Reflexivity and Reading

Author(s): Lucien Dällenbach and Annette Tomarken

Source: New Literary History, Vol. 11, No. 3, On Narrative and Narratives: II (Spring, 1980),
pp. 435-449
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/468937
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 Reflexivity and Reading
Lucien Dallenbach

T HE MOST OBVIOUSeffect of the breaking open of the struc-

turalist closure has been to renew discussion of those prob-
lems of reception and reading which could not be taken into
account by the Saussurian notion of the text, modeled on the
dichotomy of langue and parole. Inspired by this new direction in
research, particularly by the contributions of the Constance school,
the present study will investigate, from the point of view of the ad-
dressee, reflexive texts which contain mise(s) en abyme (i.e., texts
containing one or more doublings which function as mirrors or micro-
cosms of the text). By viewing mise en abymeas a factor in the readabil-
ity of the text and evaluating its impact on the process of reception, I
hope to contribute to current work on the "rhetoric of reading."1
At least three reasons can be suggested for relating mise en abyme
and reception. The first, which I shall try to justify below, is that mise
en abymeappears as a privileged object for the constitution of a theory
of reading, involving, as will be seen, the various aspects of such a
theory. Conversely, the theory of reading may clarify mise en abyme
better than previous approaches, which have centered on one or a
combination of the following elements: the writer and the written, the
text alone, the text and its textualization.2
The second reason concerns the possibility of broadening and in-
ternationalizing research, since the articulation of miseen abymeand of
the problematics of reception may bring to bear upon one another
two literary traditions which are complementary despite being rela-
tively ignorant of each other. The first of these, the German and
Anglo-Saxon tradition, constricted by its search for realism, delegates
a minor role to reflexivity and self-representation, leaving reception
and communication to dominate the idea of the literary text favored
by these critics.3 The second, or French tradition, conceives of reflex-
ivity in the wake of Mallarme, Proust, and the Nouveau Roman but, in
part for that very reason, has remained longer than its counterparts
over the Rhine, the Channel, and the Atlantic enslaved by substan-
tialist and autonomist notions of the text.
The third and last reason, a personal one, is that an examination of
mise en abymebased on and taking account of reading [lecture]seems to
me the best way of continuing my book on Le Recit speculaire in a

Copyright© 1980 by New LiteraryHistory, The University of Virginia

436 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

direction suggested and constantly outlined there but, I believe, in a

different manner and with insufficient stress. Far from being a com-
placent and unpleasant case of a narcissistic author returning to his
product in order to adjust it to the taste of the day, the present
reflections must be understood as positive self-criticism, an effort to
move beyond positions once held, to reconsider the aspect of the
problem which now seems to me most important: the function(s) of
mise en abyme in the reader's actualization of the text and, more par-
ticularly, the type(s) of readability(ies) and reception(s) entailed in mise
en abyme.
For the sake of convenience and in order to get to the main point
more swiftly, I shall take for granted general agreement on a defini-
tion of mise en abymewhich in fact only reiterates and generalizes the
canonical, Gidean definition of the procedure. Whereas Gide under-
stands by the term the repetition within a work of "the subject of the
work" "on the level of the characters,"4 my own use of the expression
covers any sign having as its referent a pertinent continuous aspect of
the narrative (fiction, text or narrative code, enunciation [enonciation])
which it represents on the diegetic level. The degree of analogy be-
tween sign and referent can give rise to various types of reduplication.
My second assumption will be that the reader is familiar with the
works on reception that I will make use of. I shall merely refer to
them when necessary, and point out immediately that what most
interests me is not the response of a given explicit reader, impossible to
generalize about, but that of the reader-subject exposed to the su-
praindividual pressures of an episteme, ideology, or unconscious de-
sire, and, even more, the response by the impliedreader understood as
the reading role inscribed in the text.5 Consequently, I shall consider
the function of mise en abymeprimarily in relation to how a text condi-
tions readings by its use of signals, instructions, or orders for decod-
ing, and by the greater or smaller margin or freedom of movement
permitted to the reader.
Finally, I would like to avoid misunderstandings by explaining the
significance of my references to Robbe-Grillet's Le Voyeur. Insofar as
the present study is intended as part of a general theory, not as a
reading-which would, in any case, presuppose acceptance of the
frame of reference I am seeking to set up-Robbe-Grillet's novel will
function in my discussion solely as a particularly helpful example.
Having taken these precautions, let me turn to the issue which
concerns us. The first question I encounter in my attempt at consid-
ering mise en abyme and reception is a general and seemingly
peripheral one: what, in a given text, authorizes and calls for the
reader's creative activity? I shall reply to the question in an absolutely
REFLEXIVITY AND READING 437

