metaleptic

Metalepsis is a figure of speech and a narrative technique in which boundaries between levels of discourse or reality are crossed. It often joins story-worlds with their framing narration, or fiction with the reader, producing self-referential or destabilizing effects. Though related to metafiction, metalepsis specifically concerns crossing narrative levels rather than merely commenting on them.

Forms include external metalepsis (real-world elements intruding into a narrative) and internal metalepsis (one level within the story intruding on another). Common methods are direct address to the reader, a character acknowledging the text’s fictionality, or a protagonist crossing into another narrative level. The effect is a disruption of expectations about authority, reality, and authorship.

Classic literary examples include Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, which often interrupts the narrative to discuss its construction, and Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler, which alternates between the reader’s quest and embedded novels. In film and popular culture, metalepsis appears when a character breaks the fourth wall or when a film character steps into the real world, as in The Purple Rose of Cairo.

The term derives from Greek meta (beyond) and lalein (to speak). In modern narratology, metalepsis is used to analyze how fiction crosses narrative boundaries, producing effects such as paradox, irony, or reflection on representation. It is a specialized concept within the study of narrative and is often discussed alongside metafiction and other self-referential devices.