![Blake jacobsladder](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Blake_jacobsladder.jpg)
A story within a story, also referred to as an embedded narrative, is a
literary device
A narrative technique (known for literary fictional narratives as a literary technique, literary device, or fictional device) is any of several specific methods the creator of a narrative uses to convey what they want
—in other words, a stra ...
in which a character within a
story
Story or stories may refer to:
Common uses
* Story, a narrative (an account of imaginary or real people and events)
** Short story, a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting
* Story (American English), or storey (British ...
becomes the narrator of a second story (within the first one). Multiple layers of stories within stories are sometimes called nested stories. A play may have a brief play within it, such as Shakespeare's play ''
Hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...
''; a film may show the characters watching a short film; or a novel may contain a short story within the novel. A story within a story can be used in all types of narration:
novel
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...
s,
short stories
A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest t ...
,
plays
Play most commonly refers to:
* Play (activity), an activity done for enjoyment
* Play (theatre), a work of drama
Play may refer also to:
Computers and technology
* Google Play, a digital content service
* Play Framework, a Java framework
* P ...
,
television program
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, e ...
s,
film
A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...
s,
poem
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in ...
s,
song
A song is a musical composition intended to be performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetitio ...
s,
video game
Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...
s, and philosophical
essay
An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal a ...
s.
The inner stories are told either simply to add entertainment or more usually to act as an example to the other characters. In either case, the inner story often has a 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 within a story are used to satirize views, not only in the outer story, but also in the real world. When a story is told within another instead of 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.
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 some cases, the story within a story is involved in the action of the plot of the outer story. In others, the inner story is independent, so that it can either be skipped over or be read separately, although many subtle connections may be lost. Sometimes, the inner story serves as an outlet for discarded ideas that the author deemed to be of too much merit to leave out completely, somewhat analogous to the inclusion of
deleted scene
A deleted scene is footage that has been removed from the final version of a film or television show. There are various reasons why these scenes are deleted, which include time constraints, relevance, quality or a dropped story thread. A similar o ...
s with
home video
Home video is prerecorded media sold or rented for home viewing. The term originates from the VHS and Betamax era, when the predominant medium was videotapes, but has carried over to optical disc formats such as DVD, Blu-ray and streaming me ...
releases of films. Often there is more than one level of internal stories, leading to deeply-nested fiction. ''
Mise en abyme
In Western art history, ''mise en abyme'' (; also ''mise en abîme'') is a formal technique of placing a copy of an image within itself, often in a way that suggests an infinitely recurring sequence. In film theory and literary theory, it refers t ...
'' is the
French term for a similar literary device (also referring to the practice in
heraldry
Heraldry is a discipline relating to the design, display and study of armorial bearings (known as armory), as well as related disciplines, such as vexillology, together with the study of ceremony, rank and pedigree. Armory, the best-known branch ...
of placing the image of a small shield on a larger shield).
Frame stories and anthology works
The literary device of stories within a story dates back to a device known as a "
frame story
A frame is often a structural system that supports other components of a physical construction and/or steel frame that limits the construction's extent.
Frame and FRAME may also refer to:
Physical objects
In building construction
*Framing (con ...
", where a supplemental story is used to help tell the main story. Typically, the outer story or "frame" does not have much matter, and most of the work consists of one or more complete stories told by one or more storytellers.
The earliest examples of "frame stories" and "stories within stories" were in ancient Egyptian and
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 recognised languages.
The earliest works of Indian literature were o ...
, such as the Egyptian "
Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor
The "Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor" is a Middle Kingdom story of an Ancient Egyptian voyage to "the King's mines".
Historical information
At least one source states that the papyrus having the story written upon it is located within the Imp ...
" and
Indian epics
Indian epic poetry is the epic poetry written in the Indian subcontinent, traditionally called ''Kavya'' (or ''Kāvya''; Sanskrit: काव्य, IAST: ''kāvyá''). The ''Ramayana'' and the ''Mahabharata'', which were originally composed in ...
like the ''
Ramayana
The ''Rāmāyana'' (; sa, रामायणम्, ) is a Sanskrit literature, Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epic composed over a period of nearly a millennium, with scholars' estimates for the earliest stage of the text ranging from the 8th ...
'', ''
Seven Wise Masters
The ''Seven Wise Masters'' (also called the ''Seven Sages'' or ''Seven Wise Men'') is a cycle of stories of Sanskrit, Persian or Hebrew origins.
Story and plot
The Sultan sends his son, the young Prince, to be educated away from the court in t ...
'', ''
Hitopadesha
''Hitopadesha'' (Sanskrit: हितोपदेशः, IAST: ''Hitopadeśa'', "Beneficial Advice") is an Indian text in the Sanskrit language consisting of fables with both animal and human characters. It incorporates maxims, worldly wisdom and ...
'' and ''
Vikram and the Vampire''. In
Vishnu Sarma
Sharma (Sanskrit: विष्णुशर्मन् / विष्णुशर्मा) was an Indian scholar and author who wrote the ''Panchatantra'', a collection of fables.
Works
Panchatantra is one of the most widely translated non-re ...
's ''
Panchatantra
The ''Panchatantra'' (IAST: Pañcatantra, ISO: Pañcatantra, sa, पञ्चतन्त्र, "Five Treatises") is an ancient Indian collection of interrelated animal fables in Sanskrit verse and prose, arranged within a frame story. '', 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 the epic ''
Mahabharata
The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; sa, महाभारतम्, ', ) is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India in Hinduism, the other being the ''Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the struggle between two groups of cousins in the Kuruk ...
'', the
Kurukshetra War
The Kurukshetra War ( sa, कुरुक्षेत्र युद्ध ), also called the Mahabharata War, is a war described in the ''Mahabharata ( sa, महाभारत )''. The conflict arose from a dynastic succession struggle be ...
is narrated by a character in
Vyasa
Krishna Dvaipayana ( sa, कृष्णद्वैपायन, Kṛṣṇadvaipāyana), better known as Vyasa (; sa, व्यासः, Vyāsaḥ, compiler) or Vedavyasa (वेदव्यासः, ''Veda-vyāsaḥ'', "the one who cl ...
's ''Jaya'', which itself is narrated by a character in
Vaisampayana
Vaishampayana ( sa, वैशंपायन, ) is the traditional narrator of the ''Mahabharata'', one of the two major Sanskrit epics of India.
Legend
Vaishampayana is a renowned sage who is stated to be the original teacher of the ''Kri ...
's ''Bharata'', which itself is narrated by a character in Ugrasrava's ''Mahabharata''.
Both ''
The Golden Ass
The ''Metamorphoses'' of Apuleius, which Augustine of Hippo referred to as ''The Golden Ass'' (''Asinus aureus''), is the only ancient Roman novel in Latin to survive in its entirety.
The protagonist of the novel is Lucius. At the end of the no ...
'' by
Apuleius
Apuleius (; also called Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis; c. 124 – after 170) was a Numidian Latin-language prose writer, Platonist philosopher and rhetorician. He lived in the Roman province of Numidia, in the Berber city of Madauros, modern-day ...
and ''
Metamorphoses
The ''Metamorphoses'' ( la, Metamorphōsēs, from grc, μεταμορφώσεις: "Transformations") is a Latin narrative poem from 8 CE by the Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his ''magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the wo ...
'' by
Ovid
Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...
extend the depths of framing to several degrees. Another early example is the ''
One Thousand and One Nights
''One Thousand and One Nights'' ( ar, أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ, italic=yes, ) is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the ''Arabian ...
'' (''Arabian Nights''), where the general story is narrated by an unknown narrator, and in this narration the stories are told by
Scheherazade
Scheherazade () is a major female character and the storyteller in the frame narrative of the Middle Eastern collection of tales known as the ''One Thousand and One Nights''.
Name
According to modern scholarship, the name ''Scheherazade'' deri ...
. 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 is "
The Three Apples The Three Apples ( ar, التفاحات الثلاثة), or The Tale of the Murdered Woman ( ar, حكاية الصبية المقتولة, Hikayat as-Sabiyya al-Maqtula), is a story contained in the ''One Thousand and One Nights'' collection (also k ...
", a
murder mystery
Crime fiction, detective story, murder mystery, mystery novel, and police novel are terms used to describe narratives that centre on criminal acts and especially on the investigation, either by an amateur or a professional detective, of a crime, ...
narrated by Scheherazade. Within the story, after the murderer reveals himself, he narrates a
flashback of events leading up to the murder. Within this flashback, an
unreliable narrator
An unreliable narrator is a narrator whose credibility is compromised. They can be found in fiction and film, and range from children to mature characters. The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in ''The Rhetoric of Fiction''. While unrel ...
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. This perennially popular work can be traced back to
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
,
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
, and Indian storytelling traditions.
Mary Shelley
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (; ; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic fiction, Gothic novel ''Frankenstein, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' (1818), which is considered an History of scie ...
's ''
Frankenstein
''Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. ''Frankenstein'' tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific ex ...
'' has a deeply nested frame story structure, that features the narration of Walton, 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. Another classic novel with a frame story is ''
Wuthering Heights
''Wuthering Heights'' is an 1847 novel by Emily Brontë, initially published under her pen name Ellis Bell. It concerns two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moorland, moors, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, and their tur ...
'', the majority of which is recounted by the central family's housekeeper to a boarder. Similarly,
Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl (13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a British novelist, short-story writer, poet, screenwriter, and wartime fighter ace of Norwegian descent. His books have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide. Dahl has be ...
's story ''
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar'' is about a rich bachelor who finds an essay written by someone who learned 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.
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequel ...
's ''
Alice'' books, ''
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (commonly ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English novel by Lewis Carroll. It details the story of a young girl named Alice (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland), Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a ...
'' (1865) and ''
Through the Looking-Glass
''Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There'' (also known as ''Alice Through the Looking-Glass'' or simply ''Through the Looking-Glass'') is a novel published on 27 December 1871 (though indicated as 1872) by Lewis Carroll and the ...
'' (1871), have several multiple poems that are mostly recited by several characters to the titular character. The most notable examples are "
You Are Old, Father William", "
'Tis the Voice of the Lobster", "
Jabberwocky
"Jabberwocky" is a nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll about the killing of a creature named "the Jabberwock". It was included in his 1871 novel ''Through the Looking-Glass'', the sequel to ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865). The bo ...
", and "
The Walrus and the Carpenter
"The Walrus and the Carpenter" is a narrative poem by Lewis Carroll that appears in his book ''Through the Looking-Glass'', published in December 1871. The poem is recited in chapter four, by Tweedledum and Tweedledee to Alice. The poem is co ...
".
Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for '' The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He w ...
's ''
The Canterbury Tales
''The Canterbury Tales'' ( enm, Tales of Caunterbury) is a collection of twenty-four stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. It is widely regarded as Chaucer's ''Masterpiece, ...
'' and
Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio (, , ; 16 June 1313 – 21 December 1375) was an Italian people, Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanism, Renaissance humanist. Born in the town of Certaldo, he became so we ...
's ''
Decameron
''The Decameron'' (; it, label=Italian, Decameron or ''Decamerone'' ), subtitled ''Prince Galehaut'' (Old it, Prencipe Galeotto, links=no ) and sometimes nicknamed ''l'Umana commedia'' ("the Human comedy", as it was Boccaccio that dubbed Dan ...
'' are also classic frame stories. In Chaucer's ''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.
Homer
Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...
's ''
Odyssey
The ''Odyssey'' (; grc, Ὀδύσσεια, Odýsseia, ) is one of two major Ancient Greek literature, ancient Greek Epic poetry, epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by moder ...
'' too makes use of this device;
Odysseus
Odysseus ( ; grc-gre, Ὀδυσσεύς, Ὀδυσεύς, OdysseúsOdyseús, ), also known by the Latin variant Ulysses ( , ; lat, UlyssesUlixes), is a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the ''Odyssey''. Odysse ...
