Story within a story
Encyclopedia
A story within a story, also rendered story-within-a-story, is a literary device in which one narrative
is presented during the action of another narrative. Mise en abyme
is the French
term for a similar literary device (also referring to the practice in heraldry
of placing the image of a small shield on a larger shield). A story within a story can be used in novel
s, short stories
, plays
, television program
s, film
s, poems, song
s, and philosophical
essays.
Sometimes with type 2, someone completes the inner story in the real world: see #From story within a story to separate story.
The literary device of stories within a story dates back to a device known as a frame story
, when the outer story does not have much matter, and most of the bulk of the work consists of one or more complete stories told by one or more storytellers. This concept can be found in ancient Indian literature
, such as the epics
Mahabharata
and Ramayana
, Vishnu Sarma
's Panchatantra
, Syntipas
' Seven Wise Masters
, the Hitopadesha
, and Vikram and the Vampire
. Another early example of stories within a story can be found in the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights), which can be traced back to Arabic
, Persian
, and Indian storytelling traditions. Homer's Odyssey too makes use of this device; Odysseus' adventures at sea are all narrated by the hero himself to the court of king Alcinous in Scheria. Other shorter tales, many of them false, account for much of the Odyssey.
Often the stories within a story are used to satirize views, not only in the outer story but also in the real world. The Itchy & Scratchy Show
from The Simpsons
and Terrance & Phillip from South Park
both comment on the levels of violence and acceptable behaviour in the media and allow criticism of the outer cartoon to be addressed in the cartoon itself.
Stories-within-a-story may disclose the background of characters or events, tell of myths and legends that influence the plot, or even seem to be extraneous diversions from the plot. In his 1895 historical novel
Pharaoh
, Bolesław Prus introduces a number of stories-within-the-story, ranging in length from vignette
to full-blown story, many of them drawn from ancient Egypt
ian texts, that further the plot, illuminate character
s, and even inspire the fashioning of individual characters.
The provenance
of the story is sometimes explained internally, as in The Lord of the Rings
by J. R. R. Tolkien
, which depicts the Red Book of Westmarch
(a story-internal version of the book itself) as a history compiled by several of the characters. The subtitles
of The Hobbit
(There and Back Again) is depicted as part of a rejected title of this book-within-a-book, and The Lord of the Rings is a part of the final title.
When a story is told within another, rather than being told as part of the plot, it allows the author to play on the reader's perceptions of the characters—the motives and the reliability of the storyteller
are automatically in question. In Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales
, the characters tell tales suited to their personalities and tell them in ways that highlight their personalities. The noble knight tells a noble story, the boring character tells a very dull tale and the rude miller tells a smutty tale.
In some cases, the story within a story is involved in the action of the plot of the outer story. An example is "The Mad Trist" in Edgar Allan Poe
's The Fall of the House of Usher
, where through somewhat mystical means the narrator's reading of the story-within-a-story influences the reality of the story he has been telling, so that what happens in "the Mad Trist" begins happening in "The Fall of the House of Usher". Also, in Don Quixote by Cervantes
, there are many stories within the story that influence the hero's actions (there are others that even the author himself admits are purely digressive).
An inner story is often independent so that it can either be skipped over or read separately, although many subtle connections may be lost. A commonly anthologised
story is The Grand Inquisitor
by Dostoevsky from his long psychological novel The Brothers Karamazov
and is told by one brother to another to explain, in part, his view on religion and morality. It also, in a succinct way, dramatizes many of Dostoevsky's interior conflicts.
Sometimes, the inner story serves as an outlet for discarded idea
s that the author deemed to be of too much merit to leave out completely, something that is somewhat analogous to the inclusion of deleted scenes
with DVD
releases of films. An example of this is the chapter The Town Ho's Story from Herman Melville
's famous novel Moby-Dick
, which tells a fully formed story of an exciting mutiny
. This inner story contains many plot ideas that Melville had conceived during the early stages of writing Moby Dick, ideas that were originally intended to be used later on in the novel, but as writing progressed these plot ideas eventually proved impossible to fit around the characters that Melville went on to create and develop. Instead of discarding these ideas altogether, Melville instead weaved them into a coherent short story and had the character Ishmael demonstrate his eloquence and intelligence by telling the story to his impressed friends. Arthur Ransome
uses the device to allow his young characters in the Swallows and Amazons series of children's books, plotted in the recognisable, everyday world, to take part in fantastic adventures of piracy in distant lands: two books from the twelve: Peter Duck
and Missee Lee
(and some would include Great Northern?
as a third) are adventures supposedly made up by the characters themselves.
With the rise of literary modernism
, writers experimented with ways in which multiple narratives might nest imperfectly within each other. A particularly ingenious example of nested narratives is James Merrill's
1974 modernist poem
"Lost in Translation
".
Other prime examples of experimental modernist literature that incorporate multiple narratives into one story are various novels written by American author Kurt Vonnegut
. Vonnegut includes the recurring character Kilgore Trout
in many of his novels. Trout acts as the mysterious science fiction
writer who enhances the moral of the novel through plot descriptions of his stories. Books such as Breakfast of Champions
and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
are sprinkled with these plot descriptions.
Robert A. Heinlein
's later books (The Number of the Beast
, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls
and To Sail Beyond the Sunset
) propose the idea that every real universe is a fiction in another Universe. This hypothesis
enables many writer who are characters in the books to interact with their own creations.
The Amory Wars
, the story told through the music of Coheed and Cambria
, tells a story for the first two albums but reveals that the story is being actively written by a character called the Writer in the third. During the album, the Writer delves into his own story and kills one of the characters, much to the dismay of the main character.
Several Star Trek
tales are stories or events within stories, such as Gene Roddenberry
's novelization
of Star Trek: The Motion Picture
, J. A. Lawrence's Mudd's Angels, John M. Ford
's The Final Reflection
, Margaret Wander Bonanno
's Strangers from the Sky
(which adopts the conceit that it is book from the future by an author called Gen Jaramet-Sauner), and J.R. Rasmussen's "Research" in the anthology Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
II. Steven Barnes
's novelization of "Far Beyond the Stars" partners with Greg Cox's The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh
(Volume Two) to tell us that the story "Far Beyond the Stars" — and, by extension, all of Star Trek itself — is the creation of 1950s writer Benny Russell.
The Quantum Leap novel Knights Of The Morningstar also features a character who writes a book by that name.
The Crying of Lot 49
by Thomas Pynchon
has several characters seeing a play called 'The Courier's Tragedy' by the fictitious Jacobean
playwright
Richard Wharfinger. The events of the play broadly mirror those of the novel and give the main character, Oedipa, a greater context with which to consider her predicament; the play concerns a feud between two rival mail distribution companies, which appears to be on-going to the present day, and in which, if this is the case, Oedipa has found herself involved. As in Hamlet
, the director makes changes to the original script; in this instance, a couplet that was added, possibly by religious zealots intent on giving the play extra moral gravity, are said only on the night that Oedipa sees the play. From what Pynchon tells us, this is the only mention in the play of Thurn and Taxis' rivals' name - Trystero - and it is the seed for the conspiracy that unfurls.
A variant of this device is a flashback
within a flashback, which was introduced by the Japanese film Rashomon
(1950), based on the Japanese novel In a Grove
(1921). The story unfolds in flashback as the four witnesses in the story—the bandit, the murdered samurai
, his wife, and the nameless woodcutter—recount the events of one afternoon in a grove. But it is also a flashback within a flashback, because the accounts of the witnesses are being retold by a woodcutter and a priest to a ribald commoner as they wait out a rainstorm in a ruined gatehouse.
The story "The Three Brothers" was in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and its film adaptation. The story was later included in the book The Tales of Beedle the Bard
.
This literary device also dates back to ancient Sanskrit literature
. In Vishnu Sarma
's Panchatantra
, an inter-woven series of colorful animal tales are told with one narrative opening within another, sometimes three or four layers deep, and then unexpectedly snapping shut in irregular rhythms to sustain attention. In Ugrasrava's epic Mahabharata
, the Kurukshetra War
is narrated by a character in Vyasa
's Jaya, which itself is narrated by a character in Vaisampayana
's Bharata, which itself is narrated by a character in Ugrasrava's Mahabharata.
The structure of The Symposium and Phaedo
, attributed to Plato
, is of a story within a story within a story.
Another early example is the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights), where the general story is narrated by an unknown narrator, and in this narration the stories are told by Scheherazade
. In many of Scheherazade's narrations there are also stories narrated, and even in some of these, there are some other stories. An example of this includes the "Sinbad the Sailor
" story narrated by Scheherazade. Within the story itself, the protagonist Sinbad the Sailor narrates the stories of his seven voyages to Sinbad the Porter. Another example is "The Three Apples", a murder mystery
narrated by Scheherazade. Within the story itself, after the murderer reveals himself, he narrates his reasons for the murder as a flashback
of events leading up to the murder. Within this flashback, an unreliable narrator
tells a story to mislead the would-be murderer, who later discovers that he was misled after another character narrates the truth to him. As the story concludes, the "Tale of Núr al-Dín Alí and his Son" is narrated within it. In yet another tale Scheherazade narrates, "The Fisherman and the Jinni
", the "Tale of the Wazir and the Sage Duban" is narrated within it, and within that there are three more tales narrated.
Jan Potocki
's The Manuscript Found in Saragossa
(1797-1805) has extremely rich interlocking structure with stories-within-stories reaching several levels of depth.
Plays such as I Hate Hamlet or movies such as A Midwinter's Tale
are about a production of Hamlet, which in turn includes a production of The Murder of Gonzago (or The Mouse-trap), so we have a story (The Murder of Gonzago) within a story (Hamlet) within a story (A Midwinter's Tale).
At least one line in the C. S. Lewis
book The Last Battle
implies that Lewis learned of Narnia's events - and thus wrote the Narnia books - after the Railway Accident in 1949, when Susan told him the stories in the belief that she was relating mere childhood make-believe. Further still, The Silver Chair
states that a Narnian author wrote a book called The Horse And His Boy
after the events related in the novel.
Mary Shelley
's Frankenstein
at one point features the narration of an Arctic explorer, who records the narration of Victor Frankenstein, who recounts the narration of his creation, who narrates the story of a cabin dwelling family he secretly observes.
Margaret Atwood
's novel The Blind Assassin
also uses this technique. The novel's expository narration is interspersed with excerpts from a novel written by one of the main characters; the novel-within-a-novel itself contains a science fiction
story written by one of that novel's characters.
Stanisław Lem's Tale of the Three Storytelling Machines of King Genius from The Cyberiad
has several levels of storytelling. Interestingly, all levels tell stories of the same person, Trurl.
House of Leaves
, the tale of a man who finds a manuscript telling the story of a documentary that may or may not have ever existed, contains multiple layers of plot. The book even includes footnotes and letters that tell their own stories only vaguely related to the events in the main narrative of the book, and even includes footnotes for fake books. In addition, the fact that portions of the book were released through the internet and purported to be true added an even higher level to the cult following surrounding this book.
The Simpsons
parodied this structure with numerous 'layers' of sub-stories in the Season 17 episode "The Seemingly Never-Ending Story
".
Neil Gaiman
's influential graphic novel series The Sandman includes several examples of this device. Worlds' End
, volume 8 of the series, contains several instances of multiple storytelling levels, including Cerements (issue #55) where one of the inmost levels actually corresponds to one of the outer levels, turning the story-within-a-story structure into an infinite regression.
In the beginning of the music video for the Michael Jackson
song "Thriller
", the heroine is terrorized by her monster boyfriend in what turns out to be a movie within a dream.
Roald Dahl
's story The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
is about a rich bachelor who finds an essay written by someone who learnt to "see" playing cards from the reverse side. The full text of this essay is included in the story, and itself includes a lengthy sub-story told as a true experience by one of the essay's protagonists, Imhrat Khan.
The music video for the Björk
song "Bachelorette
" features a musical that is about, in part, the creation of that musical. A mini-theater and small audience appear on stage to watch the musical-within-a-musical, and at some point, within that second musical a yet-smaller theater and audience appear.
Episode 14 of the anime
series Martian Successor Nadesico
causes a rather confusing link between the world of the show itself and that of Gekigangar III
, a popular anime that exists within its universe and that many characters are fans of; the episode is essentially a clip show, but has several newly animated segments based on Gekigangar that involves the characters of that show watching Nadesico (many of them being big fans of it themselves). The episode ends with the crew of the Nadesico watching the very same episode of Gekigangar, causing a bizarre paradox
of sorts.
Since Nadesico, other anime series have featured shows-within-a-show; the most famous examples are Densha Otoko
, which had the series Getsumen To Heiki Mina and Genshiken
, which had Kujibiki Unbalance
. Both sub-shows have since become actual series in their own right, though three episodes of Kujibiki Unbalance were created as OVAs to coincide with the release of Genshiken. The episodes were styled as if they were part of a serial, though they were actually one-offs. There is also a Kujibiki Unbalance manga, being translated and published by Del Rey/Tanoshimi
.
Jostein Gaarder
's books often feature this device. Examples are The Solitaire Mystery, where the protagonist receives a small book from a baker, in which the baker tells the story of a sailor who tells the story of another sailor, and Sophie's World
about a girl who is actually a character in a book that is being read by Hilde, a girl in another dimension. Later on in the book Sophie questions this idea, and realizes that Hilde too could be a character in a story that in turn is being read by another.
The popular graphic novel Watchmen
features a story within a story called Tales of the Black Freighter, which details that man's insanity comes from fear of losing something, and parallels a character in the main story and hints at his actions.
Daniel Handler
's introduction in Lemony Snicket
's Unauthorized Autobiography
continually introduces a new story about a page into the previous one, thus creating a confusing and inconsequential (but not incorrect or self-contradictory) storyline that is never finished, always dealing with the questions he is asked but never answering them. He drops a hint in one of the layers that this is simply a technique to distract the reader from the fact that he never answers these questions.
Best New Horror, a short story
from the book 20th Century Ghosts
, has the main character reading a horror tale called Button Boy.
Catheryne Valente's duology, "The Orphan's Tales" featured strong influences from 1001 Arabian Nights, with stories nestled within stories - sometimes up to more than seven layers.
in The Spanish Tragedy
around 1587, where the play is presented before an audience of two of the characters, who comment upon the action. From references in other contemporary works, Kyd is also assumed to have been the writer of an early, lost version of Hamlet (the so-called Ur-Hamlet
), with a play-within-a-play interlude.
William Shakespeare
used this device in many of his plays, including A Midsummer Night's Dream
, Love's Labours Lost, and Hamlet
. In Hamlet the prince, Hamlet himself, asks some strolling players to perform the Murder of Gonzago. The action and characters in The Murder mirror the murder of Hamlet's father in the main action, and Prince Hamlet writes additional material to emphasize this. Hamlet wishes to provoke the murderer, his uncle, and sums this up by saying "the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king." Hamlet calls this new play The Mouse-trap (a title that Agatha Christie
later took for the long-running play The Mousetrap
). In the Hamlet-based film Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
the players even feature a third-level puppet theatre version within their play. Almost the whole of The Taming of the Shrew
is a play-within-a-play, presented to convince Christopher Sly
, a drunken tinker, that he is a nobleman watching a private performance, but the device has no relevance to the plot (unless Katharina's subservience to her "lord" in the last scene is intended to strengthen the deception against the tinker) and is often dropped in modern productions. Pericles draws in part on the 14th century Confessio Amantis
(itself a frame story) by John Gower
and Shakespeare has the ghost of Gower "assume man's infirmities" to introduce his work to the contemporary audience and comment on the action of the play.
In Anton Chekhov
's The Seagull
there are specific allusions to Hamlet
: in the first act a son stages a play to impress his mother, a professional actress, and her new lover; the mother responds by comparing her son to Hamlet. Later he tries to come between them, as Hamlet had done with his mother and her new husband. The tragic developments in the plot follow in part from the scorn the mother shows for her son's play.
The opera Pagliacci
is about a troupe of actors who perform a play about marital infidelity that mirrors their own lives. And John Adams' Nixon in China (1985-7) features a surreal version of Madam Mao's Red Detachment of Women to extraordinary effect, illuminating the ascendence of human values over the disillusionment of high politics in the meeting.
In Bertolt Brecht
's The Caucasian Chalk Circle
, a play is staged as a parable
to villagers in the Soviet Union
to justify the re-allocation of their farmland: the tale describes how a child is awarded to a servant-girl rather than its natural mother, an aristocrat, as the woman most likely to care for it well. This kind of play-within-a-play, which appears at the beginning of the main play and acts as a 'frame' for it, is called an 'induction'
. Brecht's one-act play The Elephant Calf
(1926) is a play-within-a-play performed in the foyer of the theatre during his Man Equals Man
.
In Jean Giraudoux's
play Ondine
, all of act two is a series of scenes within scenes, sometimes two levels deep. This increases the dramatic tension and also makes more poignant the inevitable failure of the relationship between the mortal
Hans and water sprite Ondine.
