ArticleAuthors: Anthony Macris (2003)
To date the most comprehensive study of the literary figure of the mise en abyme is Lucien Dallenbach's Le Ricit Spiculaire: Essai sllr /a Mise en Abyme, first published in 1977.1 Employing a strict structuralist methodology, it attempts to provide a definitive typology of the mise en al?Yme, tracing its historical evolution and discussing its more recent developments in the works of Claude Simon. In doing so, Dallenbach provides a rich and analytically rigorous analysis even if, when the unwieldy products of novelistic practice do not always fit his schernas, he is forced to invent new sub-categories that threaten to undermine his neat tripartite classification. 
