Story within a story

A story told, staged or written within the work itself, which mirrors or comments on the main story.

In Purgatory

my body, frozen, at the mouth found the impetuous Archiano; and this one pushed it into the Arno, and loosed on my breast the cross I made of myself when the pain overcame me.

Dante narrates the journey, and within it the shade of Bonconte tells in the first person how the river carried off his body, a scene he tells so that Dante will repeat it among the living. It is the voice of the dead that brings to the living what only he knows.

Cantos V to VIII: Those who repented late, Bonconte of Montefeltro, to Dante, recounting the end of his own body

the widow: the good of others, for you, what will it be, if you forget your own?; to which he: now take comfort, for it is fitting that I fulfill my duty before departing: justice wills it and piety holds me back.

Cantos IX to XII: The gate and pride, The widow and Emperor Trajan, in the scene carved on the wall of the first ledge