classical manner by invoking (1) the indeterminate aspect of every

literary text, and (2) the text's Leerstellen(a term translatable here as
empty places, free places, or, more succinctly, as gaps, blanks, or
ellipses)-gaps which clearly derive from while contributing to the
overall indeterminacy of the text.
The first to recognize the Leerstellenas elements forming part of the
text, Roman Ingarden proved that the fundamental importance of
indeterminacy (Unbestimmtheit)arises from the fact that a work of
fiction is an intentional object, always indeterminate to some extent
because of its very determinacies. In fact, no matter how numerous
they may be, these determinacies can but determine in a partial and
schematic manner, the unsaid [non-dit] being dependent on and gen-
erated gradually by what is specified in the text.6 If we try, for exam-
ple, to provide predicates for the word man, we shall only preserve,
not solve the mystery. What is important is that the fated non-dit must
be assimilated to a rhetoric of the understood [sous-entendu],which
imposes an equally unavoidable extrapolation on the reader, forced
by the text to complete and imaginatively concretize what is being
narrated.
Repeated and refined in various respects by Wolfgang Iser,7 Ingar-
den's analyses, influenced by Husserl, are linked to what literary se-
mioticians, discussing indeterminacy, hold to be the major effect of
written communication, which, because it must be read, is deferred:

Insofar as [the literary text] is deferredcommunication (without feedback,

automatic adjustments of self-regulation), it constitutes a differentform of
communicationfrom oral, everyday, personalizedcommunication.Irreversi-
ble, decontextualized, hermetic, and ambiguous, it can be defined as a cross-
roadsof absencesand misunderstandings [my italics] (the absence, for the re-
ceiver, of the sender and his context and, for the sender, of the receiver and
the context of reception). Moreover, as a text fixed by philology and repro-
ducible within the limits allowed by the law, it cannot be readjusted(unlike a
myth) and reaches a sometimes scattered, heterogeneous, and not entirely
predictablepublic.8

But in addition to the indeterminacy due to what Austin and Searle

call "depragmatization," the literary text contains a variable number
of "gaps" or "blanks," which appear when semantic correlations be-
tween sentences present problems, when the text resorts to negations
or fails to make explicit the connections between different sequences.9
Among formal elements producing such gaps in the text and break-
ing the homogeneity and continuity of meaning, Iser singles out every
disturbance of phrasal and sequential relationships; the various tech-
niques of decoupage,montage, and segmentation; conflicts in narrative
438 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

perspective; and narrator's comments that result in differing points

of view or value judgments not found directly in the story and which
may be inconsistent with one another.10
Everything therefore seems to lead us to agree with Hamon that,
because of the depragmatization of factors which aid ordinary com-
munication and because of the gaps created on occasions when the
literary text cannot relay information, the text, doubly indeterminate,
can be defined as a "crossroads of absences and misunderstandings."
Upon reflection, all that prevents such a definition is the pejorative
and perhaps inappropriate nature of the formulation. The inappro-
priateness is twofold: firstly, because "misunderstandings" refers to
the doubtful model of oral communication (of a speech act) which,
ideally, would precede the text, and secondly, because to postulate the
existence of a "correct understanding" brings us surreptitiously back
to a substantialist conception of the text. The definition is pejorative
because the "absences" undoubtedly threaten the readability of the
text (in Hamon's sense of the univocality of meaning)11 while re-
maining the only means whereby readability (here in Iser's sense of
active participation by the reader)12 is made possible. Indeed, we
should stress that these absences and possibly plural understandings,
in forming a welcoming structure which invites participation, repre-
sent the reader's only creative opportunity, according to the principle
that the reader's activity (and pleasure, no doubt)13 are in inverse
proportion to the text's readability (in Hamon's sense of univocality).
In other words, far from being an inconvenience, these "blanks" are
reading stimuli, in no way perceived as gaps, for the simple reason that
the reader fills them in automatically,unaware that he, not the text, is
bringing about the smooth forward progression of his reading.14
Naturally, the filling in of these gaps presupposes a process of
selecting among possible meanings offered by the text. Regularly re-
vising the progressive concretization, we take into account what has
been set up and remembered at a given moment of the reading and
adjust these data to the general movement of the text. According to
Karlheinz Stierle, the most elementary form of reception, the act of
assigning a signified to a signifier, creates problems for the literary
text because a single signifier can have several possible signifieds,
between which we can decide only by establishing the context.15 Con-
text is established by passing to a higher unit, the sentence, and from
there up the hierarchy to the sequence of sentences, and so on. At
each stage there will be both a confirmation or refutation of the
horizon of expectation set up by the word, the sentence, or the pre-
ceding sequence and a degree of anticipation about the remainder of
the reading. This anticipation will in turn be constantly modified by
what is read next and by how that is interpreted.
REFLEXIVITY AND READING 439