' adventures at sea are all narrated by Odysseus to the court of king
Alcinous
In Greek mythology, Alcinous (; Ancient Greek: Ἀλκίνους or Ἀλκίνοος ''Alkínoös'' means "mighty mind") was a son of Nausithous and brother of Rhexenor. After the latter's death, he married his brother's daughter Arete who bore ...
in
Scheria
Scheria or Scherie (; grc, Σχερία or ), also known as Phaeacia () or Faiakia was a region in Greek mythology, first mentioned in Homer's ''Odyssey'' as the home of the Phaeacians and the last destination of Odysseus in his 10-year journey b ...
. Other shorter tales, many of them false, account for much of the ''Odyssey''. Many modern children's story collections are essentially
anthology
In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs or excerpts by different authors.
In genre fiction, the term ''anthology'' typically categ ...
works connected by this device, such as
Arnold Lobel's ''Mouse Tales'',
Paula Fox
Paula Fox (April 22, 1923 – March 1, 2017) was an American author of novels for adults and children and of two memoirs. For her contributions as a children's writer she won the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1978, the ...
's ''The Little Swineherd'', and Phillip and Hillary Sherlock's ''Ears and Tails and Common Sense''.
A well-known modern example of framing is the fantasy genre work ''The Princess Bride'' (both
the book and
the movie
"The Movie" is the 54th episode of the sitcom '' Seinfeld''. It is the 14th episode of the fourth season, and first aired on January 6, 1993 on NBC. The episode revolves entirely around the characters' struggles to go to see a movie together.
P ...
). 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 much longer (but fictive) work for his son, creating his own "Good Parts Version" (as the book called it) by leaving out all the parts that would bore or displease 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
William Goldman (August 12, 1931 – November 16, 2018) was an American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. He first came to prominence in the 1950s as a novelist before turning to screenwriting. He won Academy Awards for his screenplays '' ...
.
In the Welsh novel, ''Aelwyd F'Ewythr Robert'' (1852) by
Gwilym Hiraethog, a visitor to a farm in north Wales tells the story of ''
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 two volumes in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U. ...
'' to those gathered around the hearth.
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'' is an American television series that aired on ABC from March 4, 1992, to July 24, 1993. Filming took place in various locations around the world, with "Old Indy" bookend segments filmed in Wilmington, North ...
'', each episode was framed as though it were being told by
Indy
Indy may refer to:
Computing and technology
*Indy (software), used for Internet access to music
*Internet Direct, or "Indy", a software library
*SGI Indy, a computer workstation
Periodicals
*''The Indy'', shorthand for newspapers that include " ...
when he was older (usually acted by
George Hall, but once by
Harrison Ford
Harrison Ford (born July 13, 1942) is an American actor. His films have grossed more than $5.4billion in North America and more than $9.3billion worldwide, making him the seventh-highest-grossing actor in North America. He is the recipient o ...
). The same device of an adult narrator representing the older version of a young protagonist is used in the films ''
Stand By Me'' and ''
A Christmas Story
''A Christmas Story'' is a 1983 Christmas comedy film directed by Bob Clark and based on Jean Shepherd's semi-fictional anecdotes in his 1966 book '' In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash'', with some elements from his 1971 book ''Wanda Hickey's ...
'', and the television show ''
The Wonder Years
''The Wonder Years'' is an American coming-of-age story, coming-of-age situation comedy, comedy/Drama (film and television), drama television series created by Neal Marlens and Carol L. Black, Carol Black. It ran on American Broadcasting Company ...
'' and ''
How I Met Your Mother
''How I Met Your Mother'' (often abbreviated as ''HIMYM'') is an American sitcom, created by Craig Thomas and Carter Bays for CBS. The series, which aired from September 19, 2005 to March 31, 2014, follows the main character, Ted Mosby, and his ...
''.
Frame stories in music
In ''
The Amory Wars
''The Amory Wars'' is an ongoing series of science fiction comic books and novels created by Coheed and Cambria frontman Claudio Sanchez and published by Evil Ink Comics. The name also refers to the fictional conflict at the center of the st ...
'', a tale told through the music of
Coheed and Cambria
Coheed and Cambria are an American progressive rock band from Nyack, New York, formed in 1995. The band consists of Claudio Sanchez (vocals, guitars, keyboards), Travis Stever (guitars, vocals), Josh Eppard (drums, keyboards, backing vocals), an ...
, 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.
The critically acclaimed
Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the most influential band of all time and were integral to the developme ...
album ''
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' is presented as a stage show by the fictional eponymous band, and one of its songs, "A Day in the Life" is in the form of a story within a dream. Similarly, the
Fugees
Fugees (; sometimes The Fugees) is an American hip hop group formed in the early 1990s. Deriving its name from a shortening of the word "refugees", the group consists of Wyclef Jean, Pras Michel, and Lauryn Hill. The group rose to fame with its ...
album ''
The Score'' is presented as the soundtrack to a fictional movie, as are several other notable
concept albums
A concept album is an album whose tracks hold a larger purpose or meaning collectively than they do individually. This is typically achieved through a single central narrative or theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, or lyrical. Som ...
, while
Wyclef Jean
Nel Ust Wyclef Jean (; born October 17, 1969) is a Haitian rapper, musician, and actor. At the age of nine, Jean immigrated to the United States with his family. He first achieved fame as a member of the New Jersey hip hop group the Fugees, a ...
's ''
The Carnival'' is presented as testimony at a trial. The majority of
Ayreon
Ayreon is a musical project by Dutch songwriter, singer, musician and record producer Arjen Anthony Lucassen. Ayreon's music is described as progressive rock, progressive metal and power metal sometimes combined with genres such as folk, electro ...
's albums outline a sprawling, loosely interconnected science fiction narrative, as do the albums of
Janelle Monae Janelle may refer to:
* Janelle (given names)
* Janelle (surnames)
* 20673 Janelle, asteroid
Fictional characters:
* Janelle, a.k.a. Janae Timmins
* Janelle Duco, in episode " From a Whisper to a Scream" of television series ''Grey's Anatomy''
S ...
.
On
Tom Waits
Thomas Alan Waits (born December 7, 1949) is an American musician, composer, songwriter, and actor. His lyrics often focus on the underbelly of society and are delivered in his trademark deep, gravelly voice. He worked primarily in jazz during ...
's concept album, ''
Alice'' (consisting of music he wrote for the musical of the same name) most of the songs are (very) loosely inspired by both ''
Alice in Wonderland
''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (commonly ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English novel by Lewis Carroll. It details the story of a young girl named Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatur ...
'' and the book's real life author,
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequel ...
, and inspiration
Alice Liddell
Alice Pleasance Hargreaves (''née'' Liddell, ; 4 May 1852 – 16 November 1934), was an English woman who, in her childhood, was an acquaintance and photography subject of Lewis Carroll. One of the stories he told her during a boating trip beca ...
. The song "Poor Edward," however, is presented as a story told by a narrator about
Edward Mordrake
Edward Mordake (sometimes spelled Mordrake) is the apocryphal subject of an urban legend who was born in the 19th century as the heir to an English peerage with a face at the back of his head. According to legend, the face could whisper, laugh or ...
, and the song "Fish and Bird" is presented as a retold story that the narrator heard from a sailor.
Examples of nested stories by type
Nested books
In his 1895
historical novel
Historical fiction is a literary genre in which the plot takes place in a setting related to the past events, but is fictional. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literature, it can also be applied to other ty ...
''
Pharaoh
Pharaoh (, ; Egyptian: ''pr ꜥꜣ''; cop, , Pǝrro; Biblical Hebrew: ''Parʿō'') is the vernacular term often used by modern authors for the kings of ancient Egypt who ruled as monarchs from the First Dynasty (c. 3150 BC) until the an ...
'',
Bolesław Prus
Aleksander Głowacki (20 August 1847 – 19 May 1912), better known by his pen name Bolesław Prus (), was a Polish novelist, a leading figure in the history of Polish literature and philosophy, as well as a distinctive voice in world li ...
introduces a number of stories within the story, ranging in length from
vignettes
Vignette may refer to:
* Vignette (entertainment), a sketch in a sketch comedy
* Vignette (graphic design), decorative designs in books (originally in the form of leaves and vines) to separate sections or chapters
* Vignette (literature), short, i ...
to full-blown stories, many of them drawn from
ancient Egyptian texts, that further the plot, illuminate
characters
Character or Characters may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Literature
* ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk
* ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...
, and even inspire the fashioning of individual characters.
Jan Potocki
Count Jan Potocki (; 8 March 1761 – 23 December 1815) was a Polish nobleman, ethnologist, linguist, traveller and author of the Enlightenment period, whose life and exploits made him a celebrated figure in Poland. He is known chiefly for his pi ...
's ''
The Manuscript Found in Saragossa
''The Manuscript Found in Saragossa'' (; also known in English as ''The Saragossa Manuscript'') is a frame-tale novel written in French at the turn of 18th and 19th centuries by the Polish author Count Jan Potocki (1761–1815). It is narrated ...
'' (1797–1805) has an interlocking structure with stories-within-stories reaching several levels of depth.
The
provenance
Provenance (from the French ''provenir'', 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of a historical object. The term was originally mostly used in relation to works of art but is now used in similar senses i ...
of the story is sometimes explained internally, as in ''
The Lord of the Rings
''The Lord of the Rings'' is an epic high-fantasy novel by English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, intended to be Earth at some time in the distant past, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's boo ...
'' by
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, ; 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''.
From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawlins ...
, which depicts the
Red Book of Westmarch
The ''Red Book of Westmarch'' (sometimes the ''Thain's Book'' after its principal version) is a fictional manuscript written by hobbits, related to the author J. R. R. Tolkien's frame stories. It is an instance of the found manuscript conceit ...
(a story-internal version of the book itself) as a history compiled by several of the characters. The
subtitle of ''
The Hobbit
''The Hobbit, or There and Back Again'' is a children's fantasy novel by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published in 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the '' ...
'' ("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.
![202 027 quijote cap09](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/202_027_quijote_cap09.jpg)
An example of an interconnected inner story is "The Mad Trist" in
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (; Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is wide ...
's ''
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
is a Spanish epic novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Originally published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615, its full title is ''The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha'' or, in Spanish, (changing in Part 2 to ). A founding work of Wester ...
'' by
Miguel de Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (; 29 September 1547 (assumed) – 22 April 1616 Old Style and New Style dates, NS) was an Early Modern Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world's pre-emin ...
, 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).
Most of the first part is presented as a translation of a
found manuscript by (fictional)
Cide Hamete Benengeli
Cide Hamete Benengeli is a fictional Arab Muslim historian created by Miguel de Cervantes in his novel ''Don Quixote'', who Cervantes says is the true author of most of the work. This is a skillful metafictional literary pirouette that seems to ...
.
A commonly independently
anthologised story is "
The Grand Inquisitor
"The Grand Inquisitor" is a story within a story (called a poem by its fictional author, but not in verse) contained within Fyodor Dostoevsky's 1880 novel ''The Brothers Karamazov.'' It is recited by the character Ivan Karamazov, who questions his ...
" by
Dostoevsky
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (, ; rus, Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский, Fyódor Mikháylovich Dostoyévskiy, p=ˈfʲɵdər mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ dəstɐˈjefskʲɪj, a=ru-Dostoevsky.ogg, links=yes; 11 November 18219 ...
from his long
psychological novel
In literature, psychological fiction (also psychological realism) is a narrative genre that emphasizes interior characterization and motivation to explore the spiritual, emotional, and mental lives of the characters. The mode of narration examin ...
''
The Brothers Karamazov
''The Brothers Karamazov'' (russian: Братья Карамазовы, ''Brat'ya Karamazovy'', ), also translated as ''The Karamazov Brothers'', is the last novel by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky spent nearly two years writing '' ...
'', which 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.
An example of a "bonus material" style inner story is the chapter "The Town Ho's Story" in
Herman Melville
Herman Melville (Name change, born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American people, American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance (literature), American Renaissance period. Among his bes ...