The Two-Character Play
by Tennessee Williams
has a concurrent double plot with the convention of a play within a play. Felice and Clare are siblings and are both actor/producers touring ‘The Two-Character Play.’ They have supposedly been abandoned by their crew and have been left to put on the play by themselves. The characters in the play are also brother and sister and are also named Clare and Felice.
The Mysteries
, a modern reworking of the mediaeval mystery play
s, remains faithful to its roots by having the modern actors play the sincere, naïve tradesmen and women as they take part in the original performances.
The musical Kiss Me, Kate
is about the production of a fictitious musical, The Taming of the Shrew, based on the Shakespeare play of the same name
, and features several scenes from it. Alternatively, a play might be about the production of a play, and include the performance of all or part of the play, as in Noises Off
, Les feluettes
or The Producers
.
In most stagings of the musical Cats
, which include the song "Growltiger's Last Stand" — a recollection of an old play by Gus the Theatre Cat — the character of Lady Griddlebone
sings "The Ballad of Billy McCaw". (However, many productions of the show omit "Growltiger's Last Stand", and "The Ballad of Billy McCaw" has at times been replaced with a mock aria, so this metastory isn't always seen.) Depending on the production, there is another musical scene called The Awful Battle of the Pekes and the Pollices where the Jellicles put on a show for their leader. In Lestat: The Musical, there are three play within a plays. First, when Lestat visits his childhood friend, Nicolas, who works in a theater, where he discovers his love for theater; and two more when the Theater of the Vampires perform. One is used as a plot mechanism to explain the vampire god, Marius, which sparks an interest in Lestat to find him.
A play within a play also occurs in the musical The King and I
, where Princess Tuptim and the royal dancers give a performance of Small House of Uncle Thomas (or Uncle Tom's Cabin
) to their English guests. The play mirrors Tuptim's situation, as she wishes to run away from slavery to be with her lover, Lun Tha.
uses this concept often in his films. It can be seen most in the 2008 film Synecdoche, New York
. The main character Caden Cotard is a skilled director of plays and he receives a grant to make a remarkable theater piece. He ends up creating a carbon copy of the outside world. The 2001 film Moulin Rouge!
features a fictitious musical within a film, called "Spectacular Spectacular", which itself may have been based on an ancient Sanskrit play
, The Little Clay Cart. The 1942 Ernst Lubitsch
comedy To Be or Not to Be
confuses the audience in the opening scenes with a play about Adolf Hitler appearing to be taking place within the actual plot of the film. Thereafter, the acting company players serve as the protagonists of the film and frequently use acting/costumes to deceive various characters in the film. Hamlet
also serves as an important throughline in the film, as suggested by the title. Laurence Olivier
sets the opening scene of his 1944 film of Henry V
in the tiring room
of the old Globe Theatre
as the actors prepare for their roles on stage. The early part of the film follows the actors in these "stage" performances and only later does the action almost imperceptibly expand to the full realism of the Battle of Agincourt
. By way of increasingly more artificial sets (based on mediaeval paintings) the film finally returns to The Globe.
The main plot device in Repo! The Genetic Opera
is an opera which is going to be held the night of the events of the movie. All of the principal characters of the film play a role in the opera, though the audience watching the opera is unaware that some of the events portrayed are more than drama.
At the film To Be or Not to Be
, the play "The Naughty Nazis" is forbidden for the Gestapo at the beginning of the film.
film Day for Night
is about the making of a fictitious movie called Meet Pamela (Je vous présente Pamela) and shows the interactions of the actors as they are making this movie about a woman who falls for her husband's father. The story of Pamela involves lust, betrayal, death, sorrow, and change, events that are mirrored in the experiences of the actors portrayed in Day for Night.
The script to Karel Reisz
's movie The French Lieutenant's Woman
(1980), written by Harold Pinter
, is a film-within-a-film adaptation of John Fowles's
book. In addition to the Victorian love story of the book, Pinter creates a present-day background story that shows a love affair between the main actors.
In Buster Keaton's Sherlock, Jr.
, Keaton's protagonist actually enters into a film while it is playing in a cinema.
The 2002 Pedro Almodovar
film Talk to Her
(Hable con Ella) has the chief character Benigno tell a story called The Shrinking Lover to Alicia, a long-term comatose patient whom Benigno, a male nurse, is assigned to care for. The film presents The Shrinking Lover in the form of a black-and-white silent melodrama. To prove his love to a scientist girlfriend, the The Shrinking Lover protagonist drinks a potion that makes him progressively smaller. The resulting seven-minute scene, which is readily intelligible and enjoyable as a stand-alone short subject, is considerably more overtly comic than the rest of Talk to Her -- the protagonist climbs giant breasts as if they were rock formations and even ventures his way inside a (compared to him) gigantic vagina. Critics have noted that The Shrinking Lover essentially is a sex metaphor. Later in Talk to Her, the comatose Alicia is discovered to be pregnant and Benigno is sentenced to jail for rape. The Shrinking Lover was named Best Scene of 2002 in the Skandies, an annual survey of online cinephiles and critics invited each year by critic Mike D'Angelo.
In the 2006 Tarsem film The Fall
, an injured silent-movie stuntman tells heroic fantasy stories to a little girl with a broken arm to pass time in the hospital, which the film visualizes and presents with the stuntman's voice becoming voiceover narration. The fantasy tale bleeds back into and comments on the film's "present-tense" story. There are often incongruities based on the fact that the stuntman is an American and the girl Persian -- the stuntman's voiceover refers to "Indians," “a squaw” and “a teepee,” but the visuals show a Bollywood-style devi and a Taj Mahal-like castle.
Mel Brooks
's 1974 comedy Blazing Saddles
leaves its Western setting when the climactic fight scene breaks out, revealling the setting to have been a set in the Warner Bros studio lot; the fight spills out onto an adjacent musical set, then into the studio canteen, and finally onto the streets. The two protagonists arrive at Grauman's Chinese Theater, which is showing the "premiere" of Blazing Saddles; they enter the cinema to watch the conclusion of their own film.
The concept of a film within a television series is employed in the Macross
universe. The Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love?
(1984) was originally intended as an alternative theatrical re-telling of the television series The Super Dimension Fortress Macross
(1982), but was later "retconned" into the Macross canon
as a popular movie within the television series Macross 7
(1994).
In the latter two films of the Scream
horror trilogy, a film-within-a-film format is used when the events of the first film spawn their own horror trilogy within the films themselves. In Scream 2
, characters get killed while watching a film version of the events in the first Scream film, while in Scream 3
the actors playing the trilogy's characters end up getting killed, much in the same way as the characters they are playing on screen. In the latest Scream movie, Scream 4
, in the opening sequence, two characters are watching Stab 7 before they get killed. Also, the characters of Stab 7 are watching Stab 6. There's also a party in which all seven Stab movies were going to be shown. References are also made to Stab 5 involving time travel
as a plot device.
Austin Powers in Goldmember
begins with an action film opening, which turns out to be a sequence being filmed by Steven Spielberg
. Near the ending, the events of the film itself are revealed to be a movie being enjoyed by the characters. Parts of director Spike Jonze
's Adaptation. follows a fictionalized version of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman
as he struggles to adapt a book into a script, while the movie features scenes about the making of Being John Malkovich
, previously written by Kaufman and directed by Jonze.
Tropic Thunder
(2008) is a comedy film
revolving around a group of prima donna
actors making a Vietnam War
film (itself also named "Tropic Thunder") when their fed-up writer and director decide to abandon them in the middle of the jungle, forcing them to fight their way out.
The first episode of the anime
series The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya consists almost entirely of a poorly made film that the protagonists created, complete with Kyon
's typical, sarcastic commentary.
The television shows 30 Rock
, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
, Sonny with a Chance
& Kappa Mikey
feature a sketch show within the TV show.
Chuck Jones
's 1953 cartoon
Duck Amuck
shows Daffy Duck
trapped in a cartoon that an unseen animator repeatedly manipulates. At the end, it is revealed that the whole cartoon was being controlled by Bugs Bunny
.
All feature-length films by Jörg Buttgereit
except Schramm
feature a film within the film. In Nekromantik
, the protagonist goes to the cinema to see the fictional slasher film Vera. In Der Todesking
one of the character watches a video of the fictional nazi exploitation film Vera - Todesengel der Gestapo and in Nekromantik 2
, the characters go to see a movie called Mon dejeuner avec Vera which is a parody of Lois Malle's My Dinner with André
.
The Irish television series Father Ted
features a television show, Father Ben, which has characters and storylines almost identical to that of Father Ted.
In the Quentin Tarantino
film Inglourious Basterds, the Nazi-Propaganda film Nation's Pride is directed by Eli Roth
.
series, mini-games exist that are non-plot oriented, and optional to the completion of the game. GTA: San Andreas features several arcade-like games, including 'Invaders from Uranus' (A Space Invaders
parody). GTA 4 has another arcade game called 'Duality'. Also, while not playable video games within video games, the main games in the Pokémon
series generally include a television and game console in the player character
's room. The specific type of console portrayed depends on which one was most recently released by Nintendo
when the specific game was released, e.g. a Wii
in Pokémon Black and White
versions. The Nintendo 64 video game Donkey Kong 64
also had this system, at one part of the game when playing as Donkey Kong, the player can play the original Donkey Kong
game.
In the Shenmue
series of games there are several instances of games within the main game. In the first installment, the player is able to play a Sega Saturn
inside the Hazuki Residence and there are several Sega arcade games playable in different locations. In Shenmue 2, playable arcade machines featuring other Sega titles are scattered throughout the game world.
In Final Fantasy VII
there are several video-games that can be played in an arcade in the Gold Saucer theme park, consisting of a beat-em-up, a snowboarding game, an RPG and a submarine game.
The earliest examples are in Ugrasrava's epic Mahabharata
and Vishnu Sarma
's Panchatantra
. Some of the stories narrated in the Panchatantra often had stories within them. In the epic Mahabharata, the Kurukshetra War
is narrated by a character in Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa's Jaya, which itself is narrated by a character in Vaisampayana
's Bharata, which itself is narrated by a character in Ugrasrava's Mahabharata.
Another early example is The Book of One Thousand and One Nights
, where the general story is narrated by an unknown narrator, and in this narration the stories are told by Scheherazade
. In most of Scheherazade's narrations there are also stories narrated, and even in some of these, there are some other stories.
In Douglas Hofstadter
's Gödel, Escher, Bach
, there is a narrative between Achilles and the Tortoise (characters borrowed from Lewis Carroll
, who in turn borrowed them from Zeno
), and within this story they find a book entitled "Provocative Adventures of Achilles and the Tortoise Taking Place in Sundry Spots of the Globe", which they begin to read, the Tortoise taking the part of the Tortoise, and Achilles taking the part of Achilles. Within this narrative, which itself is somewhat self-referential, the two characters find a book entitled "Provocative Adventures of Achilles and the Tortoise Taking Place in Sundry Spots of the Globe", which they begin to read, the Tortoise taking the part of Achilles, and Achilles taking the part of the Tortoise.
In The Sandman by Neil Gaiman
, the necropolis apprentice Petrefax tells a story that includes a storytelling session about Destruction telling a story. It is later shown that this - along with all the other stories in World's End - are being related to a bar girl by one of the characters present at Petrefax's original storytelling session.
In Sue Townsend
's Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years
, Adrian
writes a book entitled Lo! The Flat Hills Of My Homeland, in which the main character, Jake Westmorland, writes a book called Sparg of Kronk, whose eponymous character, Sparg, writes a book with no language.
In Philip K. Dick
's novel The Man in the High Castle
, each character comes into interaction with a book called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, which was written by the Man in the High Castle. Dick's novel details a world in which the Axis Powers of World War II had succeeded in dominating the known world. The novel within the novel details an alternative to this history in which the Allies overcome the Axis and bring stability to the world.
In Red Orc's Rage
by Philip J. Farmer a doubly recursive method is used to interwine its fictional layers. This novel is part of a science-fiction series, the World of Tiers
. Farmer collaborated in the writing of this novel with an American psychiatrist,Dr. A. James Giannini. Dr. Giannini had previously used the World of Tiers series in treating patients in group therapy. During these therapeutic sessions, the content and process of the text and novelist was discussed rather than the lives of the patients. In this way subconscious defenses could be circumvented. Farmer took the real life case-studies and melded these with adventures of his characters in the series.
In an old Chinese tale, a monk is telling a story to a young monk, in which the story is about a monk telling a story to a young monk, and nest the story infinitely deep.
In the fictional world of the Toy Story
movies, Buzz Lightyear
is an animated toy action figure, which was based on a fictitious cartoon series, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command
, which did not exist in the real world except for snippets seen within Toy Story. Later, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command was produced in full in the real world, perhaps prompted by people who thought that the brief showing of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command in Toy Story was an embedded real-world advertisement.
Another notable example is the relationship between Genshiken
, a manga series about popular culture, and Kujibiki Unbalance
, a series in the Genshiken universe, which has spawned merchandise of its own, and is being remade into a series on its own.
On other occasions such spin-offs may be produced as a way of providing additional information on the fictional world for fans. A well-known example of this comes in the Harry Potter
series of J. K. Rowling
, where three such supplemental books have been produced, with the profits going to charity. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
is a textbook used by the main character, and Quidditch Through the Ages
is a book from the library at his school. The Tales of Beedle the Bard
provides an additional layer of fiction, the 'tales' being instructional stories told to children in the characters' world.
Perhaps the most unusual example of this was the fictitious author Kilgore Trout
, who appears in the works of Kurt Vonnegut
. In the world of those stories, Kilgore Trout has written a novel called Venus on the Half-Shell
. In 1975 real-world author Philip José Farmer
wrote a science-fiction novel called Venus on the Half-Shell, which he published under the name Kilgore Trout.
The movie Adaptation
was presented as if it had been written by Charlie Kaufman
and his fictitious brother Donald Kaufman. Both 'brothers' were nominated for an Oscar that year.
Sometimes such spin-offs are produced against the original creator's wishes. One example is that the Calvin & Hobbes comic strip (written by Bill Waterson) includes in its scenario a children's book Hamster Huey & The Gooey Kablooie, and Bill Waterson stated in The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book that he believed that Hamster Huey & The Gooey Kablooie should remain an undefined story, left to the reader's imagination; but someone not associated with the strip published Hamster Huey & The Gooey Kablooie in the real world.
At least one complete Captain Proton story has been written in the real world: http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Captain-Proton-Dean-Wesley-Smith/9780671036461-item.html?pticket=s0wazr22p1natg55uc4gj145e8peh1SsCiRuE%2fmuY4PwtRPzSQw%3d Captain Proton: Defender of the Earth, a comic, by Dean Wesley Smith
, who presumed that in the Star Trek universe, the holonovel Captain Proton was adapted from a supposed 1930's comic; and he set out to write and publish that comic in the real world. (Other fan fiction described as Captain Proton stories are Star Trek: Voyager stories whose action happens partly in Voyager's holodeck
where the Captain Proton program is running.)
, forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brennan
spends much of her free time writing novels about a forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs
. This mimics Reichs' own real-life second career of writing the Temperance Brennan
series of novels and working as executive producer of the TV show, all while working as a forensic anthropologist at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for the State of North Carolina
and the Laboratoire des Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale for the province
of Québec
. Brennan
has made at least one other reference to the real-life Kathy Reichs
most notably by stating in the series pilot that the closest other forensic anthropologist is in Montreal.
.
Mystery author Ellery Queen
can also be considered a "fictional artist" of sorts, though the proverbial line between his "true-life" and "fictional" exploits are generally very blurred.
In this case the "frame story"—that is, the fictional creator's life—can be considered metafiction
al, since each story (or other work) supposedly created by that character adds a little to his or her own (fictional) story.
Sometimes a song or a poem or an image in a fiction work, which was actually composed by the author, is attributed by the author to one of his characters
, for example the song "Namarie
" in The Lord of the Rings
by J. R. R. Tolkien
, which Tolkien attributes to the character Galadriel
.
television series; it has also happened on other shows including The X-Files
, Stargate SG1 and the short-lived Ellery Queen
series.
" or "frame story
", where a supplemental story is used to help tell the main story. In the supplemental story, or "frame", one or more characters tell the main story to one or more other characters.
The earliest examples of "frame stories" and "stories within stories" were in ancient Indian literature
, such as the Mahabharata
, Ramayana
, Fables of Bidpai
, Hitopadesha
and Vikram and the Vampire
. Both The Golden Ass
by Apuleius
and Metamorphoses
by Ovid
extend the depths of framing to several degrees. Another early example is the famous Arabian Nights, in which Sheherazade
narrates stories within stories, and even within some of these, more stories are narrated. Chaucer's
The Canterbury Tales
is also a frame story.
A well-known modern example of this is The Princess Bride
, both the book and the movie. In the movie, a grandfather is reading the story of "The Princess Bride" to his grandson. In the book, a more detailed frame story has a father editing a (nonexistent) much longer work for his son, creating his own "Good Parts Version" (as the book called it) by leaving out all the parts that would bore a young boy. Both the book and the movie assert that the central story is from a book called "The Princess Bride" by a nonexistent author named S. Morgenstern.
