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

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

The category 'author mentioned as a minor character' had better exclude frame narrators like Colette, and Lewis in the Space Trilogy, or it will be overwhelmed by Kipling, who probably was in frames within frames, with an informant offering him a new story for the 'sequel' to his in-story-mentioned next collection.

Mark Twain too, I bet. Hm, Huckleberry Finn introduces his book by mentioning Twain and criticizing Tom Sawyer.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Oh, and Lewis makes a fleeting personal appearance in Dawn Treader too, doesn't he, talking to Lucy at some point after that adventure - though presumably before her death, unless this is a future conversation scheduled to take place in Aslan's Country?

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

I don't recall that. Several things got changed between editions. Aslan appeared for some summing-up conversation; at the time, Lewis thought VDT would be the last book.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

It's very brief, but this is the passage I was thinking of:

And suddenly there came a breeze from the east, tossing the top of the wave into foamy shapes and ruffling the smooth water all round them. It lasted only a second or so but what it brought them in that second none of those three children will ever forget. It brought both a smell and a sound, a musical sound. Edmund and Eustace would never talk about it afterwards. Lucy could only say, ‘It would break your heart.’ ‘Why,’ said I, ‘was it so sad?’ ‘Sad!! No,’ said Lucy.

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

I think for Sutherland it does. The minor characters are characters who have no idea about the story we're reading, no idea that there's a story going on around them. Not even Prufrockian...