's novel ''
Moby-Dick
''Moby-Dick; or, The Whale'' is an 1851 novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book is the sailor Ishmael (Moby-Dick), Ishmael's narrative of the obsessive quest of Captain Ahab, Ahab, captain of the whaler, whaling ship ''Pequod (Moby- ...
''; that chapter tells a fully formed story of an exciting
mutiny
Mutiny is a revolt among a group of people (typically of a military, of a crew or of a crew of pirates) to oppose, change, or overthrow an organization to which they were previously loyal. The term is commonly used for a rebellion among member ...
and contains many plot ideas that Melville had conceived during the early stages of writing ''Moby-Dick''—ideas originally intended to be used later in the novel—but as the writing progressed, these plot ideas eventually proved impossible to fit around the characters that Melville went on to
create and develop. Instead of discarding the ideas altogether, Melville wove them into a coherent short story and had the character Ishmael demonstrate his eloquence and intelligence by
telling the story to his impressed friends.
One of the most complicated structures of a story within a story was used by
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bo ...
in his novel ''
The Gift''. There, as inner stories, function both poems and short stories by the main character Fyodor Cherdyntsev as well as the whole Chapter IV, a critical biography of Nikolay
Chernyshevsky
Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky ( – ) was a Russian literary and social critic, journalist, novelist, democrat, and socialist philosopher, often identified as a utopian socialist and leading theoretician of Russian nihilism. He was t ...
(also written by Fyodor). This novel is considered one of the first metanovels in literature.
With the rise of
literary modernism
Literary modernism, or modernist literature, originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional ways of writing, in both poetry and prose fiction writing. Modernism experimented ...
, writers experimented with ways in which multiple narratives might nest imperfectly within each other. A particularly ingenious example of nested narratives is
James Merrill
James Ingram Merrill (March 3, 1926 – February 6, 1995) was an American poet. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1977 for ''Divine Comedies.'' His poetry falls into two distinct bodies of work: the polished and formalist lyri ...
's 1974
modernist poem "
Lost in Translation".
In
Rabih Alameddine
Rabih Alameddine ( ar, ربيع علم الدين; born 1959) is a Lebanese-American painter and writer. His 2021 novel ''The Wrong End of the Telescope'' won the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
Early life
Alameddine was born in Amman, Jor ...
's novel ''The Hakawati'', or ''The Storyteller'', the protagonist describes coming home to the funeral of his father, one of a long line of traditional Arabic storytellers. Throughout the narrative, the author becomes hakawati (an Arabic word for a teller of traditional tales) himself, weaving the tale of the story of his own life and that of his family with folkloric versions of tales from Qur'an, the Old Testament, Ovid, and One Thousand and One Nights. Both the tales he tells of his family (going back to his grandfather) and the embedded folk tales, themselves embed other tales, often 2 or more layers deep.
In
Sue Townsend
Susan Lillian Townsend, FRSL (née Johnstone, 2 April 194610 April 2014), was an English writer and humorist whose work encompasses novels, plays and works of journalism. She was best known for creating the character Adrian Mole.
After writing ...
's ''
Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years'',
Adrian
Adrian is a form of the Latin language, Latin given name Adrianus (given name), Adrianus or Hadrianus (disambiguation), Hadrianus. Its ultimate origin is most likely via the former river Adria (river), Adria from the Venetic language, Venetic and ...
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
Anthony Horowitz
Anthony John Horowitz, (born 5 April 1955) is an English novelist and screenwriter specialising in mystery and suspense.
His works for children and young adult readers include ''The Diamond Brothers'' series, the ''Alex Rider'' series, and ''T ...
's ''
Magpie Murders'', a significant proportion of the book features a fictional but authentically formatted mystery novel by Alan Conway, titled 'Magpie Murders'. The secondary novel ends before its conclusion returning the narrative to the original, and primary, story where the protagonist and reviewer of the book attempts to find the final chapter. As this progresses characters and messages within the fictional 'Magpie Murders' manifest themselves within the primary narrative and the final chapter's content reveals the reason for its original absence.
Dreams are a common way of including stories inside stories, and can sometimes go several levels deep. Both the book ''
The Arabian Nightmare
''The Arabian Nightmare'' is a novel by Robert Irwin published in 1983.Stableford, Brian, "Irwin, Robert (Graham)" in ''St. James Guide To Fantasy Writers'', edited by David Pringle. St. James Press, 1996, p. 301–3. ''The Arabian Nightmare'' wa ...
'' and the curse of "eternal waking" from the
Neil Gaiman
Neil Richard MacKinnon GaimanBorn as Neil Richard Gaiman, with "MacKinnon" added on the occasion of his marriage to Amanda Palmer. ; ( Neil Richard Gaiman; born 10 November 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, gr ...
series ''The Sandman'' feature an endless series of waking from one dream into another dream. In
Charles Maturin
Charles Robert Maturin, also known as C. R. Maturin (25 September 1780 – 30 October 1824), was an Irish Protestant clergyman (ordained in the Church of Ireland) and a writer of Gothic plays and novels.Chris Morgan, "Maturin, Charles R(obert) ...
's novel ''
Melmoth the Wanderer
''Melmoth the Wanderer'' is an 1820 Gothic novel by Irish playwright, novelist and clergyman Charles Maturin. The novel's titular character is a scholar who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for 150 extra years of life, and searches the wo ...
'', the use of vast stories-within-stories creates a sense of dream-like quality in the reader.
Religion and philosophy
This structure is also found in classic religious and philosophical texts. The structure of ''
The Symposium
The ''Symposium'' ( grc, Συμπόσιον, ) is a philosophical text by Plato, dated . It depicts a friendly contest of extemporaneous speeches given by a group of notable men attending a banquet. The men include the philosopher Socrates, the ...
'' and ''
Phaedo
''Phædo'' or ''Phaedo'' (; el, Φαίδων, ''Phaidōn'' ), also known to ancient readers as ''On The Soul'', is one of the best-known dialogues of Plato's middle period, along with the ''Republic'' and the ''Symposium.'' The philosophical ...
'', attributed to
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
, is of a story within a story within a story. In the Christian
Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
, the
gospels
Gospel originally meant the Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words an ...
are accounts of the life and ministry of
Jesus
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...
. However, they also include within them the
parable
A parable is a succinct, didactic story, in prose or verse, that illustrates one or more instructive lessons or principles. It differs from a fable in that fables employ animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature as characters, w ...
s that Jesus told. In more modern philosophical work,
Jostein Gaarder
Jostein Gaarder (; born 8 August 1952) 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 ...
'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'' (Norwegian: ''Sofies verden'') is a 1991 novel by Norwegian writer Jostein Gaarder. It follows Sophie Amundsen, a Norwegian teenager, who is introduced to the history of philosophy as she is asked "Who are you?" in a letter ...
'' 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.
Mahabharata
The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; sa, महाभारतम्, ', ) is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India in Hinduism, the other being the ''Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the struggle between two groups of cousins in the Kuruk ...
, an Indian epic also the world longest epic has a nested structure.
Nested science fiction
The experimental modernist works that incorporate multiple narratives into one story are quite often science-fiction or science fiction influenced. These include most of the various novels written by the American author
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American writer known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. In a career spanning over 50 years, he published fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and ...
. Vonnegut includes the recurring character
Kilgore Trout
Kilgore Trout is a fictional character created by author Kurt Vonnegut. In Vonnegut's work, Trout is a notably unsuccessful author of paperback science fiction novels.
"Trout" was inspired by the name of the author Theodore Sturgeon (Vonnegut's ...
in many of his novels. Trout acts as the mysterious
science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
writer who enhances the morals of the novels through plot descriptions of his stories. Books such as ''
Breakfast of Champions
''Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday'' is a 1973 novel by the American author Kurt Vonnegut. His seventh novel, it is set predominantly in the fictional town of Midland City, Ohio, and focuses on two characters: Dwayne Hoover, a Midl ...
'' and ''
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater'' are sprinkled with these plot descriptions.
Stanisław Lem
Stanisław Herman Lem (; 12 September 1921 – 27 March 2006) was a Polish writer of science fiction and essays on various subjects, including philosophy, futurology, and literary criticism. Many of his science fiction stories are of satirical ...
's ''Tale of the Three Storytelling Machines of King Genius'' from ''
The Cyberiad
''The Cyberiad'' ( pl, Cyberiada) is a series of humorous science fiction short stories by Polish writer Stanisław Lem, originally published in 1965, with an English translation appearing in 1974. The main protagonists of the series are Trurl a ...
'' has several levels of storytelling. All levels tell stories of the same person, Trurl.
''
House of Leaves
''House of Leaves'' is the debut novel by American author Mark Z. Danielewski, published in March 2000 by Pantheon Books. A bestseller, it has been translated into a number of languages, and is followed by a companion piece, '' The Whalestoe Le ...
'' is 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 includes footnotes and letters that tell their own stories only vaguely related to the events in the main narrative of the book, and footnotes for fake books.
Robert A. Heinlein
Robert Anson Heinlein (; July 7, 1907 – May 8, 1988) was an American science fiction author, aeronautical engineer, and naval officer. Sometimes called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was among the first to emphasize scientific accu ...
's later books (''
The Number of the Beast'', ''
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls
''The Cat Who Walks Through Walls'' is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, published in 1985. Like many of his later novels, it features Lazarus Long and Jubal Harshaw as supporting characters.
Plot summary
A writer se ...
'' and ''
To Sail Beyond the Sunset
''To Sail Beyond the Sunset'' is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, published in 1987. It was the last novel published before his death in 1988. The title is taken from the poem " Ulysses", by Alfred Tennyson. The stan ...
'') propose the idea that every real universe is a fiction in another universe. This
hypothesis
A hypothesis (plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. For a hypothesis to be a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it. Scientists generally base scientific hypotheses on previous obse ...
enables many writers who are characters in the books to interact with their own creations.
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Eleanor Atwood (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of non-fiction, nin ...
's novel ''
The Blind Assassin
''The Blind Assassin'' is a novel by the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood. It was first published by McClelland and Stewart in 2000. The book is set in the fictional Ontario town of Port Ticonderoga and in Toronto. It is narrated from the present ...
'' 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 (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
story written by one of ''that'' novel's characters.
In
Philip K. Dick's novel ''
The Man in the High Castle
''The Man in the High Castle'' (1962), by Philip K. Dick, is an alternative history novel wherein the Axis Powers won World War II. The story occurs in 1962, fifteen years after the end of the war in 1947, and depicts the political intrigues b ...
'', each character comes into interaction with a book called ''The Grasshopper Lies Heavy'', which was written by the Man in the High Castle. As Dick's novel details a world in which the
Axis Powers of World War II
The Axis powers, ; it, Potenze dell'Asse ; ja, 枢軸国 ''Sūjikukoku'', group=nb originally called the Rome–Berlin Axis, was a military coalition that initiated World War II and fought against the Allies of World War II, Allies. Its p ...
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 – a victory which itself is quite different from real history.
In ''
Red Orc's Rage
''Red Orc's Rage'' (1991) is a recursive science fiction novel by American writer Philip José Farmer, part of his " World of Tiers" series . The plot of the book was inspired by the work of American psychiatrist A. James Giannini, M.D, who use ...
'' by
Philip J. Farmer a doubly
recursive method Recursive science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction, which itself takes the form of an exploration of science fiction within the narrative of the story.
Analysis
In the book ''Resnick at Large'', authors Mike Resnick and Robert J. Sawyer des ...
is used to intertwine its fictional layers. This novel is part of a science-fiction series, the ''
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, bu ...
''. 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.
The ''
Quantum Leap
''Quantum Leap'' is an American science fiction television series, created by Donald P. Bellisario, that premiered on NBC and aired for five seasons, from March 26, 1989, to May 5, 1993. The series stars Scott Bakula as Dr. Sam Beckett, a physi ...
