A Structural Model of Phenomena With Embedding in Literature and Other Arts-Furedy1989

Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics
A Structural Model of Phenomena with Embedding in Literature and Other Arts

Author(s): Viveca Füredy
Source: Poetics Today, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Winter, 1989), pp. 745-769
Published by: Duke University Press
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A Structural Model of Phenomena with
Embedding in Literature and Other Arts
Viveca Furedy
Hebrew University
Speaking of the play with a play-within-the-play, Dieter Mehl (1965:

42) once said that there had "hardly [been] any attempt to treat the
subject comprehensively," and that he was "not even sure whether it
would be possible at all, because such a bewildering variety would have
to be included [and because the subject] is ... much more complex
and less easily defined than many other conventions." The same holds
true of the whole of the structural category to which the play with a
play-within-the-play belongs, namely, what may be called "embedding-
embedded objects," which also includes phenomena such as novels with
novels-within-the-novel, paintings with paintings-within-the-painting,
and films with films-within-the-film (or with paintings or plays-within-
the-film), Chinese boxes and Russian dolls, paradoxes, quotations and
free indirect speech, mise en abyme (in some usages of the term), and
many other things.' Nevertheless, the present paper, taking Mehl's
words as a challenge, constitutes an attempt to treat "comprehen-
sively" or theoretically not only the play with a play-within-the-play
1. Studies of embedding include Voigt 1954; Nelson 1971 [1958]; Mehl 1961,
1965; Genette 1972, 1983; Dallenbach 1977; Bal 1981; Ron 1987. A book which,
among other things, also deals with embedding and which acted as a catalyst for
my own model is Hofstadter 1980. I regret very much that McHale 1987, which
-although his approach differs from mine-partly overlaps with my discussion,
arrived too late for me to be able to relate to it within the body of the article. I
could only add a few references in footnotes, which, I am afraid, do not do this
interesting book justice.
Poetics Today 10:4 (Winter 1989). Copyright ? 1989 by The Porter Institute for
Poetics and Semiotics. ccc 0333-5372/89/$2.50.
746 Poetics Today 10:4
(see Furedy 1983) but the structure of embedding as such, and thus
to account for all possible forms of such phenomena, literary as well
as nonliterary, and for their relation to each other. As I hope to show,
a radical decision to focus on the boundary between the embedding
level and the embedded level enables one to demonstrate not only that
(in their "pure" state) there are only three kinds of such phenomena,
each of which has its own defining characteristics and effects, but also
that they are actually three facets of the same underlying structure.
This "Ur-phenomenon" of embedding is brought into being when a
boundary of the type which creates discontinuous hierarchical levels,
which I shall call "logical levels," is inserted into a continuum by means
of an act of "punctuation." Such a phenomenon, which for the sake of
simplicity will from now on be referred to as "object," is radically dif-
ferent from a corresponding "simple" object without embedding (a
play, novel, painting, and so on); furthermore, its two parts are equally
important and interdependent for their character as embedding or
embedded-hence the somewhat unwieldy name used to refer to the
entity as a whole.
The concepts used in the model presented here were borrowed
and adapted from various disciplines, psychology and communication,
logic, and computer programming, among others. The most impor-
tant of these concepts are continuum, punctuation, boundary, and
logical levels.
Punctuation and Continuum
The term punctuation is taken from the field of communication, into

which it was introduced by Bateson and Jackson (1964), following
Whorf (1956). They regarded conversation as a continuous sequence
into which punctuation, a sort of usually nonverbal metamessage, is
introduced by the participants. There is normally, but by no means
always, tacit agreement between them about this punctuation; how-
ever, it is not inherent in the language but arbitrarily imposed on the
sequence of verbal interaction. When there is no agreement, conflict-
ing punctuations may cause a serious communicational impasse. On
the other hand, the very arbitrariness of the punctuation of a con-
tinuum may, when foregrounded, be exploited in art or in jokes, as
in the example of the rat which said, "I have got my experimenter
trained. Every time I press the lever he gives me food" (Watzlawick,
Beavin, and Jackson 1967: 55). Not only communicational continua
are subject to punctuation; it is ubiquitous and unavoidable. Any act
of focusing or classification, and thus any act of perception, which in-
volves both, is an act of punctuation. Alice's hesitation as to whether
what Humpty Dumpty is wearing should be called a cravat or a belt
is a case in point, but so is the usually unconscious decision to call
something a flower or a rose.
Furedy * Phenomena with Embedding in Literature 747
There are basically two modes of punctuation: one which divides a

continuum into units on the same logical level and one which divides
it into units on different logical levels (see below). Examples of the
first mode is the division of a column of mercury into degrees (the
arbitrariness of which is easy to perceive when considering that there
are four different such punctuations in use: Celsius, Fahrenheit, Kel-
vin, and Reaumur) and the division of a verbal text into chapters,
paragraphs, beginnings and endings, and so on. The second mode of
punctuation is employed, for instance, in the case of wallpaper with an
abstract pattern on which is hanging a painting with the same abstract
pattern, to distinguish between the "real" pattern on the wallpaper
and the "art" pattern on the canvas or paper. Similarly, a painting of
an artist painting another painting or a novel narrating the story of a
novelist writing a novel is punctuated in the second mode at the edge
of the canvas and the beginning of the text, and again at the edge
of the painted canvas and the novel-within-the-novel. Since it is this
mode of punctuation which creates embedding-embedded objects, it
is this mode that I shall be referring to from now on, although much
of what I shall say about punctuation and the nature of the boundary
probably holds true for the first mode as well.
The application of either mode of the concept of punctuation to an
extended object such as a literary text necessitates the further distinc-
tion between two kinds of punctuation, namely, the kind undertaken
ad hoc, during the process of reading the text as it unfolds in time and
space, which might be termed sequential punctuation, and the kind pos-
sible only post hoc, at the end of the reading process, when all infor-
mation is available (although permanent gaps may, of course, remain)
and when one is in a position to make the final revision of the sequen-
tial punctuation (which of course also involves continuous revision).
This latter punctuation might be called retrospective. The distinction is
called for not only because of the nature of the process of reading, with
its gradual accumulation of data, but also because of the possibility of
encoding in the text punctuational clues, or boundary markers (see
below), which are intentionally misleading and which therefore make
subsequent repunctuation necessary. Both literary characters and the
real reader are engaged in punctuational activities, and there are often
gaps between the two. In the case of the present model of embedding-
embedded objects, it is the reader, offstage spectator, or the like who is
the agent defining the presence of embedding, that is, whose punctua-
tion (or perception of the punctuation in the text?) decides whether
the object in question is simple or embedding-embedded.
Boundary
The boundary, albeit essential to the model proposed here, has no
existence in the real world; it exists only in the system of percep-
tion imposed on reality by the punctuator-perceiver. The boundary

