A story within a story is a literary device or conceit in which one story is told during the action of another story. 'Mise en abyme' is the French term for the same literary device (and also refers to the practice in heraldry of placing the image of a small shield on a larger shield). A story within a story can be used in novels, short stories, plays, television, films, poems, music, and even philosophy. Novels and short stories do not simply come from nowhere. ... Look up conceit in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A frame story (also frame tale, frame narrative, etc) is a narrative technique whereby a main story is composed, at least in part, for the purpose of organizing a set of shorter stories, each of which is a story within a story. ... Heraldry in its most general sense encompasses all matters relating to the duties and responsibilities of officers of arms. ... A novel (from French nouvelle Italian novella, new) is an extended, generally fictional narrative, typically in prose. ... This article is in need of attention. ... Romeo and Juliet by Ford Madox Brown A play, written by a playwright, or dramatist, is a form of literature, almost always consisting of dialog between characters, and intended for performance rather than reading. ... Film is a term that encompasses individual motion pictures, the field of film as an art form, and the motion picture industry. ... Poetry (ancient Greek: poieo = create) is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. ... For other uses, see Music (disambiguation). ... The philosopher Socrates about to take poison hemlock as ordered by the court. ...

Story within a story

The inner stories are told either simply to entertain or more usually to act as an example to the other characters. In either case the story often has 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.

The literary device of stories within a story dates back to a device known as a frame story, when the outer story does not have much matter, and most of the bulk of the work are is or more complete inner stories told by one or more fictional storytellers. This concept can be found in epics and other texts from ancient India, such as Mahabharata and Ramayana, Vishnu Sarma's Panchatantra, Syntipas' Seven Wise Masters, Hitopadesha and Vikram and the Vampire. Another early example of stories within a story can be found in the The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights), which can be traced to Indian, Persian, and Arabic storytelling traditions. A frame story (also frame tale, frame narrative, etc. ... The ancient Sanskrit epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata, laid the cornerstone for much of Hindu religion. ... The archaeological record in India (encompassing the territory of the modern nations of the Republic of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) shows first traces of Homo sapiens from ca. ... For the film by Peter Brook, see The Mahabharata (1989 film). ... For the television series by Ramanand Sagar, see Ramayan (TV series). ... Vishnu Sarma was the author of the anthropomorphic political treatise called Panchatantra. ... The Panchatantra [1][2][3] (also spelled Pañcatantra, Sanskrit पञ्चतन्त्र Five Chapters) or Kelileh va Dimneh or Anvar-i-Suhayli [4][5] or The Lights of Canopus (in Persian)[6] or Kalilag and Damnag (in Syriac)[7] or Kalila and Dimna (also Kalilah and Dimnah, Arabic كليلة و دمنة Kalila wa Dimna)[8... Syntipas (the Greek form of Sindibad or Sendabar) was an Indian philosopher supposed to have lived about 100 B.C., and the reputed author of a collection of tales known generally in Europe as The Story of the Seven Wise Masters. ... The Seven Wise Masters (also called The Seven Sages or The Seven Sages of Rome) is a cycle of stories of Eastern origin. ... Hitopadesha is a collection of Sanskrit fables in prose and verse; it is similar to, though distinct from, the Panchatantra. ... Baital Pachisi or Vetala Panchvimshati (Twenty five tales of Baital) or Vikram and The Vampire is a collection of tales and legends from India. ... Queen Scheherazade tells her stories to King Shahryar. ... For other uses of this term see: Persia (disambiguation) The Persian Empire is the name used to refer to a number of historic dynasties that have ruled the country of Persia (Iran). ... Arabic can mean: From or related to Arabia From or related to the Arabs The Arabic language; see also Arabic grammar The Arabic alphabet, used for expressing the languages of Arabic, Persian, Malay ( Jawi), Kurdish, Panjabi, Pashto, Sindhi and Urdu, among others. ...