'' novel ''Knights of the Morningstar'' also features a character who writes a book by that name. In
Matthew Stover
Matthew Woodring Stover (born 1962) is an American fantasy and science fiction novelist. He is most well known for his four '' Star Wars'' novels, including the novelization of '' Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith''. He has also wr ...
's novel ''
Shatterpoint
Mace Windu is a fictional character in the ''Star Wars'' franchise. Windu was portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson in the prequel trilogy. Jackson reprised the role in the 2008 animated film '' Star Wars: The Clone Wars'' and with voice only in the 20 ...
'', the protagonist
Mace Windu
Mace Windu is a fictional character in the ''Star Wars'' franchise. Windu was portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson in the prequel trilogy. Jackson reprised the role in the 2008 animated film '' Star Wars: The Clone Wars'' and with voice only in the 20 ...
narrates the story within his journal, while the main story is being told from the
third-person limited point of view.
Several ''
Star Trek
''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the eponymous 1960s television series and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. The franchise has expanded into vari ...
'' tales are stories or events within stories, such as
Gene Roddenberry
Eugene Wesley Roddenberry Sr. (August 19, 1921 – October 24, 1991) was an American television screenwriter, producer, and creator of ''Star Trek: The Original Series'', its sequel spin-off series ''Star Trek: The Animated Series,'' and ''Sta ...
's
novelization
A novelization (or novelisation) is a derivative novel that adapts the story of a work created for another medium, such as a film, TV series, stage play, comic book or video game. Film novelizations were particularly popular before the advent of ...
of ''
Star Trek: The Motion Picture'',
J. A. Lawrence
Judith Ann Blish (née Lawrence; born December 14, 1934) is an American sketch artist and short fiction writer, known professionally as Judith L. Blish, Judy Blish, and J. A. Lawrence. From 1967 to 1978, she co-wrote a sequence of short story adap ...
's ''Mudd's Angels'',
John M. Ford
John Milo "Mike" Ford (April 10, 1957 – September 25, 2006) was an American science fiction and fantasy writer, game designer, and poet.
A contributor to several online discussions, Ford composed poems, often improvised, in both complicated ...
's ''
The Final Reflection'',
Margaret Wander Bonanno
Margaret Wander Bonanno (February 7, 1950 – April 6, 2021) was an American science fiction writer, ghost writer, and small press publisher. She wrote seven '' Star Trek'' novels, science fiction novels (including ''The Others'' series and the ' ...
'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
Steven Barnes (born March 1, 1952) is an American science fiction, fantasy, and mystery writer. He has written novels, short fiction, screen plays for television, scripts for comic books, animation, newspaper copy, and magazine articles.
Career ...
's novelization of "
Far Beyond the Stars
"Far Beyond the Stars" is the 137th episode of the syndicated science fiction television series '' Star Trek: Deep Space Nine'', the 13th episode of season6. The teleplay was written by Ira Steven Behr and Hans Beimler, based on a story by Mar ...
" 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 book ''
Cloud Atlas
A cloud atlas is a pictorial key (or an atlas) to the nomenclature of clouds. Early cloud atlases were an important element in the training of meteorologists and in weather forecasting, and the author of a 1923 atlas stated that "increasing use ...
'' (later adapted into a film by
The Wachowskis
Lana Wachowski (born June 21, 1965, formerly known as Larry Wachowski) and Lilly Wachowski (born December 29, 1967, formerly known as Andy Wachowski) are American film and television directors, writers and producers. The sisters are both trans ...
and
Tom Tykwer
Tom Tykwer (; born 23 May 1965) is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, and composer. He is best known internationally for directing the thriller films ''Run Lola Run'' (1998), ''Heaven (2002 film), Heaven'' (2002), ''Perfume: The St ...
) consisted of six interlinked stories nested inside each other in a Russian doll fashion. The first story (that of Adam Ewing in the 1850s befriending an escaped slave) is interrupted halfway through and revealed to be part of a journal being read by composer Robert Frobisher in 1930s Belgium. His own story of working for a more famous composer is told in a series of letters to his lover Rufus Sixsmith, which are interrupted halfway through and revealed to be in the possession of an investigative journalist named Luisa Rey and so on. Each of the first five tales are interrupted in the middle, with the sixth tale being told in full, before the preceding five tales are finished in reverse order. Each layer of the story either challenges the veracity of the previous layer, or is challenged by the succeeding layer. Presuming each layer to be a true telling within the overall story, a chain of events is created linking Adam Ewing's embrace of the abolitionist movement in the 1850s to the religious redemption of a post-apocalyptic tribal man over a century after the fall of modern civilization. The characters in each nested layer take inspiration or lessons from the stories of their predecessors in a manner that validates a belief stated in the sixth tale that "Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present and by each crime, and every kindness, we birth our future."
Play or film within a book
''
The Crying of Lot 49
''The Crying of Lot 49'' is a 1966 novel by American author Thomas Pynchon. The shortest of Pynchon's novels, the plot follows Oedipa Maas, a young Californian woman who begins to embrace a conspiracy theory as she possibly unearths a centuries-ol ...
'' by
Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. ( , ; born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres and themes, including history, music, scie ...
has several characters seeing a play called ''The Courier's Tragedy'' by the fictitious
Jacobean playwright
A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays.
Etymology
The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English ...
Richard Wharfinger. The events of the play broadly mirror those of the novel and give the main character, Oedipa Maas, a greater context with which to consider her predicament; the play concerns a feud between two rival mail distribution companies, which appears to be ongoing to the present day, and in which, if this is the case, Oedipa has found herself involved. As in ''
Hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...
'', 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 relates, 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 significant portion of
Walter Moers
Walter Moers (; born 24 May 1957 in Mönchengladbach) is a German comic creator and author.
Life and work
Moers held odd jobs after leaving school before starting a commercial apprenticeship. He taught himself how to draw, and has been publis ...
' ''Labyrinth of Dreaming Books'' is an
ekphrasis
The word ekphrasis, or ecphrasis, comes from the Greek for the written description of a work of art produced as a rhetorical or literary exercise, often used in the adjectival form ekphrastic. It is a vivid, often dramatic, verbal descrip ...
on the subject of an epic puppet theater presentation. Another example is found in
Samuel Delany
Samuel R. "Chip" Delany (, ) (born April 1, 1942), is an American author and literary critic. His work includes fiction (especially science fiction), memoir, criticism, and essays (on science fiction, literature, sexual orientation, sexuality, a ...
's ''
Trouble on Triton
''Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia'' (1976) is a science fiction novel by American writer Samuel R. Delany. It was nominated for the 1976 Nebula Award for Nebula Award for Best Novel, Best Novel, and was shortlisted for a retrospectiv ...
'', which features a theater company that produces elaborate staged spectacles for randomly selected single-person audiences. Plays produced by the "Caws of Art" theater company also feature in Russell Hoban's modern fable, ''
The Mouse and His Child
''The Mouse and His Child'' is a novel by Russell Hoban first published in 1967. It has been described as "a classic of children's literature and is the book for which Hoban is best known."Awl, DaveThe Mouse and His Child (1967): a novel by Russ ...
''.
Raina Telgemeier
Raina Diane Telgemeier (/'ɹeɪna 'tɛlgə'maɪəɹ/, born May 26, 1977) is an American cartoonist. Her works include the autobiography, autobiographical webcomic ''Smile (comic book), Smile'', which was published as a full-color graphic novel i ...
's best-selling ''
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been ...
'' is a graphic novel about a middle-school musical production, and the tentative romantic fumblings of its cast members.
In
Manuel Puig
Juan Manuel Puig Delledonne (December 28, 1932 – July 22, 1990), commonly called Manuel Puig, was an Argentine author. Among his best-known novels are '' La traición de Rita Hayworth'' (''Betrayed by Rita Hayworth'', 1968), ''Boquitas pint ...
's ''
Kiss of the Spider Woman'', ekphrases on various old movies, some real, and some fictional, make up a substantial portion of the narrative. In
Paul Russell's ''Boys of Life'', descriptions of movies by director/antihero Carlos (loosely inspired by controversial director
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini (; 5 March 1922 – 2 November 1975) was an Italian poet, filmmaker, writer and intellectual who also distinguished himself as a journalist, novelist, translator, playwright, visual artist and actor. He is considered one of ...
) provide a narrative counterpoint and add a touch of surrealism to the main narrative. They additionally raise the question of whether works of artistic genius justify or atone for the sins and crimes of their creators. Auster's
The Book of Illusions
''The Book of Illusions'' is a novel by American writer Paul Auster, published in 2002. It was nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award in 2004.
Plot introduction
Set in the late 1980s, the story is written from the perspective of ...
(2002) and
Flicker by Theodore Roszak (1991) also rely heavily on fictional films within their respective narratives.
Nested plays
This dramatic device was probably first used by
Thomas Kyd
Thomas Kyd (baptised 6 November 1558; buried 15 August 1594) was an English playwright, the author of ''The Spanish Tragedy'', and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama.
Although well known in his own time, ...
in ''
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 reveng ...
'' 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
The ''Ur-Hamlet'' (the German prefix '' Ur-'' means "original") is a play by an unknown author, thought to be either Thomas Kyd or William Shakespeare. No copy of the play, dated by scholars to the second half of 1587, survives today. The play wa ...
''), with a play-within-a-play interlude.
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
's ''
Hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...
'' retains this device by having Hamlet ask 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
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, (; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictiona ...
later took for the long-running play ''
The Mousetrap
''The Mousetrap'' is a murder mystery play by Agatha Christie. ''The Mousetrap'' opened in London's West End in 1952 and ran continuously until 16 March 2020, when the stage performances had to be temporarily discontinued during the COVID-1 ...
''). Christie's work was parodied in Tom Stoppard's ''The Real Inspector Hound'', in which two theater critics are drawn into the murder mystery they are watching. The audience is similarly absorbed into the action in Woody Allen's play ''God'', which is about two failed playwrights in Ancient Greece. The phrase ''
The Conscience of the King
"The Conscience of the King" is the 13th episode of the first season of the American science-fiction television series ''Star Trek''. Written by Barry Trivers and directed by Gerd Oswald, it was first aired on December 8, 1966.
The episode tak ...
'' also became the title of a
Star Trek
''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the eponymous 1960s television series and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. The franchise has expanded into vari ...
episode featuring a production of Hamlet which leads to the exposure of a murderer (although not a king).
The play ''I Hate Hamlet'' and the movie ''
A Midwinter's Tale'' are about a production of ''Hamlet'', which in turn includes a production of ''The Murder of Gonzago'', as does the ''Hamlet''-based film ''
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
''Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead'' is an absurdist, existential tragicomedy by Tom Stoppard, first staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1966. The play expands upon the exploits of two minor characters from Shakespeare's ''Haml ...
'', which even features a third-level puppet theatre version within their play. Similarly, in
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; 29 January 1860 Old Style date 17 January. – 15 July 1904 Old Style date 2 July.) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer who is considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career ...
's ''
The Seagull
''The Seagull'' ( rus, Ча́йка, r=Cháyka, links=no) is a play by Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov, written in 1895 and first produced in 1896. ''The Seagull'' is generally considered to be the first of his four major plays. It dramatises t ...
'' 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.
Shakespeare adopted the play-within-a-play device for many of his other plays as well, including ''
A Midsummer Night's Dream
''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' is a comedy written by William Shakespeare 1595 or 1596. The play is set in Athens, and consists of several subplots that revolve around the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta. One subplot involves a conflict amon ...
'' and ''
Love's Labours Lost
''Love's Labour's Lost'' is one of William Shakespeare's early comedies, believed to have been written in the mid-1590s for a performance at the Inns of Court before Queen Elizabeth I. It follows the King of Navarre and his three companions as ...
''. Almost the whole of ''
The Taming of the Shrew
''The Taming of the Shrew'' is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1590 and 1592. The play begins with a framing device, often referred to as the induction, in which a mischievous nobleman tricks a drunken ...
