Last week we continued our work with literary devices working on flashback and juxtaposition. We took a little bit of time talking about extended flashback novels like The Orphan’s Tale which is also a frame story. So we’ll start with frame story today.

What is a frame story?

There’s a great video and full definition from the Oregon State University’s English department here. A frame story is a story-within-a-story – think Hamlet and the play happening inside the play, or The Princess Bride where the grandfather is reading to the grandson and over the course of the experience, the grandson changes his perspective on the story – “Maybe you could come back and read it again to me tomorrow?”

The Canterbury Tales may be the most famous of these. It’s Chaucer’s masterpiece that brings travelers together and gets them each to tell a different story so we have the bigger story – the journey and the travelers – and within it, each of the tales, ranging from moral to baudy.

Full show notes out on the blog here.