262 pp. Hard cover with dust jacket. Boards and dust jacket are in good condition. There are light marks on top of the page block.
Originally published as Le recit speculaire: essai sur la mise en abyme, Editions du Seuil, 1977. It was translated by Jeremy Whiteley with Emma Hughes, and published in 1989 by The University of Chicago Press and Polity Press, Cambridge. It includes bibliographical references (pp 247-255).
The Mirror in the Text is concerned with the literary and artistic device of mise en abyme, the use of an element within a work which mirrors the work as a whole—like the 'play within a play' in Hamlet.
In this classic study, Lucien Dällenbach provides the first systematic analysis of this device and its literary and artistic applications from Van Eyck and Velasquez to Gide, Beckett and the French nouveau roman.
Alongside this wealth of examples, Dällenbach constructs his theoretical argument with elegance and clarity, assuming no previous knowledge of arcane and specialized theory, but guiding the reader helpfully through the maze of literary criticism. The result is a new conceptual field, a new grammar of the mise en abyme, and an examination of its function within the work of art and literature.
The highly original study has been acclaimed as one of the most important works of contemporary literary theory. It will be of interest to all students of English and European literature, as well as to students of the visual arts.
Lucien Dällenbach was Professor of Modern French Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Geneva and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. He died in 2025.
Source: Dust jacket inner flap and back cover and https://archive.org/details/mirrorintext0000dall/page/n279/mode/2up
- Jacket Condition: Good
- Binding Condition: Very good
- Overall Condition: Good
- Size: 240 x 160 mm