Often the stories within a story are used to satirize views, not only in the outer story but also in the real world. The Itchy & Scratchy Show from The Simpsons and Terrance & Phillip from South Park both comment 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. The Itchy & Scratchy Show. ... Simpsons redirects here. ... Terrance and Phillip are a pair of fictional characters in the animated television series South Park. ... South Park is an Emmy Award-winning[1] American animated television comedy series about four third/fourth-grade school boys who live in the small town of South Park, Colorado. ...

Stories-within-a-story may disclose the background of characters or events, tell of myths and legends which influence the plot, or even seem to be extraneous diversions from the plot. In his 1895 historical novel Pharaoh, Bolesław Prus introduces a number of stories-within-the-story, ranging in length from vignette to full-blown story, many of them drawn from ancient Egyptian texts, that further the plot, illuminate characters, and even inspire the fashioning of individual characters. A historical novel is a novel in which the story is set among historical events, or more generally, in which the time of the action predates the lifetime of the author. ... Pharaoh (Polish: Faraon) is the fourth and last of the major novels by BolesÅ‚aw Prus. ... BolesÅ‚aw Prus BolesÅ‚aw Prus (pronounced: [bÉ”lεswaf prus]; August 20, 1847 – May 19, 1912), born Aleksander GÅ‚owacki, was a Polish journalist, short-story writer, and novelist. ... In theater and script writing, vignettes are short, impressionistic scenes that focus on one moment or give one impression about a character, an idea, or a setting. ... Khafres Pyramid (4th dynasty) and Great Sphinx of Giza (c. ...

If a story is told within another, rather than being told as part of the plot, the motives and the reliability of the storyteller are automatically in question. The original author is often regarded as truthful even if he is telling fiction whereas an internal teller may alter or disguise details to make himself appear better. This flexibility allows the author to play on the reader's perceptions of the characters. In Chaucer's The 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. Illustration by Gustave Doré for Baron von Münchhausen: tall tales, such as those of the Baron, often feature unreliable narrators. ... Chaucer: Illustration from Cassells History of England, circa 1902 Chanticleer the rooster from an outdoor production of Chanticleer and the Fox at Ashby_de_la_Zouch castle Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. ... Canterbury Tales Woodcut 1484 The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century (two of them in prose, the rest in verse). ...

In some cases, the story within a story is involved in the action of the plot of the outer story. An example is "The Mad Trist" in Edgar Allan Poe's "The 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 by Cervantes, there are many stories within the story which influence the hero's actions (there are others which even the author himself admits are purely digressive). The Mad Trist by Sir Launcelot Canning is a story within a story found in Edgar Allan Poes The Fall of the House of Usher. Canning is a fictitious author--the storys real author is, of course, Poe himself. ... Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American poet, short story writer, editor, critic and one of the leaders of the American Romantic Movement. ... The Fall of the House of Usher is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe. ... (IPA: , but see spelling and pronunciation below), fully titled (The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha) is an early novel written by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. ... Cervantes can refer to: Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, 16th-century man of letters Cervantes, Ilocos Sur, a municipality in the Philippines Cervantes, a town in Western Australia Cervantes de Leon, a character in the Soul Calibur series of fighting games This is a...

An inner story is often independent so that it can either be skipped over or read separately, although many subtle connections may be lost. A commonly anthologised story is The Grand Inquisitor by Dostoevsky from his long psychological novel The Brothers Karamazov and is told by one brother to another to explain, in part, his view on religion and morality. It also, in a succinct way, explains many of Dostoevsky's own views. ANThology is the first major label album by Alien Ant Farm. ... Standalone copy of the chapter The Grand Inquisitor Wikisource has original text related to this article: The Grand Inquisitor The Grand Inquisitor is a parable told by Ivan to Alyosha in Fyodor Dostoevskys novel, The Brothers Karamazov (1879-1880). ... Fyodor Dostoevsky. ... The Brothers Karamazov (Братья Карамазовы in Russian, ) is the last novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky, generally considered the culmination of his lifes work. ...