is the discontinuity itself between the two discrete levels or units be-
tween which it distinguishes or, from a different perspective, creates.
The boundary thus functions within a system without being part of it,
wholly in line with the view held in the discipline of communication,
cited above, that punctuation, the insertion of a boundary, constitutes
a metamessage. Being the mediating absence or "leap" between the
levels, the well-functioning boundary is a gap that bridges, the modus
operandi of the smooth movement of transition from one to the other
(Muken 1979). It has several interesting characteristics: It is a con-
tinuous "line" which divides another continuum, something like itself,
into discrete units, thus turning it into something unlike itself. By
intervening in the continuum, it turns difference (more/less) into dis-
tinction (either/or), the difference thus singled out by the boundary
being only one of a very great number, approaching infinitude, of
possible candidates. No distinctions can be made without boundaries;
conversely, the act of punctuation necessarily creates distinction.
Since the boundary itself is invisible, its presence must be indicated
by boundary markers. In literature and painting, the main marker
(not to be confused with the boundary itself) is a change in ontologi-
cal status2: there are, as it were, two different "worlds" on either side
of the boundary. Thus Hamlet cannot intervene and stop the mur-
der of Gonzago; it happens in a different place, at a different time,
and involves a different species of "people" from his own.3 A com-
mon indicator of the presence of such different worlds, and thus of a
boundary, in verbal and visual arts is the presence in the embedding
part of a "maker" of some kind who is responsible for the embedded
object (a narrator, painter, stage director, sponsor, or the like) or of a
certain kind of witness (an audience within the text, as distinct from
an observer or an eavesdropper). In drama, another boundary marker
is the switch from outer play actor to inner play character, the bound-
ary in this case passing within a biological entity. In the verbal arts,
there may be a change in dialect or register; in the visual or verbal-
visual arts, a change of style or period of costume, color-in films,
color versus black-and-white-setting, lighting, and the like. In three-
dimensional objects and in paintings, as opposed to the verbal arts,
there is also a boundary marking difference in size, the embedded ob-
ject of necessity being smaller than the embedding one. A transgressed
boundary too is marked, first, by there having existed, at some point,
2. McHale's (1987: 116) focus, on the other hand, is precisely on the "intensifica-
tion of ontological instability" in postmodernist film and fiction.
3. Peter Handke's (1969) play Offending the Audience elaborates on what happens
when the boundary between play and audience is erased, thus by negation illumi-
nating the markers and normal functions of that boundary when it is intact.
an intact boundary, and second, by the feeling of the strangeness of

the interaction between the former levels (see below).
It should be noted that since some of the phenomena in this by
no means exhaustive list do not necessarily indicate the presence of
a boundary (thus there may be different, parallel story lines set in
different places; two characters on the same level may speak in dif-
ferent dialects or registers; and so on), a number of such signs are
usually needed to mark the certain presence of a boundary. Even so,
as Douglas Hofstadter (1980: 701) has shown in his interpretation of
Magritte's painting Ceci n'est pas une pipe, the punctuation of a painting
into discrete logical levels, one of which represents "reality," involves
not only complex translations, for example, of two-dimensional spa-
tial clues into three-dimensional objects, but also a liberal dose of
"willing suspension of disbelief," without which not only does the real-
istic pipe become a mere blot of color, but even the words "ceci n'est
pas une pipe," written on the canvas precisely in order to counter-
act the "realistic pull" of that pipe, dissolve into smudges of paint.4
The same, though involving other factors, holds true for embedding-
embedded objects of different kinds as well.
As we shall see, the logical level-creating boundary can assume three
different forms: It can remain intact, become reified, or cease to func-
tion and become transgressed (leaving, however, certain "traces"). In
each of these cases, the relation between the two units distinguished
by the boundary will be different, and in each of these cases the effect
created will also be different.
Logical Levels
The term logical levels is used here to avoid the interpretation of
the preposition within in concepts such as novel-within-the-novel or
painting-within-the-painting as "physically surrounded by the embed-
ding part of the object," as is often the case at least in literary criti-
cism. The term as used here refers to hierarchically discontinuous levels.
The concept of hierarchical discontinuity is abstracted from Russell's
(1922, 1937 [1903], 1956 [1908]) distinction between logical types and
Tarski's (1956) between metalanguage and object language (distinc-
tions with problems of their own, which, however, exceed the scope
of this paper. See Kneale and Kneale's [1962] analysis of the theo-
ries and account of the problems which they, in their turn, create for
logic). It is in principle a logical concept; nevertheless, it has ontologi-
4. Thus a special Einstellung-a suspension of disbelief-is required of the viewer

in order to perceive the distinct, and deceptive, logical levels (see below), and
another Einstellung-a suspension of belief-to blur them in order not to be
gulled by Magritte. (As may be gathered from this account, there is no such thing
as neutral, purposeless, perception.)
cal implications which, in practice, often serve as a kind of "discovery

procedure" (or marker) which helps one decide whether or not there
are two (or more) different logical levels in the object of analysis. Chief
among these ontological implications is the impossibility of interaction
between different logical levels. When such interaction nevertheless
does take place, as when the sun in an embedded painting casts a
shadow in the embedding one, or when a character in a book murders
the reader, as in a story by Julio Cortazar (1970), it does so precisely
because the boundary between the logical levels is no longer intact,
thus collapsing the distinction between them. The sense of oddness
which arises is a sign that the object in which this effect is created is an
embedding-embedded object with a transgressed boundary, and not
a simple object in which there is nothing to prevent such interaction
to begin with. (See also the section on boundary markers, above, for
additional areas in which transgressions may manifest themselves.)
After this brief introduction to the concepts of which the model of
embedding-embedded objects is constructed, we can now proceed to
an examination of the three subtypes of such objects created by the
insertion of the three different forms of boundary between the logical
levels of these objects.
1. The Intact and Multiplying Boundary

The effect par excellence which most people associate with an
embedding-embedded object, such as a play with a play-within-the-
play, is that of infinite regression or recursion. The effect is especially
interesting, it seems to me, since it is actually created by a finite num-
ber of embeddings, often only one or two, somewhat in the nature
of an afterimage on the retina (cf. McHale 1987: 114, 124, passim).
Leo Spitzer (1957: 205) remarks on the same potential of the number
two in language, as in expressions like "It rains and rains," that "lan-
guage has chosen only two links in the chain, which are called upon
to represent the infinite expansion (rains and rains and rains etc.)."
The sense of infinity created by cases of repetition, like these, however,
seems to me considerably weaker than that brought about by recursion,
the potentially endless addition of discontinuous hierarchical levels.5
The reason for this difference may well be that there is no theoretical
5. The concept of infinity is mathematically tricky and may give rise to logical
problems. As a mathematical layman speaking, presumably, to other laymen, I
have, however, often employed the expressions "potentially infinite," "infinite re-
cursion," and the like, meaning that we get a (nonscientific) sense of infinite recur-
sion, but that within the confines of our finite world-even the universe is finite,
according to some-an infinite expansion cannot in fact take place. I should there-
fore, unless the context indicates otherwise, be taken to mean "a very high number
of recursions, approaching infinity." (I am grateful to my father for this caution.)
necessity for repetition on the same logical level to go on ad infinitum.

