In Yeats' poem "When You Are Old" he writes a line that goes "And nodding by the fire, take down this book". The term "this book" here is clearly referencing this very poem and I wonder if there is a word that specifically describes this technique of self-referral.
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3 Answers
Your question practically contains the answer. This technique is called self-reference. So the text is described as self-referential. This does not only occur in literature:
In the context of language, self-reference is used to denote a statement that refers to itself or its own referent. The most famous example of a self-referential sentence is the liar sentence:
- “This sentence is not true.”
Self-reference is often used in a broader context as well. For instance, a picture could be considered self-referential if it contains a copy of itself
and a piece of literature could be considered self-referential if it includes a reference to the work itself. (plato.stanford.edu)
About the use of self-reference in literature, Wikipedia explains:
Self-reference occurs in literature and film when an author refers to his or her own work in the context of the work itself. Examples include Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote, Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest and Twelfth Night.
As an aside, I will add that self-reference is closely related with metafiction:
Metafiction is a form of fiction which emphasises its own constructedness in a way that continually reminds the audience to be aware they are reading or viewing a fictional work. Metafiction is self-conscious about language, literary form, and story-telling, and works of metafiction directly or indirectly draw attention to their status as artifacts.
Sometimes this is associated with postmodernism, an intellectual movement characterized by (among other things) self-reference. You can of course read up on it in its entry on Wikipedia. The adjective postmodern may be what you're looking for, and the adjective form is often used specifically in connection with the self-referential aspect of postmodernism. See the definition from Oxford's Lexico:
Relating to or characterized by postmodernism, especially in being self-referential.
The term “self reflexive,” which seems to be synonymous with self referent, introduces a “mirror,” among other ideas, into the meaning of that for which you may be searching. Here is what the Oxford Reference (online) states about “self reflexive”:
A term applied to literary works that openly reflect upon their own processes of artful composition. Such self‐referentiality is frequently found in modern works of fiction that repeatedly refer to their own fictional status (see metafiction). The narrator in such works, and in their earlier equivalents such as Sterne's Tristram Shandy (1759–67), is sometimes called a ‘self‐conscious narrator’. Self‐reflexivity may also be found often in poetry. See also mise‐en‐abyme, romantic irony.
