Yes -- I've been looking for a term, or for some narratological account, of the very simple distinction between first person fictional worlds where what you read can be found (e.g. epistolary novels, journal novels, etc.) and where it can't. Sometimes you don't know you're in the former until late: e.g. Double Indemnity, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night.

As for your "recursive novel," the first one I think I ever read is Irving Wallace's The Seven Minutes, one of my earliest sources of sexual information. In it a novel called The Seven Minutes is put on trial for obscenity.

Then there are recursive novels that actually contain the novels that give them their titles. They're on the tip of my tongue, but the only thing that leaps to mind is Mark Strand's My Life, by Somebody Else.