Interesting examples of metagenre go far beyond the simple strategy of either opposing or endorsing genre conventions. […] [T]hey may bring different genres (and different attitudes to these genres) into play. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for instance, Shakespeare dismisses satire and parodies tragedy, while simultaneously defining and defending his own brand of comedy. A metageneric statement may also be at odds with what a text does, in the manner of the liar paradox. Like the Cretan who says that Cretans are liars, a text may repudiate a genre while simultaneously practicing it. […] The various explicit and implicit instances of metagenre in a text may also contradict each other, and they may change in the course of a text (as they do in Bauer’s examples, which initially reject but ultimately embrace the sonnet conventions). The most rewarding cases of metagenre create a complex and dynamic debate, a concert of critical and affirmative voices through which a text ultimately achieves a sense of itself.

From: Burkhard Niederhoff, “An Introduction to Metagenre with a Postscript on the Journey from Comedy to Tragedy in E. M. Forster’s Where Angels Fear to Tread“