In Genette’s classic definition, metalepsis is an intrusion of one diegetic level into another. The question of who is narrating, who can narrate, who is a reliable narrator and at what point we are in the outermost diegetic level that we fondly or hopefully think of as reality has become a serious one.

There once was a man from NantucketWhose life was a sham. It was muck. ItWas froth of the seaWhere he'd tried to be free

Are we all so “bovarisés” that we cannot understand our lives without reconstructing the smallest “episode” into a short story?