Story within a story

A story within a story is a literary device or conceit in which one story is told during the action of another story. 'Mise en abyme' is the French term for the same literary device (and also refers 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 novels, short stories, plays, television, films, poems, music, and even philosophy.

Related Topics:
Literary device - Conceit - French - Heraldry - Novel - Short stories - Play - Television - Film - Poem - Music - Philosophy

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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. Often the stories 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.

Related Topics:
The Itchy & Scratchy Show - The Simpsons - Terrance & Phillip - South Park

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These stories may disclose the background of characters or events, tell of myths and legends which influence the plot, or even seem to be extraneous diversions from the plot. If a story is told within another, rather than being told as part of the plot, the motives and the reliability of the storyteller are automatically in question. The original author is often regarded as truthful even if he is telling fiction whereas an internal teller may alter or disguise details to make himself appear better. This flexibility allows the author to play on the reader's perceptions of the characters. 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.

Related Topics:
Chaucer - The Canterbury Tales

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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 which influence the hero's actions (there are others which even the author himself admits are purely digressive).

Related Topics:
The Mad Trist - Edgar Allan Poe - The Fall of the House of Usher - Don Quixote - Cervantes

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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, explains many of Dostoevsky's own views.

Related Topics:
Anthologised - The Grand Inquisitor - Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov

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A similar device known as a frame tale is when several short stories are linked together with another story about one or more fictional storytellers. An example of this is The Book of One Thousand and One Nights.

Related Topics:
Frame tale - The Book of One Thousand and One Nights

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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 in a poetic context is James Merrill's 1974 poem "Lost in Translation".

Related Topics:
Literary modernism - James Merrill's - Lost in Translation

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