frame story
Story within story
A frame story is a narrative structure in which an outer story contains one or more inner stories.
The outer narrative provides context or justification for the tales within—a traveler recounting adventures, a group exchanging stories to pass time. *The Canterbury Tales* and *One Thousand and One Nights* are classic examples.
The frame may be minimal scaffolding or a rich narrative in its own right.
- metafictionLiterature aware of itself
- flashbackInvoluntary past memory
- ScheherazadeLegendary endless storyteller
- storytellingRecounting events aloud
- talesSpoken or written narratives
Decameron · oral tradition · plot · exposition · background · nested · climax · Boccaccio · once upon a time · reveal · anthology · Canterbury Tales · intertextuality · literary device · backstory · trope · outer · narrator
- storytellingstorytelling, tale, narrative, narrator, reading aloud
- talestale, funny stories, tall tales, yarns, folk tale
- literary elementsplot, character, setting, theme, narrator
- Arabian NightsAladdin, Scheherazade, Ali Baba, Arabian Nights, Sinbad
- plotplot, storyline, subplot, climax, narrative
- plot devicesMacGuffin, red herring, plot twist, flashback, foreshadowing