Sometimes a frame story exists in the same setting as the main story. On the television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles
, each episode was framed as though it were being told by an older Indy
(usually a very elderly George Hall
, though one featured Harrison Ford
).
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
is presented during the action of another narrative. Mise en abyme
Mise en abyme
Mise en abyme is a term originally from the French and means "placed into abyss".The commonplace usage of this phrase is describing the visual experience of standing between two mirrors, seeing an infinite reproduction of one's image, but it has several other meanings in the realm of the creative...
is the French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
term for a similar literary device (also referring to the practice in heraldry
Heraldry
Heraldry is the profession, study, or art of creating, granting, and blazoning arms and ruling on questions of rank or protocol, as exercised by an officer of arms. Heraldry comes from Anglo-Norman herald, from the Germanic compound harja-waldaz, "army commander"...
of placing the image of a small shield on a larger shield). A story within a story can be used in novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
s, short stories
Short Stories
Short Stories may refer to:*A plural for Short story*Short Stories , an American pulp magazine published from 1890-1959*Short Stories, a 1954 collection by O. E...
, plays
Play (theatre)
A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...
, television program
Television program
A television program , also called television show, is a segment of content which is intended to be broadcast on television. It may be a one-time production or part of a periodically recurring series...
s, film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
s, poems, song
Song
In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing.A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs...
s, and philosophical
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
essays.
Types
Stories within stories can be of these types:- The inner story is told completely in the real world, and could be extracted and told separately, for example the version of Pyramus and ThisbePyramus and ThisbePyramus and Thisbe are two characters of Roman mythology, whose love story of ill-fated lovers is also a sentimental romance.The tale is told by Ovid in his Metamorphoses.-Plot:...
in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's DreamA Midsummer Night's DreamA Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that was written by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta...
. - Only fragments of it exist in the real world, for example the Captain Proton stories within Star TrekStar TrekStar Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...
. - None of the text of the inner story exists in the real world.
Sometimes with type 2, someone completes the inner story in the real world: see #From story within a story to separate story.
Story within a story
The inner stories are told either simply to entertain or more usually to act as an example to the other characters. In either case the story often has symbolic and psychological significance for the characters in the outer story. There is often some parallel between the two stories, and the fiction of the inner story is used to reveal the truth in the outer story.The literary device of stories within a story dates back to a device known as a frame story
Frame story
A frame story is a literary technique that sometimes serves as a companion piece to a story within a story, whereby an introductory or main narrative is presented, at least in part, for the purpose of setting the stage either for a more emphasized second narrative or for a set of shorter stories...
, when the outer story does not have much matter, and most of the bulk of the work consists of one or more complete stories told by one or more storytellers. This concept can be found in ancient Indian literature
Indian literature
Indian literature refers to the literature produced on the Indian subcontinent until 1947 and in the Republic of India thereafter. The Republic of India has 22 officially recognized languages....
, such as the epics
Indian epic poetry
Indian epic poetry is the epic poetry written in the Indian subcontinent, traditionally called Kavya . The Ramayana and Mahabharata, originally composed in Sanskrit and translated thereafter into many other Indian languages, are some of the oldest surviving epic poems on earth and form part of...
Mahabharata
Mahabharata
The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India and Nepal, the other being the Ramayana. The epic is part of itihasa....
and Ramayana
Ramayana
The Ramayana is an ancient Sanskrit epic. It is ascribed to the Hindu sage Valmiki and forms an important part of the Hindu canon , considered to be itihāsa. The Ramayana is one of the two great epics of India and Nepal, the other being the Mahabharata...
, Vishnu Sarma
Vishnu Sarma
Vishnu Sharma was an Indian scholar and author who is believed to have written the Panchatantra collection of fables. The exact period of the composition of the Panchatantra is uncertain, and estimates vary from 1200 BCE to 300 CE...
's Panchatantra
Panchatantra
The Panchatantra is an ancient Indian inter-related collection of animal fables in verse and prose, in a frame story format. The original Sanskrit work, which some scholars believe was composed in the 3rd century BCE, is attributed to Vishnu Sharma...
, Syntipas
Syntipas
Syntipas was an Indian philosopher and writer supposed to have lived around 100 BC, and the reputed author of a collection of tales known generally in Europe as The Story of the Seven Wise Masters....
' Seven Wise Masters
Seven Wise Masters
The Seven Wise Masters is a cycle of stories of Sanskrit, Persian or Hebrew origins.-Story and Plot:...
, the Hitopadesha
Hitopadesha
Hitopadesha is a collection of Sanskrit fables in prose and verse written in the 12 century C.E. It is an independent treatment of the Panchatantra...
, and Vikram and the Vampire
Baital Pachisi
Baital Pachisi or Vetala Panchavimshati , is a collection of tales and legends within a frame story, from India. It was originally written in Sanskrit....
. Another early example of stories within a story can be found in the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights), which can be traced back to Arabic
Arabic literature
Arabic literature is the writing produced, both prose and poetry, by writers in the Arabic language. The Arabic word used for literature is adab which is derived from a meaning of etiquette, and implies politeness, culture and enrichment....
, Persian
Persian literature
Persian literature spans two-and-a-half millennia, though much of the pre-Islamic material has been lost. Its sources have been within historical Persia including present-day Iran as well as regions of Central Asia where the Persian language has historically been the national language...
, and Indian storytelling traditions. Homer's Odyssey too makes use of this device; Odysseus' adventures at sea are all narrated by the hero himself to the court of king Alcinous in Scheria. Other shorter tales, many of them false, account for much of the Odyssey.
Often the stories within a story are used to satirize views, not only in the outer story but also in the real world. The Itchy & Scratchy Show
The Itchy & Scratchy Show
The Itchy & Scratchy Show is a show within a show in the animated television series The Simpsons. It usually appears as a part of The Krusty the Clown Show, watched regularly by Bart and Lisa Simpson...
from The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
and Terrance & Phillip from South Park
South Park
South Park is an American animated television series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the Comedy Central television network. Intended for mature audiences, the show has become famous for its crude language, surreal, satirical, and dark humor that lampoons a wide range of topics...
both comment on the levels of violence and acceptable behaviour in the media and allow criticism of the outer cartoon to be addressed in the cartoon itself.
Stories-within-a-story may disclose the background of characters or events, tell of myths and legends that influence the plot, or even seem to be extraneous diversions from the plot. In his 1895 historical novel
Historical novel
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, a historical novel is-Development:An early example of historical prose fiction is Luó Guànzhōng's 14th century Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which covers one of the most important periods of Chinese history and left a lasting impact on Chinese culture.The...
Pharaoh
Pharaoh (novel)
Pharaoh is the fourth and last major novel by the Polish writer Bolesław Prus . Composed over a year's time in 1894–95, it was the sole historical novel by an author who had earlier disapproved of historical novels on the ground that they inevitably distort history.Pharaoh has been described...
, Bolesław Prus introduces a number of stories-within-the-story, ranging in length from vignette
Vignette (literature)
In theatrical script writing, sketch stories, and poetry, a vignette is a short impressionistic scene that focuses on one moment or gives a trenchant impression about a character, an idea, or a setting and sometimes an object...
to full-blown story, many of them drawn from ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...
ian texts, that further the plot, illuminate character
Character (arts)
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
s, and even inspire the fashioning of individual characters.
The provenance
Provenance
Provenance, from the French provenir, "to come from", refers to the chronology of the ownership or location of an historical object. The term was originally mostly used for works of art, but is now used in similar senses in a wide range of fields, including science and computing...
of the story is sometimes explained internally, as in The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings is a high fantasy epic written by English philologist and University of Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit , but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in...
by J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
, which depicts the Red Book of Westmarch
Red Book of Westmarch
The Red Book of Westmarch is a fictional manuscript written by hobbits, a conceit of author J. R. R...
(a story-internal version of the book itself) as a history compiled by several of the characters. The subtitles
Subtitle (titling)
In books and other works, a subtitle is an explanatory or alternate title. For example, Mary Shelley used a subtitle to give her most famous novel, Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, an alternate title to give a hint of the theme. In library cataloging the subtitle does not include an...
of The Hobbit
The Hobbit
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, better known by its abbreviated title The Hobbit, is a fantasy novel and children's book by J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published on 21 September 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the New York Herald...
(There and Back Again) is depicted as part of a rejected title of this book-within-a-book, and The Lord of the Rings is a part of the final title.
When a story is told within another, rather than being told as part of the plot, it allows the author to play on the reader's perceptions of the characters—the motives and the reliability of the storyteller
Unreliable narrator
An unreliable narrator is a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, whose credibility has been seriously compromised. The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction. This narrative mode is one that can be developed by an author for a number of reasons, usually...
are automatically in question. In Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at...
, the characters tell tales suited to their personalities and tell them in ways that highlight their personalities. The noble knight tells a noble story, the boring character tells a very dull tale and the rude miller tells a smutty tale.
In some cases, the story within a story is involved in the action of the plot of the outer story. An example is "The Mad Trist" in Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
's The Fall of the House of Usher
The Fall of the House of Usher
"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in September 1839 in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine. It was slightly revised in 1840 for the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque...
, where through somewhat mystical means the narrator's reading of the story-within-a-story influences the reality of the story he has been telling, so that what happens in "the Mad Trist" begins happening in "The Fall of the House of Usher". Also, in Don Quixote by Cervantes
Cervantes
-People:*Alfonso J. Cervantes , mayor of St. Louis, Missouri*Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, 16th-century man of letters*Ignacio Cervantes, Cuban composer*Jorge Cervantes, a world-renowned expert on indoor, outdoor, and greenhouse cannabis cultivation...
, there are many stories within the story that influence the hero's actions (there are others that even the author himself admits are purely digressive).
An inner story is often independent so that it can either be skipped over or read separately, although many subtle connections may be lost. A commonly anthologised
Anthology
An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...
story is The Grand Inquisitor
The Grand Inquisitor
The Grand Inquisitor is a parable told by Ivan to Alyosha in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov . Ivan and Alyosha are brothers; Ivan questions the possibility of a personal, benevolent God and Alyosha is a novice monk....
by Dostoevsky from his long psychological novel The Brothers Karamazov
The Brothers Karamazov
The Brothers Karamazov is the final novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Dostoyevsky spent nearly two years writing The Brothers Karamazov, which was published as a serial in The Russian Messenger and completed in November 1880...
and is told by one brother to another to explain, in part, his view on religion and morality. It also, in a succinct way, dramatizes many of Dostoevsky's interior conflicts.
Sometimes, the inner story serves as an outlet for discarded idea
Idea
In the most narrow sense, an idea is just whatever is before the mind when one thinks. Very often, ideas are construed as representational images; i.e. images of some object. In other contexts, ideas are taken to be concepts, although abstract concepts do not necessarily appear as images...
s that the author deemed to be of too much merit to leave out completely, something that is somewhat analogous to the inclusion of deleted scenes
Deleted Scenes
A deleted scene is a scene removed from or replaced by another scene in the final version of a film or television series.It may also refer to:* "Deleted Scenes", an episode of the Adult Swim animated television series, Aqua Teen Hunger Force...
with DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
releases of films. An example of this is the chapter The Town Ho's Story from Herman Melville
Herman Melville
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....
's famous novel Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, was written by American author Herman Melville and first published in 1851. It is considered by some to be a Great American Novel and a treasure of world literature. The story tells the adventures of wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod,...
, which tells a fully formed story of an exciting mutiny
Mutiny
Mutiny is a conspiracy among members of a group of similarly situated individuals to openly oppose, change or overthrow an authority to which they are subject...
. This inner story contains many plot ideas that Melville had conceived during the early stages of writing Moby Dick, ideas that were originally intended to be used later on in the novel, but as writing progressed these plot ideas eventually proved impossible to fit around the characters that Melville went on to create and develop. Instead of discarding these ideas altogether, Melville instead weaved them into a coherent short story and had the character Ishmael demonstrate his eloquence and intelligence by telling the story to his impressed friends. Arthur Ransome
Arthur Ransome
Arthur Michell Ransome was an English author and journalist, best known for writing the Swallows and Amazons series of children's books. These tell of school-holiday adventures of children, mostly in the Lake District and the Norfolk Broads. Many of the books involve sailing; other common subjects...
uses the device to allow his young characters in the Swallows and Amazons series of children's books, plotted in the recognisable, everyday world, to take part in fantastic adventures of piracy in distant lands: two books from the twelve: Peter Duck
Peter Duck
Peter Duck is the third book in the Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome. The Swallows and Amazons sail to Crab Island with Captain Flint and Peter Duck an old sailor to recover buried treasure...
and Missee Lee
Missee Lee
Missee Lee is the tenth book of Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series of children's books, set in 1930s China. The Swallows and Amazons are on a round the world trip with Captain Flint aboard the schooner Wild Cat. After the Wild Cat sinks, they escape in the Swallow and Amazon but are...
(and some would include Great Northern?
Great Northern?
Great Northern? is the twelfth and final completed book of Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series of children's books. It was published in 1947. In this book, the three families of major characters in the series, the Swallows , the Amazons and the Ds , are all reunited in a book for the...
as a third) are adventures supposedly made up by the characters themselves.
With the rise of literary modernism
Modernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...
, writers experimented with ways in which multiple narratives might nest imperfectly within each other. A particularly ingenious example of nested narratives is James Merrill's
James Merrill
James Ingram Merrill was an American poet whose awards include the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Divine Comedies...
1974 modernist poem
Modernist poetry in English
Modernist poetry in English is generally considered to have emerged in the early years of the 20th century with the appearance of the Imagists. In common with many other modernists, these poets wrote in reaction to the perceived excesses of Victorian poetry, with its emphasis on traditional...
"Lost in Translation
Lost in Translation (poem)
"Lost in Translation" is a narrative poem by James Merrill , one of the most studied and celebrated of his shorter works. It was originally published in The New Yorker magazine on April 8, 1974, and published in book form in 1976 in Divine Comedies.The poem opens with a description of a summer...
".
Other prime examples of experimental modernist literature that incorporate multiple narratives into one story are various novels written by American author Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle , Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions blend satire, gallows humor and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.-Early...
. Vonnegut includes the recurring character Kilgore Trout
Kilgore Trout
Kilgore Trout is a fictional character created by author Kurt Vonnegut. He was originally created as a fictionalized version of author Theodore Sturgeon , although Trout's consistent presence in Vonnegut's works has also led critics to view him as the author's own alter ego...
in many of his novels. Trout acts as the mysterious science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
writer who enhances the moral of the novel through plot descriptions of his stories. Books such as Breakfast of Champions
Breakfast of Champions
Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday is a 1973 novel by the American author Kurt Vonnegut. Set in the fictional town of Midland City, it is the story of "two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast." One of these men, Dwayne Hoover, is a normal-looking but...
and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine, is a novel written by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., published in 1965. The plot focuses on Eliot Rosewater, the primary trustee of the philanthropic Rosewater Foundation, whom one of the family lawyers, Norman Mushari, is attempting to have declared...
are sprinkled with these plot descriptions.
Robert A. Heinlein
Robert A. Heinlein
Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. Often called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the genre. He set a standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of...
's later books (The Number of the Beast
The Number of the Beast (novel)
The Number of the Beast is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein published in 1980. The first edition featured a cover and interior illustrations by Richard M. Powers...
, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls: A Comedy of Manners is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein published in 1985. Like many of his later novels, it features Lazarus Long and Jubal Harshaw as supporting characters.-Plot summary:...
and To Sail Beyond the Sunset
To Sail Beyond the Sunset
To Sail Beyond the Sunset is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein published in 1987. It was the last novel published before he died in 1988....
) propose the idea that every real universe is a fiction in another Universe. This hypothesis
World as Myth
The idea of World as Myth was created by science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein in his book The Number of the Beast. According to this idea, myths and fictional worlds exist as an almost infinite number of universes which are parallel to our own...
enables many writer who are characters in the books to interact with their own creations.
The Amory Wars
The Amory Wars
The Amory Wars, originally entitled The Bag.On.Line Adventures, is an ongoing series of comic books written by Coheed and Cambria frontman Claudio Sanchez and published by Evil Ink Comics. The story of The Amory Wars is also the focus of the band's music...
, the story told through the music of Coheed and Cambria
Coheed and Cambria
Coheed and Cambria is an American progressive rock band from Nyack, New York. Formed in 1995, the group incorporates aspects of progressive rock, punk rock, metal and post-hardcore....
, tells a story for the first two albums but reveals that the story is being actively written by a character called the Writer in the third. During the album, the Writer delves into his own story and kills one of the characters, much to the dismay of the main character.
Several Star Trek
Star Trek
Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...
tales are stories or events within stories, such as Gene Roddenberry
Gene Roddenberry
Eugene Wesley "Gene" Roddenberry was an American television screenwriter, producer and futurist, best known for creating the American science fiction series Star Trek. Born in El Paso, Texas, Roddenberry grew up in Los Angeles, California where his father worked as a police officer...
