Mise en abyme
artistic technique
In Western art history, mise en abyme (French pronunciation: [miz ɑ̃n‿abim]; also mise en abîme) is the technique of placing a copy of an image within itself, often in a way that suggests an infinitely recurring sequence. In film theory and literary theory, it refers to the story within a story technique.
The term is derived from heraldry, and means placed into abyss (exact middle of a shield). It was first appropriated for modern criticism by the French author André Gide. A common sense of the phrase is the visual experience of standing between two mirrors and seeing an infinite reproduction of one's image. Another is the Droste effect, in which a picture appears within itself, in a place where a similar picture would realistically be expected to appear. The Droste effect is named after the 1904 package of Droste cocoa, which depicts a woman holding a tray bearing a Droste cocoa package, which bears a smaller version of her image.
Heraldry
In the terminology of heraldry, the abyme or abisme is the center of a coat of arms. The term mise en abyme (also called inescutcheon) then meant “put/placed in the center”. It described a coat of arms that appears as a smaller shield in the center of a larger one.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1549285. The Library of Congress control number is sh2002001443. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1904.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mise en abyme” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.