Frame story
A frame story (also known as a frame tale, frame narrative, sandwich narrative, or intercalation) is a
.Origins
Some of the earliest frame stories are from ancient Egypt, including one in the
The use of a frame story in which a single narrative is set in the context of the telling of a story is also a technique with a long history, dating back at least to the beginning section of Homer's Odyssey, in which the narrator Odysseus tells of his wandering in the court of King Alcinous.[2][9]
A set of stories
A frame story is a
A typical frame story is
Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein has multiple framed narratives. In the book, Robert Walton writes letters to his sister, describing the story told to him by the scientist Victor Frankenstein. Frankenstein's story contains the monster's story, and its story even briefly contains the tale of a family whom he had been observing.[2][13]
Frame stories have appeared in
Sometimes, as in Washington Irving's Sketch Book, which contains "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle" among others, the conceit is that the author of the book is not the real author but a fictional character, in this case a man named Crayon. Here the frame includes the world of the imagined Crayon, his stories, and the reader who is assumed to play along and "know" who Crayon is.[15]
Single story
When there is a single story, the frame story is used for other purposes – chiefly to position the reader's attitude toward the tale. This can be done in a variety of ways.
Casting doubt on the narrator
A common reason to frame a single story is to draw attention to the narrator's unreliability. By explicitly making the narrator a character within the frame story, the writer distances him or herself from the narrator. The writer may characterize the narrator to cast doubt on the narrator's truthfulness, as when in P. G. Wodehouse's stories of Mr. Mulliner, Mulliner is made a fly fisherman, a person who is expected to tell tales of unbelievably large fish.[citation needed] The movie Amadeus is framed as a story that an old Antonio Salieri tells to a young priest, because the movie is based more on stories Salieri told about Mozart than on historical fact.[16]
Procatalepsis
Another use is a form of procatalepsis, where the writer puts the readers' possible reactions to the story in the characters listening to it. In The Princess Bride the frame of a grandfather reading the story to his reluctant grandson puts the cynical reaction a viewer might have to the romantic fairytale into the story in the grandson's persona, and helps defuse it. This is the use when the frame tells a story that lacks a strong narrative hook in its opening; the narrator can engage the reader's interest by telling the story to answer the curiosity of his listeners, or by warning them that the story began in an ordinary seeming way, but they must follow it to understand later actions, thereby identifying the reader's wondering whether the story is worth reading to the listeners'.[17] Such an approach was used, too, by Edith Wharton in her novella Ethan Frome, in which a nameless narrator hears from many characters in the town of Starkfield about the main character Ethan's story.[18]
Dream vision
A specialized form of the frame is a
Still, even as the story proceeds realistically, the dream frame casts doubt on the events. In the book
Use
To be a frame narrative, the story must act primarily as an occasion for the telling of other stories. For example, Odysseus narrates much of the Odyssey to the Phaeacians, but, even though this recollection forms a great part of the poem, the events after and before the interpolated recollection are of greater interest than the memory.[2]
A film that plays with frame narrative is the 1994 Forrest Gump. Most of it is narrated by Forrest to various companions on the bus-stop bench. However, in the last fifth or so of the film, Forrest gets up and leaves the bench, and we follow him as he meets with Jenny and her son. This final segment suddenly has no narrator unlike the rest of the film that came before it, but is instead told through Forrest and Jenny's dialogues.[23]
This approach is also demonstrated in the 2008 film
Compared to reprise
In musical sonata form or rondo, a reprised theme occurs at the beginning and end of the work, or returns periodically.[25] A framing device may take the form of a recurrent element at the beginning and end of the narrative. For example, a story may begin with a character visiting a park under one set of circumstances, then returning at the end to the same park under a different set of circumstances, having undergone a change that allows him or her to see the park in a new light.[26]
A framing device might simply be a defining image of the narrative or art that is used at the beginning and end of the work, as in the film Chariots of Fire which begins and ends with the characters running along a beach, accompanied at both times by the movie's famous theme music. This scene, although chronologically in the middle of the film and unimportant to the straightforward plot, serves to convey a defining emotion and tone that sets the context for the main story.[27]
See also
- Fan fiction – Type of fiction created by fans of the original subject
- Fictional universe – Self-consistent fictional setting with elements that may differ from the real world
- Parallel novel – Pastiche novel with in universe continuity
- Spin-off (media) – Narrative work derived from existing works
References
- ^ "What is a Frame Story? Oregon State Guide to Literary Terms". College of Liberal Arts. 6 September 2020. Retrieved 30 June 2021.
- ^ a b c d e f "Frame Story - Examples and Definition of Frame Story". Literary Devices. 11 April 2016. Retrieved 30 June 2021.
- ^ a b c "The Frame Narrative". Harvard University. Retrieved 30 June 2021.
- ISBN 9780312198695.
- ISBN 9789004323070.
- ISBN 3-925270-01-9.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - ^ a b Hoh, Anchi (26 October 2017). "A Thousand and One Nights: Arabian Story-telling in World Literature". Library of Congress. Retrieved 7 May 2021.
- ^ Coulton, George Gordon (1908). Chaucer and His England. Putnam. p. 126.
- JSTOR 1773187.
- ^ Hayward, Susan (2006). "Mise-en-abime". Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts (third ed.). Routledge. pp. 252–253.
- JSTOR 3297921.
- ISBN 978-1136173813.
- ^ Shelley, Mary Godwin. "Frankenstein". Gutenberg. Retrieved 24 December 2020.
- ISBN 978-0-7566-6742-9.
- ^ Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Wolf's Mount. 2013. p. 11, notes by editor. GGKEY:GH4HD41JQT1.
- JSTOR 26844631.
- ^ Martinelli, Marissa (21 November 2018). "The Princess Bride You Don't Know". Slate. Retrieved 30 June 2021.
- S2CID 170215022.
- ISBN 978-0-007-10504-5.
- S2CID 163488337.
- ^ Bertsch, Janet (August 2000). The Whole Story Language, Narrative and Salvation in Bunyan, Defoe, Grimmelshausen and Schnabel (PDF). University College London, PhD Thesis. pp. 217–218.
- ISBN 0-8057-0950-9.
- ^ "A Frame Story". Wholesale Frame Company. 5 March 2019. Retrieved 30 June 2021.
- ^ Miguel, Andres (14 January 2009). ""Slumdog Millionaire" is well done but a bit hollow". The Pitt News. Retrieved 30 June 2021.
- OCLC 54752753.
- ISBN 978-0-8386-4086-9.
- ^ "Chariots of Fire: The flame of conviction". David Puttnam. Retrieved 30 June 2021.