The stage of Postmodern Allegory

[Terrance]

Bandwraith at aol.com wrote:
> 
>  Yes, and it probably is Lepton, although it might not
> be. But what about the reaction of M&D, for whom this
> encounter is surely staged? 


snip

This is pretty far out lit-crit, but I think it may be of interest. 

The discussion of self-referential forms in recent social systems
theory, in particular the treatment of cognition as paradox, can be
usefully turned toward matters of literary
analysis. Niklas Luhmann has refined systems-theoretical descriptions of
observation
that posit ineluctable paradox in the very cognitive move that brings
any observation
about—making a distinction.[1] Distinctions are simultaneously self- and
other-referential.  Because they denote themselves as well as whatever
it is they
indicate, their semantic effects cannot finally be stabilized, and these
paradoxes of
distinction infect any and all cognitions. However, certain narrative
operations and
rhetorical structures in discursive and dramatic fictions can be read as
rehearsing ways
of both eliciting and resolving these cognitive issues.  In particular,
the literary analogue of systemic self-reference and its productive
unfolding is the embedding of narrative and dramatic frames—stories
within stories or plays within plays.[2] The zigzag play and sequence of
embedding and embedded frames in literary forms reenact the
paradoxicality of observing systems. 

http://english.ttu.edu/clarke/FormofMetamorphosisIntertexts.html