's novelization
Novelization
A novelization is a novel that is written based on some other media story form rather than as an original work.Novelizations of films usually add background material not found in the original work to flesh out the story, because novels are generally longer than screenplays...
of Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a 1979 American science fiction film released by Paramount Pictures. It is the first film based on the Star Trek television series. The film is set in the twenty-third century, when a mysterious and immensely powerful alien cloud called V'Ger approaches the Earth,...
, J. A. Lawrence's Mudd's Angels, John M. Ford
John M. Ford
John Milo "Mike" Ford was an American science fiction and fantasy writer, game designer, and poet.Ford was regarded as an extraordinarily intelligent, erudite and witty man. He was a popular contributor to several online discussions...
's The Final Reflection
The Final Reflection
The Final Reflection is a 1984 Star Trek tie-in novel by John M. Ford which emphasizes developments of Klingon language and culture. The novel provided the foundation for the FASA Star Trek role-playing game sourcebooks dealing with the Klingon elements of the game...
, Margaret Wander Bonanno
Margaret Wander Bonanno
Margaret Wander Bonanno is an American science fiction writer, ghost writer and small press publisher. She was born in New York City.She has written six Star Trek novels, including Strangers from the Sky...
's Strangers from the Sky
Strangers from the Sky
Strangers from the Sky , is a novel, released in 1987, by Margaret Wander Bonanno.-Overview:This novel is an adventure involving the original Star Trek series cast and journeys through many eras of the Trek timeline....
(which adopts the conceit that it is book from the future by an author called Gen Jaramet-Sauner), and J.R. Rasmussen's "Research" in the anthology Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was an annual collection of short stories set in the Star Trek universe, written by amateur writers chosen through an open submissions process. The first volume was published in 1998, with the tenth and final volume published in 2007...
II. Steven Barnes
Steven Barnes
Steven Barnes is an African American science fiction writer, lecturer, creative consultant, and human performance technician....
's novelization of "Far Beyond the Stars" partners with Greg Cox's The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh
The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh
The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh is a two volume set of novels written by Greg Cox about the life of the fictional Star Trek character Khan Noonien Singh. He is often referred to as simply "Khan" in the Star Trek episode "Space Seed" and in the Star Trek movie Star Trek...
(Volume Two) to tell us that the story "Far Beyond the Stars" — and, by extension, all of Star Trek itself — is the creation of 1950s writer Benny Russell.
The Quantum Leap novel Knights Of The Morningstar also features a character who writes a book by that name.
The Crying of Lot 49
The Crying of Lot 49
The Crying of Lot 49 is a novel by Thomas Pynchon, first published in 1966. The shortest of Pynchon's novels, it is about a woman, Oedipa Maas, possibly unearthing the centuries-old conflict between two mail distribution companies, Thurn und Taxis and the Trystero...
by Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...
has several characters seeing a play called 'The Courier's Tragedy' by the fictitious Jacobean
English Renaissance theatre
English Renaissance theatre, also known as early modern English theatre, refers to the theatre of England, largely based in London, which occurred between the Reformation and the closure of the theatres in 1642...
playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
Richard Wharfinger. The events of the play broadly mirror those of the novel and give the main character, Oedipa, a greater context with which to consider her predicament; the play concerns a feud between two rival mail distribution companies, which appears to be on-going to the present day, and in which, if this is the case, Oedipa has found herself involved. As in Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
, the director makes changes to the original script; in this instance, a couplet that was added, possibly by religious zealots intent on giving the play extra moral gravity, are said only on the night that Oedipa sees the play. From what Pynchon tells us, this is the only mention in the play of Thurn and Taxis' rivals' name - Trystero - and it is the seed for the conspiracy that unfurls.
A variant of this device is a flashback
Flashback (narrative)
Flashback is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story’s primary sequence of events or to fill in crucial backstory...
within a flashback, which was introduced by the Japanese film Rashomon
Rashomon (film)
The bandit's storyTajōmaru, a notorious brigand , claims that he tricked the samurai to step off the mountain trail with him and look at a cache of ancient swords he discovered. In the grove he tied the samurai to a tree, then brought the woman there. She initially tried to defend herself with a...
(1950), based on the Japanese novel In a Grove
In a Grove
is a short story by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, first appearing in the January 1922 edition of the Japanese literature monthly Shinchō. Akira Kurosawa used this story as the basis for his award-winning movie Rashōmon....
(1921). The story unfolds in flashback as the four witnesses in the story—the bandit, the murdered samurai
Samurai
is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...
, his wife, and the nameless woodcutter—recount the events of one afternoon in a grove. But it is also a flashback within a flashback, because the accounts of the witnesses are being retold by a woodcutter and a priest to a ribald commoner as they wait out a rainstorm in a ruined gatehouse.
The story "The Three Brothers" was in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and its film adaptation. The story was later included in the book The Tales of Beedle the Bard
The Tales of Beedle the Bard
The Tales of Beedle the Bard is a book of children's stories by British author J. K. Rowling. It purports to be the storybook of the same name mentioned in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the last book of the Harry Potter series....
.
Subsequent layers
Some stories may include within themselves a story within a story, or even more than two layers.This literary device also dates back to ancient Sanskrit literature
Sanskrit literature
Literature in Sanskrit begins with the Vedas, and continues with the Sanskrit Epics of Iron Age India; the golden age of Classical Sanskrit literature dates to late Antiquity . Literary production saw a late bloom in the 11th century before declining after 1100 AD...
. In Vishnu Sarma
Vishnu Sarma
Vishnu Sharma was an Indian scholar and author who is believed to have written the Panchatantra collection of fables. The exact period of the composition of the Panchatantra is uncertain, and estimates vary from 1200 BCE to 300 CE...
's Panchatantra
Panchatantra
The Panchatantra is an ancient Indian inter-related collection of animal fables in verse and prose, in a frame story format. The original Sanskrit work, which some scholars believe was composed in the 3rd century BCE, is attributed to Vishnu Sharma...
, an inter-woven series of colorful animal tales are told with one narrative opening within another, sometimes three or four layers deep, and then unexpectedly snapping shut in irregular rhythms to sustain attention. In Ugrasrava's epic Mahabharata
Mahabharata
The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India and Nepal, the other being the Ramayana. The epic is part of itihasa....
, the Kurukshetra War
Kurukshetra war
According to the Indian epic poem Mahābhārata, a dynastic succession struggle between two groups of cousins of an Indo-Aryan kingdom called Kuru, the Kauravas and Pandavas, for the throne of Hastinapura resulted in the Kurukshetra War in which a number of ancient kingdoms participated as allies of...
is narrated by a character in Vyasa
Vyasa
Vyasa is a central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions. He is also sometimes called Veda Vyasa , or Krishna Dvaipayana...
's Jaya, which itself is narrated by a character in Vaisampayana
Vaisampayana
Vaishampayana was the traditional narrator of the Mahabharata, one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India. He was an ancient Indian sage who was the original teacher of the Black Yajur-Veda. The Ashvalayana Grihya Sutra mentions him as Mahabharatacharya...
's Bharata, which itself is narrated by a character in Ugrasrava's Mahabharata.
The structure of The Symposium and Phaedo
Phaedo
Plato's Phaedo is one of the great dialogues of his middle period, along with the Republic and the Symposium. The Phaedo, which depicts the death of Socrates, is also Plato's seventh and last dialogue to detail the philosopher's final days .In the dialogue, Socrates...
, attributed to Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
, is of a story within a story within a story.
Another early example is the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights), where the general story is narrated by an unknown narrator, and in this narration the stories are told by Scheherazade
Scheherazade
Scheherazade , sometimes Scheherazadea, Persian transliteration Shahrazad or Shahrzād is a legendary Persian queen and the storyteller of One Thousand and One Nights.-Narration :...
. In many of Scheherazade's narrations there are also stories narrated, and even in some of these, there are some other stories. An example of this includes the "Sinbad the Sailor
Sinbad the Sailor
Sinbad the Sailor is a fictional sailor from Basrah, living during the Abbasid Caliphate – the hero of a story-cycle of Middle Eastern origin...
" story narrated by Scheherazade. Within the story itself, the protagonist Sinbad the Sailor narrates the stories of his seven voyages to Sinbad the Porter. Another example is "The Three Apples", a murder mystery
Crime fiction
Crime fiction is the literary genre that fictionalizes crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be, and indeed are, blurred...
narrated by Scheherazade. Within the story itself, after the murderer reveals himself, he narrates his reasons for the murder as a flashback
Flashback (narrative)
Flashback is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story’s primary sequence of events or to fill in crucial backstory...
of events leading up to the murder. Within this flashback, an unreliable narrator
Unreliable narrator
An unreliable narrator is a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, whose credibility has been seriously compromised. The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction. This narrative mode is one that can be developed by an author for a number of reasons, usually...
tells a story to mislead the would-be murderer, who later discovers that he was misled after another character narrates the truth to him. As the story concludes, the "Tale of Núr al-Dín Alí and his Son" is narrated within it. In yet another tale Scheherazade narrates, "The Fisherman and the Jinni
The Fisherman and the Jinni
The Fisherman and the Jinni is the second top-level story told by Shahrazad in the One Thousand and One Nights.-Synopsis:There was an old, poor fisherman who cast his net four times a day and only four times. One day he went to the shore and cast his net. When he tried to pull it up, he found it...
", the "Tale of the Wazir and the Sage Duban" is narrated within it, and within that there are three more tales narrated.
Jan Potocki
Jan Potocki
Count Jan Nepomucen Potocki was a Polish nobleman, Polish Army Captain of Engineers, ethnologist, Egyptologist, linguist, traveler, adventurer and popular author of the Enlightenment period, whose life and exploits made him a legendary figure in his homeland...
's The Manuscript Found in Saragossa
The Manuscript Found in Saragossa
The Manuscript Found in Saragossa , is a frame-tale novel by the Polish Enlightenment author, Count Jan Potocki...
(1797-1805) has extremely rich interlocking structure with stories-within-stories reaching several levels of depth.
Plays such as I Hate Hamlet or movies such as A Midwinter's Tale
A Midwinter's Tale
A Midwinter's Tale is a 1995 romantic comedy written and directed by Kenneth Branagh. Many of the roles in the film were written for specific actors....
are about a production of Hamlet, which in turn includes a production of The Murder of Gonzago (or The Mouse-trap), so we have a story (The Murder of Gonzago) within a story (Hamlet) within a story (A Midwinter's Tale).
At least one line in the C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...
book The Last Battle
The Last Battle
The Last Battle is the seventh and final novel in The Chronicles of Narnia series by C. S. Lewis. It won the prestigious Carnegie Medal in Literature in 1956.-Plot summary:In The Last Battle, Lewis brings The Chronicles of Narnia to an end...
implies that Lewis learned of Narnia's events - and thus wrote the Narnia books - after the Railway Accident in 1949, when Susan told him the stories in the belief that she was relating mere childhood make-believe. Further still, The Silver Chair
The Silver Chair
The Silver Chair is part of The Chronicles of Narnia, a series of seven fantasy novels written by C. S. Lewis. It was the fourth book published and is the sixth book chronologically. It is the first book published in the series in which the Pevensie children do not appear. The main characters are...
states that a Narnian author wrote a book called The Horse And His Boy
The Horse and His Boy
The Horse and His Boy is a novel by C. S. Lewis. It was published in 1954, making it the fifth of seven books published in Lewis' series The Chronicles of Narnia. The books in this series are sometimes ordered chronologically in relation to the events in the books as opposed to the dates of their...
after the events related in the novel.
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley...
's Frankenstein
Frankenstein
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...
at one point features the narration of an Arctic explorer, who records the narration of Victor Frankenstein, who recounts the narration of his creation, who narrates the story of a cabin dwelling family he secretly observes.
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Eleanor Atwood, is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C...
's novel The Blind Assassin
The Blind Assassin
The Blind Assassin is an award-winning, bestselling novel by the Canadian author Margaret Atwood. It was first published by McClelland and Stewart in 2000. Set in Canada, it is narrated from the present day, referring back to events that span the twentieth century.The work was awarded the Man...
also uses this technique. The novel's expository narration is interspersed with excerpts from a novel written by one of the main characters; the novel-within-a-novel itself contains a science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
story written by one of that novel's characters.
Stanisław Lem's Tale of the Three Storytelling Machines of King Genius from The Cyberiad
The Cyberiad
The Cyberiad is a series of humorous short stories by Stanisław Lem. The Polish version was first published in 1965, with an English translation appearing in 1974. The main protagonists of the series are Trurl and Klapaucius, the "constructors"....
has several levels of storytelling. Interestingly, all levels tell stories of the same person, Trurl.
House of Leaves
House of Leaves
House of Leaves is the debut novel by the American author Mark Z. Danielewski, published by Pantheon Books. The novel quickly became a bestseller following its March 7, 2000 release. It was followed by a companion piece, The Whalestoe Letters...
, the tale of a man who finds a manuscript telling the story of a documentary that may or may not have ever existed, contains multiple layers of plot. The book even includes footnotes and letters that tell their own stories only vaguely related to the events in the main narrative of the book, and even includes footnotes for fake books. In addition, the fact that portions of the book were released through the internet and purported to be true added an even higher level to the cult following surrounding this book.
The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
parodied this structure with numerous 'layers' of sub-stories in the Season 17 episode "The Seemingly Never-Ending Story
The Seemingly Never-Ending Story
"The Seemingly Never-Ending Story" is the 13th episode of The Simpsons 17th season. It originally aired in the United States on March 12, 2006.-Plot:...
".
Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman
Neil Richard Gaiman born 10 November 1960)is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book...
's influential graphic novel series The Sandman includes several examples of this device. Worlds' End
The Sandman: Worlds' End
Worlds' End is the eighth collection of issues in the DC Comics series The Sandman. It was written by Neil Gaiman; illustrated by Michael Allred, Gary Amaro, Mark Buckingham, Dick Giordano, Tony Harris, Steve Leialoha, Vince Locke, Shea Anton Pensa, Alec Stevens, Bryan Talbot, John Watkiss, and...
, volume 8 of the series, contains several instances of multiple storytelling levels, including Cerements (issue #55) where one of the inmost levels actually corresponds to one of the outer levels, turning the story-within-a-story structure into an infinite regression.
In the beginning of the music video for the Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records...
song "Thriller
Thriller (music video)
Michael Jackson's Thriller is a 14-minute music video for the song of the same name released on December 2, 1983 and directed by John Landis, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Jackson....
", the heroine is terrorized by her monster boyfriend in what turns out to be a movie within a dream.
Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl was a British novelist, short story writer, fighter pilot and screenwriter.Born in Wales to Norwegian parents, he served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, in which he became a flying ace and intelligence agent, rising to the rank of Wing Commander...
's story The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More is a collection of seven short stories written by Roald Dahl. They are generally regarded as being aimed for a slightly older audience than many of his other children's books....
is about a rich bachelor who finds an essay written by someone who learnt to "see" playing cards from the reverse side. The full text of this essay is included in the story, and itself includes a lengthy sub-story told as a true experience by one of the essay's protagonists, Imhrat Khan.
The music video for the Björk
Björk
Björk Guðmundsdóttir , known as Björk , is an Icelandic singer-songwriter. Her eclectic musical style has achieved popular acknowledgement and popularity within many musical genres, such as rock, jazz, electronic dance music, classical and folk...
song "Bachelorette
Bachelorette (song)
"Bachelorette" is a song by Björk, released as the second single from her 1997 album Homogenic.The song was originally written for a film by Bernardo Bertolucci, but the project was withdrawn...
" features a musical that is about, in part, the creation of that musical. A mini-theater and small audience appear on stage to watch the musical-within-a-musical, and at some point, within that second musical a yet-smaller theater and audience appear.
Episode 14 of the anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
series Martian Successor Nadesico
Martian Successor Nadesico
, is a science fiction comedy anime TV series, and a later manga series created by Kia Asamiya. The manga, published in English by CPM Manga, is significantly different from the anime....
causes a rather confusing link between the world of the show itself and that of Gekigangar III
Gekigangar III
is an anime series within the anime series Martian Successor Nadesico that plays a critical part in the plot thereof. Gekiganger III was designed to mimic 70s Super Robots, especially Getter Robo. Initially, only Gai Daigoji and Akito Tenkawa are depicted as enjoying the series...
, a popular anime that exists within its universe and that many characters are fans of; the episode is essentially a clip show, but has several newly animated segments based on Gekigangar that involves the characters of that show watching Nadesico (many of them being big fans of it themselves). The episode ends with the crew of the Nadesico watching the very same episode of Gekigangar, causing a bizarre paradox
Paradox
Similar to Circular reasoning, A paradox is a seemingly true statement or group of statements that lead to a contradiction or a situation which seems to defy logic or intuition...
of sorts.
Since Nadesico, other anime series have featured shows-within-a-show; the most famous examples are Densha Otoko
Densha Otoko
is a Japanese movie, television series, manga, novel, and other media, all based on the purportedly true story of a 23-year-old otaku who intervened when a drunk man started to harass several women on a train...
