Disturbing Frames

First discussed in ancient legal discourse (by Hermagoras), metalepsis passed into the domain of rhetoric, where it was linked with synonymy (involving incongruous use of a synonym) as well as metonymy (involving a temporal transfer that expresses the precedent by the consequent or vice versa). It became narratologically relevant thanks to Gérard Genette (1980 [1972]: 234–35), who characterized it in Narrative Discourse as ‘‘any intrusion by the extradiegetic narrator or narratee into the diegetic universe (or by the diegetic characters into a metadiegetic universe, etc.) or the inverse.’’ Genette provided several illustrations of the phenomenon. For example, Denis Diderot executes a move akin to what the classics dubbed ‘‘author’s metalepsis’ ’ (when the author brings about the effects she or he describes: ‘‘Virgil has Dido die in the 4th Book of the Aeneid ’’). Addressing the reader in Jacques le fataliste, he says: ‘‘If it gives you pleasure, let us set the peasant girl back in the saddle behind her escort, let us let them go and let us come back to our two travelers.’ ’ Writing as if narrating and narrated were contempo-raneous, Balzac performs a (barely) transgressive metaleptic maneuver in the following passage of Illusions perdues: ‘‘While the venerable churchman climbs the ramps of Angoulême, it is not useless to explain [the network of interests into which he was going to set foot].’ ’ Far more clearly transgres-I thank Meir Sternberg for his helpful comments