'Mirrors and fatherhood': The mise-en-abime structure in the works of Jorge Luis Borges, Macedonio Fernandez and Miguel de Unamuno

This dissertation explores the play of the mise-en-abime structure in the works of Jorge Luis Borges, Miguel de Unamuno, and Macedonio Fernandez within the larger context of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century novel and literary theory. Taking as my point of departure Borges's essay "Magias parciales del Quijote ," where he inquires into the disquieting nature of texts-within-texts, maps-within maps or plays-within-plays, I examine how Borges, Macedonio and Unamuno foreground the mise-en-abime structure and its vertiginous effects as the centerpiece of their reaction to or provocation against "realism." In addressing this, I focus on three issues: (1) the way the mise-en-abime structure appeals to the figure of the reader (both physical and metaphorical) in order to provoke inquiries into and subvert representational practices grounded upon verisimilitude, (2) the relationship between mise-en-abime structures and reproduction, both biological and textual, and (3) the emergence of the mise-en-abime as a key device in fiction that attempts to be provocative or subversive through a hyperbolization of reproduction.