On the other hand, since every metalevel, when discussed, in its turn
becomes an object level, the concept of infinity is intrinsic to Russell's
idea of logical typing and Tarski's distinction between object language
and metalanguage, from which the concept of logical levels derives.
A rewriting of the Mobius strip called "Frame-Tale," with which John
Barth's (1969: 1-2) novel Lost in the Funhouse begins,6 strikingly illus-
trates this strong effect: "Once upon a time there was a story that
began 'Once upon a time there was a story that began "Once upon a
time there was a story that began ... ,"' and so on. The first "Once
upon a time .. ." is on a level which we may call a. The next time it is
repeated, it is embedded in the level a, creating a level we may call 3;
the following level is y; and so on. The construction of the strip may
also be represented by the use of logical bracketing in the following
way: a (a ((a (((a .. )))))) (Breuer 1976: 229).
The effect of infinite recursion is thus inherent in the intact logi-
cal level-producing boundary, and anyone wishing to create such an
effect need do nothing but use such an intact boundary. However,
he may augment the effect thus created by increasing the amount of
analogy between the logical levels. In the example from Barth, the
analogy is maximal and the effect therefore very strong: The sen-
tence of one level is repeated verbatim on the next. The greater the
number of elements repeated on the different levels, in addition to
the multiplication of the boundary itself, the stronger the effect of in-
finite recursion. Though not immediately evident in the case of verbal
repetition on different levels, it is important to remember that what
is repeated are tokens of a type, not the type itself, and that what we
have is analogy, not identity. (Identity, as we shall see, exists only in
the third subtype.) The difference is easier to perceive when we turn
to a visual embedding-embedded object, such as the famous cocoa tin
on which is painted a girl holding another such cocoa tin, on which
is painted a girl, and so on. Not even a row of such tins coming off
the production line would be "the same," except in the sense of being
tokens of the same type, but the tins painted on the real tin are
even more clearly different from it. The real tin is three-dimensional,
made of metal, and perhaps full of cocoa. The other tins are two-
dimensional, made of specks of paint, and different from the real tin
and from each other in size. To be able to regard the cocoa tins as "the
6. In the book, the words "Once upon a time there" are written on a strip on the
right-hand side of the first page and the words "was a story that began" on the
other side, and instructions are given to cut the strip and fold it in such a way
that it becomes an endlessly continuous sentence, a Mobius strip. By spelling the
sentence out, as I have done, I have converted it from a self-engulfing structure
into an infinitely recursive one.
same tin" even in the sense of being analogous to one another, we se-
lect certain features as more significant than others, foreground them,
and interpret them. In this case, this involves translating spatial clues
given in the flat, painted tins into three-dimensionality and ignoring
the differences in size, material, and the like mentioned before. That
is, we focus on the similarities and gloss over the differences.
The perception of recursion, as distinct from repetition on the same
logical level, seems to involve a step in addition to the abstraction
of similarities. Take, for instance, a painting which depicts a painter
painting a picture of himself painting and so on. Here, as with the
tins painted on the metal tin, by inserting boundaries we give different
logical status to what in reality are areas of similar lines and colors;
we see, as it were, a "real" artist painting an object (an artist) which,
on the next logical level, the first frankly artificial painted canvas, is
in turn a subject painting an object (an artist), and so on. Here, same-
ness (lines and colors) is translated into distinct logical levels, thereby
multiplying the boundary and creating the effect of infinite recursion.
In other words, in order to perceive not only repetition but recursion,
what is required is both an abstraction of similarity and punctuation
of the continuum in such a manner as to emphasize the difference
between the logical levels (the "willing suspension of disbelief" men-
tioned above); we need a combination of distinct logical levels (differ-
ence) separated by a potentially infinite series of boundaries (sameness)
and some analogy between the levels (sameness in difference).
The recursion resulting from the multiplication of the intact bound-
ary differs from repetition not only in involving distinct logical levels;
whereas in repetition the whole unit can be repeated, in recursion it
cannot. In the heraldic device which Lucien Dallenbach (1977: 143)
thinks suggested the idea of mise en abyme to Gide, we see a shield
A, in the middle of which is another shield, B, in the middle of which
is an imaginary shield C, the first of the potential shields expanding
the recursion. We have no way of knowing what is "behind" shield B,
but we assume it to be the continuation of shield A. This continuation
is not, and cannot be, included in shield B, nor does shield B include
itself, although it too is part of shield A. In other words, when the
point is reached at which the object would have to repeat itself, there
is a switch to the next logical level. As in linguistic subordination, the
lower logical level fulfills a structural function on the higher level, thus
completing it, but, since the lower level itself here is incomplete, this
completion is never achieved. At the heart of recursion there is thus
a hole, an absence. These structures, like the sentence from Lost in
the Funhouse, never "bottom out," to borrow a term from computer
programming. The reason they cannot include themselves in them-
selves and thus bottom out is the same reason that eliminated para-
doxes from Russell's theory of logical types: Self in the different oc-
currences of the word itself refers to objects on different logical levels.
(But see Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson [1967] and Fuiredy [1983:
chs. 7, 9] on the return of paradox.) Therefore, as long as the bound-
aries of the recursive structures remain intact, the absence at their
heart will also continue to exist. Each time the edge of the abyss is
reached, another boundary is quickly inserted, another level created,
as a futile-but perhaps necessary?-attempt to fill in the hole. Only
when the boundaries are erased, as in the third subtype, does the
structure finally bottom out and the "sameness" of analogy become
transformed into the sameness of identity.
As pointed out above, the increasing of analogy between the logical
levels will only enhance an effect inherent in the intact logical level-
producing boundary as such. In contradistinction, if one wishes to
diminish or stop the recursion, active measures have to be taken. I
shall mention only a few, taken from embedding-embedded objects
in the field of drama. Thus, in Tiny Alice, Albee (1971) has a charac-
ter deliberately and explicitly stop the recursions. In a room in Miss
Alice's castle, in which much of the action takes place, there is a model
of the castle which even includes a "model of the model of the castle"
in the room of the model corresponding to the room of the castle in
which the model stands.
BUTLER (a shy smile): You don't suppose that within that tiny model there,
there is ... another room like this, with yet a tinier model within it, and
within ...
JULIAN (laughs): ... and within and within and within and .. . ? No, I ...
rather doubt it. It is a remarkable craftmanship, though. Remarkable.
(Ibid.: 26)7
A series of embedded objects on the same logical level (e.g., a series

