The Play within the Play

The thirty chapters of this innovative international study are all devoted to the topic of the play within the play . The authors explore the wide range of aesthetic, literary-theoretical and philosophical issues associated with this rhetorical device, not only in terms of its original meta-theatrical setting from the baroque idea of a theatrum mundi onward to contemporary examples of postmodern self-referential dramaturgy but also with regard to a variety of different generic applications, e.g.