Languages,Faculty of Humanities, Payam-e-Noor University,Tehran,

The purpose of this research is to identify postmodern narrative techniques in Dian Satterfield s The Thirteenth Tale (2006) [1] in the light of Brian McHale s Ontological foregrounding [2]. The Thirteenth Tale which isconstructed around a series of strategies closely related to the post-cognitive worldview and strategies which havecome to be associated with postmodernist poetics and which can as well be regarded as confirming and developingideas and devices already and later present in other postmodern works; therefore, analysis according to McHale s postmodernist ontological foregrounding becomes the key to define the novel s postmodernist aspects through which the blurred boundaries of reality and fictionality turn to be more comprehensible. Obviously there are some narrativetechniques that are used to forground the ontological aspects by using some postmodernist narrative techniques including Chinese box strategy, Trampl oeil and its subcategories, Metalepsis or strange loops, abysmal fiction and Mise-en-abyme and so on that all these techniques leads to ontological violations of the fiction s real world and the created fictional world in that realm and have the effect of interrupting and complicating the ontological horizon of the fiction, and multiplying its worlds.This research deals only with those techniques that are used influentially to form the story as a succesful postmodernist fiction.

Ontological Foregrounding, Chinese Box, Tromp òeil, The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Satterfield