of 3s), that is, parallel rather than embedded one within the other,
also reduces the effect of infinite recursion. Thus in Massinger's (1912
[1626]) The Roman Actor, the potential of the first play-within-the-play
to suggest infinite regression is reduced the moment the next play is
put on, and reduced even further when the third one begins. Rever-
sal of the downward or inward movement of the intensional recursion
("popping" instead of "pushing," to use computer terminology again)
also undermines the feeling of potentially infinite recursion (see, e.g.,
the dialogue "Little Harmonic Labyrinth" in Hofstadter 1980). Simi-
larly, if the outermost embedding level of a literary text includes God,
7. The play itself constantly subverts the notion that the castle is "real" and the
model only a replica.
extensional multiplication of the boundary is rendered improbable,

though not, theoretically, impossible (see, e.g., McHale 1987: 115). A
diminishing of the feeling of infinite recursion also occurs when the
embedded text fulfills a plot function within the outer, especially if
it is a play acted by lay characters from the outer play, as in Richard
Brome's (1968 [1641]) A Jovial Crew. In it, the runaway children of
the outer play put on a play for their elders in order to obtain their
pardon. The inner play repeats some of the action of the outer, ex-
plaining why Oldrents' daughters have run off to live with beggars
and at the same time providing the solution to a prophecy that they
would be reduced to begging. When the play has achieved its purpose,
Oldrents interrupts it, thus also decreasing the elements analogous to
the outer play. Although logically there is a clear distinction between
the characters of the outer play and the roles they are playing in the
inner, the boundary seems to be less clearly marked in this case and
therefore not as suggestive of recursion. The fact that they are acting
out a representation of their own lives, and that the play has a practical
function within the plot of the outer play, further narrows the gap be-
tween the discontinuous levels and thus weakens the boundary which
is that gap, albeit not sufficiently to cancel its function, only enough
to make it more difficult for it to multiply. It is as if, instead of the
dizzying multiplications of the well-functioning boundary, we have a
more sluggish process, one which demands an effort of imagination
rather than happening, as it were, by itself.
What would happen if an object were truly, not only hypothetically,
infinitely recursive? Each time it came to the point at which it had
to repeat itself, it would push to a lower, hierarchically discontinu-
ous level (in computer language, it would "call on" another object like
itself). Although the hole of each level would be closed by the next level
that came to stop that gap, that level in turn would have a similar hole,
and so on forever. Such an object would never bottom out; it would
literally never end. Each embedded level would be surrounded by an
intact and well-functioning boundary, the sine qua non for its infinite
multiplication, but the embedding-embedded object as a whole would
not be closed. In other words, although paradox proprement dit belongs
to the second subtype, there seems to be something paradoxical about
the first and, as we shall see, the third types as well.
2. The Intact but Reified Boundary

The first of the two types of boundary which may be described as
"malfunctioning" (in a descriptive rather than evaluative sense) still
preserves the logical levels created by it as separate, though they be-
come incomplete and undecidable entities. This kind of boundary is
transformed from a mediating absence into an obstructing presence,
a boundary drawing attention to itself rather than facilitating pas-

sage across it. Free passage from level to level is thus prevented, even
prohibited. The boundary allows one to cross it on condition that
one immediately recross it, and one is permitted to recross it only
if one immediately re-recrosses it and so on, in perpetual oscillation
between the two logical levels. When the passage is disturbed in this
way, a "repetition-compulsion" is created-perhaps a re-petition to be
allowed to cross the boundary in the proper one-directional and un-
conditional way-and oscillation results, a perpetual series of encoun-
ters with the reified, obstructing boundary. If the main characteristic
of the first group of objects is the multiplication of the boundary with
its concomitant effect of a sense of infinite recursion, what character-
izes this category with the reification of the boundary is its concomitant
effect of undecidability and infinite oscillation.
Undecidability (ambiguity as to, e.g., status or reference or logical
level for which no process of decision which would resolve it is known)
actually occurs twice in these objects. At the first encounter with the
phenomenon in question, for example a paradox, what is undecidable
is which level we are confronted with, a or p. Once the boundary be-
tween the two levels has been crossed and we are obliged to recross it,
what is undecidable is the direction in which we are moving: whether
we have returned to the original level of entry or gone on in the same
direction as that of the first crossing. Though the logical levels re-
main clearly separate, the distinction between higher and lower levels,
as will be discussed in more detail below, thus loses much of its normal
significance.
When the levels distinguished by this type of boundary are incom-
plete, constantly referring to the other level for completion, and when
there is simultaneously a conflict between them, we have the structure
of paradox.8 In paradox, an additional factor is the denial of access
to an inviolate, extrasystem metalevel; there is no safe and oscillation-
free place outside the system or object with the reified boundary and
the contradictory, incomplete levels from which the system can be
regarded "objectively." Consider, for example, M. C. Escher's (1971:
drawing 69) lithograph Drawing Hands. It shows a sheet of paper nailed
8. My way of anatomizing paradoxes is based on Watzlawick's (1967) account of

pathological and therapeutic paradoxes. Different types of paradox which are not
accounted for with this method may exist. It should be noted, however, that the
aim of philosophy is to resolve paradoxes and to rid logic and mathematics of
them, whereas my concern is to describe the structure of the unresolved paradox,
for which the distinction between logical levels and the concept of an inviolate
metalevel (see below) are highly illuminating. I was pleased later to find a similar
approach and a delightful anthology of mind-boggling paradoxes in Hughes and
Brecht 1978 [1975].
diagonally with drawing pins onto a darker background. At the upper