, which had the series Getsumen To Heiki Mina and Genshiken
Genshiken
is a manga series by Shimoku Kio about a college club for otaku and the lifestyle its members pursue. The title is a shortening of the club's official name, , or "The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture". The series has also been adapted into an anime directed by Tsutomu Mizushima...
, which had Kujibiki Unbalance
Kujibiki Unbalance
, as it exists in the real world, is a three-episode OVA from the highly popular 2004 anime Genshiken, as well as a series of three light novels by Genshiken anime collaborator Michiko Yokote. Within the world of Genshiken, however, Kujibiki Unbalance is a popular ongoing manga and 26-episode anime...
. Both sub-shows have since become actual series in their own right, though three episodes of Kujibiki Unbalance were created as OVAs to coincide with the release of Genshiken. The episodes were styled as if they were part of a serial, though they were actually one-offs. There is also a Kujibiki Unbalance manga, being translated and published by Del Rey/Tanoshimi
Del Rey Books
Del Rey Books is a branch of Ballantine Books, which is owned by Random House and, in turn since 1998, by Bertelsmann AG. It is a separate imprint established in 1977 under the editorship of author Lester del Rey and his wife Judy-Lynn del Rey. It specializes in science fiction and fantasy...
.
Jostein Gaarder
Jostein Gaarder
Jostein Gaarder /ˈju:staɪn ˈgɔːrdər/ is a Norwegian intellectual and author of several novels, short stories and children's books. Gaarder often writes from the perspective of children, exploring their sense of wonder about the world. He often uses metafiction in his works, writing stories within...
's books often feature this device. Examples are The Solitaire Mystery, where the protagonist receives a small book from a baker, in which the baker tells the story of a sailor who tells the story of another sailor, and Sophie's World
Sophie's World
Sophie's World is a novel by Jostein Gaarder, published in 1991. It was originally written in Norwegian, but has since been translated into English and many other languages. It sold more than 30 million copies and is one of the most successful Norwegian novels outside of Norway...
about a girl who is actually a character in a book that is being read by Hilde, a girl in another dimension. Later on in the book Sophie questions this idea, and realizes that Hilde too could be a character in a story that in turn is being read by another.
The popular graphic novel Watchmen
Watchmen
Watchmen is a twelve-issue comic book limited series created by writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons, and colourist John Higgins. The series was published by DC Comics during 1986 and 1987, and has been subsequently reprinted in collected form...
features a story within a story called Tales of the Black Freighter, which details that man's insanity comes from fear of losing something, and parallels a character in the main story and hints at his actions.
Daniel Handler
Daniel Handler
Daniel Handler is an American author, screenwriter and accordionist. He is best known for his work under the pen name Lemony Snicket.-Personal life:...
's introduction in Lemony Snicket
Lemony Snicket
Lemony Snicket is the pen name of American novelist Daniel Handler . Snicket is the author of several children's books, serving as the narrator of A Series of Unfortunate Events and appearing as a character within the series. Because of this, the name Lemony Snicket may refer to both a fictional...
's Unauthorized Autobiography
Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography
Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography was first released on May 1, 2002. The book's content relates to the author Lemony Snicket and his series of books, A Series of Unfortunate Events...
continually introduces a new story about a page into the previous one, thus creating a confusing and inconsequential (but not incorrect or self-contradictory) storyline that is never finished, always dealing with the questions he is asked but never answering them. He drops a hint in one of the layers that this is simply a technique to distract the reader from the fact that he never answers these questions.
Best New Horror, a short story
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
from the book 20th Century Ghosts
20th Century Ghosts
20th Century Ghosts is American author Joe Hill's first published book-length work. An anthology of short stories, it was first published in October 2005 in the United Kingdom and released in October 2007 in the United States.-Publication history:...
, has the main character reading a horror tale called Button Boy.
Catheryne Valente's duology, "The Orphan's Tales" featured strong influences from 1001 Arabian Nights, with stories nestled within stories - sometimes up to more than seven layers.
Play within a play
This dramatic device was probably first used by Thomas KydThomas Kyd
Thomas Kyd was an English dramatist, the author of The Spanish Tragedy, and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama....
in The Spanish Tragedy
The Spanish Tragedy
The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is Mad Again is an Elizabethan tragedy written by Thomas Kyd between 1582 and 1592. Highly popular and influential in its time, The Spanish Tragedy established a new genre in English theatre, the revenge play or revenge tragedy. Its plot contains several violent...
around 1587, where the play is presented before an audience of two of the characters, who comment upon the action. From references in other contemporary works, Kyd is also assumed to have been the writer of an early, lost version of Hamlet (the so-called Ur-Hamlet
Ur-Hamlet
The Ur-Hamlet is the name given to a play mentioned as early as 1589, a decade before most scholars believe Shakespeare composed Hamlet...
), with a play-within-a-play interlude.
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
used this device in many of his plays, including A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that was written by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta...
, Love's Labours Lost, and Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
. In Hamlet the prince, Hamlet himself, asks some strolling players to perform the Murder of Gonzago. The action and characters in The Murder mirror the murder of Hamlet's father in the main action, and Prince Hamlet writes additional material to emphasize this. Hamlet wishes to provoke the murderer, his uncle, and sums this up by saying "the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king." Hamlet calls this new play The Mouse-trap (a title that Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
later took for the long-running play The Mousetrap
The Mousetrap
The Mousetrap is a murder mystery play by Agatha Christie. The Mousetrap opened in the West End of London in 1952, and has been running continuously since then. It has the longest initial run of any play in history, with over 24,500 performances so far. It is the longest running show of the modern...
). In the Hamlet-based film Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (film)
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is a 1990 film written and directed by Tom Stoppard based on his play of the same name. Like the play, the film depicts two minor characters from William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who find themselves on the road to Elsinore Castle...
the players even feature a third-level puppet theatre version within their play. Almost the whole of The Taming of the Shrew
The Taming of the Shrew
The Taming of the Shrew is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1590 and 1591.The play begins with a framing device, often referred to as the Induction, in which a mischievous nobleman tricks a drunken tinker named Sly into believing he is actually a nobleman himself...
is a play-within-a-play, presented to convince Christopher Sly
Christopher Sly
Christopher Sly is a minor character in William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew.The Taming of the Shrew is a play within a play. The frame play, where the action opens, shows Christopher Sly drunk in what basically is a bar. A wealthy lord arrives and finds Sly drunk and decides to play a...
, a drunken tinker, that he is a nobleman watching a private performance, but the device has no relevance to the plot (unless Katharina's subservience to her "lord" in the last scene is intended to strengthen the deception against the tinker) and is often dropped in modern productions. Pericles draws in part on the 14th century Confessio Amantis
Confessio Amantis
Confessio Amantis is a 33,000-line Middle English poem by John Gower, which uses the confession made by an ageing lover to the chaplain of Venus as a frame story for a collection of shorter narrative poems. According to its prologue, it was composed at the request of Richard II...
(itself a frame story) by John Gower
John Gower
John Gower was an English poet, a contemporary of William Langland and a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer. He is remembered primarily for three major works, the Mirroir de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis, three long poems written in French, Latin, and English respectively, which...
and Shakespeare has the ghost of Gower "assume man's infirmities" to introduce his work to the contemporary audience and comment on the action of the play.
In Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...
's The Seagull
The Seagull
The Seagull is the first of what are generally considered to be the four major plays by the Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov. The Seagull was written in 1895 and first produced in 1896...
there are specific allusions to Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
: in the first act a son stages a play to impress his mother, a professional actress, and her new lover; the mother responds by comparing her son to Hamlet. Later he tries to come between them, as Hamlet had done with his mother and her new husband. The tragic developments in the plot follow in part from the scorn the mother shows for her son's play.
The opera Pagliacci
Pagliacci
Pagliacci , sometimes incorrectly rendered with a definite article as I Pagliacci, is an opera consisting of a prologue and two acts written and composed by Ruggero Leoncavallo. It recounts the tragedy of a jealous husband in a commedia dell'arte troupe...
is about a troupe of actors who perform a play about marital infidelity that mirrors their own lives. And John Adams' Nixon in China (1985-7) features a surreal version of Madam Mao's Red Detachment of Women to extraordinary effect, illuminating the ascendence of human values over the disillusionment of high politics in the meeting.
In Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
's The Caucasian Chalk Circle
The Caucasian Chalk Circle
The Caucasian Chalk Circle is a play by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht. An example of Brecht's epic theatre, the play is a parable about a peasant girl who rescues a baby and becomes a better mother than its natural parents....
, a play is staged as a parable
Parable
A parable is a succinct story, in prose or verse, which illustrates one or more instructive principles, or lessons, or a normative principle. It differs from a fable in that fables use animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as characters, while parables generally feature human...
to villagers in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
to justify the re-allocation of their farmland: the tale describes how a child is awarded to a servant-girl rather than its natural mother, an aristocrat, as the woman most likely to care for it well. This kind of play-within-a-play, which appears at the beginning of the main play and acts as a 'frame' for it, is called an 'induction'
Induction (play)
An Induction in a play is an explanatory scene or other intrusion that stands outside and apart from the main action with the intent to comment on it, moralize about it or in the case of dumb show to summarize the plot or underscore what is afoot. Inductions are a common feature of plays written...
. Brecht's one-act play The Elephant Calf
The Elephant Calf
The Elephant Calf , also known as The Baby Elephant, is an early one-act surrealistic prose farce written by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht. It originally formed the penultimate scene of Brecht's full-length play Man Equals Man, but by 1926 Brecht had separated it to an appendix to...
(1926) is a play-within-a-play performed in the foyer of the theatre during his Man Equals Man
Man Equals Man
Man Equals Man , or A Man's a Man, is a play by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht. One of Brecht's earlier works, it explores themes of war, human fungibility, and identity...
.
In Jean Giraudoux's
Jean Giraudoux
Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux was a French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright. He is considered among the most important French dramatists of the period between World War I and World War II. His work is noted for its stylistic elegance and poetic fantasy...
play Ondine
Ondine (play)
Ondine is a play written in 1938 by French dramatist Jean Giraudoux that tells the story of Hans and Ondine. Hans is a knight-errant who has been sent off on a quest by his betrothed. In the forest he meets and falls in love with Ondine, a water-sprite who is attracted to the world of mortal man....
, all of act two is a series of scenes within scenes, sometimes two levels deep. This increases the dramatic tension and also makes more poignant the inevitable failure of the relationship between the mortal
Human
Humans are the only living species in the Homo genus...
Hans and water sprite Ondine.
The Two-Character Play
The Two-Character Play
The Two Character Play, also known as Out Cry in one of its alternate versions, is a play by Tennessee Williams written 25 years after his famous A Streetcar Named Desire. It was one of most personal works...
by Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...
has a concurrent double plot with the convention of a play within a play. Felice and Clare are siblings and are both actor/producers touring ‘The Two-Character Play.’ They have supposedly been abandoned by their crew and have been left to put on the play by themselves. The characters in the play are also brother and sister and are also named Clare and Felice.
The Mysteries
The Mysteries (play)
The Mysteries is a version of the medieval English mystery plays presented at London's National Theatre in 1977. The cycle of three plays tells the story of the Bible from the creation to the last judgement....
, a modern reworking of the mediaeval mystery play
Mystery play
Mystery plays and miracle plays are among the earliest formally developed plays in medieval Europe. Medieval mystery plays focused on the representation of Bible stories in churches as tableaux with accompanying antiphonal song...
s, remains faithful to its roots by having the modern actors play the sincere, naïve tradesmen and women as they take part in the original performances.
The musical Kiss Me, Kate
Kiss Me, Kate
Kiss Me, Kate is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. It is structured as a play within a play, where the interior play is a musical version of William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. The original production starred Alfred Drake, Patricia Morison, Lisa Kirk and Harold Lang.Kiss...
is about the production of a fictitious musical, The Taming of the Shrew, based on the Shakespeare play of the same name
The Taming of the Shrew
The Taming of the Shrew is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1590 and 1591.The play begins with a framing device, often referred to as the Induction, in which a mischievous nobleman tricks a drunken tinker named Sly into believing he is actually a nobleman himself...
, and features several scenes from it. Alternatively, a play might be about the production of a play, and include the performance of all or part of the play, as in Noises Off
Noises Off
Noises Off is a 1982 play by English playwright Michael Frayn. The idea for it was born in 1970, when Frayn was standing in the wings watching a performance of Chinamen, a farce that he had written for Lynn Redgrave...
, Les feluettes
Les feluettes
Les feluettes is a critically acclaimed play written by gay Quebec playwright Michel Marc Bouchard.The play concerns the confession of an aging prisoner to a bishop...
or The Producers
The Producers (1968 film)
The Producers is a 1968 American satirical dark comedy cult classic film written and directed by Mel Brooks. The film is set in the late 1960s and it tells the story of a theatrical producer and an accountant who want to produce a sure-fire Broadway flop...
.
In most stagings of the musical Cats
Cats (musical)
Cats is a musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot...
, which include the song "Growltiger's Last Stand" — a recollection of an old play by Gus the Theatre Cat — the character of Lady Griddlebone
Griddlebone
Griddlebone is a cat character who appears in T. S. Eliot's collection of poems Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats and also the musical Cats during the song of 'Growltigers Last Stand.'...
sings "The Ballad of Billy McCaw". (However, many productions of the show omit "Growltiger's Last Stand", and "The Ballad of Billy McCaw" has at times been replaced with a mock aria, so this metastory isn't always seen.) Depending on the production, there is another musical scene called The Awful Battle of the Pekes and the Pollices where the Jellicles put on a show for their leader. In Lestat: The Musical, there are three play within a plays. First, when Lestat visits his childhood friend, Nicolas, who works in a theater, where he discovers his love for theater; and two more when the Theater of the Vampires perform. One is used as a plot mechanism to explain the vampire god, Marius, which sparks an interest in Lestat to find him.
A play within a play also occurs in the musical The King and I
The King and I
The King and I is a stage musical, the fifth by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. The work is based on the 1944 novel Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon and derives from the memoirs of Anna Leonowens, who became governess to the children of King Mongkut of Siam in...
, where Princess Tuptim and the royal dancers give a performance of Small House of Uncle Thomas (or Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman....
) to their English guests. The play mirrors Tuptim's situation, as she wishes to run away from slavery to be with her lover, Lun Tha.
Play within a film
Director Charlie KaufmanCharlie Kaufman
Charles Stuart "Charlie" Kaufman is an American screenwriter, producer, and director. His film work includes Being John Malkovich, Human Nature, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Synecdoche, New York...
uses this concept often in his films. It can be seen most in the 2008 film Synecdoche, New York
Synecdoche, New York
Synecdoche, New York is a 2008 American drama film written and directed by Charlie Kaufman, and starring Philip Seymour Hoffman. It was Kaufman's directorial debut.The film premiered in competition at the 61st Annual Cannes Film Festival on May 23, 2008...
. The main character Caden Cotard is a skilled director of plays and he receives a grant to make a remarkable theater piece. He ends up creating a carbon copy of the outside world. The 2001 film Moulin Rouge!
Moulin Rouge!
Moulin Rouge! is a 2001 romantic jukebox musical film directed, produced, and co-written by Baz Luhrmann. Following the Red Curtain Cinema principles, the film is based on the Orphean myth, La Traviata, and La Bohème...
features a fictitious musical within a film, called "Spectacular Spectacular", which itself may have been based on an ancient Sanskrit play
Sanskrit drama
The earliest-surviving fragments of Sanskrit drama date from the 1st century CE. The Mahābhāṣya by Patañjali contains the earliest reference to what may have been the seeds of Sanskrit drama. This treatise on grammar from 140 BCE provides a feasible date for the beginnings of theatre in India.Its...
, The Little Clay Cart. The 1942 Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch was a German-born film director. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch."In 1947 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his...
comedy To Be or Not to Be
To Be or Not to Be (1942 film)
To Be or Not to Be is a 1942 American comedy directed by Ernst Lubitsch, about a troupe of actors in Nazi-occupied Warsaw who use their abilities at disguise and acting to fool the occupying troops. It was adapted by Lubitsch and Edwin Justus Mayer from the story by Melchior Lengyel...
confuses the audience in the opening scenes with a play about Adolf Hitler appearing to be taking place within the actual plot of the film. Thereafter, the acting company players serve as the protagonists of the film and frequently use acting/costumes to deceive various characters in the film. Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
also serves as an important throughline in the film, as suggested by the title. Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...
sets the opening scene of his 1944 film of Henry V
Henry V (1944 film)
Henry V is a 1944 film adaptation of William Shakespeare's play of the same name. The on-screen title is The Cronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France . It stars Laurence Olivier, who also directed. The play was adapted for the screen by Olivier, Dallas...
in the tiring room
Green room
In British English and American English show business lexicon, the green room is that space in a theatre, a studio, or a similar venue, which accommodates performers or speakers not yet required on stage...
of the old Globe Theatre
Globe Theatre
The Globe Theatre was a theatre in London associated with William Shakespeare. It was built in 1599 by Shakespeare's playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and was destroyed by fire on 29 June 1613...
as the actors prepare for their roles on stage. The early part of the film follows the actors in these "stage" performances and only later does the action almost imperceptibly expand to the full realism of the Battle of Agincourt
Battle of Agincourt
The Battle of Agincourt was a major English victory against a numerically superior French army in the Hundred Years' War. The battle occurred on Friday, 25 October 1415 , near modern-day Azincourt, in northern France...