'' is a play-within-a-play, presented to convince
Christopher Sly
Christopher Sly is a minor character in William Shakespeare's ''The Taming of the Shrew.'' He is a drunk man who is easily dominated by women, set up as a Foil (literature), foil to Petruchio, the central male character in the play.
Role
''The T ...
, 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. The musical ''
Kiss Me, Kate
''Kiss Me, Kate'' is a musical written by Bella and Samuel Spewack with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. The story involves the production of a musical version of William Shakespeare's ''The Taming of the Shrew'' and the conflict on and off-s ...
'' 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. ''
Pericles
Pericles (; grc-gre, Περικλῆς; c. 495 – 429 BC) was a Greek politician and general during the Golden Age of Athens. He was prominent and influential in Athenian politics, particularly between the Greco-Persian Wars and the Pelopo ...
'' draws in part on the 14th century ''
Confessio Amantis
''Confessio Amantis'' ("The Lover's Confession") 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. Accord ...
'' (itself a frame story) by
John Gower
John Gower (; c. 1330 – October 1408) was an English poet, a contemporary of William Langland and the Pearl Poet, and a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civ ...
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
Francis Beaumont
Francis Beaumont ( ; 1584 – 6 March 1616) was a dramatist in the English Renaissance theatre, most famous for his collaborations with John Fletcher.
Beaumont's life
Beaumont was the son of Sir Francis Beaumont of Grace Dieu, near Thrin ...
's ''
Knight of the Burning Pestle
''The Knight of the Burning Pestle'' is a play in five acts by Francis Beaumont, first performed at Blackfriars Theatre in 1607 and published in a quarto in 1613. It is the earliest whole parody (or pastiche) play in English. The play is a s ...
'' (ca. 1608) a supposed common citizen from the audience, actually a "planted" actor, condemns the play that has just started and "persuades" the players to present something about a shopkeeper. The citizen's "apprentice" then acts, pretending to extemporise, in the rest of the play. This is a satirical tilt at Beaumont's playwright contemporaries and their current fashion for offering plays about London life.
The opera ''
Pagliacci
''Pagliacci'' (; literal translation, "Clowns") is an Italian opera in a prologue and two acts, with music and libretto by Ruggero Leoncavallo. The opera tells the tale of Canio, actor and leader of a commedia dell'arte theatrical company, who m ...
'' is about a troupe of actors who perform a play about marital infidelity that mirrors their own lives, and composer
Richard Rodney Bennett
Sir Richard Rodney Bennett (29 March 193624 December 2012) was an English composer of film, TV and concert music, and also a jazz pianist and occasional vocalist. He was based in New York City from 1979 until his death there in 2012.Zachary Woo ...
and
playwright
A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays.
Etymology
The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English ...
-
librettist
A libretto (Italian for "booklet") is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major litu ...
Beverley Cross
Alan Beverley Cross (13 April 1931 – 20 March 1998) was an English playwright, librettist, and screenwriter.
Early life
Born in London into a theatrical family, and educated at the Nautical College Pangbourne, Cross started off by writ ...
's ''
The Mines of Sulphur
''The Mines of Sulphur'' is an opera in three acts by Richard Rodney Bennett, his first full-length opera, composed in 1963. Beverley Cross wrote the libretto, based on his play ''Scarlet Ribbons'', at the suggestion of Colin Graham, who eventual ...
'' features a ghostly troupe of actors who perform a play about murder that similarly mirrors the lives of their hosts, from whom they depart, leaving them with the plague as nemesis.
John Adams
John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Befor ...
' ''
Nixon in China
''Nixon in China'' is an opera in three acts by John Adams with a libretto by Alice Goodman. Adams's first opera, it was inspired by U.S. president Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China. The work premiered at the Houston ...
'' (1985-7) features a surreal version of
Madam Mao's ''
Red Detachment of Women'', illuminating the ascendance of human values over the disillusionment of high politics in the meeting.
In
Bertolt Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a pl ...
's ''
The Caucasian Chalk Circle
''The Caucasian Chalk Circle'' (german: Der kaukasische Kreidekreis) 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 b ...
,'' a play is staged as a
parable
A parable is a succinct, didactic story, in prose or verse, that illustrates one or more instructive lessons or principles. It differs from a fable in that fables employ animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature as characters, w ...
to villagers in the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
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
''Man Equals Man'' (german: Mann ist Mann), or A Man's a Man, is a play by the German people, German Modernism, modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht. One of Brecht's earlier works, it explores themes of war, human fungibility, and Personal identit ...
''.
In
Jean Giraudoux
Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux (; 29 October 1882 – 31 January 1944) 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 ...
's play
''Ondine'', all of act two is a series of scenes within scenes, sometimes two levels deep. This increases the
dramatic tension
Suspense is a state of mental uncertainty, anxiety, being undecided, or being doubtful. In a dramatic work, suspense is the anticipation of the outcome of a plot or of the solution to an uncertainty, puzzle, or mystery, particularly as it af ...
and also makes more poignant the inevitable failure of the relationship between the
mortal
Mortal means susceptible to death; the opposite of immortality, immortal.
Mortal may also refer to:
* Mortal (band), a Christian industrial band
* The Mortal, Sakurai Atsushi's project band
* Mortal (novel), ''Mortal'' (novel), a science fiction ...
Hans and
water sprite
A sprite is a supernatural entity in European mythology. They are often depicted as fairy-like creatures or as an ethereal entity.
The word ''sprite'' is derived from the Latin ''spiritus'' ("spirit"), via the French '' esprit''. Variations on ...
Ondine.
''
The Two-Character Play'' by
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the thre ...
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'' is a version of the medieval English mystery plays first 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.
Background
It is based lar ...
'', a modern reworking of the medieval
mystery play
Mystery plays and miracle plays (they are distinguished as two different forms although the terms are often used interchangeably) are among the earliest formally developed plays in medieval Europe. Medieval mystery plays focused on the represen ...
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.
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'' is a 1982 play by the English playwright Michael Frayn. Frayn conceived the idea in 1970 while watching from the wings a performance of '' The Two of Us'', a farce that he had written for Lynn Redgrave. He said, "It was funnier ...
'', ''
A Chorus of Disapproval'' or ''
Lilies
''Lilium'' () is a genus of herbaceous flowering plants growing from bulbs, all with large prominent flowers. They are the true lilies. Lilies are a group of flowering plants which are important in culture and literature in much of the world. M ...
''. Similarly, the musical ''
Man of La Mancha
''Man of La Mancha'' is a 1965 musical with a book by Dale Wasserman, music by Mitch Leigh, and lyrics by Joe Darion. It is adapted from Wasserman's non-musical 1959 teleplay ''I, Don Quixote'', which was in turn inspired by Miguel de Cervantes ...
'' presents the story of Don Quixote as an impromptu play staged in prison by ''
Quixote
is a Spanish epic novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Originally published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615, its full title is ''The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha'' or, in Spanish, (changing in Part 2 to ). A founding work of Wester ...
s author,
Miguel de Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (; 29 September 1547 (assumed) – 22 April 1616 Old Style and New Style dates, NS) was an Early Modern Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world's pre-emin ...
.
In most stagings of the musical ''
Cats
The cat (''Felis catus'') is a domestic species of small carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species in the family Felidae and is commonly referred to as the domestic cat or house cat to distinguish it from the wild members of t ...
'', which include the song "Growltiger's Last Stand" — a recollection of an old play by Gus the Theatre Cat — the character of Lady
Griddlebone
''Cats'' is a sung-through musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based upon the 1939 poetry collection ''Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats'' by T. S. Eliot. It tells the story of a tribe of cats called the Jellicles and the night they m ...
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'' is the fifth musical by the team of Rodgers and Hammerstein. It is based on Margaret Landon's novel '' Anna and the King of Siam'' (1944), which is in turn derived from the memoirs of Anna Leonowens, governess to the childre ...
'', 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; or, Life Among the Lowly'' is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in two volumes in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U. ...
'') 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.
In stagings of
Dina Rubina's play ''Always the Same Dream'', the story is about staging a school play based on a poem by
Pushkin
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (; rus, links=no, Александр Сергеевич ПушкинIn pre-Revolutionary script, his name was written ., r=Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin, p=ɐlʲɪkˈsandr sʲɪrˈɡʲe(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ ˈpuʂkʲɪn, ...
.
Joseph Heller's 1967 play ''
We Bombed in New Haven
''We Bombed in New Haven'' is a 1967 play by Joseph Heller. An anti-war black comedy, it is thematically linked in part to Heller's famous novel ''Catch-22''.
The play opened on Broadway at the Ambassador Theatre on October 16, 1968, and closed o ...
'' is about actors engaged in a play about military airmen; the actors themselves become at times unsure whether they are actors or actual airmen.
The 1937 musical ''
Babes in Arms
''Babes in Arms'' is a 1937 coming-of-age musical comedy with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart and book by Rodgers and Hart. It concerns a group of small-town Long Island teenagers who put on a show to avoid being sent to a wor ...
'' is about a group of kids putting on a musical to raise money. The central plot device was retained for the popular 1939 film version with
Judy Garland
Judy Garland (born Frances Ethel Gumm; June 10, 1922June 22, 1969) was an American actress and singer. While critically acclaimed for many different roles throughout her career, she is widely known for playing the part of Dorothy Gale in '' The ...
and
Mickey Rooney
Mickey Rooney (born Joseph Yule Jr.; other pseudonym Mickey Maguire; September 23, 1920 – April 6, 2014) was an American actor. In a career spanning nine decades, he appeared in more than 300 films and was among the last surviving stars of the ...
. A similar plot was recycled for the films ''
White Christmas'' and ''
The Blues Brothers
The Blues Brothers are an American blues and soul revivalist band founded in 1978 by comedians Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi as part of a musical sketch on ''Saturday Night Live''. Belushi and Aykroyd fronted the band, in character, respective ...
''.
Nested films
The
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut ( , ; ; 6 February 1932 – 21 October 1984) was a French film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. After a career of more tha ...
film ''
Day for Night
Day for night is a set of cinematic techniques used to simulate a night scene while filming in daylight. It is often employed when it is too difficult or expensive to actually shoot during nighttime. Because both film stocks and digital image s ...
'' 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''. There are a wealth of other movies that revolve around the film industry itself, even if not centering exclusively on one nested film. These include the darkly satirical classic ''
Sunset Boulevard
Sunset Boulevard is a boulevard in the central and western part of Los Angeles, California, that stretches from the Pacific Coast Highway in Pacific Palisades east to Figueroa Street in Downtown Los Angeles. It is a major thoroughfare in t ...
'' about an aging star and her parasitic victim, and the Coen Brothers' farce ''
Hail, Caesar!
''Hail, Caesar!'' is a 2016 period mystery musical black comedy film written, produced, edited and directed by the brothers Joel and Ethan Coen. An American-British-Japanese co-production, the film stars Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Ehrenr ...
''
The script to
Karel Reisz
Karel Reisz (21 July 1926 – 25 November 2002) was a Czech-born British filmmaker, one of the pioneers of the new realist strain in British cinema during the 1950s and 1960s. Two of the best-known films he directed are ''Saturday Night and Sun ...
's movie ''
The French Lieutenant's Woman
''The French Lieutenant's Woman'' is a 1969 postmodern historical fiction novel by John Fowles. The plot explores the fraught relationship of gentleman and amateur naturalist Charles Smithson and Sarah Woodruff, the former governess and indep ...
'' (1981), written by
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter (; 10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that spanne ...
, is a film-within-a-film adaptation of
John Fowles
John Robert Fowles (; 31 March 1926 – 5 November 2005) was an English novelist of international renown, critically positioned between modernism and postmodernism. His work was influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, among others.
Aft ...
'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.
''
The Muppet Movie
''The Muppet Movie'' is a 1979 American musical road comedy film directed by James Frawley, produced by Jim Henson, and the first theatrical film featuring the Muppets. A co-production between the United Kingdom and the United States, the fil ...