end of this sheet, there is a "three-dimensional" right hand holding a
pen and drawing a two-dimensional cuff on the left side of the paper.
Out of this cuff emerges a "three-dimensional" left hand holding a
pen and drawing a two-dimensional cuff on the right side of the paper.
Out of this cuff emerges the upper right hand, with which I began
the description. The right hand thus draws the left and is drawn by it,
and vice versa. Neither is complete without the other, because neither
would exist if it were not drawn by the other and because neither
would be a "drawing" hand were it not drawing the other. (The am-
biguous title of the lithograph expresses the same paradox.) These
hands are, logically, on different levels: The hand drawing is on a
logical level immediately above that which it draws. Although this dis-
tinction is preserved in the lithograph in the sense that the levels are
still separable, it is also and at the same time subverted. Not only is
each level by itself incomplete-without the other level, each hand is
simply a slightly odd, two-dimensional/three-dimensional hand-but
the assignation of one of the hands to one of the logical levels is im-
possible. It can be assigned to either level, thus being undecidable,
and the two levels, "drawing" and "drawn," conflict with each other,
thus creating a paradox. The paradox can be escaped only by 'jump-
ing out" of the system, that is, by moving to an inviolate metalevel
separated from the oscillating levels by a boundary of the first type.
Hofstadter (1980: 690) suggests that this can be done by imagining
Escher's hand drawing both of the hands in the lithograph. (This level
may, of course, in turn become part of an oscillating structure with
a reified boundary, necessitating yet another inviolate metalevel, and
so on.)
In a scene in Albee's play, the characters are assembled in the room
in the castle in which the model of the castle stands. The butler men-
tions that the real castle once was in England. The following conver-
sation ensues:
Miss ALICE (as if suddenly remembering): Yes, it was! Every stone, marked
and shipped.
JULIAN: Oh, I had thought it was a replica.
LAWYER: Oh no; that would have been too simple. Though it is a replica ...
in its way.
JULIAN: Of?
LAWYER (pointing to the model): Of that. (JULIAN laughs a little; the LAWYER
shrugs.) Ah well.
JULIAN (to MIss ALICE): Did your father ... did your father have it ... put
up?....
BUTLER (to JULIAN, pointing first to the model, then to the room): Do you
mean the model ... or the replica?
JULIAN: I mean the ... I mean . . . what we are in.

BUTLER: Ah-ha. And which is that? (Albee 1971: 58-59)
It is perfectly obvious which is a room in a real castle and which is a

model; what is undecidable is, which is a replica of which. Is the model
the object-level model of which the real castle is a metalevel represen-
tation, or is it a metalevel replica of the object-level real castle? The
concepts "replica" and "model" (in the sense of "real object to copy,"
not "small-sized copy") are incomplete and refer us to the other as
part of their meaning, and they conflict with each other. The scene
thus has all the ingredients of a paradox.
In plays with plays-within-the-play with a reified boundary, for in-
stance, Pirandello's (1952 [1923]) Each in His Own Way, there is the
same undecidability and the same paradoxical oscillation between the
levels, in this case between the inner play and the outer play. The two
levels, though undoubtedly separate, keep changing places in a pro-
cess of infinite oscillation, and because of this oscillation their status
as inner or outer plays is undecidable. In the case of extended texts,
what is incomplete is not something in a particular word, as in the
previous example. Rather, something in the content of one of the
levels will send one to the other level for completion, and vice versa.
Thus, in Pirandello's play, the inner play "imitates" an action which
has "really" taken place on the logical level of the outer play, and the
two "real" people in the outer play whose previous actions are acted
out in the inner play in turn "imitate" an action performed by their
counterparts in the inner play which had not taken place in outer-play
reality. Which play is "inner" and which "outer," which object level
and which metalevel? Whether we look at it in terms of content or
structure, within the limited "set" or "universe" of the play as a whole,
there is a conflict between the two levels of the play, and thus paradox
arises.9
In the two dramatic examples, as in Escher's drawing, access to an

inviolate metalevel has been barred. To break through to it requires a
deliberate repunctuation, sometimes very difficult to imagine. When
no such repunctuation is effected, all messages-assertions, actions,
events, and so on-are "part of the game," or subject to undecidability.
We are thus faced with an illusion of alternatives which we cannot
escape, except by refusing to watch the object altogether. The chal-
lenge to decide the undecidable and the inescapability of the challenge
9. In the set of embedding-embedded drama, a play can only be either inner or

outer, and it must be one of them. The universe consisting of these two alterna-
tives is exhaustive; tertium non datur. For a case involving "the interchangeability
of narrative levels," in this case whether the narrator creates the character or vice
versa, see Rimmon-Kenan 1982.
produce the characteristic of the phenomena with two logical levels

separated by a reified boundary: infinite oscillation in a game without
end. One's knowledge that there are distinct logical levels is of no avail.
The boundary functions like a revolving door to which one is chained,
with no hope of escape, rather than like the normal opening of the
"gap that bridges." Since each side or level is incomplete and thus un-
able to exist without the other level to which it refers for completion,
one is forced to shuttle back and forth in the vain, but eternal, hope of
arriving at some final, untangling, order-creating "full stop"-a point
which, as we have seen, can exist only outside the system to which one
is chained inside the revolving door.
3. The Transgressed Boundary

In the case of the first two types of boundary, something always mul-
tiplies: either the boundary itself or our encounter with it. In the case
of the third type, however, the boundary can almost be said to dis-
appear. Almost, but not quite: Traces of the original, intact boundary
remain, and this is the reason I prefer to call it a transgressed bound-
ary, rather than an erased one. It should be noted that the "trans-
gressions" take place between logical levels, not between, for example,
characters from different levels; the interaction of characters across a
previously intact boundary is only one of the most frequent markers
of this transgression. The new entity created when the boundary is
transgressed and the hitherto discrete logical levels collapse is com-
pletely different from entities not created in this way. (The feeling of
peculiarity, mentioned before, which it evokes plays an important part
in the discovery procedures for boundaries of this type.) Within this
entity, the original distinction between logical types or levels is can-
celed, remaining only as the backdrop against which this "composite"
or, to use Hofstadter's term referring to Russell's theory of logical
types, "typeless" level is perceived. As opposed to the first two kinds of
boundary, in the case of the transgressed boundary every notion of in-
finity within the structure itself (except in the case of self-engulfment;
see below) is eliminated; it bottoms out and reaches an end-or a be-
ginning. In Breuer's (1976: 230) formulation, this typeless unit is a
"futile attempt at 'reconciling' the two levels." Instead, infinite oscilla-
tion is set up between the "composite level," created when a boundary
is transgressed, and the "inviolate level" beyond it, belonging to the
logical system in which such composite levels cannot occur and no
rock bottom can be reached. The "infinity" here thus moves out of the
painting, novel, or play and seems to involve the concepts themselves
rather than their fictional manifestations.
For a boundary transgression to be perceived as such, an intact
boundary must also be perceived. Logical levels can be subverted only
after being established or, at least, after retroactively being seen to

