Mise en abyme

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2008)

Mise en abyme (also mise en abîme) has several meanings in the realm of the creative arts and literary theory. The term is originally from the French and means, "placing into infinity" or "placing into the 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.

History

Coat of arms of the United Kingdom 1801-1837. Comprised of the arms of England, Scotland and Ireland and en abyme the escutcheon of Hanover and the crown of Charlemagne en abyme inside that again.

While the word abyme is related to the word abyss, in heraldry terminology the abyme is the center of a coat of arms. The term "mise en abyme" then meant literally "put in the center" but the term was usually reserved for a smaller coat of arms put in the center of the larger one, as seen in the picture to the right, in the coat of arms of King George III.

The modern meaning of the term originates with the author André Gide which used it to describe self-reflexive embeddings in various art-forms and describe what he himself sought in his work.^[1]

Las Meninas by Velázquez,

As examples, Gide cites both paintings such as Las Meninas and the use of a theatre performance within the Hamlet play, where its content illuminates an aspect of the Hamlet play itself. This use of the term mise en abyme was gradually picked up by scholars and especially popularized in the 1977 book Le récit spéculaire. Essai sur la mise en abyme by Lucien Dällenbach^[2]

While art-historians working on the early-modern period adopted this term and interpreted it as showing artistic "self awareness", it saw little coverage by medievalists, despite frequent occurences of it in the pre-modern era. Below is shown a mosaic from the Hagia Sophia. The mosaic is dated to the year 944. To the left is seen emperor Justinian I offering the Virgin Mary the Hagia Sophia, containing the mosaic itself. To the right is emperor Constantine the great offering the city of Istanbul, which itself contains the Hagia Sophia. More medieval examples can be found in the collection of articles Medieval mise-en-abyme: the object depicted within itself^[1]. An interpretation raised by Stuart Whatling in the aforementioned text is that the self-references are sometimes used to strengthen the symbolism of gift-giving by documenting the act of giving on the object itself. This can for instance be seen in the Stefaneschi triptych in the Vatican Museum, which prominently shows Cardinal Giacomo Gaetani Stefaneschi as the giver of the altarpiece.^[3]

Southwestern entrance mosaic of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, depicting both Hagia Sophia itself and Istanbul, both offered to Jesus and the Virgin Mary.

Contemporary interpretation

Mise-en-abîme occurs within a text when there is a reduplication of images or concepts referring to the textual whole. Mise-en-abîme is a play of signifiers within a text, of sub-texts mirroring each other. This mirroring can get to the point where meaning can be rendered unstable and in this respect can be seen as part of the process of deconstruction. The film-within-a-film is an example of mise-en-abîme. The film being made within the film refers through its mise-en-scène to the ‘real’ film being made. The spectator sees film equipment, stars getting ready for the take, crew sorting out the various directorial needs. The narrative of the film within the film may directly reflect the one in the ‘real’ film.^[4]

In Western art "mise en abyme" is a formal technique in which an image contains a smaller copy of itself, the sequence appearing to recur infinitely. The term originated in heraldry, describing a coat of arms that appears as a smaller shield in the center of a larger one. See Droste effect.

In film, the meaning of "mise en abyme" is similar to the artistic definition, but also includes the idea of a "dream within a dream". For example, a character awakens from a dream and later discovers that he or she is still dreaming. Activities similar to dreaming, such as unconsciousness and virtual reality, are also described as "mise en abyme". This is seen in the film eXistenZ where the two protagonists never truly know whether or not they are out of the game.

In literary criticism, "mise en abyme" is a type of frame story, in which the core narrative can be used to illuminate some aspect of the framing story. The term is used in deconstruction and deconstructive literary criticism as a paradigm of the intertextual nature of language—that is, of the way language never quite reaches the foundation of reality because it refers in a frame-within-a-frame way to other language, which refers to other language, et cetera.

The ability of computers to so repeat a task has led to modern forms of this technique: screen savers that fly through space forever, looping and churning tunnels.

See also

Look up mise en abyme in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Mise en abyme

• Gödel, Escher, Bach
• Recursion
• Story within a story
• Macbeth (1971 film)
• Droste effect
• Fractal
• Infinite-loop motif

References