mise-en-abyme

As the mere existence of mise-en-abyme tends to threaten suspension of disbelief, McHale has to argue that mimesis doesn't necessarily mean the literary equivalent of photographic realism.

"Mimetic Fiction" 2009

McHale is talking about mise-en-abyme rather than SF&F though he does use examples from Gibson, Sterling and Delany as well as the likes of Danielewski, Barth and Cervantes but this is also something that realism purists complain about, and the defenses Hale uses are very similar to the defenses we use for SF&F.

"Mimetic Fiction" 2009

But would he then have had to take out a hyper-injunction to prevent them reporting on the fact that they were unable to report on the fact of his knicker-model-bothering ways, I wonder, and there's my aforementioned mise-en-abyme in the bag.

Irish Blogs 2010

One thing I've noticed in my life, and Lord knows there haven't been many, is that I am never more than a prompt or two in the nearest media outlet away from a spot of absurdist mise-en-abyme, and this worries me.

Irish Blogs 2010