With the rise of literary modernism, writers experimented with ways in which multiple narratives might nest imperfectly within each other. A particularly ingenious example of nested narratives in a poetic context is James Merrill's 1974 poem "Lost in Translation". a poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, which brought him to prominence. ... poet James Merrill, age 30, in a 1957 publicity photograph for The Seraglio James Ingram Merrill (March 3, 1926 - February 6, 1995) was a Pulitzer Prize winning American writer, increasingly regarded as one of the most important 20th century poets in the English language. ... James Merrills childhood home was a 50-room mansion called The Orchard, located in Southampton, New York Lost in Translation is a poem by James Merrill, originally published in The New Yorker magazine on April 8, 1974. ...

Robert A. Heinlein's later books (The Number of the Beast, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls and To Sail Beyond the Sunset) propose the idea that every real Universe is a fiction in another Universe. This hypothesis enables many fictional writers to interact with their own (doubly) fictional characters. Robert Anson Heinlein (July 7, 1907 – May 8, 1988) was one of the most popular, influential, and controversial authors of hard science fiction. ... Book cover The Number of the Beast is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein published in 1980 (ISBN 0-44-913070-3). ... Book cover The Cat Who Walks Through Walls is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein published in 1985. ... To Sail Beyond the Sunset is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein published in 1987. ... Pantheistic solipsism is a technical term that has been advanced for the World as Myth idea proposed by science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein in several of his books and stories, although the concept has nothing in common with either Pantheism (the universe is God) or Solipsism (nothing exists but...

Several Star Trek tales are stories or events within stories, such as Gene Roddenberry's novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, J. A. Lawrence's Mudd's Angels, John M. Ford's The Final Reflection, Margaret Wander Bonanno's Strangers From The Sky (relating a future book with that title by the fictional author Gen Jaramet-Sauner), and J.R. Rasmussen's "Research" in the anthology Star Trek: Strange New Worlds II. Steve Barnes's novelization of "Far Beyond the Stars" 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 current Star Trek franchise logo Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment series. ... Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Gene Roddenberry Eugene Wesley Roddenberry (August 19, 1921 – October 24, 1991) was an American scriptwriter and producer. ... A novelization (or novelisation in British English) is a work of fiction that is written based on some other media story form rather than as an original work. ... Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Paramount Pictures, 1979; see also 1979 in film) is the first feature film based on the popular Star Trek science fiction television series and is released on Friday, December 7. ... John M. Ford portrait 2000 John Milo Mike Ford (April 10, 1957 – September 25, 2006) was an American science fiction and fantasy writer, game designer, and poet. ... The Final Reflection is a 1984 Star Trek tie-in novel by John M. Ford which emphasizes developments of Klingon language and culture. ... Margaret Wander Bonanno (born in 1950 as Margaret Wander) is an American science fiction writer, ghost writer and small press publisher. ... Far Beyond the Stars is a season six episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. ... Greg Cox is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous Star Trek novels, including The Eugenics Wars, (Volume One and Two), The Q Continuum, Assignment: Eternity, and The Black Shore. ... This does not cite any references or sources. ...

The Quantum Leap novel Knights Of The Morningstar also features a character who writes a book by that name. Quantum Leap is a science fiction television series that ran for 97 episodes from March 1989 to May 1993 on NBC. It follows the adventures of Dr. Samuel Beckett (played by Scott Bakula), a brilliant scientist who after researching time-travel, and doing experiments in something he calls The Imaging...

In most stagings of the musical CATS which include the song Growltiger's Last Stand — a recollection of an old play by Gus the Theatre Cat — the character of Lady Griddlebone 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 metametastory 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. Cats is an award-winning musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber based on Old Possums Book of Practical Cats and other poems by T. S. Eliot. ... Griddlebone is a cat character who appears in T.S. Eliots collection of poems, Old Possums Book of Practical Cats. ...