Although the text is not itself temporal in nature, its consecutive

quality combines with indeterminacy and "blanks" to make of reading
an eminently temporal process, which is the third facet I wish to
stress. His memory finite, the reader cannot comprehend the text at a
single glance. A fragment from a letter written by Flaubert describing
the composition of MadameBovary provides a pertinent example here:
"I am in the midst of recopying, correcting, and erasing the entire
first part of Bovary. My eyes are smarting. I would like to be able at a
single glance to read these 158 pages, grasping every detail in one
thought."16 This inability to grasp and synthesize the text "in a single
thought," to subsume it somehow in a stable and definitive unity,
forces the reader to structure and restructure the text, the previous
horizons of expectation creating both anticipation of what is to come
and a retroactive reinterpretation of what has been read. This move-
ment [bouge]of the reading is accompanied by the creation of a virtual
dimension of the text, one which will disappear only when the con-
cretization has been completed-on the last page of the book.
Every literary text tends to restrict, to a greater or lesser extent, its
indeterminacy, its "empty places," and its successiveness by "signals"
which appear as constraints and limitations upon the reader's free-
dom of invention.17 A structure providing a challenge and inviting
participation, the text is also a guide: permitting action and move-
ment, it nonetheless imposes action and movement in one direction
rather than another. As Philippe Hamon formulates it, in the passage
I began quoting above:

These two factors, therefore (the heterogeneous public and deferred com-
munication) [which I shall discuss as three factors-overall indeterminacy,
semantic gaps, and consecutiveness], undoubtedly impose on the written text,
more than on others, the necessity of ensuring a "minimum of readability"
(even if readability is not the sole or predominant goal of the sender). This
minimum of readability is achieved by lessening the basic ambiguity of the
text by way of a compensatory metalinguistic apparatus [surcodage] which
incorporates into the message a set of signals, equational and relational
structures, a variety of procedures and operators for removing ambiguity;
these, by constructing together text, context, and metatext, combine the self-
gloss (the autonymousmode) with the gloss on the language code (the metalin-
guistic mode).
We can perhaps hypothesize that the literary text ... containing its own
paraphrasing system, its own internal metalanguage, could almost be defined
as a statement incorporating a metalanguage.18

In stressing this fourth and final mark of the literary text, I have set
up the framework within which mise en abyme will be found to be
linked to reception. Throughout this introduction I have attempted
440 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

to proceed openly enough for my thesis-at least the first formulation

of my thesis, for it may have to be modified-to be perceived and
expressed immediately. An autonymous structure par excellence, in
defining itself from the outset as an equivalent of the narrative, miseen
abyme, the most powerful textual signal and aid to readability, can (1)
use artifice to repragmatize the text, (2) seal directly or indirectly the
text's vanishing points, (3) condense the text in order to provide a
surview, and (4) render the text more intelligible by making use of
redundancy and an integrated metalanguage.
Before reviewing and commenting briefly on each of these points, I
would like to note that we can now understand better the insistence
with which certain works signal the signal by indicating, through un-
mistakable connectors, the linking procedure whereby equivalencies
are set up: if the mise en abyme was never perceived by the reader,
would it not lose its illocutionary force? Left to his own devices, the
reader might comprehend in his own manner or, perhaps, not at all.
He must therefore be supported and, on occasion, provided with a
mise en abyme in the enunciation as an artificial remedy for the de-
ferred nature of written communication. Using this subterfuge to rees-
tablish a dialogue situation, the text presents the reader with a pro-
ducer and a receiver, even, in a sleight of hand at which Cervantes,
Jean Paul Richter, and Gide excelled, with the producer and receiver
of the very text he is reading.
Robbe-Grillet's latest novels, as is well known, have made extensive
use of tricks and aporia of this kind. Although not yet evidencing such
a fondness for illusion, Le Voyeur nonetheless provides, in Mathias, a
half-ironic, half-serious double of the novelist.'9 The parallel goes
beyond the incomplete drawing of a sea gull made by the character
and the gap-filled work composed by the author to touch on their
linguistic activity, since both use persuasive rhetoric to capture the
imagination of the listener/reader by manufacturing a memory for
him, giving him the illusion of recognition (see p. 32). In an even
more fundamental manner, the commercial traveler's patter
metaphorizes novelistic activity, which functions here to hide a gap or
metaphysical absence before the abyss [abime] reopens to engulf the
fiction. On occasion, Mathias also figures the reader's hesitations (see,
particularly, pp. 40, 49, 60, 125, 146 ff., 152).
But, Le Voyeur notwithstanding, we know that mise en abyme is not
limited to repairing principal gaps in written discourse by recreating
the conditions of a direct fictive communication: when mise en abyme
places the text in a state of self-equivalency by reflecting upon textual
statements or laying bare codes, the narrative can repeat itself or
comment upon itself internally. As a result, the text acquires not
REFLEXIVITY AND READING 441