. By way of increasingly more artificial sets (based on mediaeval paintings) the film finally returns to The Globe.
The main plot device in Repo! The Genetic Opera
Repo! The Genetic Opera
Repo! The Genetic Opera is a 2008 horror-rock opera musical film directed by Darren Lynn Bousman. The film is based on a play written and composed by Darren Smith and Terrance Zdunich....
is an opera which is going to be held the night of the events of the movie. All of the principal characters of the film play a role in the opera, though the audience watching the opera is unaware that some of the events portrayed are more than drama.
At the film To Be or Not to Be
To Be or Not to Be
To Be or Not to Be can refer to:* To be, or not to be, the soliloquy from Hamlet* To Be or Not to Be , directed by Ernst Lubitsch* To Be or Not to Be , a remake produced by Mel Brooks...
, the play "The Naughty Nazis" is forbidden for the Gestapo at the beginning of the film.
Show within a film
In some films, the characters go to a show, and the greater part of the film is the show.Film within a film
The François TruffautFrançois Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
film Day for Night
Day for Night (film)
La Nuit Américaine is a 1973 French film directed by François Truffaut. It stars Jacqueline Bisset and Jean-Pierre Léaud. In French, nuit américaine is a technical process whereby sequences filmed outdoors in daylight are underexposed to appear as if they are taking place at night...
is about the making of a fictitious movie called Meet Pamela (Je vous présente Pamela) and shows the interactions of the actors as they are making this movie about a woman who falls for her husband's father. The story of Pamela involves lust, betrayal, death, sorrow, and change, events that are mirrored in the experiences of the actors portrayed in Day for Night.
The script to Karel Reisz
Karel Reisz
Karel Reisz was a Czech-born British filmmaker who was active in post–war Britain, and one of the pioneers of the new realist strain in 1950s and 1960s British cinema.-Early life:...
's movie The French Lieutenant's Woman
The French Lieutenant's Woman (film)
The French Lieutenant's Woman is a 1981 film directed by Karel Reisz and adapted by playwright Harold Pinter. It is based on the novel of the same title by John Fowles...
(1980), written by Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
, is a film-within-a-film adaptation of John Fowles's
John Fowles
John Robert Fowles was an English novelist and essayist. In 2008, The Times newspaper named Fowles among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Birth and family:...
book. In addition to the Victorian love story of the book, Pinter creates a present-day background story that shows a love affair between the main actors.
In Buster Keaton's Sherlock, Jr.
Sherlock, Jr.
Sherlock, Jr. is an American silent comedy film directed by and starring Buster Keaton and written by Clyde Bruckman, Jean Havez and Joseph A. Mitchell...
, Keaton's protagonist actually enters into a film while it is playing in a cinema.
The 2002 Pedro Almodovar
Pedro Almodóvar
Pedro Almodóvar Caballero is a Spanish film director, screenwriter and producer.Almodóvar is arguably the most successful and internationally known Spanish filmmaker of his generation. His films, marked by complex narratives, employ the codes of melodrama and use elements of pop culture, popular...
film Talk to Her
Talk to Her
Talk to Her is a 2002 Spanish comedy-drama film written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar, starring Javier Cámara, Darío Grandinetti, Leonor Watling, Geraldine Chaplin, and Rosario Flores...
(Hable con Ella) has the chief character Benigno tell a story called The Shrinking Lover to Alicia, a long-term comatose patient whom Benigno, a male nurse, is assigned to care for. The film presents The Shrinking Lover in the form of a black-and-white silent melodrama. To prove his love to a scientist girlfriend, the The Shrinking Lover protagonist drinks a potion that makes him progressively smaller. The resulting seven-minute scene, which is readily intelligible and enjoyable as a stand-alone short subject, is considerably more overtly comic than the rest of Talk to Her -- the protagonist climbs giant breasts as if they were rock formations and even ventures his way inside a (compared to him) gigantic vagina. Critics have noted that The Shrinking Lover essentially is a sex metaphor. Later in Talk to Her, the comatose Alicia is discovered to be pregnant and Benigno is sentenced to jail for rape. The Shrinking Lover was named Best Scene of 2002 in the Skandies, an annual survey of online cinephiles and critics invited each year by critic Mike D'Angelo.
In the 2006 Tarsem film The Fall
The Fall (2006 film)
The Fall is a 2006 adventure fantasy film directed by Tarsem Singh, starring Lee Pace, Catinca Untaru, and Justine Waddell. It is based on the screenplay of the 1981 Bulgarian film Yo Ho Ho by Valeri Petrov. The film earned $3.2 million worldwide. The film was released to theaters in 2008...
, an injured silent-movie stuntman tells heroic fantasy stories to a little girl with a broken arm to pass time in the hospital, which the film visualizes and presents with the stuntman's voice becoming voiceover narration. The fantasy tale bleeds back into and comments on the film's "present-tense" story. There are often incongruities based on the fact that the stuntman is an American and the girl Persian -- the stuntman's voiceover refers to "Indians," “a squaw” and “a teepee,” but the visuals show a Bollywood-style devi and a Taj Mahal-like castle.
Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks is an American film director, screenwriter, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor and producer. He is best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. He began his career as a stand-up comic and as a writer for the early TV variety show Your Show of Shows...
's 1974 comedy Blazing Saddles
Blazing Saddles
Blazing Saddles is a 1974 satirical Western comedy film directed by Mel Brooks. Starring Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder, the film was written by Brooks, Andrew Bergman, Richard Pryor, Norman Steinberg, and Al Uger, and was based on Bergman's story and draft. The movie was nominated for three...
leaves its Western setting when the climactic fight scene breaks out, revealling the setting to have been a set in the Warner Bros studio lot; the fight spills out onto an adjacent musical set, then into the studio canteen, and finally onto the streets. The two protagonists arrive at Grauman's Chinese Theater, which is showing the "premiere" of Blazing Saddles; they enter the cinema to watch the conclusion of their own film.
The concept of a film within a television series is employed in the Macross
Macross
is a series of science fiction mecha anime, directed by Shōji Kawamori of Studio Nue in 1982. The franchise features a fictional history of Earth/Humanity after the year 1999. It consists of three TV series, four movies, six OVAs, one light novel and five manga series, all sponsored by Big West...
universe. The Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love?
The Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love?
, also known as The Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love? or Super Spacefortress Macross , is a 1984 Japanese animated movie based around the Macross television series.The movie is a film adaptation of the original Macross series, with new animation...
(1984) was originally intended as an alternative theatrical re-telling of the television series The Super Dimension Fortress Macross
The Super Dimension Fortress Macross
is an anime television series. According to story creator Shoji Kawamori, it depicts "a love triangle against the backdrop of great battles" during the first Human-alien war....
(1982), but was later "retconned" into the Macross canon
Canon (fiction)
In the context of a work of fiction, the term canon denotes the material accepted as "official" in a fictional universe's fan base. It is often contrasted with, or used as the basis for, works of fan fiction, which are not considered canonical...
as a popular movie within the television series Macross 7
Macross 7
is an anime television series. It is a sequel to the show The Super Dimension Fortress Macross that takes place many years after the events of the first series following a cast of mostly new characters. The show ran from October 16, 1994 to September 24, 1995 at 11:00 AM, and 49 episodes were aired...
(1994).
In the latter two films of the Scream
Scream (film series)
Scream is a series of American horror slasher films created by Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven. The films star Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, and David Arquette. The series has grossed over $600 million in worldwide box-office receipts and consists, to date, of four motion pictures...
horror trilogy, a film-within-a-film format is used when the events of the first film spawn their own horror trilogy within the films themselves. In Scream 2
Scream 2
Scream 2 is a 1997 American slasher film created and written by Kevin Williamson and directed by Wes Craven, starring Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Jamie Kennedy and Liev Schreiber, released on December 12, 1997 as the second installment in the Scream film series...
, characters get killed while watching a film version of the events in the first Scream film, while in Scream 3
Scream 3
Scream 3 is a 2000 American slasher film created by Kevin Williamson, directed by Wes Craven and written by Ehren Kruger, starring Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox Arquette and David Arquette, released on February 4, 2000 as the third, and originally, concluding installment in the Scream film series...
the actors playing the trilogy's characters end up getting killed, much in the same way as the characters they are playing on screen. In the latest Scream movie, Scream 4
Scream 4
Scream 4 is a 2011 American slasher horror film and the fourth installment in the Scream film series. Directed by Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson, writer of Scream and Scream 2, the film stars an ensemble cast which includes David Arquette, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Emma Roberts,...
, in the opening sequence, two characters are watching Stab 7 before they get killed. Also, the characters of Stab 7 are watching Stab 6. There's also a party in which all seven Stab movies were going to be shown. References are also made to Stab 5 involving time travel
Time travel
Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...
as a plot device.
Austin Powers in Goldmember
Austin Powers in Goldmember
Austin Powers in Goldmember is a 2002 American spy comedy film and the third installment of the Austin Powers series starring Mike Myers in the title role. The movie was directed by Jay Roach, and co-written by Mike Myers and Michael McCullers. Myers also plays the roles of Dr. Evil, Goldmember,...
begins with an action film opening, which turns out to be a sequence being filmed by Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
. Near the ending, the events of the film itself are revealed to be a movie being enjoyed by the characters. Parts of director Spike Jonze
Spike Jonze
Spike Jonze is an American director, producer and actor, whose work includes music videos, commercials, film and television...
's Adaptation. follows a fictionalized version of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman
Charlie Kaufman
Charles Stuart "Charlie" Kaufman is an American screenwriter, producer, and director. His film work includes Being John Malkovich, Human Nature, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Synecdoche, New York...
as he struggles to adapt a book into a script, while the movie features scenes about the making of Being John Malkovich
Being John Malkovich
Being John Malkovich is a 1999 American black comedy-fantasy film written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze. It stars John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, and John Malkovich, who plays a fictional version of himself...
, previously written by Kaufman and directed by Jonze.
Tropic Thunder
Tropic Thunder
Tropic Thunder is a 2008 American action satire comedy film written, produced, and directed by Ben Stiller, and starring Stiller, Robert Downey, Jr., and Jack Black. The main plot revolves around a group of prima donna actors who are making a Vietnam War film...
(2008) is a comedy film
Comedy film
Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...
revolving around a group of prima donna
Prima donna
Originally used in opera or Commedia dell'arte companies, "prima donna" is Italian for "first lady." The term was used to designate the leading female singer in the opera company, the person to whom the prime roles would be given. The prima donna was normally, but not necessarily, a soprano...
actors making a Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
film (itself also named "Tropic Thunder") when their fed-up writer and director decide to abandon them in the middle of the jungle, forcing them to fight their way out.
The first episode of the anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
series The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya consists almost entirely of a poorly made film that the protagonists created, complete with Kyon
Kyon
is a fictional character, protagonist and narrator of the Haruhi Suzumiya light novel series and the anime series The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, voiced by Tomokazu Sugita in the original version of the anime, and Crispin Freeman in the English dubbed edition. The name Kyon is actually a...
's typical, sarcastic commentary.
The television shows 30 Rock
30 Rock
30 Rock is an American television comedy series created by Tina Fey that airs on NBC. The series is loosely based on Fey's experiences as head writer for Saturday Night Live...
, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was an American dramedy television series created and written by Aaron Sorkin. It ran for 22 episodes.The series takes place behind the scenes of a live sketch comedy show on the fictional television network NBS , whose format is similar to that of NBC's...
, Sonny with a Chance
Sonny With a Chance
Sonny with a Chance is an American children's sitcom which aired on Disney Channel, created by Steve Marmel, that follows the experiences of teenager Sonny Munroe, portrayed by Demi Lovato, who becomes the newest accepted cast member of her favorite live comedy show, So Random!.The series debuted...
& Kappa Mikey
Kappa Mikey
Kappa Mikey is an American animated sitcom created by Larry Schwarz, who chose 4Kids Entertainment as the worldwide licensing, marketing and official promotional agent of the series...
feature a sketch show within the TV show.
Chuck Jones
Chuck Jones
Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio...
's 1953 cartoon
Cartoon
A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...
Duck Amuck
Duck Amuck
Duck Amuck is a surreal animated cartoon directed by Chuck Jones and produced by Warner Bros. Cartoons. The short was released in early 1953 by The Vitaphone Corporation, the short subject division of Warner Bros. Pictures, as part of the Merrie Melodies series...
shows Daffy Duck
Daffy Duck
Daffy Duck is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons, often running the gamut between being the best friend and sometimes arch-rival of Bugs Bunny...
trapped in a cartoon that an unseen animator repeatedly manipulates. At the end, it is revealed that the whole cartoon was being controlled by Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny is a animated character created in 1938 at Leon Schlesinger Productions, later Warner Bros. Cartoons. Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray rabbit and is famous for his flippant, insouciant personality and his portrayal as a trickster. He has primarily appeared in animated cartoons, most...
.
All feature-length films by Jörg Buttgereit
Jörg Buttgereit
Jörg Buttgereit is a German writer/director known for his controversial films. He was born in Berlin, Germany and has lived there for his entire life.He is maybe best known for his 1987 film Nekromantik....
except Schramm
Schramm
Schramm may refer to:* Schramm , a film about Lothar Schramm, the "lipstick killer"* Schramm , people with the surname Schramm...
feature a film within the film. In Nekromantik
Nekromantik
NEKRomantik is a 1987 West German horror film directed by Jörg Buttgereit. This frequently controversial movie, banned in a number of countries, has become a cult film over the years due to its transgressive subject matter and audacious imagery...
, the protagonist goes to the cinema to see the fictional slasher film Vera. In Der Todesking
Der Todesking
Der Todesking is a 1989 German horror film directed by Jörg Buttgereit. This experimental style movie which does not use central characters explores the topic of suicide and violent death in the form of seven episodes, each one attributed to one day of the week...
one of the character watches a video of the fictional nazi exploitation film Vera - Todesengel der Gestapo and in Nekromantik 2
Nekromantik 2
NEKRomantik 2 is 1991 German horror/splatter film directed by Jörg Buttgereit and a sequel of his 1987 film Nekromantik. The film is about necrophilia, and was quite controversial and was seized by authorities in Munich 12 days after its release, an action that had no precedent in Germany since the...
, the characters go to see a movie called Mon dejeuner avec Vera which is a parody of Lois Malle's My Dinner with André
My Dinner with Andre
My Dinner with Andre is a 1981 film starring Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn, written by Gregory and Shawn, and directed by Louis Malle.-Plot:...
.
The Irish television series Father Ted
Father Ted
Father Ted is a comedy series set in Ireland that was produced by Hat Trick Productions for British broadcaster Channel 4. Written jointly by Irish writers Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan and starring a predominantly Irish cast, it originally aired over three series from 21 April 1995 until 1 May...
features a television show, Father Ben, which has characters and storylines almost identical to that of Father Ted.
In the Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...
film Inglourious Basterds, the Nazi-Propaganda film Nation's Pride is directed by Eli Roth
Eli Roth
Eli Raphael Roth is an American film director, producer, writer and actor. He is known for his role as Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds for which he won both a SAG Award and a BFCA Critic's Choice Award...
.
Video game within a video game
In many video games, including the GTAGTA
- Events :*Golden Tap Awards, an annual beer awards event held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada*Golden Ticket Awards, the most prestigious awards in the amusement industry- Media :*Grand Theft Auto , a 1977 film directed by Ron Howard...
series, mini-games exist that are non-plot oriented, and optional to the completion of the game. GTA: San Andreas features several arcade-like games, including 'Invaders from Uranus' (A Space Invaders
Space Invaders
is an arcade video game designed by Tomohiro Nishikado, and released in 1978. It was originally manufactured and sold by Taito in Japan, and was later licensed for production in the United States by the Midway division of Bally. Space Invaders is one of the earliest shooting games and the aim is to...
parody). GTA 4 has another arcade game called 'Duality'. Also, while not playable video games within video games, the main games in the Pokémon
Pokémon
is a media franchise published and owned by the video game company Nintendo and created by Satoshi Tajiri in 1996. Originally released as a pair of interlinkable Game Boy role-playing video games developed by Game Freak, Pokémon has since become the second most successful and lucrative video...
series generally include a television and game console in the player character
Player character
A player character or playable character is a character in a video game or role playing game who is controlled or controllable by a player, and is typically a protagonist of the story told in the course of the game. A player character is a persona of the player who controls it. Player characters...