'' begins with
the Muppets
The Muppets are an American ensemble cast of puppet characters known for an absurdist, burlesque, and self-referential style of variety- sketch comedy. Created by Jim Henson in 1955, they are the focus of a media franchise that encompasses ...
sitting down in a theater to watch the eponymous movie, said by
Kermit the Frog
Kermit the Frog is a Muppet character created and originally performed by Jim Henson. Introduced in 1955, Kermit serves as the everyman protagonist of numerous Muppet productions, most notably ''Sesame Street'' and ''The Muppet Show'', as well ...
to be a semi-biographical account of how they all met.
In
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker. He is best known for his silent film work, in which his trademark was physical comedy accompanied by a stoic, deadpan expression ...
's ''
Sherlock Jr.
''Sherlock Jr.'' is a 1924 American silent comedy film directed by and starring Buster Keaton and written by Clyde Bruckman, Jean Havez, and Joseph A. Mitchell. It features Kathryn McGuire, Joe Keaton, and Ward Crane.
In 1991, ''Sherlock J ...
'', Keaton's protagonist actually enters into a film while it is playing in a cinema, as does the main character in the
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger (born July 30, 1947) is an Austrian and American actor, film producer, businessman, retired professional bodybuilder and politician who served as the 38th governor of California between 2003 and 2011. ''Time'' ...
children's film ''
The Last Action Hero
''Last Action Hero'' is a 1993 American fantasy action comedy film directed and produced by John McTiernan and co-written by Shane Black and David Arnott. It is a satire of the action genre and associated clichés, containing several parodies o ...
''. A similar device is used in the seminal music video ''
Take on me
"Take On Me" is a song by the Norwegian synth-pop band A-ha. The original version, recorded in 1984 and released in October of that same year, was produced by Tony Mansfield and remixed by John Ratcliff. The 1985 international hit version was p ...
'' by
A-ha
A-ha (usually stylised as ''a-''h''a''; ) is a Norwegian synth-pop band formed in Oslo in 1982. Founded by Paul Waaktaar-Savoy (guitars and vocals), Magne Furuholmen (keyboards, guitars and vocals), and Morten Harket (lead vocals), the band ...
, which features a young woman entering a cartoon universe. Conversely,
Woody Allen
Heywood "Woody" Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; November 30, 1935) is an American film director, writer, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades and multiple Academy Award-winning films. He began his career writing ...
's ''
Purple Rose of Cairo'' is about a movie character exiting the movie to interact with the real world. Allen's earlier film ''
Play it Again, Sam'' featured liberal use of characters, dialogue and clips from the film classic ''
Casablanca
Casablanca, also known in Arabic as Dar al-Bayda ( ar, الدَّار الْبَيْضَاء, al-Dār al-Bayḍāʾ, ; ber, ⴹⴹⴰⵕⵍⴱⵉⴹⴰ, ḍḍaṛlbiḍa, : "White House") is the largest city in Morocco and the country's econom ...
'' as a central device.
The 2002
Pedro Almodóvar
Pedro Almodóvar Caballero (; (often known simply as Almodóvar) born 25 September 1949) is a Spanish filmmaker. His films are marked by melodrama, irreverent humour, bold colour, glossy décor, quotations from popular culture, and complex narr ...
film ''
Talk to Her
''Talk to Her'' ( es, Hable con ella) is a 2002 Spanish drama written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar, and starring Javier Cámara, Darío Grandinetti, Leonor Watling, Geraldine Chaplin, and Rosario Flores. The film follows two men who form an u ...
'' (''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 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 name
Best Scene of 2002in the ''Skandies'', an annual survey of online cinephiles and critics invited each year by critic Mike D'Angelo.
''
Tropic Thunder
''Tropic Thunder'' is a 2008 satirical action comedy film directed by Ben Stiller, who wrote the screenplay with Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen. The film stars Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., Jay Baruchel, and Brandon T. Jackson as a gro ...
'' (2008) is a
comedy film
A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending (black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the ol ...
revolving around a group of
prima donna
In opera or commedia dell'arte, a prima donna (; Italian for "first lady"; plural: ''prime donne'') is the leading female singer in the company, the person to whom the prime roles would be given.
''Prime donne'' often had grand off-stage pers ...
actors making a
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
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 concept was perhaps inspired by the 1986 comedy
Three Amigos
''Three Amigos'' (stylized as ''¡Three Amigos!'') is a 1986 American Western comedy film directed by John Landis, written by Lorne Michaels, Steve Martin, and Randy Newman (who also wrote the film's songs), and starring Chevy Chase, Steve M ...
, where three washed-up silent film stars are expected to live out a real-life version of their old hit movies. The same idea of life being forced to imitate art was also reprised in the
Star Trek
''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the eponymous 1960s television series and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. The franchise has expanded into vari ...
parody ''
Galaxy Quest
''Galaxy Quest'' is a 1999 American science fiction comedy film directed by Dean Parisot and written by David Howard and Robert Gordon. A parody of and homage to science-fiction films and series, especially ''Star Trek'' and its fandom, the ...
''.
The first episode of the
anime
is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...
series ''
The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya
is a Japanese light novel series written by Nagaru Tanigawa and illustrated by Noizi Ito. It was first published in 2003 by Kadokawa Shoten in Japan with the novel ''The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya'', and has since been followed ...
'' consists almost entirely of a poorly made film that the protagonists created, complete with
Kyon
This is a list of the characters featured in the ''Haruhi Suzumiya'' franchise, written by Nagaru Tanigawa and illustrated by Noizi Ito, which contains a multitude of other secondary, and minor characters who are introduced throughout the cours ...
's typical, sarcastic commentary.
Chuck Jones
Charles Martin Jones (September 21, 1912 – February 22, 2002) was an American animator, director, and painter, best known for his work with Warner Bros. Cartoons on the ''Looney Tunes'' and ''Merrie Melodies'' series of shorts. He wrote, produ ...
's 1953
cartoon
A cartoon is a type of visual art that is typically drawn, frequently animated, in an unrealistic or semi-realistic style. The specific meaning has evolved over time, but the modern usage usually refers to either: an image or series of images ...
''
Duck Amuck
''Duck Amuck'' is an American animated surreal comedy short film directed by Chuck Jones and written by Michael Maltese. The short was released on January 17, 1953 as part of the ''Merrie Melodies'' series, and stars Daffy Duck.
In the cartoon, D ...
'' shows
Daffy Duck
Daffy Duck is an animated cartoon fictional character, character created for Warner Bros. Cartoons, Leon Schlesinger Productions by animators Tex Avery and Bob Clampett. Styled as an Anthropomorphism, anthropomorphic American black duck, black ...
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 is an animated cartoon character created in the late 1930s by Leon Schlesinger Productions (later Warner Bros. Cartoons) and voiced originally by Mel Blanc. Bugs is best known for his starring roles in the '' Looney Tunes'' and '' ...
. The ''Duck Amuck'' plot was essentially replicated in one of Jones' later cartoons, ''
Rabbit Rampage
''Rabbit Rampage'' is a 1955 Warner Bros. ''Looney Tunes'' animated cartoon, directed by Chuck Jones. The short was released on June 11, 1955, and stars Bugs Bunny.
Plot
The short opens to Bugs Bunny's hole being drawn by the animator in the ...
'' (1955), in which Bugs Bunny turns out to be the victim of the sadistic animator (
Elmer Fudd
Elmer J.''Hare Brush'' (1956) Fudd is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. '' Looney Tunes''/'' Merrie Melodies'' series and the archenemy of Bugs Bunny. He has one of the more disputed origins in the Warner Bros. cartoon pantheo ...
). A similar plot was also included in an episode of ''
New Looney Tunes
''New Looney Tunes'', originally titled ''Wabbit: A Looney Tunes Production'' in the US and ''Bugs!'' in some markets for its first season, is an American animated television series from Warner Bros. Animation based on the characters from ''Loon ...
'', in which Bugs was the victim, Daffy was the animator, and it was made on a computer instead of a pencil and paper. In 2007, the ''Duck Amuck'' sequence was parodied on ''
Drawn Together
''Drawn Together'' is an American adult animation, adult animated sitcom created by Dave Jeser and Matt Silverstein and premiered on Comedy Central on October 27, 2004. The series is a parody of ''The Surreal Life'' and follows the misadventures ...
'' ("Nipple Ring-Ring Goes to Foster Care").
All feature-length films by
Jörg Buttgereit
Jörg Buttgereit (born 20 December 1963) is a German writer/director known for his controversial films. He was born in Berlin, Germany, and has lived there his entire life. He is best known for his horror films ''Nekromantik'' (1987), ''Der To ...
except ''
Schramm'' feature a film within the film. In ''
Nekromantik
''Nekromantik'' (stylized as ''NEKRomantik'') is a 1988 West German horror exploitation film co-written and directed by Jörg Buttgereit. It is known to be frequently controversial, banned in a number of countries, and has become a cult film ov ...
'', the protagonist goes to the cinema to see the fictional slasher film ''Vera''. In ''
Der Todesking
''Der Todesking'' () is a 1990 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 attribute ...
'' one of the character watches a video of the fictional Nazi exploitation film ''Vera - Todesengel der Gestapo'' and in ''
Nekromantik 2
''Nekromantik 2: Die Rückkehr der Liebenden Toten (The Return of the Loving Dead)'' (stylized as ''NEKRomantik 2'') is a 1991 German horror film directed by Jörg Buttgereit and a sequel to his 1988 film ''Nekromantik''. The film is about necrop ...
'', the characters go to see a movie called ''Mon dejeuner avec Vera'', which is a parody of
Louis Malle
Louis Marie Malle (; 30 October 1932 – 23 November 1995) was a French film director, screenwriter, and producer who worked in both Cinema of France, French cinema and Cinema of the United States, Hollywood. Described as "eclectic" and "a fi ...
's ''
My Dinner with André''.
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino (; born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, writer, producer, and actor. His films are characterized by stylized violence, extended dialogue, profanity, Black comedy, dark humor, Nonlinear narrative, non-lin ...
's ''
Inglourious Basterds
''Inglourious Basterds'' is a 2009 war film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, starring Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Michael Fassbender, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger, Daniel Brühl, Til Schweiger and Mélanie Laurent. The film tells an alter ...
'' depicts a
Nazi propaganda
The propaganda used by the German Nazi Party in the years leading up to and during Adolf Hitler's dictatorship of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 to 1945 was a crucial instrument for acquiring and maintaining power, and for the implementation o ...
film called ''
Nation's Pride
Nation's Giant Hamburgers, or simply Nation's, is a privately held El Cerrito, Contra Costa County, California, El Cerrito, California-based fast food diner Chain store#Restaurant chains, chain.
The chain, founded in 1952, largely operates in t ...
'', which glorifies a soldier in the German army. ''Nation's Pride'' is directed by
Eli Roth
Eli Raphael Roth (born April 18, 1972) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, and actor. As a director and producer, he is most closely associated with the horror genre, having directed the films '' Cabin Fever'' (2003) and ''Hoste ...
.
Joe Dante
Joseph James Dante Jr. (; born November 28, 1946) is an American film director, producer, editor and actor. His films—notably ''Gremlins'' (1984) alongside its sequel, '' Gremlins 2: The New Batch'' (1990)—often mix 1950s-style B movies wit ...
's ''
Matinee'' depicts ''Mant'', an early-'60s sci-fi/horror movie about a man who turns into an
ant
Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cretaceous period. More than 13,800 of an estimated total of 22 ...
. In one scene, the protagonists see a
Disney
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...
-style family movie called ''The Shook-Up Shopping Cart''.
Story within a film
The 2002 martial arts epic ''
Hero
A hero (feminine: heroine) is a real person or a main fictional character who, in the face of danger, combats adversity through feats of ingenuity, courage, or Physical strength, strength. Like other formerly gender-specific terms (like ...