merely a "strong" structure (in Gestaltpsychologieterms), but also di-

minishes, by redundancy or a metalinguistic gloss, its level of inde-
terminacy and its Leerstellen.
When an elliptical narrative contains a central scene which has been
deliberately effaced, mise en abyme seems peculiarly useful as a com-
pensatory and restorative device. It is therefore not surprising that
certain readers of Le Voyeur have unhesitatingly seen here the func-
tion of mise en abyme in fiction. Jean Ricardou, for example, declares
that because a mirror-scene "reveals what is absent from the context,"
it accuses a character or a narrative of seeking a "cover-up" for them-
selves.20 Although incorrect in that fictional misesen abymein Le Voyeur
appear to me calculated precisely in order not to fill the central gap,
this stabilizing reading is welcome because it validates the rule fol-
lowed by most novelists, who use doubling to remove the ambiguity of
their message. Notice that, in resorting to miseen abyme,texts manifest
their fears about their own readability, either because the need for
readability so obsesses them that they forbid the reader to fill in the
gaps as he wishes, automatically and according to the rhythm of his
reading, or because, readability being truly in danger, the reader
might risk being unable to fill in the gaps. In the latter case, the miseen
abyme,depending on whether it concerns the statement, the enuncia-
tion, or the code, will indicate the level at which the gaps must be filled
and, in so doing, will suggest where readability has been most
compromised.
In this respect, Le Voyeur is especially interesting, because its many
metatextual misesen abymeare symptomatic of the resistance of a pub-
lic whose horizon of expectation is being questioned. As proof of its
own novelty, Le Voyeurasserts that "a new literature is not addressed
to an already existing public. The public for a freshly published
Nouveau Roman is nil. Only gradually, by way of the book itself, is a
public formed."21 In order, then, to form its reader and to help him
recognize clearly what is at issue, Le Voyeur had to bring its metatex-
tual mises en abyme to bear on platonic or metaphysical mimesis (the
connection between text and model) and, in particular, on realism
(see p. 37), on the univocality of meaning, on meaning as such (for
example, pp. 40 and 60), and, thereby, on readability which, as several
comments in the work indicate, remains uncertain (pp. 49, 125, 152,
168, 186).
Anyone interested in the changes in the novel from Balzac to the
present day would find it most instructive to undertake a brief dia-
chronic investigation of miseen abyme.A few preliminary findings per-
mit us to state with confidence that historically mises en abyme super-
sede the "authorial intervention"-hence their unrecognized impor-
442 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

tance for the naturalist novel.22 They multiplied and grew more
complex because of the increasing number and ever more involved
subtlety of the semantic gaps. The number of misesen abymeof the code
continues to increase, signaling the ever-widening separation between
art and a public whose horizon of expectations is regularly thwarted.
Finally, in the new Nouveau Roman of recent years, certain mises en
abymehave undergone an internal modification necessary to maintain
their utility.
This latter metamorphosis of our structure will not detain us here,
because, having stressed the creation of a pseudodialogue, the filling
in of semantic gaps and the resulting redundancy, we must consider
as soon as possible the way in which the syntax of the text is realized by
this same mise en abyme, ensuring the hesitant progression of the
reading in an all-encompassing, almost instantaneous moment of un-
derstanding. This grasp of the whole is comparable to that made
possible by a "model" [maquette]which, on the level of the signifier
and sometimes of the signified, simplifies the original, converts time
into space, successiveness into simultaneousness, the latter enabling us
to "take in" [com-prendre]and thereby master and "phrase" the text.
Armed with this replica, which is generally and for good reason
placed in the center of the narrative,23 the reader will be able to
identify and elucidate obscure elements, notice certain details as rel-
evant, dismiss others as marginal; in short, use mise en abyme as a
criterion for selecting and structuring. This guide will facilitate the
progression from first to second readings, a fact which brings us to
consider the problem of reception in a new light: does mise en abyme
not work toward two conflicting ends, its way of avoiding the danger
of unreadability being that of a dangerous medicine? I assert in reply
that everything depends on what we expect from miseen abyme.If one
resorts to the device in the hope that it will reestablish the conditions
of a quasi-pragmatic reception, that is, mute the effect of illusion
which removes the reality of the text and replaces it with a phantasmic
identification, one runs the grave risk of making a false calculation,
using one ill to drive out another.24 For it is precisely this second
reading, replaced and rendered superfluous by mise en abyme, which,
according to Karlheinz Stierle, permits the development of a recep-
tion neither quasi-pragmatic nor projective, but respectful of the fic-
tionality of fiction.25
Moreover, mises en abyme such as Magritte's "picture within a pic-
ture," which turns trompel'oeil against itself, denounce pictural illusion
and betray the "ideology of the window" which has dominated West-
ern painting since the Renaissance.26 Although presenting itself as a
"representation of a representation," this mise en abyme, as second-
REFLEXIVITY AND READING 443