have existed. In other words, "all boundaries cannot be transgressed
all the time." Whether a boundary is to be regarded as transgressed
or not usually depends on "instructions" for punctuation encoded in
the object. When confronted with the paradoxes created by the reified
boundary, we had to take deliberate steps to reach an inviolate meta-
level, that is, to insert an intact boundary around the two levels created
by the reified boundary, if we wished to escape the oscillations (an
equally deliberate decision to preserve the sense of paradox rather
than resolve it can, of course, be taken by refusing this option of es-
cape). In the case of the transgressed boundary, on the other hand, we
just as deliberately have to unlearn the punctuation previously used.
From the point of view of "normal" punctuation, the clues encoded in
an object with a boundary of this type are instructions to "mispunctu-
ate." When reading such a text or regarding such an object, then, we
paradoxically obey the injunction of the object to disobey the rules we
are used to regarding as inherent in embedding-embedded objects.
As a result of this mispunctuation, the analogy between the two logical
levels created by the intact boundary is transformed into identity.
Some cases of mispunctuation are reversible. They are the result of
misleading clues or mistaken conclusions as to the place or nature of
the boundary. Usually it is the intratextual characters who make such
mistakes, as in the case of the "real" deaths in the plays-within-the-play
in Elizabethan and Jacobean revenge drama, such as Kyd's (1959 [c.
1582-92]) The Spanish Tragedy. Here, as in Middleton's (1965 [1605])
comedy A Mad World, My Masters, the onstage spectators perceive an
intact boundary where none exists. The opposite occurs in Massinger's
(1912 [1626]) The Roman Actor, when Domitia, watching a play in which
the lover, acted by the outer-play Roman actor Paris, with whom she
is beginning to fall in love, is going to hang himself, rises from her
seat, crying, "Restrain him, as you love your lives!" (3.2.281-82), thus
erasing a boundary which is, in fact, intact and thereby revealing
something about herself rather than about the nature of the boundary.
In these plays, the offstage spectator knows the correct punctuation,
but there are plays where he knows as little as, or even, as in Joseph
Heller's (1967) We Bombed in New Haven, less than, some of the onstage
characters, thus reversing the more frequently occurring type of gap
of knowledge.
Within the subtype of embedding-embedded objects with a trans-
gressed boundary, further subdivisions can be made. Gerard Genette
(1972: 245), in his discussion of narrative levels in Figures 3, discusses
three such subdivisions, to which I shall add another two, namely,
self-reference and self-engulfing. (I shall also add something I call
"pseudotransgression," a phenomenon which, though structurally dif-
ferent from the others, has a similar effect.) Genette (1980 [1972]:
236) defines boundary transgression in narrative, which he calls meta-
lepsis, as any form of transition between narrative levels other than
that "achieved ... by the narrating, the act that consists precisely of
introducing into one situation, by means of a discourse, the knowledge
of another situation."10 His theory is admirably simple and elegant.
Although Genette does not make this subdivision explicit, all his nar-
rative metalepses, apart from the temporal ones, belong to one of two
categories: Either the transgressive transition takes place from the
inner level outwards, or the other way round.
Metalepsis from the Inner Level Outwards

Genette gives the example, mentioned above, of a story by Cortazar
about a man murdered by a character in the novel he is reading. Ex-
amples taken from plays include characters (but not actors) speaking
to their audience, as when the Peasant in Calderon's (1976) The Great
Stage of the World, a character in the inner play, answers the comments
of the World, a member of the onstage audience.1
Metalepsis from the Outer Level Inwards
An example mentioned by Genette (1972: 244) is Sterne's narrator's
asking the reader to help him put Mr. Shandy to bed. This imaginary
act would be a metalepsis from the outer level inwards. The scene
from The Roman Actor, mentioned above, is another example, as are
several of the interventions of the merchant and his wife in the inner
plays of Beaumont's (1969 [c. 1607]) The Knight of the Burning Pestle.
Temporal Metalepsis
Genette (1972: 245 n.3) quotes his school history teacher, who pro-
duced the following metalepsis: "Nous allons etudier maintenant le
Second Empire depuis le Coup d'Etatjusqu'aux vacances de Paques."
(The technique of showing something which has happened or will
happen elsewhere, for instance, in the form of a "magic show," as in
Corneille's [1961 (1636)] L'Illusion comique, seems to be a relative of
this particular form of metalepsis, but in reverse; it involves the trans-
position onto the embedded logical level of something which "really"
10. It is not clear from this formulation who should be the possessor of "the knowl-
edge of another situation," but presumably it is the reader. In my model, the status
of an object as embedding-embedded is defined by the spectator, reader, or the
like outside that object. Metalepsis means "taking hold of (telling) by changing level"
(Genette 1980: 235 n.1). It should be noted that, although I add some metaleptic
phenomena to Genette's list, my own "taxonomy" may not be exhaustive, either.
11. In this play, the transgression serves a further, characterizing function: The
Peasant is churlish and insolent, and the boundary transgressions, which he is the
only character in the play to commit, constitute a structural counterpart to the
moral transgressions of which he is guilty.
belongs on the embedding one, in other words a mispunctuation con-

sisting of the insertion of an intact logical level-creating boundary
where in "reality" there is none.)
Self-Reference
Self-reference is what would occur "if the title of a book were included
in the book's own bibliography or if, in the index, one found refer-
ences not only to those pages where a name or a notion occurs in its
actual usage, but also to the page of the index entry" (Breuer 1976:
229). The index of a book has a metarelation to the book to which it
belongs; it refers to names and concepts occurring on the object level
of the text of the book itself. When the index refers not to the text but
to itself, we do not have an intrusion of the index into the text or vice
versa. Instead, we have a metalevel becoming its own object level, thus
collapsing the logical levels. It is as if a boundary had momentarily
been inserted where it did not belong, dividing the index into two
levels, only to be immediately erased. The effect is clearly metaleptic,
in the wider sense of "creating a unit with composite logical levels." 12
At this point, the question may arise whether the index reference
to its own entry, that is, the entry referring to itself, is not a case of
undecidability and oscillation between two levels, of a reified bound-
ary rather than of boundary transgression. In spite of the apparent
similarities, however, the two are quite different. In the case of un-
decidability, no procedure exists for finding out whether what we are
dealing with is a metalevel or an object level. Our index entry, however,
is not undecidable: There is a procedure for deciding, for example,
whether "p. 735" refers to a page in the text or a page of the index-
one simply has to look at the page numbers of the text and the index.
The problem is therefore not that it is undecidable but that such a ref-
erence is "improper," violating the rule that the item referred to must
be on a logical level distinct from and immediately below the level of
the referring item; in other words, self-reference is possible only when
a boundary has been transgressed.
Self-Engulfing
In Escher's lithograph Print Gallery (Ernst 1976: Fig. 56),13 we see a
boy standing in a picture gallery, looking at a print on the wall. This
print shows a harbor with a ship in the foreground and buildings on
the shore in the background. To the right, the buildings are enlarged
and come closer to the spectator, becoming bigger and bigger. In the
12. I sometimes also use the term "boundary transgression" in this wider sense.
13. See Ernst 1976: 98 for a reproduction of Escher's Spirals which beautifully
illustrates the structure of self-engulfing: They look like a snake swallowing itself,
and, because of the gaps between the spiraling strips, one can see the "tail" inside
the "entrails."
building closest to us, a woman is standing at a window looking out.