'' presented the same narrative several different times, as recounted by different storytellers, but with both factual and aesthetic differences. Similarly, in the whimsical 1988
Terry Gilliam
Terrence Vance Gilliam (; born 22 November 1940) is an American-born British filmmaker, comedian, animator, actor and former member of the Monty Python comedy troupe.
Gilliam has directed 13 feature films, including ''Time Bandits'' (1981), ''B ...
film ''
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
''The Adventures of Baron Munchausen'' is a 1988 adventure fantasy film co-written and directed by Terry Gilliam, and starring John Neville, Sarah Polley, Eric Idle, Jonathan Pryce, Oliver Reed, Robin Williams and Uma Thurman. An interna ...
'', and the 2003
Tim Burton
Timothy Walter Burton (born August 25, 1958) is an American filmmaker and animator. He is known for his gothic fantasy and horror films such as ''Beetlejuice'' (1988), ''Edward Scissorhands'' (1990), ''The Nightmare Before Christmas'' (1993), ...
film ''
Big Fish
''Big Fish'' is a 2003 American fantasy comedy-drama film directed by Tim Burton, and based on the 1998 novel of the same name by Daniel Wallace. The film stars Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Billy Crudup, Jessica Lange, Helena Bonham Carter, ...
'', the bulk of the film is a series of stories told by an (extremely) unreliable narrator. In the 2006 Tarsem film ''
The Fall'', an injured silent-movie stuntman tells
heroic fantasy
Heroic fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy in which events occur in a world where magic is prevalent and modern technology is nonexistent. The setting may be entirely fictitious in nature or based upon Earth with some additions. Unlike dark fiction, ...
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. The same conceit of an unreliable narrator was used to very different effect in the 1995 crime drama ''
The Usual Suspects
''The Usual Suspects'' is a 1995 neo-noir mystery thriller film directed by Bryan Singer and written by Christopher McQuarrie. It stars Stephen Baldwin, Gabriel Byrne, Benicio del Toro, Kevin Pollak, Chazz Palminteri, Pete Postlethwait ...
'' (which garnered an Oscar for
Kevin Spacey
Kevin Spacey Fowler (born July 26, 1959) is an American actor. He began his career as a stage actor during the 1980s, obtaining supporting roles before gaining a leading man status in film and television. Spacey has received various accolades ...
's performance).
Walt Disney
Walter Elias Disney (; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film p ...
's 1946 live-action drama film ''
Song of the South
''Song of the South'' is a 1946 American Live-action animated film, live-action/animated musical film, musical drama film directed by Harve Foster and Wilfred Jackson; produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Pictures, RKO Radio Pictures. ...
'' had three animated sequences, all based on the
Br'er Rabbit
Br'er Rabbit (an abbreviation of ''Brother Rabbit'', also spelled Brer Rabbit) is a central figure in an oral tradition passed down by African-Americans of the Southern United States and African descendants in the Caribbean, notably Afro-Bahami ...
stories, told by
Uncle Remus
Uncle Remus is the fictional title character and narrator of a collection of African American folktales compiled and adapted by Joel Chandler Harris and published in book form in 1881. Harris was a journalist in post-Reconstruction era Atlanta, a ...
(
James Baskett
James Franklin Baskett (February 16, 1904 – July 9, 1948) was an American actor who portrayed Uncle Remus, singing the song "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" in the 1946 Disney feature film '' Song of the South''.
In recognition of his portrayal of Remus, h ...
) to the main character, seven-year-old Johnny (
Bobby Driscoll
Robert Cletus Driscoll (March 3, 1937 – March 30, 1968) was an American actor known for his film and television performances from 1943 to 1960. He starred in some of the Walt Disney Studios' best-known live-action pictures of that period ...
), and his friends Ginny (
Luana Patten
Luana Patten (July 6, 1938 – May 1, 1996) was an American actress who appeared in films produced by Walt Disney Pictures, such as ''Song of the South'' (1946), ''Fun and Fancy Free'' (1947), and ''Melody Time'' (1948). Later in life, she pla ...
) and Toby (Glenn Leedy) as moral fables.
The seminal 1950 Japanese film ''
Rashomon
is a 1950 Jidaigeki psychological thriller/crime film directed and written by Akira Kurosawa, working in close collaboration with cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa. Starring Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyō, Masayuki Mori (actor), Masayuki Mori, and ...
'', based on the Japanese short story "
In a Grove
, also translated as ''In a Bamboo Grove'', is a Japanese short story by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa first published in 1922. It was ranked as one of the "10 best Asian novels of all time" by ''The Telegraph'' in 2014. ''In a Grove'' has been adapted s ...
" (1921), utilizes the
flashback-within-a-flashback technique. The story unfolds in flashback as the four witnesses in the story—the bandit, the murdered
samurai
were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in 1876. They were the well-paid retainers of the '' daimyo'' (the great feudal landholders). They h ...
, 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 movie ''
Inception
''Inception'' is a 2010 science fiction action film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, who also produced the film with Emma Thomas, his wife. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a professional thief who steals information by infiltr ...
'' has a deeply nested structure that is itself part of the setting, as the characters travel deeper and deeper into layers of dreams within dreams. Similarly, in the beginning of the music video for the
Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and philanthropist. Dubbed the "King of Pop", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century. Over a ...
song "
Thriller", the heroine is terrorized by her monster boyfriend in what turns out to be a movie within a dream. The film ''
The Grand Budapest Hotel
''The Grand Budapest Hotel'' is a 2014 comedy-drama film written and directed by Wes Anderson. Ralph Fiennes leads a seventeen-actor ensemble cast as Monsieur Gustave H., famed concierge of a twentieth-century mountainside resort in the fiction ...
'' has four layers of narration; starting with a young girl at the author's memorial reading his book, it cuts to the old author in 1985 telling of an incident in 1968 when he, as a young author, stayed at the hotel and met the owner, old Zero. He was then told the story of young Zero and M Gustave, from 1932, which makes up most of the narrative.
Play within a film
The 2001 film ''
Moulin Rouge!
''Moulin Rouge!'' (, ) is a 2001 jukebox musical romantic drama film directed, co-produced, and co-written by Baz Luhrmann. It follows a young English poet, Christian, who falls in love with the star of the Moulin Rouge, cabaret actress and cour ...
'' features a fictitious musical within a film, called "Spectacular Spectacular". The 1942 Ernst Lubitsch comedy ''To Be or Not to Be (1942 film), To Be or Not to Be'' confuses the audience in the opening scenes with a play, "The Naughty Nazis", about Adolf Hitler which appears 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
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...
'' 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 (1944 film), Henry V'' in the Green room, 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.
Mel Brooks' film, ''The Producers (1968 film), The Producers'', revolves around a scheme to make money by producing a disastrously bad Broadway musical, ''Springtime for Hitler.'' Ironically the film itself was later made into its own Broadway musical (although a more intentionally successful one). The Outkast music video for the song "Roses" is a short film about a high school musical. In ''Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010 film), Diary of a Wimpy Kid'', the middle-schoolers put on a play of ''The Wizard of Oz (1939 film), The Wizard of Oz'', while ''High School Musical'' is a romantic comedy about the eponymous musical itself. A high school production is also featured in the gay teen romantic comedy ''Love, Simon''.
A 2012 Italian film ''Caesar Must Die'' stars real-life Italian prisoners who rehearse Shakespeare's ''Julius Caesar (play), Julius Caesar'' in Rebibbia prison playing ''fictional'' Italian prisoners rehearsing the same play in the same prison. In addition, the film itself becomes a ''Julius Caesar'' adaption of sorts as the scenes are frequently acted all around the prison, outside of rehearsals, and the prison life becomes indistinguishable from the play.
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. The 1990 biopic ''Korczak (film), Korczak'', about the last days of a Jewish children's orphanage in Nazi occupied Poland, features an amateur production of Rabindranath Tagore's ''The Post Office'', which was selected by the orphanage's visionary leader as a way of preparing his charges for their own impending death. That same production is also featured in the stage play ''Korczak's Children,'' also inspired by the same historical events.
TV show within a film
The 1973 film The National Health (film), The National Health, an adaptation of Peter Nichols (playwright), Peter Nichols's The National Health (play), 1969 play of the same name features a send-up of a typical American hospital soap opera being shown on a television situated in an underfunded, unmistakably British National Health Service, NHS hospital.
The Jim Carrey film ''The Truman Show'' is about a person who grows to adulthood without ever realizing that he is the unwitting hero of the immersive eponymous television show.
In ''Toy Story 2'', the lead character Sheriff Woody, Woody learns that he was based on the lead character of the same name of a 1950s Western (genre), Western show known as ''Woody's Roundup'', which was seemingly cancelled due to the rise of Sputnik 1, Sputnik and children wanting to play with space toys like Buzz Lightyear.
Nested video games
The first example of a video game within a video game is almost certainly Tim Stryker's 80s era text-only game Fazuul (also the world's first online multiplayer game), in which one of the objects that the player can create is a minigame. Another early use of this trope was in Cliff Johnson (game designer), Cliff Johnson's 1987 hit ''The Fool's Errand'', a thematically linked narrative puzzle game, in which several of the puzzles were semi-independent games played against NPCs.
''Power Factor (video game), Power Factor'' has been cited as a rare example of a video game in which the entire concept is a video game within a video game: The player takes on the role of a character who is playing a "Virtual Reality Simulator", in which he in turn takes on the role of the hero Redd Ace. The ''.hack'' franchise also gives the concept a central role. It features a narrative in which internet advancements have created an MMORPG franchise called The World. Protagonists Kite and Haseo try to uncover the mysteries of the events surrounding The World. Characters in .hack are self-aware that they are video game characters.
More commonly, however, the video game within a video game device takes the form of mini-games that are non-plot oriented, and optional to the completion of the game. For example, in the ''Yakuza (series), Yakuza'' and ''Shenmue (series), Shenmue'' franchises, there are playable arcade machines featuring other Sega games that 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. In ''Animal Crossing'', the player can acquire individual NES emulations through various means and place them within their house, where they are playable in their entirety. When placed in the house, the games take the form of a Nintendo Entertainment System. In ''Fallout 4'' and ''Fallout 76,'' the protagonist can find several cartridges throughout the wasteland that can be played on his pip-boy (an electronic device that exists only in the world of the game) or any terminal computer.
TV show within a video game
In the Remedy Entertainment, Remedy video game title ''Max Payne (video game), Max Payne,'' players can chance upon a number of ongoing television shows when activating or happening upon various television sets within the game environs, depending on where they are within the unfolding game narrative. Among them are ''Lords & Ladies'', ''Captain Baseball Bat Boy'', ''Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, Dick Justice'' and the pinnacle television serial ''Max Payne (video game), Address Unknown'' – heavily inspired by David Lynch-style film narrative, particularly ''Twin Peaks'', ''Address Unknown'' sometimes prophesies events or character motives yet to occur in the Max Payne narrative.
In ''Grand Theft Auto IV'', the player can watch several TV channels which include many programs: reality shows, cartoons, and even game shows.
Nested TV shows
''Terrance & Phillip'' from ''South Park'' comments 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. Similarly, on the long running animated sitcom ''The Simpsons'', Bart's favorite cartoon, ''Itchy and Scratchy'' (a parody of ''Tom & Jerry''), often echoes the plotlines of the main show. ''The Simpsons'' also parodied this structure with numerous 'layers' of sub-stories in the Season 17 episode "The Seemingly Never-Ending Story".
On the show ''Dear White People (TV series), Dear White People'', the ''Scandal (TV series), Scandal'' parody ''Defamation'' offers an ironic commentary on the main show's theme of interracial relationships. Similarly, each season of the HBO show ''Insecure (TV series), Insecure'' has featured a different fictional show, including the slavery-era soap opera ''Due North'', the rebooted black 90s sitcom ''Kev'yn,'' and the investigative documentary series ''Looking for LaToya''.
The Ireland, Irish television series ''Father Ted'' features a television show, ''Father Ben'', which has characters and storylines almost identical to that of ''Father Ted''.
