Prolepsis is a narrative resource linked to events that will happen in the future.
Prolepsis is a concept that derives from the Greek language. The term is used in the field of rhetoric , philosophy and cinema to refer to the anticipation of certain issues.
Prolepsis can be the narrative resource that is used to anticipate a statement or to pause in the narrative present and narrate an event that takes place in the future .
Examples of prolepsis
For example: “No one will come to support me when I file a complaint, but I must tell what is happening in this city.” In this case, the speaker's prolepsis anticipates an eventual lack of support.
Another example of prolepsis in a narrative is the following: “The young man was witnessing a scene that he would remember for the rest of his life, even on afternoons of playing with his grandchildren.” As you can see, the present tense of the expression reveals that there is a young man observing a scene; prolepsis consists of narrating that said observation will be remembered in the future by the same person.
The Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez , in works such as “Chronicle of a Death Foretold” and “One Hundred Years of Solitude” , has made use of this resource.
The Colombian Gabriel García Márquez resorted to prolepsis in different works.
The resource in the cinema
In cinema, the prolepsis technique (which can also be mentioned as flashforward ) is carried out based on a modification of the chronological sequence of the narrative. The viewer watching the film sees how, abruptly, the action jumps to the future. An example appears when a character is taking off his clothes to enter a river to swim and, suddenly, we see that he is in the water and is attacked by a shark. After this flashforward, the narrative returns to the present and the character in question is just entering the river. Prolepsis, in this case, anticipated what will happen when the subject is swimming.
In this second meaning, prolepsis belongs to anachrony , a resource that serves to alter the chronological order of events in a story . In other words, its use generates a temporal sequence that does not respond to logic . The opposite concept to prolepsis is analepsis , also known as flashback , which consists of narrating events from the past to offer the audience a broader context in which to place the story and the characters. The use of the latter is much more frequent than analepsis.
Uses of prolepsis
One of the biggest challenges that prolepsis presents is keeping the audience interested in the work despite having revealed what will happen in the future. It is up to the ability of each author to ensure that the lack of knowledge of other factors, such as the steps that the protagonist must take to get from the present to that future, is sufficient so that the tension or the desire to move forward is not diminished. .
On the other hand, it is also true that prolepsis is sometimes used to anticipate events of little importance, and in this case there is no risk of losing the public's interest . As with any other resource, the secret to its effectiveness is not to use it too much, but to always seek to generate surprise in the audience and readers.
Just as stories based on real events, such as the famous film " Titanic " directed by James Cameron, do not generate disinterest simply because they have a predictable ending, prolepsis can be used to show part of the end of a work in the first chapter , to catch the reader due to the lack of information regarding the events that will unfold until reaching that scene . This is very common in police works.