Analepses

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The act of recalling or recounting past events in a narrative or analysis
2. A literary device involving the retrospective narration of events, often used for emphasis or depth
3. Referring to the technique of flashbacks that enrich a story by providing background and context through previous occurrences

Etymology: "Analepses" is simply the plural of "analepsis," a noun that comes from Ancient Greek "análēpsis," meaning "a taking up" or "a receiving back." The Greek word was built from "aná," meaning "up" or "again," and "lambánein," meaning "to take," so its literal sense is a taking back up, which is the same idea behind a story pausing to pick up an earlier moment. In modern English the term is used by literary critics and narrative theorists for a scene that interrupts the chronological order of a story to show something that happened earlier. The Greek sense of recovering or resuming was a neutral one, so the shift toward looking backward in time is the key development: the word moved from the physical act of taking something up again to a technical label for a narrative device that takes the reader back into the past.