Hard-to-Google Lit. Crit. Queries...

[steepholm]

Is there a general term for novels (or other fictions) that contain/mention themselves? I mean, the novel is called The Book of Glum, and it's about someone who turns out to be writing or reading a book called The Book of Glum, or we're at least given to know that this is a world where The Book of Glum already exists?

Also, is there decent existing discussion (in journals or elsewhere) of this phenomenon?

Comments

Slightly beside the point but drifting along joyously...

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

Sayers lets Lord Peter Wimsey (refer to) his epoch-making work "The Murderer’s Vade-Mecum” or "101 Ways of Causing Sudden Death” though it never appears to get ready, perhaps due to an overload of material. We also don´t see him working on it, easily distracted as he is by collecting incunabila.

There is also a "Manual of Detection" by one Jedediah Berry and all of this invariably makes me think of Chesterton´s "Club of Men Misunderstood", those "Four Faultless Felones" of his as opposed to O´Brien´s "Third Policeman".

Isn´t Bulgakov´s Master writing The Book, too? Like Dostoyevsky his Doppelgänger and Faust but I´ll leave it there...I think. Endless as it is!

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Casaubon was stalling on his book. Roquentin formally gave up his, perhaps due to a bad sinus allergy attack.