"meta" in art and literature was more of a 20th century thing, even an early 20th thing (as you can see in the work of the Avant-gardes) and you can find a lot

"meta" in art and literature was more of a 20th century thing, even an early 20th thing (as you can see in the work of the Avant-gardes) and you can find a lot of earlier examples, at least in literature, maybe most notably through books that experimented with diegesis. I think it's just coming back in fashion in ways that are both a lot more naive (in their content and their approach) and more sophisticated (in their forms and that of the subcultures that they use as a substrate) than what the 20th saw.