The Mirror In The Text

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.

Deconstruction is no game of mirrors, revealing the text as a play of surface against surface. Its more radical philosophical effort is to get behind the mirror and question the very nature of reflection. The Tain of the Mirror explores that gritty surface without which no reflection would be possible.

Mirrors are mesmerizing. The rhetorical figure that represents a mirror is called a chiasmus, a pattern derived from the Greek letter X (Chi). This pattern applies to sentences such as “one does not live to eat; one eats to live.” It is found in myths, plays, poems, biblical songs, short stories, novels, epics. Numerous studies have dealt with repetition, difference, and Narcissism in the fields of literature, music, and art. But mirror structures, per se, have not received systematic notice. This book analyses mirror imagery, scenes, and characters in French prose texts, in chronological order, from the 17th to the 20th centuries. It does so in light of literal, metaphoric, and rhetorical structures. Works analysed in the traditional French canon, written by such writers as Laclos, Lafayette, and Balzac, are extended by studies of texts composed by Barbey d’Aurevilly, Georges Rodenbach, Jean Lorrain, and Pieyre de Mandiargues. This work appeals to readers interested in linguistics, French history, psychology, art, and material culture. It invites analyses of historical and ideological contexts, rhetorical strategies, symmetry and asymmetry. Ovid’s Narcissus and Alice in Wonderland are paradigms for the study of micro and macro-structures. Analyses of mirrors as cultural artefacts are significant to Lowrie’s sight seeing.

"Brave, explosive, and thought-provoking, this is a powerful memoir. 'It's material, make a story out of it,' was the mantra Charlotte Grimshaw grew up with in her literary family. But when her life suddenly turned upside-down, she needed to re-examine the reality of that material. The more she delved into her memories, the more the real characters in her life seemed to object. So what was the truth of 'a whole life lived in fiction'? This is a vivid account of a New Zealand upbringing, where rebellion was encouraged, where trouble and tragedy lay ahead. It looks beyond the public face to the 'messy reality of family life - and much more'."--Back cover.

There existed no English-language scholarly introduction to Marguerite Porete or The Mirror of Simple Souls until now. Current interest in both and the implications her book has on medieval scholarship make a collection such as this companion ideal.

“The Mirror in the Mirror” – in the E-Book now also with illustrations by his father Edgar Ende, to whom Michael Ende dedicated this book. It is a fantastic story labyrinth of a very special kind. For the author himself, this work was of great importance: in interviews, he liked to call it his “never-ending story for adult readers.” The reader is taken into a mysterious narrative world, full of bizarre situations and mysterious fates, surreal images and philosophical thoughts. Those who open themselves in amazement to these enigmatic visions and allow themselves to be drawn into the fantastic stories will emerge from Michael Ende’s magic labyrinth with a new perspective. The core question is: What is reflected in a mirror that is reflected in a mirror? If two readers read the same book, they are still not reading the same thing. For both people immerse themselves into the reading. The book becomes a mirror in which the reader is reflected. But in the same way, the reader is also a mirror in which the book is reflected: The mirror in the mirror refers the reader back to himself. The FAZ, one of the major newspapers in Germany, writes that Michael Ende shows with the book “how much darkness, wildness and rawness is inherent in dreams. He does not trivialize. His dreams make reference to reality because in dreams, Cicero wrote, ‘the remnants of those objects roll and tumble about in the souls which we have thought and impelled while awake’.”

Inspired by a school art project and a new friend, Sable learns to look beneath the surface of an image.

In A Diabolical Voice, Justine L. Trombley traces the afterlife of the Mirror of Simple Souls, which circulated anonymously for two centuries in four languages, though not without controversy or condemnation. Widely recognized as one of the most unusual and important mystical treatises of the late Middle Ages, the Mirror was condemned in Paris in 1310 as a heretical work, and its author, Marguerite Porete, was burned at the stake. Trombley identifies alongside the work's increasing positive reception a parallel trend of opposition and condemnation centered specifically around its Latin translation. She's discovered fourteenth- and fifteenth-century theologians, canon lawyers, inquisitors, and other churchmen who were entirely ignorant of the Mirror's author and its condemnation and saw in the work dangerous heresies that demanded refutation and condemnation of their own. Using new evidence from the Mirror's largely overlooked Latin manuscript tradition, A Diabolical Voice charts the range of negative reactions to the Mirror, from confiscations and physical destruction to academic refutations and vicious denunciations of its supposedly fiendish doctrines. This parallel story of opposition shows how heresy remained an integral part of the Mirror's history well beyond the events of 1310, revealing how seriously churchmen took Marguerite Porete's ideas on their own terms, in contexts entirely removed from Marguerite's identity and her fate. Emphasizing the complexity of the Mirror of Simple Souls and its reception, Trombley makes clear that this influential book continues to yield new perspectives and understandings.