degree mimesis, still subverts mimesis, revealing it for what it is. In-
deed, such a manner of ensnaring representation in its own trap
entails certain failures [rates] which alert the reader, undermining his
referential illusion, snatching him away from his transference to
arouse a critical point of view. The question concerning the world is
henceforth linked with that concerning reception, the production of
the spectacle and the spectacle itself.27
The question obviously comes down to knowing whether the effect
of affect and that of illusion are as closely connected as Aristotelian
and Freudian aesthetics have claimed, and whether, if representation
is destroyed, there can be a pleasure of the text other than the purely
intellectual one of the deciphering of enigmas. An even more radical
inquiry would consider whether self-reflexive reception permits
enough play to the reader to prevent his being so overcome with
boredom as to close a book which would, as Mallarme hoped, exist
alone, independent of the reader. Would self-reflexive reading not
be a contradiction in terms; would self-interpretation and self-
elucidation not produce self-reading instead and in place of reading?
By abusing mise en abyme, will certain texts not pay dearly for their
increased readability and risk being neglected in favor of texts calling
for a primarily identificatory and instinctive type of reception, as
characterized by Artaud? The fate of a certain Nouveau Roman or of
some borderline texts seems to provide an obvious reply to such
questions.
However, we should take a second look at the matter before trying
to comfort theory by the sanction of facts, for the latter, as it happens,
remain ambiguous: as an alternative to the example of little-read texts
we can offer Mallarme's Sonnet en X,28 designated by its author as
"allegorical of itself." If the principle of autonymy necessarily has a
demobilizing effect on the reader's energies, how can we explain the
fact that no one feels excluded upon reading this poem which, in
being entirely constructed on the principle of self-reflexivity, is the
perfect illustration of the following declaration from Variationssur un
sujet, referred to above: "The volume, impersonalized as one sepa-
rates oneself from it as an author, does not require the approach of
the reader. As such, among human accessories, it takes place alone:
made, existing."29 Now if the Sonnet en X does not take place all alone,
but fascinates and delights numbers of readers, this success is not
because its generic properties are somehow better suited to self-
reflexivity than those of the novel, or because the total reflection it
plays on differs in some way from mise en abymein our strict sense of
the term. Rather, it is due, Mallarme tells us, to the "somewhat
cabalistic sensation" aroused and to the "dose of poetry contained" in
444 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

the piece.30 For surely certain texts fall from our hands because their
author wanted to remove the voids himself, and because such texts so
often err in providing too much pedagogy rather than an overdose of
poetry. On these occasions mise en abyme is utilized to determine in-
stead of merely to orient reception.
Clearly, the text only remains pleasurable if it resides somewhere
between the thresholds of unreadability and readability.31 Are we
thereby admitting that the prescribed path for narrative is a middle
road, and that mise en abymemust be used only in moderation, like an
antidote? In fact, the lesson of the Sonnet en X seems to me to be quite
the contrary. The fact that the sonnet evokes what Mallarme calls a
cabalistic sensation, paralleling our feeling that the poem is com-
pletely devoid of meaning, can surely be ascribed first and foremost to
the autonym upon which the poem is programmed. Consequently, to
admit that "language reflecting itself" can suspend meaning and ap-
proach unreadability (in Hamon's sense) is also to admit that "narra-
tive reflecting itself" can use self-reflection not only to remove its own
ambiguity, that is, fill in the gaps, but also to create the gaps and
problematize its reading, which becomes active becauseof, not in spite of
mise en abyme.
Following the hypothesis adopted throughout this article, that the
degree of indeterminacy and the Leerstellenmobilize the reader's ac-
tivity, we can conclude that mise en. abyme can diffuse the void and
permit us to read by exercising negativity. Once again, Le Voyeur per-
fectly illustrates the disturbing effect of certain reflections on a read-
ing that seeks univocality. But since such an analysis would take us too
far astray, I shall limit myself to reconsidering from this point of view
two matters touched on above, in order to offer a few general sugges-
tions.
If, in Le Voyeur,mise en abymeof fiction can be seen as reparative in
the sense of suggesting what might be absent from the narrative, it
would be a great mistake to claim that the device reveals both the
existence of a flaw and the possibility of disguising the flaw in order to
ensure the passage of a plausible meaning, as if mise en abymewere a
mere gap-filler or, worse yet, a cork. Far from blocking the gap once
and for all in a definitive manner, mise en abyme permits the gap to
exist as such by its very varied, insistent, equivocal and always conjec-
tural manner of inviting the reader to fill in the void. Indeed, once the
initial narrative does not fill in the central gap, as Kleist's Marquisevon
O ... does in extremis,where a mirrored dream [reveen abyme]allowed
a prior glimpse of what the narrative repressed and set up the famous
aposiopesis, the reader cannot but formulate hypotheses about what is
not given him, basing his speculation on the specifics of the secondary
REFLEXIVITY AND READING 445

