Flashback (narrative)
A narrative device that depicts events from an earlier time.
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A flashback, or analepsis, is a narrative technique that interrupts the chronological flow of a story to depict an earlier event. It is used to provide crucial backstory, develop characters, or add structural coherence. The opposite device, the flashforward or prolepsis, reveals future events.
Notable examples
Early instances of analepsis appear in the Ramayana and Mahabharata, where the main story is told through a later frame story. Another early use occurs in the Arabian Nights tale "The Three Apples," which opens with a dead body and later uses flashbacks to reveal the murderer's motives. Several other Arabian Nights stories, including "Sinbad the Sailor" and "The City of Brass," also employ flashbacks.
Author Ford Madox Ford and poet, author, historian and mythologist Robert Graves made extensive use of analepsis. Thornton Wilder's 1927 book The Bridge of San Luis Rey is considered a progenitor of the modern disaster epic, using flashbacks to explore the lives of victims connected by a single disaster. Elie Wiesel's Night also uses analepsis.
In Slaughterhouse-Five, the narrative jumps non-chronologically through time, creating no single present timeline. Os Lusíadas begins with the voyage arriving in Africa but flashes back to the departure from Portugal. The Harry Potter series features a magical Pensieve that allows characters to directly experience flashbacks and provide commentary.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Flashback (narrative) (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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