Analepsis is a literary and narratological device where the narrative evokes an event that occurred prior to the current point in the story <a href="#book-info_2351376">(Adriana Gordejuela et al., 2021)</a>. Commonly known as a flashback, it involves a retrospective shift in time to provide essential background information or context <a href="#book-info_2351376">(Adriana Gordejuela et al., 2021)</a>. In formal terms, it is the narration of a past event at a point later than its chronological place within the story's sequence <a href="#book-info_2351376">(Adriana Gordejuela et al., 2021)</a>.

The mechanism of analepsis involves a literal return to an earlier event to provide additional details about characters or plot points <a href="#book-info_1621747">(Linden Peach et al., 2018)</a>. This technique allows authors to reveal information that explains current developments or introduces significant objects, such as tokens of identity <a href="#book-info_2059504">(Heather O'Donoghue et al., 2021)</a>. While deeply rooted in Western literature, the device is also central to cinema, where it represents temporal occurrences anterior to the images that preceded them <a href="#book-info_2351376">(Adriana Gordejuela et al., 2021)</a>.

Analepsis is often contrasted with prolepsis, which narrates future events; occasionally, a prolepsis can frame the majority of a narrative as an analepsis <a href="#book-info_1621747">(Linden Peach et al., 2018)</a>. A primary challenge in using analepsis is ensuring it appears as a deliberate strategy rather than authorial oversight <a href="#book-info_2059504">(Heather O'Donoghue et al., 2021)</a>. If an analeptic revelation seems implausible or is introduced without sufficient explanation, it may fail to convince the reader of its necessity within the plot <a href="#book-info_2059504">(Heather O'Donoghue et al., 2021)</a>.

2 Flashbacks in film

Indeed, flashbacks were not invented by film but have been employed in (Western) literature since its origins (cf., for instance, Genette, 1972, pp. 79–80; De Jong, 2014, pp. 135–137). Narratology uses the term analepsis to refer to these narrative retrospections, which Genette (1972, p. 82) defines as “any a posteriori evocation of an event previous to the point of the story in which we find ourselves”. 1 In other words, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) (Analepsis, n.d.), analepsis is “[a] literary device in narrative, in which a past event is narrated at a point later than its chronological place in a story”. 1 The original definition is in French: “[T]oute évocation après coup d’un événement antérieur au point de l’histoire où l’on se trouve”. The translation is mine. Maureen Turim, in an extended study of film flashbacks (the most comprehensive to date), offers a similar definition of the cinematic device: “a flashback is simply an image or a filmic segment that is understood as representing temporal occurrences anterior to those in the images that preceded it” (Turim, 1989, p. 1). But, beyond the explanation of the term (which, in fact, matches the classical concept of analepsis), what is really interesting about Turim’s contribution is her review of the etymology of the term flashback. Around the turn of the 20th century, the word flash was used to refer not only to a brief burst of light but also to talk about explosions and the ignition of engines as well as to refer to a particular kind of glance. And so, Turim argues (1989, p. 3), “[t]his combination of brief instances of light, of explosive power, and of the change in direction and quality of a glance are appropriate antecedents to the term flashback in its cinematic sense”

Chapter Four Organizing a Narrative

The narrative literally returns to an earlier event. An analepsis may provide additional information about an event occurring or a character involved at the point of the narrative when the analepsis is introduced. However, more unusually, it may provide information about events and characters from another part of the narrative. A prolepsis is the narration of an event at a point in the narrative before earlier events have been narrated. However, the process of foreshadowing can be subtler than this. An example of a prolepsis occurs, for example, at the beginning of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance, a nineteenth-century American novel in which Zenobia’s death, which ends the promise of her young life is anticipated by the way a cold wind kills the spring buds. The cold wind, then, is an example of prolepsis. Foreshadowing is a more common form of prolepsis than the actual narration of an event ‘from the future’. We normally read a narrative in order to discover what will happen next. A prolepsis changes our motivation in reading to ‘how did it happen?’ In the film Woman in Red we know that the main character is going to end up on a window ledge. The whole film is about how he got there. In a sense the prolepsis turns most of the film into an analepsis. The prolepsis narrates a future for the viewer which is a past for the main character. In literature, narratives which involve prolepsis are normally first person narratives

