abyme
- noun
- Literature
:
mise en abyme
- Here the story ends, repeating itself apparently in a mise-en-abyme effect of story within story.
- mise en abyme
Examples
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In her latest novel, the author cleverly employs a mise en abyme, presenting a story within a story that captivates the reader.
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Staging an audience in a play functions in the same way as presenting an act of reading does in a novel; the mise en abyme forces the audience to acknowledge their presence in the playhouse.
Academic text (2017) -
The same might be said for the similar device of mise-en-abyme.
Academic text (1995) -
The variation structure adopted in chapter 16 would thus be a mise en abyme of the overall structure of the novel.
Academic text (2003) -
Although many critics have mentioned Sabato's use of mise en abyme, there has been little extended discussion of it.
Academic text (1995) -
We descend into a mise en abyme of representative spaces.
Academic text (1993) -
A line from Runeberg's epic poem turns out to be a mise-en-abyme revealing in advance a decisive turn of the plot.
Academic text (1999) -
The laying bare of fictional conventions is combined with a mise en abyme that contributes to the novel's structural fragmentation.
Academic text (1997) -
The reader of Madame Bovary will notice that this metaphor parallels the unfolding of the plot as a mise en abyme.
Academic text (2000) -
In Abaddon, Sabato amplifies the use of mise en abyme to the point of threatening all narrative coherence, and this is for deliberate artistic reasons.
Academic text (1995)
How Recursive
- Literature
- Specialized
Surface Forms
Etymology
Abyme in art comes from the French phrase mise en abyme, which literally means 'placing into the abyss' and was used for putting an image or scene inside itself. So an abyme in a book, film, or painting is like a 'story within a story' or a picture showing itself, which is why the term means a self-contained repeat.