Play within a play

This dramatic device was apparently first used by Thomas Kyd in The Spanish Tragedy around 1587, where it forms the spectacular resolution of the story. Kyd is also assumed to have used it in his lost Hamlet (the so-called Ur-Hamlet). In The Spanish Tragedy, Hieronimo is so convinced of the far-reaching consequences of his "revelation" that he predicts it will bring about the "fall of Babylon". This does not cite any references or sources. ... Thomas Kyd (1558 - 1594) was an English dramatist, the author of The Spanish Tragedy, and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama. ... Ur-Hamlet was the name given by nineteenth century German scholars to a pre-Shakespearean Hamlet written before 1589. ... Babylon (in Arabic: بابل; in Syriac: ܒܒܙܠ in Hebrew:בבל) was an ancient city in Mesopotamia (modern Al Hillah, Iraq), the ruins of which can be found in present-day Babil Province, about 80km south of Baghdad. ...

William Shakespeare used this device notably in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Love's Labours Lost, and Hamlet. In Hamlet the Prince of Denmark, Hamlet himself, asks some strolling players to perform the Murder of Gonzago. The action and characters in the play mirror some of the events from the play Hamlet itself, and Prince Hamlet writes additional material to emphasize this. Hamlet wishes to provoke 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 which Agatha Christie later took for the long-running play The Mousetrap. Shakespeare also briefly used this device in The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, where the character Cassius, a conspirator against Julius Caesar, exclaims "How many ages hence shall this our lofty scene be acted over, in states unborn and accents yet unknown!", and in As You Like It, where the character Jaques said "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players...". Almost the whole of The Taming of the Shrew is a play-within-a-play, presented to convince a drunken beggar 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 beggar) and is often dropped in modern productions. Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Loves Labours Lost is one of William Shakespeares early comedies; it is believed to have been written around 1595-1596 and is probably contemporaneous with Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Nights Dream. ... Hamlet and Horatio in the cemetery by Eugène Delacroix For other uses, see Hamlet (disambiguation). ... Agatha Mary Clarissa, Lady Mallowan, DBE (15 September 1890—12 January 1976), also known as Dame Agatha Christie, was an English crime fiction writer. ... St. ... Julius Caesar is a tragedy by William Shakespeare probably written in 1599. ... Caius Cassius Longinus featured on a denarius (42 BC). ... Gaius Julius Caesar [1] (Latin pronunciation ; English pronunciation ; July 12 or July 13, 100 BC or 102 BC – March 15, 44 BC), was a Roman military and political leader and one of the most influential men in classical antiquity. ... Scene from As you like it, Francis Hayman, c. ... All the worlds a stage is the phrase that begins a famous soliloquy from William Shakespeares As You Like It, spoken by the melancholy Jacques. ... Taming of the Shrew by Augustus Egg The Taming of the Shrew is a comedy by William Shakespeare. ...

In Anton Chekhov's The Seagull 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. The house in Taganrog where Chekhov was born Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Russian: , IPA: ) was a Russian physician, short story writer, and playwright. ... Chekhov in an 1898 portrait by Osip Braz. ... Hamlet and Horatio in the cemetery by Eugène Delacroix For other uses, see Hamlet (disambiguation). ...

When characters in a play perform on stage the action of another play, often with other characters forming an "audience", the audience in the theatre sometimes loses its privileged, omniscient position because it is suddenly not clear who is in the play and who is in the play within. The device, then, can also be an ironic comment on drama itself, with inversions and reversals of its basic elements: actors become authors. This form is exploited in Berthold Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle, where a play is shown as a parable to villagers in soviet Russia to justify the reallocation 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. Bertolt Brecht (born Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht February 10, 1898 – August 14, 1956) was an influential German socialist dramatist, stage director, and poet of the 20th century. ... The Caucasian Chalk Circle (Der kaukasische Kreidekreis) is one of Bertolt Brechts most important plays and one of the most regularly performed German plays. ... // A parable is a brief, succinct story, in prose or verse, that illustrates a moral or religious lesson. ... Soviet redirects here. ...

The musical Kiss Me, Kate is about the production of a fictional musical, "The Taming of the Shrew", based on the Shakespeare play of the same name, and features several scenes from it. Kiss Me, Kate is a Tony Award-winning musical with a book by Samuel and Bella Spewack and music and lyrics by Cole Porter. ... Taming of the Shrew by Augustus Egg The Taming of the Shrew is a comedy by William Shakespeare. ...

