Mise en abyme (in literature and other media)

Mise en abyme (also mise-en-abîme, French "put in the abyss", [miːz ɒn əˈbɪːm]) is a transgeneric and transmedial technique that can occur in any literary genre, in comics, film, painting or other media.

Further, mise en abyme can either be partial or complete (i.e. mirror part or all of the upper level) and either probable, improbable or paradoxical.

[3] André Gide, in an 1893 entry into his journal,[4] was the first to write about mise en abyme in connection with describing self-reflexive embeddings in various forms of art.

Lucien Dällenbach[7] continues the research in a magisterial study by classifying and describing various forms and functions of mise en abyme.

Towards the end of the story, the narrator begins to read aloud parts of an antique volume entitled Mad Trist by Sir Launcelot Canning.

Yet, as a rule, mise en abyme merely ‘mirrors’ elements from a superior level on a subordinate one, but does not necessarily trigger an analysis of them.

These terms describe related features, as mise en abyme can be a springboard to metalepsis if there is a paradoxical confusion of the levels involved.

[9] To summarise, mise en abyme is a form of similarity, repetition and hence a variant of self-reference that is not necessarily discussed within its appearing medium, it only occurs.