Mise en abyme

Mise en abyme is a French phrase that means “put in the abyss”. In art and literature, it is when something is repeated over and over again. For example, if you had a picture of a person looking in a mirror, and in that mirror was a reflection of that person looking back at themselves, that’s an example of mise en abyme. It’s like having a never-ending set of mirrors, filled with reflections of the same person or object, gradually shrinking in size. It’s like looking into an abyss.