Below her flat is the entrance to a picture gallery-which turns out to
be the same gallery in which the print hangs of which the house forms
a part! The gallery is "in" a picture, which is itself"in" the gallery, and
thus all logical levels collapse and intact boundaries are transgressed.
(As already pointed out, this is the only kind of embedding-embedded
object with a transgressed boundary in which an effect of infinity is
created within the structure itself.) This is not a case of a lower level
invading a higher level or vice versa; here, one level is engulfing not
only the next but also itself (or perhaps both levels are invading and
swallowing each other?).
There is one part of the print which does not participate in the en-
gulfing movement, however, namely, the blank space in the middle in
which Escher's signature appears. It is not part of the world of the con-
tent of the print at all; it belongs to an extrapictorial level, the level
of Escher's Print Gallery. Unlike us, the boy in the print cannot see it.
The space was not left blank by chance or because Escher needed a
place to sign his name; it is logically and mathematically impossible to
fill that space, to achieve total self-engulfing (ibid.: Fig. 59; p. 33).
Similarly, in Pirandello's play Tonight We Improvise, towards the end
of the first act we see the characters of the play on their way to the the-
ater. They are late and afraid that they have missed the first act. They
hurry offstage and after a moment appear in the real auditorium,
noisily entering a box. The first act, which has indeed just ended, is
the first act of the outer play in which these same "spectators" ap-
peared as characters. They have thus come to watch themselves go to
the theater to watch themselves go to the theater and so on, and the
play thus engulfs itself.14
Although the blank space in the self-engulfing structures may seem
to resemble the "hole" in the recursive structures discussed above,
actually there are two essential differences between these phenomena.
The first is that the hole in the recursive structures is created by the
"legal" transition from one logical level to the next-the multiplication
of the intact boundary-and, although the next level in the hierarchy
is also incomplete and therefore unable to make the recursive struc-
ture bottom out, each hole is filled by the infinite series of logical levels.
In the self-engulfing structures, on the other hand, as we have just
seen, nothing can enter the "space" of the hole, and the logical level is
a typeless one. The second difference is that recursive structures are
14. Pirandello 1932 [1930]: 82ff. In this play, there is self-engulfing at the bound-
ary around the play as a whole as well (see the interlude in the lobby). The self-
engulfing metalepsis seems to be marked not by the interaction of any two charac-
ters across a boundary, but by a spectator and a watched one or an author and a
character-in-his-work and the like.
Figure 1. Self-engulfment correctly punctuated.
based on analogy, whereas self-engulfing, as shown by the word self,

like all boundary transgressions, translates analogy into identity. This
is actually a "mistranslation," concomitant with the "mispunctuation"
of the transgressed boundary. If we begin looking at Print Gallery at
the bottom, we may consider the gallery entrance as belonging to level
a and everything depicted in the picture exhibited in the gallery as be-
longing to level P. The second time we get to the entrance, it is thus a
level 3 entrance and the pictures exhibited in the gallery are on level y,
and so forth. With "correct" punctuation, then, the movement is spiral
(Figure 1). Since, however, the logical levels a, f3, y, are represented by
the same unrepeated objects-the gallery entrance and the picture in
the gallery, in this example-not by a series of recursive analogues like
the girls with the cocoa tins, the underlying "correct" spiral movement
in effect collapses into a circular one (Figure 2).
The self-engulfing structures also remind us of the oscillating struc-
tures created by the reified boundary both in that we keep returning
to the same place, and in that the exclusion of the "inviolate" level
of Escher's signature from the structure, like the barring of access
to the inviolate metalevel in the oscillating structures, seems to cre-
ate undecidability. Although the undecidability of self-engulfing and
oscillating structures may be the same (I am not certain it is), there
are two important differences between them, one of which I have just
discussed. The other difference is that in the oscillating structures,
the oscillation is two-directional, back and forth between the same
two logical levels (Figure 3). In self-engulfing structures, however, the
movement, as in recursive structures but not oscillating ones, is in one
Figure 2. The effect of the self-engulfing structure.
boundary
x y
(metalevel) (object level)
Figure 3. Oscillation at the reified boundary.
direction only; but unlike recursive structures and like oscillating ones,
we keep coming back to the same place (with the proviso about the
underlying spiral structure).
Pseudotransgression
A "metaleptic" effect without actual boundary transgression is created
in verbal texts when attention is drawn to the normally invisible in-
tact boundary, which is then foregrounded and "made strange" (but
apparently not actually reified, to judge by the effect). Fabian's well-
known lines in Twelfth Night are a case in point: "If this were played
upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction" (Shake-
speare 1975 [1601]: 3.4.128-29). Similarly, in The Roman Actor, Caesar,
on seeing Philargus, Parthenius' miserly father, comments, before the
play-within-the-play showing the cure of a miser:
Can it be
This sordid thing, Parthenius, is thy father?

