frame tale
Story containing stories
A frame tale is a narrative structure in which an outer story contains one or more inner stories.
The frame provides context or justification for the embedded tales—a group of travelers telling stories to pass the time, or a narrator recounting what someone else told them.
Classic examples include *The Canterbury Tales* and *One Thousand and One Nights*.
Also called a frame narrative or frame story.
Medieval Middle Eastern folklore anthology
- One Thousand and One NightsClassic frame-tale collection
- ScheherazadeLegendary endless storyteller
- DecameronHundred tales in ten days
- HyperionTitan of celestial light
Cloud Atlas · Frankenstein · Wuthering Heights · Chaucer · Boccaccio · pilgrimage
Contained within another
- embeddedSet firmly within something
- encapsulationSurrounding on all sides
- wrapperOuter protective layer
- envelopeFolded paper enclosure
recursive · layered · interlocking · Chinese boxes · matryoshka · interlocutor · storyteller · narrator
Introductory literary section
- epilogueConcluding literary section
- prefaceIntroductory book section
- preamblePreliminary statement before content
- expositionSystematic explanatory presentation
vignette · subplot · interweaving · juxtaposition · tapestry · mosaic · omnibus · compilation
Arabian Nights
Medieval Middle Eastern folklore anthology
- One Thousand and One NightsClassic frame-tale collection
- ScheherazadeLegendary endless storyteller
- DecameronHundred tales in ten days
Hyperion · Cloud Atlas · Frankenstein · Wuthering Heights · Chaucer · Boccaccio · pilgrimage
nested
Contained within another
- embeddedSet firmly within something
- encapsulationSurrounding on all sides
- wrapperOuter protective layer
envelope · recursive · layered · interlocking · Chinese boxes · matryoshka · interlocutor · storyteller · narrator · transition
prologue
Introductory literary section
- epilogueConcluding literary section
- prefaceIntroductory book section
- preamblePreliminary statement before content
exposition · vignette · subplot · interweaving · juxtaposition · tapestry · mosaic · omnibus · compilation · serial
- folktalesfolktales, animal fables, folktale, moral fables, fable
- Arabian NightsAladdin, Scheherazade, Ali Baba, Arabian Nights, Sinbad
- framing deviceswraparound, bookends
- medieval writingschronicle, hagiography, treatise, chronicles, bestiary
- Russian LiteratureTolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Pushkin, Nabokov
- ChaucerGeoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury, pilgrims, Wife of Bath, Chaucerian
frame talenon-fiction
Writing about real things
reality · documentary · reportage · testimony · journalism
frame, tale, frames, framed, framing, framer, framers, framework, frameworks