's room. The specific type of console portrayed depends on which one was most recently released by Nintendo
Nintendo
is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel....
when the specific game was released, e.g. a Wii
Wii
The Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo on November 19, 2006. As a seventh-generation console, the Wii primarily competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. Nintendo states that its console targets a broader demographic than that of the two others...
in Pokémon Black and White
Pokémon Black and White
are role-playing games developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS. They are the first installments in the fifth generation of the Pokémon series of role-playing games...
versions. The Nintendo 64 video game Donkey Kong 64
Donkey Kong 64
Donkey Kong 64 is a platform game, developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. It was released in North America on November 24, 1999 and in Europe on December 6, 1999. The game is a follow up to the Donkey Kong Country trilogy on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System...
also had this system, at one part of the game when playing as Donkey Kong, the player can play the original Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong
is a fictional gorilla in the Donkey Kong and Mario series. He is roughly twice the size of a normal gorilla, weighing approximately 800 pounds. Donkey Kong first appeared in Nintendo's popular 1981 video game of the same name. Since then he has appeared in over 20 games in his own series, as well...
game.
In the Shenmue
Shenmue
is a 1999 open-world adventure video game developed by Sega AM2 and published by Sega for the Dreamcast, produced and directed by Yu Suzuki. Suzuki coined a genre title, "FREE" , for the game, based on the interactivity and freedom he wanted to give to the player...
series of games there are several instances of games within the main game. In the first installment, the player is able to play a Sega Saturn
Sega Saturn
The is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console that was first released by Sega on November 22, 1994 in Japan, May 11, 1995 in North America, and July 8, 1995 in Europe...
inside the Hazuki Residence and there are several Sega arcade games playable in different locations. In Shenmue 2, playable arcade machines featuring other Sega titles are scattered throughout the game world.
In Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VII
is a role-playing video game developed by Square and published by Sony Computer Entertainment as the seventh installment in the Final Fantasy series. It was originally released in 1997 for the Sony PlayStation and was re-released in 1998 for Microsoft Windows-based personal computers and in 2009...
there are several video-games that can be played in an arcade in the Gold Saucer theme park, consisting of a beat-em-up, a snowboarding game, an RPG and a submarine game.
Deeply nested fiction
There are several cases where an author has nested his fiction more deeply than just two layers.The earliest examples are in Ugrasrava's epic Mahabharata
Mahabharata
The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India and Nepal, the other being the Ramayana. The epic is part of itihasa....
and Vishnu Sarma
Vishnu Sarma
Vishnu Sharma was an Indian scholar and author who is believed to have written the Panchatantra collection of fables. The exact period of the composition of the Panchatantra is uncertain, and estimates vary from 1200 BCE to 300 CE...
's Panchatantra
Panchatantra
The Panchatantra is an ancient Indian inter-related collection of animal fables in verse and prose, in a frame story format. The original Sanskrit work, which some scholars believe was composed in the 3rd century BCE, is attributed to Vishnu Sharma...
. Some of the stories narrated in the Panchatantra often had stories within them. In the epic Mahabharata, the Kurukshetra War
Kurukshetra war
According to the Indian epic poem Mahābhārata, a dynastic succession struggle between two groups of cousins of an Indo-Aryan kingdom called Kuru, the Kauravas and Pandavas, for the throne of Hastinapura resulted in the Kurukshetra War in which a number of ancient kingdoms participated as allies of...
is narrated by a character in Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa's Jaya, which itself is narrated by a character in Vaisampayana
Vaisampayana
Vaishampayana was the traditional narrator of the Mahabharata, one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India. He was an ancient Indian sage who was the original teacher of the Black Yajur-Veda. The Ashvalayana Grihya Sutra mentions him as Mahabharatacharya...
's Bharata, which itself is narrated by a character in Ugrasrava's Mahabharata.
Another early example is The Book of One Thousand and One Nights
The Book of One Thousand and One Nights
One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian stories and folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age...
, where the general story is narrated by an unknown narrator, and in this narration the stories are told by Scheherazade
Scheherazade
Scheherazade , sometimes Scheherazadea, Persian transliteration Shahrazad or Shahrzād is a legendary Persian queen and the storyteller of One Thousand and One Nights.-Narration :...
. In most of Scheherazade's narrations there are also stories narrated, and even in some of these, there are some other stories.
In Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Richard Hofstadter is an American academic whose research focuses on consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics...
's Gödel, Escher, Bach
Gödel, Escher, Bach
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid is a book by Douglas Hofstadter, described by his publishing company as "a metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll"....
, there is a narrative between Achilles and the Tortoise (characters borrowed from Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
, who in turn borrowed them from Zeno
Zeno of Elea
Zeno of Elea was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher of southern Italy and a member of the Eleatic School founded by Parmenides. Aristotle called him the inventor of the dialectic. He is best known for his paradoxes, which Bertrand Russell has described as "immeasurably subtle and profound".- Life...
), and within this story they find a book entitled "Provocative Adventures of Achilles and the Tortoise Taking Place in Sundry Spots of the Globe", which they begin to read, the Tortoise taking the part of the Tortoise, and Achilles taking the part of Achilles. Within this narrative, which itself is somewhat self-referential, the two characters find a book entitled "Provocative Adventures of Achilles and the Tortoise Taking Place in Sundry Spots of the Globe", which they begin to read, the Tortoise taking the part of Achilles, and Achilles taking the part of the Tortoise.
In The Sandman by Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman
Neil Richard Gaiman born 10 November 1960)is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book...
, the necropolis apprentice Petrefax tells a story that includes a storytelling session about Destruction telling a story. It is later shown that this - along with all the other stories in World's End - are being related to a bar girl by one of the characters present at Petrefax's original storytelling session.
In Sue Townsend
Sue Townsend
-Adrian Mole series:* The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ , her best selling book, and the best-selling new British fiction book of the 1980s.* The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole * The True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole...
's Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years
Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years
Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years is the fourth book in the Adrian Mole series, written by Sue Townsend. It focuses on the worries of the, now, adult Mole. The book was first published in 1993 by Methuen...
, Adrian
Adrian Mole
Adrian Albert Mole is the fictional protagonist in a series of books by English author Sue Townsend. The character first appeared in a BBC Radio 4 play in 1982. The books are written in the form of a diary, with some additional content such as correspondence...
writes a book entitled Lo! The Flat Hills Of My Homeland, in which the main character, Jake Westmorland, writes a book called Sparg of Kronk, whose eponymous character, Sparg, writes a book with no language.
In Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick
Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...
's novel The Man in the High Castle
The Man in the High Castle
The Man in the High Castle is a science fiction alternate history novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. It won a Hugo Award in 1963 and has since been translated into many languages....
, each character comes into interaction with a book called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, which was written by the Man in the High Castle. Dick's novel details a world in which the Axis Powers of World War II had succeeded in dominating the known world. The novel within the novel details an alternative to this history in which the Allies overcome the Axis and bring stability to the world.
In Red Orc's Rage
Red Orc's Rage
Red Orc's Rage is a recursive science fiction novel and part of the "World of Tiers" series of novels by Philip José Farmer. The plot of the book was inspired by the work of American psychiatrist A.James Giannini, M.D, who used earlier books in Farmer's series as role-playing tools and aids to...
by Philip J. Farmer a doubly recursive method is used to interwine its fictional layers. This novel is part of a science-fiction series, the World of Tiers
World of Tiers
The World of Tiers is a series of science fiction novels by American writer Philip José Farmer. They are set within a series of artificially-constructed universes, created and ruled by decadent beings who are genetically identical to humans, but who regard themselves as superior, the inheritors of...
. Farmer collaborated in the writing of this novel with an American psychiatrist,Dr. A. James Giannini. Dr. Giannini had previously used the World of Tiers series in treating patients in group therapy. During these therapeutic sessions, the content and process of the text and novelist was discussed rather than the lives of the patients. In this way subconscious defenses could be circumvented. Farmer took the real life case-studies and melded these with adventures of his characters in the series.
In an old Chinese tale, a monk is telling a story to a young monk, in which the story is about a monk telling a story to a young monk, and nest the story infinitely deep.
From story within a story to separate story
Occasionally a story within a story becomes such a popular element that the producer(s) decide to develop it autonomonously (completing it if it is incomplete) as a separate and distinct work. This is sometimes called a "spin-off".In the fictional world of the Toy Story
Toy Story
Toy Story is a 1995 American computer-animated film released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is Pixar's first feature film as well as the first ever feature film to be made entirely with CGI. The film was directed by John Lasseter and featuring the voices of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen...
movies, Buzz Lightyear
Buzz Lightyear
Buzz Lightyear is a character and the main deuteragonist of the Toy Story franchise. Buzz is a space ranger action figure and the co-leader of Andy's Room. He has also appeared in the movie Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins and the television series spin-off Buzz Lightyear of...
is an animated toy action figure, which was based on a fictitious cartoon series, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command
Buzz Lightyear of Star Command
Buzz Lightyear of Star Command is an American animated science fiction/adventure/comedy series produced by Walt Disney Television. The character is from the planet Zurtron. The series originally aired on UPN and ABC from October 2000 to January 2001 as part of Disney's One Saturday Morning...
, which did not exist in the real world except for snippets seen within Toy Story. Later, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command was produced in full in the real world, perhaps prompted by people who thought that the brief showing of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command in Toy Story was an embedded real-world advertisement.
Another notable example is the relationship between Genshiken
Genshiken
is a manga series by Shimoku Kio about a college club for otaku and the lifestyle its members pursue. The title is a shortening of the club's official name, , or "The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture". The series has also been adapted into an anime directed by Tsutomu Mizushima...
, a manga series about popular culture, and Kujibiki Unbalance
Kujibiki Unbalance
, as it exists in the real world, is a three-episode OVA from the highly popular 2004 anime Genshiken, as well as a series of three light novels by Genshiken anime collaborator Michiko Yokote. Within the world of Genshiken, however, Kujibiki Unbalance is a popular ongoing manga and 26-episode anime...
, a series in the Genshiken universe, which has spawned merchandise of its own, and is being remade into a series on its own.
On other occasions such spin-offs may be produced as a way of providing additional information on the fictional world for fans. A well-known example of this comes in the Harry Potter
Harry Potter
Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...
series of J. K. Rowling
J. K. Rowling
Joanne "Jo" Rowling, OBE , better known as J. K. Rowling, is the British author of the Harry Potter fantasy series...
, where three such supplemental books have been produced, with the profits going to charity. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a 2001 book written by British author J. K. Rowling about the magical creatures in the Harry Potter universe...
is a textbook used by the main character, and Quidditch Through the Ages
Quidditch Through the Ages
Quidditch Through the Ages is a 2001 book written by British author J. K. Rowling about Quidditch in the Harry Potter universe. It purports to be the Hogwarts library's copy of the non-fiction book of the same name mentioned in several novels of the Harry Potter series.Rowling's name does not...
is a book from the library at his school. The Tales of Beedle the Bard
The Tales of Beedle the Bard
The Tales of Beedle the Bard is a book of children's stories by British author J. K. Rowling. It purports to be the storybook of the same name mentioned in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the last book of the Harry Potter series....
provides an additional layer of fiction, the 'tales' being instructional stories told to children in the characters' world.
Perhaps the most unusual example of this was the fictitious author Kilgore Trout
Kilgore Trout
Kilgore Trout is a fictional character created by author Kurt Vonnegut. He was originally created as a fictionalized version of author Theodore Sturgeon , although Trout's consistent presence in Vonnegut's works has also led critics to view him as the author's own alter ego...
, who appears in the works of Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle , Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions blend satire, gallows humor and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.-Early...
. In the world of those stories, Kilgore Trout has written a novel called Venus on the Half-Shell
Venus on the Half-Shell
Venus on the Half-Shell is a science fiction novel attributed to the fictional author Kilgore Trout but actually written by Philip José Farmer. Kilgore Trout is a recurring character of many of the novels of Kurt Vonnegut and this book was first mentioned as a fictional work in his novel God Bless...
. In 1975 real-world author Philip José Farmer
Philip José Farmer
Philip José Farmer was an American author, principally known for his award-winning science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories....
wrote a science-fiction novel called Venus on the Half-Shell, which he published under the name Kilgore Trout.
The movie Adaptation
Adaptation.
Adaptation. is a 2002 American comedy-drama film directed by Spike Jonze and written by Charlie Kaufman. The film is based on Susan Orlean's non-fiction book The Orchid Thief through self-referential events...
was presented as if it had been written by Charlie Kaufman
Charlie Kaufman
Charles Stuart "Charlie" Kaufman is an American screenwriter, producer, and director. His film work includes Being John Malkovich, Human Nature, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Synecdoche, New York...
and his fictitious brother Donald Kaufman. Both 'brothers' were nominated for an Oscar that year.
Sometimes such spin-offs are produced against the original creator's wishes. One example is that the Calvin & Hobbes comic strip (written by Bill Waterson) includes in its scenario a children's book Hamster Huey & The Gooey Kablooie, and Bill Waterson stated in The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book that he believed that Hamster Huey & The Gooey Kablooie should remain an undefined story, left to the reader's imagination; but someone not associated with the strip published Hamster Huey & The Gooey Kablooie in the real world.
At least one complete Captain Proton story has been written in the real world: http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Captain-Proton-Dean-Wesley-Smith/9780671036461-item.html?pticket=s0wazr22p1natg55uc4gj145e8peh1SsCiRuE%2fmuY4PwtRPzSQw%3d Captain Proton: Defender of the Earth, a comic, by Dean Wesley Smith
Dean Wesley Smith
Dean Wesley Smith is a science fiction author, known primarily for his Star Trek novels, movie novelizations, and other novels of licensed properties such as Smallville, Spider-Man, X-Men, Aliens, Roswell, Men in Black, and Quantum Leap...
, who presumed that in the Star Trek universe, the holonovel Captain Proton was adapted from a supposed 1930's comic; and he set out to write and publish that comic in the real world. (Other fan fiction described as Captain Proton stories are Star Trek: Voyager stories whose action happens partly in Voyager's holodeck
Holodeck
A holodeck, in the fictional Star Trek universe, is a simulated reality facility located on starships and starbases. The first use of a "holodeck" by that name in the Star Trek universe was in the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Encounter at Farpoint", although a conceptually...
where the Captain Proton program is running.)
Real people as characters within a multi-layered fiction
In the television series BonesBones (TV series)
Bones is an American crime drama television series that premiered on the Fox Network on September 13, 2005. The show is based on forensic anthropology and forensic archaeology, with each episode focusing on an FBI case file concerning the mystery behind human remains brought by FBI Special Agent...
, forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brennan
Temperance Brennan
Temperance Daesee Brennan is a fictional character created by author Kathy Reichs, and is the hero of her crime novel series . She was introduced in Reichs' first novel, Déjà Dead, which was published in 1997...
spends much of her free time writing novels about a forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs
Kathy Reichs
Kathleen Joan Toelle "Kathy" Reichs is an American crime writer, forensic anthropologist and academic . She is a professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, but is currently on indefinite leave...
. This mimics Reichs' own real-life second career of writing the Temperance Brennan
Temperance Brennan
Temperance Daesee Brennan is a fictional character created by author Kathy Reichs, and is the hero of her crime novel series . She was introduced in Reichs' first novel, Déjà Dead, which was published in 1997...
series of novels and working as executive producer of the TV show, all while working as a forensic anthropologist at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for the State of North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
and the Laboratoire des Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale for the province
Province
A province is a territorial unit, almost always an administrative division, within a country or state.-Etymology:The English word "province" is attested since about 1330 and derives from the 13th-century Old French "province," which itself comes from the Latin word "provincia," which referred to...
of Québec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
. Brennan
Temperance Brennan
Temperance Daesee Brennan is a fictional character created by author Kathy Reichs, and is the hero of her crime novel series . She was introduced in Reichs' first novel, Déjà Dead, which was published in 1997...
has made at least one other reference to the real-life Kathy Reichs
Kathy Reichs
Kathleen Joan Toelle "Kathy" Reichs is an American crime writer, forensic anthropologist and academic . She is a professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, but is currently on indefinite leave...
most notably by stating in the series pilot that the closest other forensic anthropologist is in Montreal.
Examples on Television
- WJM News within The Mary Tyler Moore ShowThe Mary Tyler Moore ShowThe Mary Tyler Moore Show is an American television sitcom created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns that aired on CBS from 1970 to 1977...
- Wake Up San Francisco and The Ranger Joe Show, a morning talk show and children's program, respectively, within Full HouseFull HouseFull House is an American sitcom television series. Set in San Francisco, the show chronicles widowed father Danny Tanner, who, after the death of his wife, enlists his best friend Joey Gladstone and his brother-in-law Jesse Katsopolis to help raise his three daughters, D.J., Stephanie, and...
. - F.Y.I. (For Your Information), a news magazine show within Murphy BrownMurphy BrownMurphy Brown is an American situation comedy which aired on CBS from November 14, 1988, to May 18, 1998, for a total of 247 episodes. The program starred Candice Bergen as the eponymous Murphy Brown, a famous investigative journalist and news anchor for FYI, a fictional CBS television...