narratives, i.e., the mises en abyme.32In or, rather, behind every ap-
parently "objective" description, we glimpse a half-hidden, half-
revealed erotic spectacle.33 The sexualization of narrative, a reading
which fantasizes by way of signs on the page, is chiefly due, I main-
tain, to mise en abyme.34 For this reason, most misesen abyme-and they
are numerous-appear in the first part of a novel. Early appearance is
necessary if the reader is to enliven what is said by supplying the
unsaid, reading what is said as a kind of euphemistic double
meaning-an insinuation. Orchestrated by mise en abyme, this register
leads the reader to begin the process of autosuggestion and be the
first to turn himself into a voyeur.
My second brief remark concerns sight more than voyeurism. Ha-
mon's readability presupposes conformity of the text and the cultural
extratext to what is alreadysaid.35But Le Voyeur,in a striking manner,
constructs its readability by deconstructing it: whatever the question
concerns-literary genre (p. 167), style (p. 50), reading code (p. 144),
or interpretation (p. 40)-the narrative always replies by way of non-
response, since literary genre, style, reading code, and interpretation
all arise in Le Voyeur from the undescribed and therefore (still?) un-
formulable. Robbe-Grillet is surely blocking holes with emptiness, re-
pragmatizing fiction in order to depragmatize even more radically,3
puncturing flat parts of the text until the work resembles a sieve (see
pp. 54 ff.)-i.e., an instrumentwith holes.37
The moral of the tale is that only a perforated text lends itself to
reading. The amended version of my thesis is that the ambiguous
tool, mise en abyme, permits us to fill in "blanks" when abundant, form
them when scarce, or hollow them out by filling them. The latter
procedure occurs in Le Voyeur,where mise en abymeunites the threads
and interstices, the readability and the unreadability of the text-lace,
constantly seeking to ensure for the reading a kind of self-regulation.
At this point, a general law or at least a working hypothesis can
perhaps be deduced from our analysis: rebalancing is achieved by
inverting the reception programmed into the initial narrative. If the
latter calls for a quasi-pragmatic reception, miseen abymeclears the way
for self-reflexive reception and permits us to take account of the text
in its materiality. If, on the other hand, self-reflexive reception pre-
dominates, mise en abymereestablishes quasi-pragmatic reception and
the powers of the imaginary.38 In other words, mise en abymesuddenly
appears as the opposite of the dominant reception and as such is un-
surpassed as a means of bringing contradiction into the heart of
reading activity.
UNIVERSITY OF GENEVA
(Translated by Annette Tomarken)
446 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

