In this paper I will take a closer look at some classification problems of two so called paradoxical narrative devices according to the typology used by the interdisciplinary centre for Narratology from Hamburg (especially Sabine Lang and Klaus Meyer-Minnemann). The first of these devices, the narrative metalepsis, has been the object of a growing theoretical interest the last few years, while the second one, the narrative syllepsis, has been more or less ignored by today's theorists. Still, as it appears in some of the attempts to classify narrative metalepsis in the volume Métalepses. Entorses au pacte de la représentation, edited by John Pier and Jean-Marie Schaeffer in 2005, a distinction between the two concepts is not unnecessary. Monika Fludernik's  concept of "rhetorical metalepsis" should for instance rather be considered as a case of syllepsis, something that would undoubtedly underscore its framebreaking effect. The same applies to what Dorrit Cohn calls discursive metalepsis, which is held in quite low esteem by her because of its being less audacious than ontological metalepsis.

Using examples from other media - especially film - I will also consider the classification of narrative metalepses as ascending, descending and horizontal. Sonja Klimek (2009 and 2011) considers horizontal metalepsis incompatible with Genette's original definition of the term, since the frontier between the world of representation and the world of what is represented is not transgressed in such cases. A transmedial perspective would elucidate us when it comes to this problem, which is principally caused by logocentrism. I will also show examples which would allow me to investigate the possibility to apply the same typology to syllepsis, especially when it comes to horizontal transgressions.