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, Les feluettes or The Producers. Noises Off is a 1982 British play by Michael Frayn. ... Les feluettes is the critically acclaimed play written by openly gay French-Canadian playwright Michel Marc Bouchard. ... This page is about the 1968 film. ...

Laurence Olivier sets the opening scene of his 1944 film of Henry V in the tiring room of the old Globe Theatre as the actors prepare for their roles on stage. The early part of the film comprises 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. Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM (22 May 1907–11 July 1989) was an Academy Award, Golden Globe, BAFTA and four-time Emmy winning English actor, director, and producer. ... Henry V is a 1944 film adaptation of William Shakespeares play Henry V. The on-screen title is The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France (the title of the 1600 quarto edition of the play). ... For the music studio, film or online magazine named The Green Room, see The Green Room A green room is a room in a theater, studio, or other public venues for the accommodation of performers or speakers when not required on the stage. ... This article is about the Globe Theatre of Shakespeare (commonly known as Shakespeares Globe Theatre) and includes information about both the original and its modern reconstruction. ...

Story within a story within a story

Some stories may include within themselves a story within a story, or even more than two layers.

This literary device also dates back to ancient Sanskrit literature. In Vishnu Sarma's Panchatantra, 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 Ugrasrava's epic Mahabharata, the Kurukshetra War is narrated by a character in Vyasa's Jaya, which itself is narrated by a character in Vaisampayana's Bharata, which itself is narrated by a character in Ugrasrava's Mahabharata. Literature in Sanskrit, one of Indias two oldest languages, and the basis of several modern languages in India. ... Vishnu Sarma was the author of the anthropomorphic political treatise called Panchatantra. ... The Panchatantra [1][2][3] (also spelled Pañcatantra, Sanskrit पञ्चतन्त्र Five Chapters) or Kelileh va Dimneh or Anvar-i-Suhayli [4][5] or The Lights of Canopus (in Persian)[6] or Kalilag and Damnag (in Syriac)[7] or Kalila and Dimna (also Kalilah and Dimnah, Arabic كليلة و دمنة Kalila wa Dimna)[8... For the film by Peter Brook, see The Mahabharata (1989 film). ... Combatants Pandavas led by Dhristadyumna Kauravas led by Bhishma Commanders Arjuna Bhima Yudhishthira Nakula Sahadeva Bhishma Drona Karna Duryodhana Ashwatthama Strength 7 Akshauhinis 1,530,900 soldiers 11 Akshauhinis 2,405,700 soldiers Casualties Almost Total Only 7 survivors - the five Pandavas, Krishna, and Satyaki Almost Total Only 3 survivors... Veda Vyasa(Contemporary painting) Vyāsa (Devanāgarī: व्यास) is a central and much revered figure in the majority of Hindu traditions. ... Vaisampayana or Vaiśampayana was a celebrated sage who was the original teacher of the Black Yajur-Veda. ...

Another early example is The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, where the general story is narrated by an unknown narrator, and in this narration the stories are told by Scheherazade. In most of Scheherazade's narrations there are also stories narrated, and even in some of these, there are some other stories. Queen Scheherazade tells her stories to King Shahryar. ... Queen Scheherazade tells her stories to King Shahryar. ...

Jan Potocki's The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (1797-1805) has extremely rich interlocking structure with stories-within-stories reaching several levels of depth. Noble Family Potocki Coat of Arms PiÅ‚awa Parents StanisÅ‚aw Potocki Anna Teresa OssoliÅ„ska Consorts Julia Lubomirska Konstancja Potocka Children with Julia Lubomirska Alfred Wojciech Potocki Artur Potocki with Konstancja Potocka Bernard Potocki Irena Potocka Teresa Potocka Date of Birth March 3, 1761 Place of Birth Leżajsk... The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (original French title Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse, also known in English as Saragossa Manuscript), by the Polish author Jan Potocki (1761-1815), is a frame tale novel from the period of the Napoleonic Wars. ...