No actor can express him. I had held
The fiction for impossible in the scene,
Had I not seen the substance.
(Massinger 1912 [1626]: 2.1.268-72)
Like those detectives and policemen in detective fiction who are fond
of saying, "If this were a detective story, such and such would hap-
pen, but since it is not . .. ," these characters are speaking about a
hypothetical logical level embedded in their own; furthermore, they
are unaware of the analogy between the object referred to and their
own "reality." They are not stepping out of their own existence into
another reality on a different logical level; on the contrary, they are
firmly entrenched in it. It is the reader's or the spectator's perception
of the analogy between the fictional nature of the objects referred to
and the fictionality of the characters' own existence which draws atten-
tion to the normally invisible boundary between the two levels, thus, in
opposition to the characters' intention to establish the reality of their
existence, giving rise to a metaleptic effect emphasizing its artificiality.
To return to embedding-embedded objects with a structural meta-
lepsis, not only a metaleptic effect, when this object is a work of art
the composite level is further circumscribed by an untransgressable
boundary, which, because we are so used to it, is not always clearly
perceived as such. If what is transgressed is the boundary between
level a and level t3, the boundary between level a and the reality of the
reader or spectator of course remains intact. But even if the boundary
between level a and extradramatic reality seems to be transgressed,
the one around the work of art as a whole remains intact. The moment
such a transgression takes place, for example, when spectators inter-
rupt a play or interact with characters in a play, as in Beaumont's The
Knight of the Burning Pestle or Pirandello's Tonight We Improvise, what
was or seemed like reality becomes part of the a level of the play; it
is part of the script of the play and as such is distinguishable from
the reality beyond the boundary of the script. This boundary between
the work of art and reality can therefore be transgressed by analogy
only, by a boundary transgression within the "script." The essence of
a work of art as such depends on the existence of a boundary between
it and reality; if, hypothetically, it would really succeed in erasing this
boundary, it would self-destruct (Aspelin 1977). Everything that can
be said about transgression of the boundary between a work of art
and reality must therefore always be understood in the context of this
proviso.
However, although the composite and typeless unit with the trans-
gressed boundary is surrounded by an intact boundary, the nature of
latter is affected by the transgression of the boundary within the unit.
Unlike the intact boundaries discussed in section 1, this is a threatened
boundary which seems peculiarly temporary. Evidently, what is sug-
gested when a boundary is transgressed is that at any moment the next
boundary may in turn be transgressed. In other words, although at no
point can all boundaries be transgressed simultaneously, because at
all times there will be an intact boundary around the composite unit,
a recursive series of transgressable boundaries is created whenever
one boundary is transgressed! At this point, the model of embedding-

embedded objects with different types of boundaries seems to become
self-engulfing.
Nevertheless, although the insertion of an intact, well-functioning
boundary into a continuum already implies its possible reification or
transgression, there is still an important difference between the multi-
plication of intact boundaries and the multiplication of transgressable
boundaries. The first, however hypothetical, is within the system of
the embedding-embedded object, which can become recursively ex-
panded. The boundaries which multiply when a boundary is trans-
gressed, on the other hand, are the boundaries separating the level-
less system from the system with logical levels. Although as soon as a
boundary is transgressed it becomes part of the typeless unit within
the object, the boundary which is added whenever one is transgressed
is not yet transgressed and thus does not yet belong to the level-less
system (this is the logical reason why the transgressed boundary will
always be fictional, "part of the script").15
The oscillation at the intact but threatened boundary around the
level-less unit is thus between the whole system based on logical levels,
which permeates our thinking but leads to infinite recursion, and
another system, in which at least two logical levels have collapsed into a
typeless unit, thus escaping infinite recursion by bottoming out. Inter-
estingly, although the typeless unit is outside the logical level system, it
may in turn become the basis for a system which may be either typeless
or not; in the latter case, it forms, as it were, an axiom of the system
with logical levels. Not only religious metaphysical systems have been
based on such a typeless level; Rolf Breuer (1976: 234 nn. 25, 26),
referring to Wittgenstein, makes the intriguing suggestion that logic
itself may bottom out in this way: Wittgenstein's
thesis had been: there are no verifiable (i.e. meaningful) statements except
those in the field of the natural sciences. However, this contention itself is,
of course, not a statement of this kind and therefore meaningless, if correct.
Although Wittgenstein knew that a statement cannot refer back to itself, he
nevertheless wrote: "Logic must take care of itself."
Which system, then, is theoretically stronger, perhaps the "ultimate"

system, the rock-bottom typeless system or the system with logical
levels which never bottoms out, never reaches the "first cause"? Does
15. It is also interesting to note that the "infinity" of the system itself is here lim-
ited in a way which is not the case with the other two types of boundary. If there
were n intact boundaries in recursive structures, or n meetings with the boundary
in the oscillating ones, there are only n-1 transgressed boundaries here. (What
we have n of here is transgressable boundaries, one of which, as we have seen, is
always outside the system.)
the very notion that every boundary is potentially transgressable imply

the collapse of Russell's and Tarski's distinction between logical levels
on which, as we have in part seen, so much of Western thinking is
founded? Or does the fact that there is always a part of the system
with distinct logical levels which is not swallowed up by the typeless
system indicate that it is, after all, the "correct" way of perceiving and
thinking? Whether one ultimately decides in favor of subversion or
preservation of the system of logical levels is largely a matter of taste
and temperament. Both decisions are equally "right" or "wrong," be-
cause both are made by an arbitrary act of punctuating an essentially
dialectical continuum, in which both systems continuously and simul-
taneously subvert and reinforce each other.
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A Structural Model of Phenomena With Embedding in Literature and Other Arts-Furedy1989

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Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics

A Structural Model of Phenomena with Embedding in Literature and Other Arts

Speaking of the play with a play-within-the-play, Dieter Mehl (1965:

The term punctuation is taken from the field of communication, into

There are basically two modes of punctuation: one which divides a

tion imposed on reality by the punctuator-perceiver. The boundary

an intact boundary, and second, by the feeling of the strangeness of

4. Thus a special Einstellung-a suspension of disbelief-is required of the viewer

cal implications which, in practice, often serve as a kind of "discovery

1. The Intact and Multiplying Boundary

necessity for repetition on the same logical level to go on ad infinitum.

A series of embedded objects on the same logical level (e.g., a series

extensional multiplication of the boundary is rendered improbable,

2. The Intact but Reified Boundary

a boundary drawing attention to itself rather than facilitating pas-

8. My way of anatomizing paradoxes is based on Watzlawick's (1967) account of

diagonally with drawing pins onto a darker background. At the upper

JULIAN: I mean the ... I mean . . . what we are in.

It is perfectly obvious which is a room in a real castle and which is a

In the two dramatic examples, as in Escher's drawing, access to an

9. In the set of embedding-embedded drama, a play can only be either inner or

produce the characteristic of the phenomena with two logical levels

3. The Transgressed Boundary

after being established or, at least, after retroactively being seen to

Metalepsis from the Inner Level Outwards

belongs on the embedding one, in other words a mispunctuation con-

building closest to us, a woman is standing at a window looking out.

Figure 1. Self-engulfment correctly punctuated.

based on analogy, whereas self-engulfing, as shown by the word self,

Figure 2. The effect of the self-engulfing structure.

(metalevel) (object level)

Figure 3. Oscillation at the reified boundary.

This sordid thing, Parthenius, is thy father?

one boundary is transgressed! At this point, the model of embedding-

Which system, then, is theoretically stronger, perhaps the "ultimate"

the very notion that every boundary is potentially transgressable imply

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