The television shows ''30 Rock'', ''Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip'', ''Sonny with a Chance'', and ''Kappa Mikey'' feature a sketch show within the TV show.
An extended plotline on the semi-autobiographical sitcom ''Seinfeld'' dealt with the main characters developing a sitcom about their lives. The gag was reprised on ''Curb Your Enthusiasm'', another semi-autobiographical show by and about ''Seinfeld'' co-creator Larry David, when the long-anticipated ''Seinfeld'' reunion was staged entirely inside the new show.
The ''USS Callister'' episode of the ''Black Mirror'' anthology television series is about a man obsessed with a ''Star Trek''-like show, who recreates it as part of a virtual reality game.
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 "Retroactive continuity, retconned" into the Macross Canon (fiction), canon as a popular movie within the television series ''Macross 7'' (1994).
The ''Stargate SG-1'' episode ''Wormhole X-Treme!'' features a fictional TV show with an almost identical premise to ''Stargate SG-1''. A later episode, ''200 (Stargate SG-1), 200'', depicts ideas for a possible reboot of ''Wormhole X-Treme!'', including using a "younger and edgier" cast, or even Supermarionation, Thunderbirds-style puppets.
Film within a TV show
''Seinfeld'' had a number of reoccurring fictional films, most notably ''Rochelle, Rochelle'', a parody of artsy but exploitative foreign films, while the trippy, metaphysically loopy thriller ''Death Castle'' is a central element of the ''Master of None'' episode ''New York, I Love You.''
Fantasy within realism
Stories inside stories can allow for genre changes. Arthur Ransome uses the device to let his young characters in the Swallows and Amazons series, ''Swallows and Amazons'' series of children's books, set in the recognisable everyday world, take part in fantastic adventures of piracy in distant lands: two of the twelve books, ''Peter Duck'' and ''Missee Lee'' (and some would include ''Great Northern?'' as a third), are adventures supposedly made up by the characters. Similarly, the film version of ''Chitty Chitty Bang Bang'' uses a story within a story format to tell a purely fantastic fairy tale within a relatively more realistic frame-story. The film version of ''The Wizard of Oz (1939 film), The Wizard of Oz'' does the same thing by making its inner story into a dream. Lewis Carroll's celebrated ''
Alice'' books use the same device of a dream as an excuse for fantasy, while Carroll's less well-known ''Sylvie and Bruno'' subverts the trope by allowing the dream figures to enter and interact with the "real" world. In each episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, the main story was realistic fiction, with live action human characters, while an inner story took place in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, in which most characters were puppets, except Lady Aberlin and occasionally Mr. McFeely, played by Betty Aberlin and David Newell in both realms.
Fractal fiction
Some stories feature what might be called a literary version of the Droste effect, where an image contains a smaller version of itself (also a common feature in many fractals). An early version is found in an ancient Chinese proverb, in which an old monk situated in a temple found on a high mountain recursively tells the same story to a younger monk about an old monk who tells a younger monk a story regarding an old monk sitting in a temple located on a high mountain, and so on.
The same concept is at the heart of Michael Ende's classic children's novel ''The Neverending Story'', which prominently features a book of the same title. This is later revealed to be the same book the audience is reading, when it begins to be retold again from the beginning, thus creating an infinite regression that features as a plot element. Another story that includes versions of itself is
Neil Gaiman
Neil Richard MacKinnon GaimanBorn as Neil Richard Gaiman, with "MacKinnon" added on the occasion of his marriage to Amanda Palmer. ; ( Neil Richard Gaiman; born 10 November 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, gr ...
's ''The Sandman: Worlds' End'' which contains several instances of multiple storytelling levels, including ''Cerements'' (issue #55) where one of the inmost levels corresponds to one of the outer levels, turning the story-within-a-story structure into an infinite regression. Jesse Ball's ''The Way Through Doors'' features a deeply nested set of stories within stories, most of which explore alternate versions of the main characters. The frame device is that the main character is telling stories to a woman in a coma (similar to Almodóvar's ''Talk to Her'', mentioned above).
Samuel Delany
Samuel R. "Chip" Delany (, ) (born April 1, 1942), is an American author and literary critic. His work includes fiction (especially science fiction), memoir, criticism, and essays (on science fiction, literature, sexual orientation, sexuality, a ...
's great surrealist sci-fi classic, ''Dhalgren,'' features the main character discovering a diary that appears to be written by a version of himself, with incidents that usually reflect, but sometimes contrast with the main narrative. The last section of the book is taken up entirely by journal entries, about which readers must choose whether to take as completing the narrator's own story. Similarly, in Kiese Laymon's ''Long Division'', the main character discovers a book, also called ''Long Division'', featuring what appears to be himself, except as living twenty years earlier. The title book in Charles Yu's ''How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe'' exists within itself as a stable creation of a closed loop in time. Likewise, in the Will Ferrell comedy ''Stranger than Fiction (2006 film), Stranger than Fiction'' the main character discovers he is a character in a book that (along with its author) also exists in the same universe. In Douglas Hofstadter's ''Gödel, Escher, Bach'', there is a narrative between Achilles and the Tortoise (characters borrowed from
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequel ...
, who in turn borrowed them from Zeno of Elea, 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. Italo Calvino's experimental book, ''If on a winter's night a traveler'', is about a reader, addressed in the second person, trying to read the very same book, but being interrupted by ten other recursively nested incomplete stories.
Robert Altman's satirical noir ''The Player (1992 film), The Player'' about Hollywood ends with the antihero being pitched a movie version of his own story, complete with an unlikely happy ending. The long-running musical ''A Chorus Line'' dramatizes its own creation, and the life stories of its own original cast members. The famous final number does double duty as the showstopper for both the musical the audience is watching and the one the characters are appearing in. ''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. Jim Henson's ''
The Muppet Movie
''The Muppet Movie'' is a 1979 American musical road comedy film directed by James Frawley, produced by Jim Henson, and the first theatrical film featuring the Muppets. A co-production between the United Kingdom and the United States, the fil ...
'' is framed as a screening of the movie itself, and the screenplay for the movie is present inside the movie, which ends with an abstracted, abbreviated re-staging of its own events. The 1985 Tim Burton film ''Pee-Wee's Big Adventure'' ends with the main characters watching a film version of their own adventures, but as reimagined as a Hollywood blockbuster action film, with James Brolin as a more stereotypically manly version of the Paul Reubens title character. Episode 14 of the
anime
is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...
series ''Martian Successor Nadesico'' is essentially a clip show, but has several newly animated segments based on ''Gekigangar III'', an anime that exists within its universe and that many characters are fans of, that involves the characters of that show watching Nadesico. The episode ends with the crew of the Nadesico watching the very same episode of Gekigangar, causing a paradox. Mel Brooks's 1974 comedy ''Blazing Saddles'' leaves its Western setting when the climactic fight scene breaks out, revealing 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 Theatre, which is showing the "premiere" of ''Blazing Saddles''; they enter the cinema to watch the conclusion of their own film. Brooks recycled the gag in his 1987 ''Star Wars'' parody, ''Spaceballs'', where the villains are able to locate the heroes by watching a copy of the movie they are in on VHS video tape (a comic exaggeration of the phenomenon of films being available on video before their theatrical release). Brooks also made the 1976 parody ''Silent Movie'' about a buffoonish team of filmmakers trying to make the first Hollywood silent film in forty years—which is essentially that film itself (another forty years later, life imitated art imitating art, when an actual modern silent movie became a hit, the Oscar winner''The Artist (film), The Artist'').
The film-within-a-film format is used in the ''Scream (franchise), Scream'' horror series. In ''Scream 2'', the opening scene takes place in a movie theater where a screening of ''Stab'' is played which depicts the events from the Scream (1996 film), first film. In between the events of ''Scream 2'' and ''Scream 3'', a second film was released called ''Stab 2''. ''Scream 3'' is about the actors filming a fictional third installment in the Stab 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 and in the same order. In between the events of ''Scream 3'' and ''Scream 4'', four other Stab films are released. In the opening sequence of ''Scream 4'' two characters are watching ''Stab 7'' before they get killed. 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. In the fifth installment of the series, also named ''Scream (2022 film), Scream'', an eighth Stab film is mentioned having been released before the film takes place. The characters in the film, several of which are fans of the series, heavily criticize the film, similar to how ''Scream 4'' was criticized. Additionally, late in the film, Mindy watches the first Stab by herself. During the depiction of Ghostface sneaking up behind Randy on the couch from the first film in Stab, Ghostface sneaks up on Mindy and attacks and stabs her.
Director Spike Jonze's ''Adaptation (film), Adaptation'' is a fictionalized version of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's struggles to adapt the non-cinematic book ''The Orchid Thief'' into a Hollywood blockbuster. As his onscreen self succumbs to the temptation to commercialize the narrative, Kaufman incorporates those techniques into the script, including tropes such as an invented romance, a car chase, a drug-running sequence, and an imaginary identical twin for the protagonist. (The movie also features scenes about the making of ''Being John Malkovich'', previously written by Kaufman and directed by Jonze.) Similarly, in Kaufman's self-directed 2008 film ''Synecdoche, New York'', the main character Caden Cotard is a skilled director of plays who receives a grant, and ends up creating a remarkable theater piece intended as a carbon copy of the outside world. The layers of copies of the world ends up several layers deep. The same conceit was previously used by frequent Kaufman collaborator Michel Gondry in his music video for the Björk song "Bachelorette (song), Bachelorette," which 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.
Fractal fiction is sometimes utilized in
video game
Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...
s to play with the concept of player choice: In the first chapter of ''Stories Untold (video game), Stories Untold'', the player is required to play a text adventure, which eventually becomes apparent to be happening in the same environment the player is in; in ''Superhot'' the narrative itself is constructed around the player playing a game called Superhot.
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 autonomously as a separate and distinct work. This is an example of a Spin-off (media), spin-off.
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 the real world and was itself later joined by ''Lightyear (film), Lightyear'', a film described as the source material for the toy and cartoon series.
''Kujibiki Unbalance'', a series in the ''Genshiken'' universe, has spawned merchandise of its own, and been remade into a series on its own.
Such spin-offs may be produced as a way of providing additional information on the fictional world for fans. In the ''Harry Potter'' series, three such supplemental books have been produced. ''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.
In the works of
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American writer known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. In a career spanning over 50 years, he published fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and ...
,
Kilgore Trout
Kilgore Trout is a fictional character created by author Kurt Vonnegut. In Vonnegut's work, Trout is a notably unsuccessful author of paperback science fiction novels.
"Trout" was inspired by the name of the author Theodore Sturgeon (Vonnegut's ...
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'', published under the name Kilgore Trout.
In ''Homestuck'' by Andrew Hussie, there is a comic called Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff, created by one of the characters, Dave Strider. It was later adapted to its own ongoing series. Similarly, the popular ''Dog Man'' series of children's graphic novels is presented as a creation of the main characters of author Dav Pilkey's earlier series, ''Captain Underpants''.
''Captain Proton: Defender of the Earth'', a story by Dean Wesley Smith, was adapted from the holonovel ''Captain Proton'' in the
Star Trek
''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the eponymous 1960s television series and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. The franchise has expanded into vari ...
universe.
In the animated online franchise ''Homestar Runner'' many of the best-known features were spun off from each other. The best known was "Strong Bad Emails," which depicted the villain of the original story giving snarky answers to fan emails, but that in turn spawned several other long-running features which started out as figments of Strong Bad's imagination, including the teen-oriented cartoon parody "Teen Girl Squad" and the anime parody "20X6."
One unique example is the Tyler Perry comedy/horror hit ''Boo! A Madea Halloween'' which originated as a parody of Tyler Perry films in the Chris Rock film ''Top 5''.
See also
* List of films featuring fictional films
* Metafiction
*
* Subplot
References
{{Reflist
Fictional works,
Comedy
Fiction
Metafictional techniques
Plot (narrative)