Sort each example by whether it is an ANALEPSIS or a PROLEPSIS.
Groups: Analepsis · Prolepsis
- Chapter two returns to the narrator's schooldays
- The opening line announces the hero's death
- A narrator remarks that the reader will learn the truth later
- "He would not see the city again for thirty years"
- A witness statement fills in the night of the murder
- Odysseus recounts his wanderings to the Phaeacians
Hints
- One looks back, the other forward.
- Any statement about what will happen later is a prolepsis, however brief.
Show the answer
Analepsis: Chapter two returns to the narrator's schooldays, Odysseus recounts his wanderings to the Phaeacians, A witness statement fills in the night of the murder
Prolepsis: "He would not see the city again for thirty years", A narrator remarks that the reader will learn the truth later, The opening line announces the hero's death
Prolepsis is rarer and more conspicuous than analepsis, because announcing an outcome trades suspense for something else, usually irony, or the sense of a fate already fixed. García Márquez's famous opening does exactly this, telling you about the firing squad on the first line and spending the novel getting there.
Practise Narratology I. Story, Discourse and Order
The app has 3 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Literature I is free to start.
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