. - Tool Time, a remodeling/construction show within Home Improvement.
- Deep Powder, a serial described as "Baywatch on Skis" within JoeyJoey (TV series)Joey is an American sitcom, which stars Matt LeBlanc reprising his role as Joey Tribbiani from the sitcom Friends. It premiered on the NBC television network, on September 9, 2004, in the former time slot of its parent series, Thursday nights at 8:00 p.m...
. - So Random and MacKenzie Falls with Sonny With a ChanceSonny With a ChanceSonny with a Chance is an American children's sitcom which aired on Disney Channel, created by Steve Marmel, that follows the experiences of teenager Sonny Munroe, portrayed by Demi Lovato, who becomes the newest accepted cast member of her favorite live comedy show, So Random!.The series debuted...
, a Disney ChannelDisney ChannelDisney Channel is an American basic cable and satellite television network, owned by the Disney-ABC Television Group division of The Walt Disney Company. It is under the direction of Disney-ABC Television Group President Anne Sweeney. The channel's headquarters is located on West Alameda Ave. in...
series starring Demi LovatoDemi Lovato"She’s got the range, the full emotional spectrum, incredible control… Vocally, she’s the best thing Disney’s had since Christina Aguilera."—Producer Toby Gad on Demi Lovato's vocals...
described as "a comedy show about a comedy show" - In 19901990 in televisionFor the American TV schedule, see: 1990-91 United States network television schedule.The year 1990 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 1990.-Events:-Debuts:-1950s:...
, the fictional soap opera Invitation to Love appeared in every episode of the first season of Twin PeaksTwin PeaksTwin Peaks is an American television serial drama created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. The series follows the investigation headed by FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper , of the murder of a popular teenager and homecoming queen, Laura Palmer...
, often offering commentary on the events of the outer series (particularly foreshadowing the appearance of Laura PalmerLaura PalmerLaura Palmer is a fictional character from the television series Twin Peaks, created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. Her death was the catalyst for the events of the series...
's identical cousin Maddy Ferguson). - Dr. Gregory HouseGregory HouseGregory House, M.D., or simply referred to as House, is a fictional antihero and title character of the American television series House, played by Hugh Laurie. He is the Chief of Diagnostic Medicine at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, where he leads a team of diagnosticians...
watches the fictional show Prescription: Passion in the 20082008 in televisionThe following is a list of events affecting American television in 2008. Events listed include television show debuts, finales, cancellations, and new channel launches.-January:-February:-March:-April:-May:-June:-July:-August:...
HouseHouse (TV series)House is an American television medical drama that debuted on the Fox network on November 16, 2004. The show's central character is Dr. Gregory House , an unconventional and misanthropic medical genius who heads a team of diagnosticians at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in...
episodes "No More Mr. Nice Guy" and "Living the Dream" (though the show appeared as early as the pilotPilot (House)"Pilot", also known as "Everybody Lies", is the first episode of the U.S. television series House. The episode premiered on the Fox network on November 16, 2004. It introduces the character of Dr. Gregory House —a maverick antisocial doctor—and his team of diagnosticians at the fictional...
). The fictional show intersects with the outer series in "Living the Dream," as House treats the star of the soap opera against the actor's will. - Itchy & Scratchy (a pastiche of Tom and JerryTom and JerryTom and Jerry are the cat and mouse cartoon characters that were evolved starting in 1939.Tom and Jerry also may refer to:Cartoon works featuring the cat and mouse so named:* The Tom and Jerry Show...
) within The Simpsons - Terrance & Phillip (a pastiche of Beavis & Butt-head) within South Park
- The Alan Brady Show within The Dick Van Dyke ShowThe Dick Van Dyke ShowThe Dick Van Dyke Show is an American television sitcom that initially aired on the Columbia Broadcasting System from October 3, 1961, until June 1, 1966. The show was created by Carl Reiner and starred Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore. It was produced by Reiner with Bill Persky and Sam Denoff....
- The Comeback and Room and Bored within The ComebackThe Comeback (TV series)The Comeback is a television series produced by HBO that stars actress Lisa Kudrow as sitcom actress Valerie Cherish in modern-day Los Angeles, California. It was created by Kudrow and Michael Patrick King, a former executive producer of Sex and the City...
- The Larry Sanders Show within The Larry Sanders ShowThe Larry Sanders ShowThe Larry Sanders Show is a satirical television sitcom that aired from August 1992 to May 1998 on the HBO cable television network in the United States. It starred stand-up comedian Garry Shandling as vain, neurotic talk show host Larry Sanders, and centered on the running of his TV show, and the...
- TGS With Tracy Jordan within 30 Rock30 Rock30 Rock is an American television comedy series created by Tina Fey that airs on NBC. The series is loosely based on Fey's experiences as head writer for Saturday Night Live...
- Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip within Studio 60 on the Sunset StripStudio 60 on the Sunset StripStudio 60 on the Sunset Strip was an American dramedy television series created and written by Aaron Sorkin. It ran for 22 episodes.The series takes place behind the scenes of a live sketch comedy show on the fictional television network NBS , whose format is similar to that of NBC's...
- "Shake It Up Chicago" within Shake It UpShake It Up (TV series)Shake It Up is an American television sitcom airing on Disney Channel in the United States. The series premiered on November 7, 2010. Created by Chris Thompson and starring Bella Thorne and Zendaya, the show follows the adventures of Cece Jones and Rocky Blue as they star as background dancers on...
- Ultralord within The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy GeniusThe Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy GeniusThe Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, often shortened to just Jimmy Neutron, is an American animated television series, and spin-off of the Academy Award-nominated computer-animated movie, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. The series first officially aired on July 20, 2002, on Nickelodeon...
- LilyMu within Kappa MikeyKappa MikeyKappa Mikey is an American animated sitcom created by Larry Schwarz, who chose 4Kids Entertainment as the worldwide licensing, marketing and official promotional agent of the series...
Other examples
- Lazy JonesLazy JonesLazy Jones is a computer game for the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, MSX and Tatung Einstein. It was written by David Whittaker and released by Terminal Software in 1984. The Spectrum version was ported by Simon Cobb....
- Hero at LargeHero at LargeHero at Large is a 1980 comedy film starring John Ritter and Anne Archer. The film was written by former Disney screenwriter, AJ Carothers and directed by Martin Davidson. The original music score was composed by Patrick Williams.-Plot:...
- Noises OffNoises OffNoises Off is a 1982 play by English playwright Michael Frayn. The idea for it was born in 1970, when Frayn was standing in the wings watching a performance of Chinamen, a farce that he had written for Lynn Redgrave...
- "Wormhole X-Treme!"
- Super Mario Bros. 2Super Mario Bros. 2Super Mario Bros. 2, often abbreviated SMB2, is a platform game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System as a sequel to the 1985 game Super Mario Bros. The game was also remade as part of the Super Mario All-Stars collection for the Super Nintendo Entertainment...
- Galaxy QuestGalaxy QuestGalaxy Quest is a 1999 science-fiction comedy parody about a troupe of human actors who defend a group of aliens against an alien warlord. It was directed by Dean Parisot and written by David Howard and Robert Gordon. Mark Johnson and Charles Newirth produced the film for DreamWorks, and David...
to some extent - 'Geikigangar III' within Martian Successor Nadesico
- Bewitched
- Papillon RosePapillon Roseis an anime which parodies the magical girl genre, particularly Sailor Moon and Cutie Honey. Created by dojinshi group ECHIGOYA, Papillon Rose started out as a metafiction joke on a website, and the only had a few pictures of characters and a few lyrics to opening and ending theme songs...
- The music video for "SabotageSabotage (song)"Sabotage" is a song by American hip-hop group Beastie Boys, released as the first single from their fourth studio album Ill Communication....
" by the Beastie BoysBeastie BoysBeastie Boys are an American hip hop trio from New York City. The group consists of Mike D who plays the drums, MCA who plays the bass, and Ad-Rock who plays the guitar.... - A Cock and Bull StoryA Cock and Bull StoryA Cock and Bull Story is a 2006 British comedy film directed by Michael Winterbottom...
- Max PayneMax PayneMax Payne is a BAFTA Award–winning third-person shooter video game developed by Finnish developers Remedy Entertainment and published by Gathering of Developers in July 2001 for Microsoft Windows. Ports created later in the year for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and the GameBoy Advance were published by...
- InceptionInceptionInception: The Subconscious Jams 1994-1995 is a compilation of unreleased tracks by the band Download.-Track listing:# "Primitive Tekno Jam" – 3:23# "Bee Sting Sickness" – 8:04# "Weed Acid Techno" – 8:19...
- MausMausMaus: A Survivor's Tale, by Art Spiegelman, is a biography of the author's father, Vladek Spiegelman, a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. It alternates between descriptions of Vladek's life in Poland before and during the Second World War and Vladek's later life in the Rego Park neighborhood of...
Fictional artists
Like S. Morgenstern, Peter Schikele's P.D.Q. Bach can be considered a "fictional artist", who supposedly created the works actually created by the artist's own creator. P.D.Q.'s life thus becomes something of a "frame story" (albeit indirectly) for such works as his opera The Abduction of FigaroThe Abduction of Figaro
The Abduction of Figaro is a comic opera, described as "A Simply Grand Opera by P. D. Q. Bach," which is actually the work of composer Peter Schickele. It is a parody of opera in general, and the title is a play on two operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: The Abduction from the Seraglio and The...
.
Mystery author Ellery Queen
Ellery Queen
Ellery Queen is both a fictional character and a pseudonym used by two American cousins from Brooklyn, New York: Daniel Nathan, alias Frederic Dannay and Manford Lepofsky, alias Manfred Bennington Lee , to write, edit, and anthologize detective fiction.The fictional Ellery Queen created by...
can also be considered a "fictional artist" of sorts, though the proverbial line between his "true-life" and "fictional" exploits are generally very blurred.
In this case the "frame story"—that is, the fictional creator's life—can be considered metafiction
Metafiction
Metafiction, also known as Romantic irony in the context of Romantic works of literature, is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion...
al, since each story (or other work) supposedly created by that character adds a little to his or her own (fictional) story.
Sometimes a song or a poem or an image in a fiction work, which was actually composed by the author, is attributed by the author to one of his characters
Character (arts)
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
, for example the song "Namarie
Namárië
"Namárië" is a poem by J. R. R. Tolkien written in Quenya, a constructed language, and published for the first time in The Lord of the Rings...
" in The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings is a high fantasy epic written by English philologist and University of Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit , but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in...
by J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
, which Tolkien attributes to the character Galadriel
Galadriel
Galadriel is a character created by J.R.R. Tolkien, appearing in his Middle-earth legendarium. She appears in The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and Unfinished Tales....
.
Recursion
Occasionally, though primarily on television, the characters in a story become the subjects of dramatizations based on their own lives or events that they have experienced. The most notorious case of this took place on the SeinfeldSeinfeld
Seinfeld is an American television sitcom that originally aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, lasting nine seasons, and is now in syndication. It was created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, the latter starring as a fictionalized version of himself...
television series; it has also happened on other shows including The X-Files
The X-Files
The X-Files is an American science fiction television series and a part of The X-Files franchise, created by screenwriter Chris Carter. The program originally aired from to . The show was a hit for the Fox network, and its characters and slogans became popular culture touchstones in the 1990s...
, Stargate SG1 and the short-lived Ellery Queen
Ellery Queen
Ellery Queen is both a fictional character and a pseudonym used by two American cousins from Brooklyn, New York: Daniel Nathan, alias Frederic Dannay and Manford Lepofsky, alias Manfred Bennington Lee , to write, edit, and anthologize detective fiction.The fictional Ellery Queen created by...
series.
Frame stories
An early phenomenon related to the "story within a story" is the "framing deviceFraming device
The term framing device refers to the usage of the same single action, scene, event, setting, or any element of significance at both the beginning and end of an artistic, musical, or literary work. The repeated element thus creates a ‘frame’ within which the main body of work can develop.The...
" or "frame story
Frame story
A frame story is a literary technique that sometimes serves as a companion piece to a story within a story, whereby an introductory or main narrative is presented, at least in part, for the purpose of setting the stage either for a more emphasized second narrative or for a set of shorter stories...
", where a supplemental story is used to help tell the main story. In the supplemental story, or "frame", one or more characters tell the main story to one or more other characters.
The earliest examples of "frame stories" and "stories within stories" were in ancient Indian literature
Indian literature
Indian literature refers to the literature produced on the Indian subcontinent until 1947 and in the Republic of India thereafter. The Republic of India has 22 officially recognized languages....
, such as the Mahabharata
Mahabharata
The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India and Nepal, the other being the Ramayana. The epic is part of itihasa....
, Ramayana
Ramayana
The Ramayana is an ancient Sanskrit epic. It is ascribed to the Hindu sage Valmiki and forms an important part of the Hindu canon , considered to be itihāsa. The Ramayana is one of the two great epics of India and Nepal, the other being the Mahabharata...
, Fables of Bidpai
Panchatantra
The Panchatantra is an ancient Indian inter-related collection of animal fables in verse and prose, in a frame story format. The original Sanskrit work, which some scholars believe was composed in the 3rd century BCE, is attributed to Vishnu Sharma...
, Hitopadesha
Hitopadesha
Hitopadesha is a collection of Sanskrit fables in prose and verse written in the 12 century C.E. It is an independent treatment of the Panchatantra...
and Vikram and the Vampire
Baital Pachisi
Baital Pachisi or Vetala Panchavimshati , is a collection of tales and legends within a frame story, from India. It was originally written in Sanskrit....
. Both The Golden Ass
The Golden Ass
The Metamorphoses of Apuleius, which St. Augustine referred to as The Golden Ass , is the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety....
by Apuleius
Apuleius
Apuleius was a Latin prose writer. He was a Berber, from Madaurus . He studied Platonist philosophy in Athens; travelled to Italy, Asia Minor and Egypt; and was an initiate in several cults or mysteries. The most famous incident in his life was when he was accused of using magic to gain the...
and Metamorphoses
Metamorphoses (poem)
Metamorphoses is a Latin narrative poem in fifteen books by the Roman poet Ovid describing the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar within a loose mythico-historical framework. Completed in AD 8, it is recognized as a masterpiece of Golden Age Latin literature...
by Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
extend the depths of framing to several degrees. Another early example is the famous Arabian Nights, in which Sheherazade
Shéhérazade
Shéhérazade is the title of two works by the French composer Maurice Ravel.Shéhérazade, ouverture de féerie, written in 1898 but unpublished, is a work for orchestra intended as the overture for an opera of the same name...
narrates stories within stories, and even within some of these, more stories are narrated. Chaucer's
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at...
is also a frame story.
A well-known modern example of this is The Princess Bride
The Princess Bride
The Princess Bride is a 1973 fantasy novel written by William Goldman. It was originally published in the United States by Harcourt Brace, while in the UK it is/was published by Bloomsbury Publishing....
, both the book and the movie. In the movie, a grandfather is reading the story of "The Princess Bride" to his grandson. In the book, a more detailed frame story has a father editing a (nonexistent) much longer work for his son, creating his own "Good Parts Version" (as the book called it) by leaving out all the parts that would bore a young boy. Both the book and the movie assert that the central story is from a book called "The Princess Bride" by a nonexistent author named S. Morgenstern.
Sometimes a frame story exists in the same setting as the main story. On the television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles
The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles
The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles is an American television series that aired on ABC from March 4, 1992, to July 24, 1993. The series explores the childhood and youth of the fictional character Indiana Jones and primarily stars Sean Patrick Flanery and Corey Carrier as the title character, with...
, each episode was framed as though it were being told by an older Indy
Indiana Jones
Colonel Henry Walton "Indiana" Jones, Jr., Ph.D. is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Indiana Jones franchise. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg created the character in homage to the action heroes of 1930s film serials...
(usually a very elderly George Hall
George Hall (actor)
George Hall was a theater, TV, and film actor best remembered by his role as the 93 year old Indiana Jones in the TV series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles . He debuted on Broadway in 1946. He had a memorable and engaging role as Mr...
, though one featured Harrison Ford
Harrison Ford
Harrison Ford is an American film actor and producer. He is famous for his performances as Han Solo in the original Star Wars trilogy and as the title character of the Indiana Jones film series. Ford is also known for his roles as Rick Deckard in Blade Runner, John Book in Witness and Jack Ryan in...
).
See also
- MetafictionMetafictionMetafiction, also known as Romantic irony in the context of Romantic works of literature, is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion...
- List of fictional plays
- List of fictional books
- List of fictional musicals
- Frame storyFrame storyA frame story is a literary technique that sometimes serves as a companion piece to a story within a story, whereby an introductory or main narrative is presented, at least in part, for the purpose of setting the stage either for a more emphasized second narrative or for a set of shorter stories...
- ParableParableA parable is a succinct story, in prose or verse, which illustrates one or more instructive principles, or lessons, or a normative principle. It differs from a fable in that fables use animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as characters, while parables generally feature human...