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.