Revisiting the deconstruction of narratology: Master tropes of narrative embedding and symmetry

Although significant studies on narratives embedding or framing (Jeffrey Wi lliam's Theory and the Novel; William Nelles's Frameworks) have come to lig ht in recent years, narratology can continue to benefit from a fuller analy sis that exploits the rhetorical theory of deconstruction and of the classi cal history of rhetoric. I show how narrative embedding, that I christen in this study 'para-antimetabole', can be understood as a subset of the rheto rical tropes antimetabole and chiasmus--both of which involve syntactical s tructures that get reversed at a linear or syntagmatic midpoint. Using Joha nnes Kepler's posthumously published allegory Somnium (1634)--a text about life on the moon--I then demonstrate how a frustrated desire fro symmetry c haracterizes these mutually related devices, the poetic deployment of which can undo the formalist and structuralist imposes in conventional narratolo gy.