Self-reference
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Self-reference is a phenomenon in narratology consisting of a narrative referring to itself directly. See metafiction.
Usage
Self-reference also occurs in literature when an author refers to his work in the context of the work itself. Famous examples include Cervantes's Don Quixote, Denis Diderot's Jacques le fataliste et son maître, Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler, many stories by Nikolai Gogol, Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth, and Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author. This is closely related to the concept of breaking the fourth wall or meta-reference (which often involve self-reference).
The surrealistic painter René Magritte is famous for his self-referential works. "The Treachery of Images" includes words claiming, in French, it is not a pipe, the truth of which depend entirely on what the word "ceci" (in English, "this") is taken to refer to. Is it the pipe depicted—or is it the painting or even the sentence itself?
Self-reference is also employed in tautology and in licensed terminology. When a word defines itself (e.g., "Machine: any objects put together mechanically"), the result is a tautology. Such self-references can be quite complex, include full propositions rather than simple words, and produce arguments and terms that require license (accepting them as proof of themselves).
In popular culture
- Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy, specifically City Of Glass.
- Mel Brooks' film Spaceballs uses the video release of the movie that the audience is watching to see what will happen in the future.
- Miguel de Cervantes mentions his own work La Galatea and the novel Don Quixote itself in the novel Don Quixote. A character of an apocryphal version of Don Quixote acknowledges that Cervantes' Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are the real ones and not those of the apocryphal text, which implies that the reader is one of the characters of the novel.
- In DC Comics' Legion of the 3 Worlds, The main antagonist, Superboy Prime, is the Clark Kent from a destroyed iteration of the real universe, supremely displeased from how his favourite comic books turned out while journeying in their multiverse (depicted as coexisting with the real one). Eventually, Clark returns to our dimension, where is confronted by his distraught parents and girlfriend, having read the chronicles of his villainous action from the comic books published after his "departure".
- Dave Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius has characters referring to their role in the book and references to the book itself. This includes a list of tips to help better enjoy the book (including several tips not to bother reading large sections of the book), and a guide to its symbols and metaphors.
- Michael Ende's The Neverending Story uses self-reference of the book prominently, when a character (Bastian) of a story within the story (also called 'Neverending Story') finds a book called the same, and it is the same book the reader is reading.
- Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World, in which the titular character realizes she is the character in a book.
- Ain Gordon and David Gordon's Obie Award-winning play The Family Business, in which a character who is a playwright is asked what he is writing. "This," he replies, "I'm writing this."
- Robert A. Heinlein's The Cat Who Walks Through Walls considers the universe, or multiverse, as an author-manipulated object, including the plot of the book itself.
- Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book
- Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach uses self-referencing mathematical (formal language) and English (natural language) sentences, pictures (M.C. Escher's dragon for example), and music (Bach's fugues) to convey the concept and its recursive nature.
- Some Monty Python sketches involves characters consulting or referring to the script to determine what to do next. Their film Monty Python and the Holy Grail is extensively self-referencing, including numerous on-screen references to incidents in "Scene 24"; soundtrack music being repeatedly noticed and silenced by a character; a sotto voce admission that a castle is "only a model", and the like.
- Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author involves a collection of people that show up at a play rehearsal, claiming to be characters in search of a playwright to help them finish their story. The play plays itself out as a way of (possibly) doing just that.
- The Sesame Street book The Monster at the End of This Book references itself in the title, as well as throughout the story.
- Carly Simon's song "You're So Vain", which contains the lyrics, "You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you."
- In Miguel de Unamuno's novel Niebla ("Fog") the main character, Augusto Pérez, confronts Unamuno himself and has a quarrel with his author and inventor, reproaching Unamuno to have created him.
- Kurt Vonnegut refers to himself as the author in his novel Breakfast of Champions, where he has a conversation with himself about the writing of the novel itself. The character Kilgore Trout also engages in a conversation with the author.
- Several classic Warner Bros. Looney Tunes animated cartoons show characters going into a movie theatre, where they watch a version of the cartoon they're in.
- Robert Anton Wilson's Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy takes place in a universe where the books of the trilogy exist. Indeed, a character named Robert Wilson exists in the third book, and he is aware that he is a character in a book, having read the book and found himself described there.
- The 2006 film Stranger Than Fiction is about a character's knowledge that he is apparently living out a story written by an author, complete with narration which is audible to him. He eventually confronts the author, identifying himself as a character from one of her books.
See also