3 The management of narrative time Order

Displacing both analepsis and prolepsis on to the characters also adds to our understanding of their natures and dispositions. But the crucial difference between the two is that prolepsis in narrative is always a proactive and considered strategy – it doesn’t come about by accident. The risk with analepsis is that it can be hard to distinguish analepsis for literary effect from simple authorial oversight: something the narrator should have revealed earlier, or more clearly. This is easier to illustrate than to describe. In Laxdœla saga, when Óláfr pái travels to Ireland to meet his royal grandfather, his mother Melkorka gives him a ‘fingrgull mikit’ (large gold ring) which she describes as having been given to her by her father as a teething gift. 173 In Ireland, that ring plays a major part in identifying Óláfr as the genuine grandson of Mýrkjartan. As a token of identity, it resembles a common enough trope in folklore and romance literature, for instance. 174 And yet it is not at all plausible that Melkorka could have kept possession of the ring all through her abduction and slavery. When Höskuldr buys her, she is destitute, and poorly dressed. If the saga author produces the token analeptically, just in time for Óláfr’s trip to Ireland to seek out his roots, some explanation of how Melkorka managed to keep it hidden is necessary for the analepsis to be convincing. In Njáls saga, in another implausible analepsis, Gunnarr acts out Njáll’s plan for him to reclaim his kinswoman Unnr’s dowry from her ex-husband Hrútr, involving disguising himself as a pedlar, as I discussed earlier in this chapter. Afterwards, when the household is asleep, Gunnarr and his men sneak out of Hrútr’s farmhouse and ride away. But the same night, Hrútr’s half-brother Höskuldr dreams that Hrútr’s farm was visited by a bear, and this leads him to suspect a trick. He questions his household about a tall man they had seen earlier in the day

Flashbacks in Film examines film flashback as a rich multimodal narrative device, analyzing the cognitive underpinnings of film flashbacks and the mechanisms that lead viewers to successfully comprehend them.Combining a cognitive film theory approach with the theoretical framework proposed by blending theory, which claims that human beings' general ability for conceptual integration underlies most of our daily activities, this book argues that flashbacks make sense to the viewer, as they are specifically designed for the viewer's cognitive understanding. Through a mixture of analysis and dozens of case studies, this book demonstrates that successful film flashbacks appeal to the spectator's natural perceptual and cognitive abilities, which spectators exercise daily.This book will serve as a valuable resource for scholars interested in film studies, media studies, and cognitive linguistics.

A Cognitive and Multimodal Analysis

Flashbacks in Film

English as a Creative Art is different from previous works on either creative writing or contemporary literary criticism. It is the first book to bring the two together, demonstrating how concepts drawn from literary theory can be used to enable students to develop critical insights into their own writing. Conversely, it also aims to help students understand contemporary critical concepts and become more incisive thinkers through creative work.

Literacy Concepts Linked to Creative Writing

English as a Creative Art

Representative of a unique literary genre and composed in the 13th and 14th centuries, the Icelandic Family Sagas rank among some of the world's greatest literature. Here, Heather O'Donoghue skilfully examines the notions of time and the singular textual voice of the Sagas, offering a fresh perspective on the foundational texts of Old Norse and medieval Icelandic heritage. With a conspicuous absence of giants, dragons, and fairy tale magic, these sagas reflect a real-world society in transition, grappling with major new challenges of identity and development. As this book reveals, the stance of the narrator and the role of time – from the representation of external time passing to the audience's experience of moving through a narrative – are crucial to these stories. As such, Narrative in the Icelandic Family Saga draws on modern narratological theory to explore the ways in which saga authors maintain the urgency and complexity of their material, handle the narrative and chronological line, and offer perceptive insights into saga society. In doing so, O'Donoghue presents a new poetics of family sagas and redefines the literary rhetoric of saga narratives.

Analepsis

What Is Analepsis?

Core Mechanism and Narrative Function

Your digital library for Analepsis and Literature

Comparative Frameworks and Implementation Risks

Related key terms