Self-referentiality
By medium: fourth wall - metafiction - metadata - metafilm - metanarrative - metanarrative - meta-reference - postmodernism - self - self-conscious - tautology
Key works: Don Quixote (1605) - Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921)
Self-reference also occurs in literature when an author refers to his work in the context of the work itself. Famous examples include Cervantes's Quixote, Denis Diderot's Jacques le fataliste et son maître, Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler and Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author. This is closely related to the concept of breaking the fourth wall. The surrealistic painter René Magritte is famous for his self-referential works. [Jul 2006]
Self-reference
A self-reference occurs when a statement refers to itself. Reference is possible when there are two logical levels, a level and a meta-level. It is most commonly used in mathematics, philosophy, computer programming, and linguistics. Self-referential statements can lead to paradoxes (but see antinomy for limits on the significance of these). --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-reference [May 2004]
In literature
Self-reference also occurs in literature when an author refers to his or her work in the context of the work itself. Famous examples include Denis Diderot's Jacques the Fatalist and Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author. This is closely related to the concept of breaking the fourth wall. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-reference [May 2004]
Tautology
Self-reference is also employed in tautology and in licensed terminology. When a word defines itself (e.g., "Machine: any objects put together mechanically"), the result is a tautology. Such self-references can be quite complex, include full propositions rather than simple words, and produce arguments and terms that require license (accepting them as proof of themselves). --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-reference [Jul 2006]Postmodern self-referentiality and self-parody
Postmodern: A wide-ranging term describing certain post-World War II artistic works, characterized by nonlinearity, self-referentiality if not self-parody, and multiple/simultaneous sensory impressions. See also postmodernism --Theatre GlossaryA history of self-referentiality
If one accepts self-referentiality as a basic feature of postmodernism, one has to conclude that this technique was already a feature of modernism. [Jun 2006]
A review of play The Play's the Thing (1926):
Anyone who thinks self-referentiality is a postmodern invention will be surprised to hear Molnár's characters speak of how a play should begin in actually beginning the play and enacting three possible Act 2 conclusions. When Ilona and Almady rehearse their actual conversation as Turai's play, mirrors reflects mirrors to wonderfully dizzying effect.
The Hungarian Molnár (1878-1952) uses a simple farcical plot for sophisticated look at the interplay of reality and illusion uncovering the artifice of the former and the truth of the latter. Unlike the anxiety and despair such a subject produces in Pirandello's "Six Characters in search of an Author", Molnár accepts the intermingling of real and unreal as a fact of life, gently amused that this should trouble anyone. Adapter P. G. Wodehouse of Jeeves and Wooster fame gives the work his own brand of witty absurdity. --http://www.stage-door.org/reviews/misc2003c.htm
In fact, it can be argued that this self-referentiality was already present in Shakespeare's plays:
William Shakespeare used this device (play within a play) notably in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Love's Labours Lost, and Hamlet. In Shakespeare's 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 emphasise 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. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_within_a_story [Jul 2006]
See also: postmodernism - modernism - self-referentiality - technique
Reflexivity in film and literature: From Don Quixote to Jean-Luc Godard (1985) - Robert Stam
Reflexivity in film and literature: From Don Quixote to Jean-Luc Godard (1985, 1992) - Robert Stam [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Reflexivity in film and literature: From Don Quixote to Jean-Luc Godard (1985, 1992) - Robert Stam [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
see entry for Robert stam
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