Claude Simon and the emergence of the generative Mise En Abyme

Abstract

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.