Plays such as I Hate Hamlet or movies such as A Midwinter's Tale are about a production of Hamlet, which in turn includes a production of The Murder of Gonzago (or The Mouse-trap), so we have a story (The Murder of Gonzago) within a story (Hamlet) within a story (A Midwinter's Tale). (For some, this example does not count as metametafiction, as the play Hamlet exists in full in the real world; however, it is one of the most familiar illustrations of the phenomenon.) A Midwinters Tale is a 1996 romantic comedy directed by Kenneth Branagh. ... Look up metafiction in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

At least one line in the C. S. Lewis book The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader implies that Lewis learnt of Narnia's events - and thus wrote the Narnia books - after the Railway Accident in 1949, when Susan told him them in the belief she was relating mere childhood make-believe. Further still, The Silver Chair states that a Narnian author wrote a book called The Horse And His Boy after the events that book relates. Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963), commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis, was an Irish author and scholar. ... The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is a fantasy novel by C. S. Lewis. ... The Silver Chair is part of The Chronicles of Narnia, a series of seven fantasy novels written by C.S. Lewis. ... Cover of a recent edition of The Horse and His Boy The Horse and His Boy is a novel by C.S. Lewis. ...

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein at one point features the narration of an arctic explorer, 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. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English romantic/gothic novelist and the author of Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. ... This article is about the 1818 novel. ...

Margaret Atwood's novel The Blind Assassin also uses this technique. The novel's expository narration is interspersed with excerpts from a novel written by one of the main characters; the novel-within-a-novel itself contains a science fiction story written by one of that novel's characters. Margaret Eleanor Atwood, OC (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian writer. ... The Blind Assassin is a novel by the Canadian author Margaret Atwood. ... Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ...

Stanisław Lem's Tale of the Three Storytelling Machines of King Genius from The Cyberiad has several levels of storytelling. Interestingly, all levels tell stories of the same person, Trurl. StanisÅ‚aw Lem (1966). ... The Cyberiad is a series of short stories by StanisÅ‚aw Lem. ...

The Simpsons parodied this structure with numerous 'layers' of sub-stories in the Season 17 episode The Seemingly Never-Ending Story. Simpsons redirects here. ... The Seemingly Never-Ending Story is the thirteenth episode of the seventeenth season of The Simpsons, and the ninth Emmy Award-winning episode. ...

Neil Gaiman's influential graphic novel series The Sandman includes several examples of this device. Worlds' End, volume 8 of the series, contains several instances of multiple storytelling levels, including Cerements (issue #55) where one of the inmost levels actually corresponds to one of the outer levels, turning the story-within-a-story structure into an infinite regression. Neil Richard Gaiman () (born November 10, 1960, Portchester, Hampshire) is an English author of numerous science fiction and fantasy works, including many graphic novels. ... For other uses, see Sandman (comics). ...

In the beginning of the music video for the Michael Jackson song "Thriller", the heroine is terrorized by her monster boyfriend in what turns out to be a movie within a dream. Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958), commonly known as MJ as well as the King of Pop, is an American musician, entertainer, and pop icon whose successful career and controversial personal life have been a part of pop culture for the last three decades. ... Michael Jacksons Thriller is a 8-minute music video for the song Thriller released on December 2, 1983 and directed by John Landis. ...

The music video for the Björk song "Bachelorette" features a musical which 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. Björk Guðmundsdóttir ( ) (born November 21, 1965 in Reykjavík, Iceland) is an Icelandic singer/songwriter and composer, as well as an occasional actress. ... Bachelorette (American English) is an informal term for an unmarried woman. ...

Jostein Gaarder's books often feature this device. A notable example is 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. Jostein Gaarder (born August 8, 1952 in Oslo) is a Norwegian intellectual and author of several novels, short stories and childrens books. ...

See also

• Fictional fictional character
• List of fictional plays
• List of fictitious films
• Frame story
• Parable
• Show within a show