NOTES

1 Michel Charles's fine book-Rhitorique de la lecture(Paris, 1977)-is not the only sign
of the change of direction in theory currently taking place. Other converging signs of
this "change of paradigm" are the numerous colloquia and journal issues devoted to
reading; the availability in France, thanks to the translation of H. R. Jauss's "pro-
grammatic" writings, of the research of the Constance school (see Pour une esthetiquede
la reception, pref. Jean Starobinski [Paris, 1978]); and the spectacular conversion of
Jakobsonian poetics of significance into pragmatics, the problems of enunciation and
"transtextuality" (Gerard Genette).
2 Recognizable here are the conceptions of mise en abymeformulated by Andre Gide,
B. Morrissette, Jean Ricardou, and myself, respectively. For a discussion of these con-
ceptions, see my Recit speculaire (Paris, 1977).
3 It must not be forgotten that the theory of reflexivity is one of the claims to glory
and, no doubt, chief battlehorses of the early German Romantics. See my Recit
speculaire, Appendix 2, and the texts of Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis commented on
by P. Lacoue-Labarthe and J.-L. Nancy in L'Absolulitteraire (Paris, 1978).
4 Gide, Journal 1889-1939 (Paris, 1948), p. 41.
5 We must attend carefully to this "pleasure of the text"-established as an important
issue by Roland Barthes and H. R. Jauss, Kleine Apologieder dsthetischenErfahrung (Con-
stance, 1972), and further developed in AsthetischeErfahrung und literarischeHermeneutik
I (Munich, 1977)-and show under what conditions mise en abyme contributes to or
detracts from the pleasure of the text.
6 Cf. Roman Ingarden, Vom Erkennen des literarischen Kunstwerkes (Tubingen,
1968)-in English, The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art, tr. Ruth Ann Crowley
and Kenneth R. Olson (Evanston, Ill., 1973)-and Wolfgang Iser, Der Akt des Lesens
(Munich, 1976)-in English, The Act of Reading (Baltimore, 1978). For an analytical
conception of this reciprocal involvement of the said and the unsaid, see the new book
by Vincent Descombes, L'Inconscientmalgre lui (Paris, 1977), which deals with the logic
of the secret.
7 Iser, Der Akt des Lesens, pp. 280 ff.
8 Philippe Hamon, "Texte litteraire et metalangage," Poetique, 31 (1977), 264.
9 Contrary to Searle, for whom, as is well known, the fictional statement is a funda-
mentally "empty" and "parasitic" language, Rainer Warning demonstrates that the
fictional text not only contains an actual pragmatic relation, but is inconceivable
theoretically without such a relation. See Warning, "Rezeptionsasthetik als literatur-
wissenschaftliche Pragmatik," in Rezeptionsisthetik,ed. Warning (Munich, 1975), pp.
10-39; and Warning, "La Relation pragmatique du discours litteraire," Poetique, 39
(1979), 321-37. For a radical critique of Searle's arguments, see Jacques Derrida,
"Signature evenement contexte," in Marges de la philosophie(Paris, 1972), pp. 365-93;
and Derrida, LimitedInc., supplement to Glyph 2 (Baltimore and London, 1977).
10 See Iser, Der Akt des Lesens, pp. 284 ff.
11 Hamon, "Un Discours contraint," Poetique, 16 (1973), 422 ff.; and "Note sur les
notions de norme et de lisibilite en stylistique," Litterature, 14 (1974), 118 ff.
12 See Iser, Die Appelstrukturder Texte (Constance, 1970), and Der Akt des Lesens, in
which Henry James's "The Figure in the Carpet" functions as an apologue for reading.
13 In Le Plaisir du texte (Paris, 1973), Barthes refers to "the space between two edges,
the interstice of bliss [jouissance]"(p. 23). He goes on: "Surely the most erotic part of the
body is the place at which the garmentfalls open? In perversion (the area of textual plea-
sure) there are no 'erogenous zones' (a tedious expression, in any case): as
psychoanalysis claims, it is intermittence that is erotic-the glimpse of bare skin between
REFLEXIVITY AND READING 447

two articles of clothing (trousers and sweater), between two edges (open-necked shirt,
the glove and sleeve). This gleam of flesh is what seduces, or rather, the staging of an
appearance-disappearance" (p. 19). [This translation is mine, not that of Richard Miller
(London, 1975). I have, however, adopted Miller's term "bliss" for jouissance. Tr.]
14 Except in very modern texts, which work with and thematize the blanks.
15 Karlheinz Stierle, "Was heisst Rezeption bei fiktionalen Texten?" Poetica (1975), p.
348.
16 A letter of 22 July 1852, in OeuvresCompletesde GustaveFlaubert, XIII (Paris, 1974),
222-24. Cf. Ingarden, VomErkennen, pp. 146 ff.
17 These "signals" (Harald Weinrich) have been reviewed and analyzed by Hamon in
"Texte litt6raire et m6talangage."
18 Hamon, "Texte litt6raire et m6talangage," pp. 264 ff.
19 See Alain Robbe-Grillet, Le Voyeur(Paris, 1955), pp. 19 ff. and 22, hereafter cited
in text, and Pour un nouveau roman (Paris, 1963), pp. 175 ff. (the "drawing" of the sea
gull). We know that Robbe-Grillet, in his books as in his films, deliberately confuses us
about the author's stages of narration and representation. On this perturbation of the
reading and on the doubling of the novelist, see my study, "Faux portraits de per-
sonne," in Robbe-Grillet(Paris, 1976), I, 108-30.
20 J. Ricardou, "L'Histoire dans l'histoire," in Problemes du nouveau roman (Paris,
1967), p. 183.
21 Robbe-Grillet, Nouveau roman: hier, aujourd'hui (Paris, 1972), I, 143.
22 See my study, "'L'Oeuvre dans l'oeuvre' chez Zola," in Le Naturalisme (Paris, 1978),
pp. 125-39.
23 Given what we know about reading, we recognize here the strategic point at which
we need to balance the prospective horizons of expectation and the recapitulating
resum6s, or, better yet, to base the former on the latter.
24 The Zola novel is exemplary here (see n. 22). Haunted by the desire to achieve a
strictly communicative language act, Zola finds in miseen abymethe most effective means
of removing ambiguity from his message and of attaining transparency. But the cost of
the operation is high: the more his novel eliminates ambiguity by mirror-doublings, the
more it closes in upon itself, destroying its connection with the world. So much for the
naturalist objective "screen" or "window"!
25 Stierle, "Was heisst Rezeption?" pp. 367 ff.
26 See S. Gablick, Magritte, 3rd ed. (London, 1972), pp. 75-101: "The 'painting-
within-a-painting' theme is a stunning contraposition to the Renaissance concept of
painting as a 'window on reality"' (p. 96). On this breaking of the illusion, see also E. H.
Gombrich's classic work, L'Art et l'illusion, tr. G. Durand (Paris, 1971), p. 261-in En-
glish, Art and Illusion (London and New York, 1960).
27 Quasi-pragmatic reception, represented by the hero of Don Quixote, supports this
view: would the illusion and identification of the novel reader be tenable if romans de
chevalerie were self-reflecting after the manner of Don Quixote?
28 Stephane Mallarm6, Poems, tr. Roger Fry (New York, 1937), pp. 186-89:

