English

Noun

diegesis ‎(plural diegeses)

1. (narratology) A narration or recitation.
   • 1985, Bill Nichols, Movies and Methods: An Anthology, page 504,

     A novel like Sterne′s Tristram Shandy, however, simply embeds a number of different diegeses on the play-within-a-play model.

   • 1991, Christopher Collins, The Poetics of the Mind's Eye: Literature and the Psychology of Imagination, page 4,

     The standard distinction between mimesis and diegesis is usually referred to as that between showing and telling, between iconic and indexical signs on the one hand and symbolic signs on the other, between drama and recitation.

   • 2004, Sarah Hatchuel, Shakespeare: From Stage to Screen, page 89,

     Extradiegetic music is a matter of pure convention. It constitutes an exception within Hollywood classical cinema, in which everything is to belong to diegesis in order to elaborate a fictive, realistic universe.

Related terms

• diegetic

See also

• mimesis