Reflexivity in Film and Literature: From Don Quixote to Jean-Luc Godard

Reflexivity refers to those moments in fiction and film when the work suddenly calls attention to itself as a fictional construct. For example, in literature a character might suddenly step out of the story and address the reader. This study of reflexivity in film and literature pays special attention to "Don Quixote", one of the first such examples of reflexivity in the novel, and to Jean-Luc Godard and the nouvelle vague in cinema, where self-reflection prevailed. It examines the rise of modernism, the complicity of the reader-spectator in creating illusion and the production process in film. The discussion of film includes "Rear Window", "Tom Jones" and "The French Lieutenant's Woman".