SES purs ongles tres haut d6diant leur onyx

L'Angoisse, ce minuit, soutient, lampadophore,
Maint reve vesp6ral bruil par le Ph6nix
Que ne recueille pas de cin6raire amphore
Sur les credences, au salon vide: nul ptyx,
Aboli bibelot d'inanit6 sonore
(Car le Maitre est alle puiser des pleurs au Styx
Avec ce seul objet dont le N6ant s'honore.)
448 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

Mais proche la croisee au nord vacante, un or

Agonise selon peut-etre le decor
Des licornes ruant du feu contre une nixe,
Elle, d6funte nue en le miroir, encor
Que, dans l'oubli ferme par le cadre, se fixe
De scintillations sitot le septuor.

HER pure nails very high dedicating their onyx,

Anguish, this midnight, upholds, the lampbearer,
Many vesperal dreams by the Phenix burnt
That are not gathered up in the funeral urn
On the credences, in the empty room: no ptyx,
Abolished bibelot of sounding inanity
(For the Master is gone to draw tears from the Styx
With this sole object which Nothingness honours.)
But near the window void Northwards, a gold
Dies down composing perhaps a decor
Of unicorns kicking sparks at a nixey,
She, nude and defunct in the mirror, while yet,
In the oblivion closed by the frame there appears
Of scintillations at once the septet.

29 Mallarme, "Quant au livre," in Oeuvres completes(Paris, 1965), p. 372.

30 Mallarm6, Oeuvres completes,p. 1489.
31 In this regard it is significant that, in order to palliate the obscurity of texts offer-
ing too great a resistance, the reader introduces, as he sees fit, misesen abyme,and that,
conversely, certain new Nouveaux Romans abandon or renew the procedure once it
becomes codified or threatens to become exaggeratedly metalinguistic.
32 See Robbe-Grillet's statements in Robbe-Grillet, II, 194 ff., and 0. Bernal's in-
terpretation, Alain Robbe-Grillet:le roman de l'absence(Paris, 1964).
33 For example, compare the description of a given object in Instantanes to that of the
gas lamp, in which repetition and interplay of signifiers (collerette,decoupe, anneau)
reinforce the obsessional reading set up by the mises en abyme.
34 Here the structural linking activity of reading can only fantasize to the extent
allowed by the textual strategy, which invariably signals by a warning and/or a repeti-
tion the elements to be selected and linked together in the course of constructing the
meaning. The first appearance of the sign of the figure 8 (Le Voyeur, p. 16) and its
thematic modulation throughout the novel provide a particularly clear example of this
technique.
35 See n. 11.
36 The reader will notice that Le Voyeuritself thematizes the fundamental ambiguity
of its reading by simultaneously valorizing and disqualifying a quasi-pragmatic recep-
tion which toys with the imaginary and a structural reception which focuses only on
literality. Ostentatiously empty or contradictory, the indications which would permit us
to determine the pragmatic status of the text are here set up in such a way as to
challenge the reader to reconstruct a univocal enunciation situation. He is thereby
thrust defenseless into a double bind, caught between two readings calling for and
contesting one another. The resulting confusion is, moreover, reflected in the narrative
on several occasions: "he could hardly abandon his hosts so abruptly, without even
knowing if the meal was over. The complete lack of form at the meal once again
REFLEXIVITY AND READING 449

prevented the traveler from knowing how to handle his own situation. There again he
found himself in the position of being powerless to act according to any rule which he
could remember afterwards and use to make his behavior necessary or, if need be,
defensible" (p. 144).
37 Another metaphor for the text corroborating the above is the newspaper article
burnt through by Mathias's cigarette (pp. 236 ff.).
38 In other words, it seems to me possible to extend to the process of reception the
law, formulated by Jean Ricardou, according to which "every mise en abymecontradicts
the overall functioning of the text containing it" (LeNouveau roman [Paris, 1973], p. 73).