Framing device
Encyclopedia
The term framing device refers to the usage of the same single action, scene, event, setting, or any element of significance at both the beginning and end of an artistic, musical, or literary work. The repeated element thus creates a ‘frame’ within which the main body of work can develop.
The earliest example of this device is the frame story
. Familiar examples of this include the Arabian Nights where Scheherazade
must narrate stories in order to prevent her execution, Boccaccio
's Decameron
where young people run away from Florence to avoid the plague pass the time telling stories
, and Chaucer
's Canterbury Tales
in which the host at the inn charges the travellers with each providing a tale.
A simple framing device often takes the form of a crucial- often the climactic- scene that appears at the beginning of the work, then reappears later on in the story, usually at the end or close to the end. Here, this device is most often intended to create suspense or to pique the audience’s interest.
Most commonly, the first time the scene appears it is out of the true chronology
of the story, the second time it appears in its rightful place and the meaning of the scene is made clear. An example of this is the 2006 film The Illusionist which begins with a scene involving the arrest of the main character, which is then explained close to the end of the film. Many other films, books and television episodes use a simple framing device in this manner.
The reverse of this may also occur if an event occurs at the beginning of a story remains unexplained to the audience and the character(s) involved until the end of the story where it may be resolved in flashback
. This occurs in the film The Bourne Identity
where the main character’s amnesia prevents him from understanding the initial events. The earliest example of this technique was used in the Arabian Nights tale "The Three Apples", which begins with the discovery of a young woman's dead body; after the murderer later reveals himself, he narrates his reasons for the murder as a flashback of events leading up to the discovery of her dead body at the beginning of the story.
A framing device is also used in the 1997 disaster
romance film
Titanic
, where Old Rose tells a modern day treasure hunter
her story of love and loss on the RMS Titanic.
A framing device of this kind may also be a scene or event that is slowly explained over the course of the main narrative. An example of this can be seen in the 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire
(adapted from the 2005 novel Q & A), where the protagonist Jamal comes close to winning Kaun Banega Crorepati
(the India
n version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
) and is then accused of cheating. The film begins with an interrogation at a police station serving as a framing device, where Jamal narrates how he answered the questions correctly by relating them to flashbacks of his own life.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle often structured his detective stories in frames. The crime was reported, Sherlock Holmes
solved the crime, and then he explained the solution to Dr. Watson. Thus the reader gets three looks at the same event.
Framing devices may also take the form of a recurrent element that appears at the beginning and the end of the narrative. For example, a story may begin with a character visiting a park under one set of circumstances, then returning at the end to the same park under a different set of circumstances, having undergone a change that allows him or her to see the park in a new light.
A framing device might also simply be a defining image of the narrative or art that is used at the beginning and end of the work. An example of this is in the film Chariots of Fire
which begins and ends with the characters running along a beach, accompanied at both times by the movie’s famous theme music. This scene, although chronologically occurring in the middle of the film and unimportant to the straightforward plot, serves to convey a defining emotion and tone that sets the context for the main story.
At the beginning of the 1992 movie Far and Away
, the father "dies" and then returns to life briefly. The same thing happens in Vanilla Sky
where Tom Cruise's character "dies" and then comes back to life.
In the 2010 film The Social Network
, Mark Zuckerberg
testifies in the deposition
of two Facebook
-related lawsuits. The framing device gives perspective and narration to the flashback storyline beginning in 2003.
or rondo
, a theme occurs at the beginning and end of the work, or returns periodically. This could most simply be a recurrence or restatement of a melody or song. For example, the Beatles
song "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
" works as a framing device for their album of the same name
, appearing at the beginning and end of the album. Other albums with similar devices include Paul McCartney & Wings
' Band on the Run
, the recurring heartbeats in Pink Floyd
's album The Dark Side of the Moon
and Wish You Were Here ("Shine On You Crazy Diamond
"), Supertramp
's Crime of the Century (the harmonica riff at the beginning of "School" is reprised at the end of the title track), and Spirit
's Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus
("You have the world at your fingertips/No one can make it better than you"). Another is Junior Senior's 'D-D-D-Don't Stop The Beat' album which ends with a reprise of the first notes from the opening track. The closing track of Genesis
' Selling England by the Pound
is a reprise of the opening track "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight
."
A reprise may be expressed in narrative: at the beginning and the end of the movie The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
, Clint Eastwood
's character shoots the noose to save his partner from hanging.
The earliest example of this device is the frame story
Frame story
A frame story is a literary technique that sometimes serves as a companion piece to a story within a story, whereby an introductory or main narrative is presented, at least in part, for the purpose of setting the stage either for a more emphasized second narrative or for a set of shorter stories...
. Familiar examples of this include the Arabian Nights where Scheherazade
Scheherazade
Scheherazade , sometimes Scheherazadea, Persian transliteration Shahrazad or Shahrzād is a legendary Persian queen and the storyteller of One Thousand and One Nights.-Narration :...
must narrate stories in order to prevent her execution, Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular...
's Decameron
The Decameron
The Decameron, also called Prince Galehaut is a 14th-century medieval allegory by Giovanni Boccaccio, told as a frame story encompassing 100 tales by ten young people....
where young people run away from Florence to avoid the plague pass the time telling stories
Story within a story
A story within a story, also rendered story-within-a-story, is a literary device in which one narrative is presented during the action of another narrative. Mise en abyme is the French term for a similar literary device...
, and Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
's Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at...
in which the host at the inn charges the travellers with each providing a tale.
Use in narrative
Framing devices are very common in storytelling. They are often employed to hold a story together and provide context, to create interest, to provide resolution and/or to move a story along. They are sometimes set apart from the main narrative by a change in story telling technique or tone.A simple framing device often takes the form of a crucial- often the climactic- scene that appears at the beginning of the work, then reappears later on in the story, usually at the end or close to the end. Here, this device is most often intended to create suspense or to pique the audience’s interest.
Most commonly, the first time the scene appears it is out of the true chronology
Chronology
Chronology is the science of arranging events in their order of occurrence in time, such as the use of a timeline or sequence of events. It is also "the determination of the actual temporal sequence of past events".Chronology is part of periodization...
of the story, the second time it appears in its rightful place and the meaning of the scene is made clear. An example of this is the 2006 film The Illusionist which begins with a scene involving the arrest of the main character, which is then explained close to the end of the film. Many other films, books and television episodes use a simple framing device in this manner.
The reverse of this may also occur if an event occurs at the beginning of a story remains unexplained to the audience and the character(s) involved until the end of the story where it may be resolved in flashback
Flashback (narrative)
Flashback is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story’s primary sequence of events or to fill in crucial backstory...
. This occurs in the film The Bourne Identity
The Bourne Identity (2002 film)
The Bourne Identity is a 2002 American spy film loosely based on Robert Ludlum's novel of the same name. It stars Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, an amnesiac attempting to discover his true identity amidst a clandestine conspiracy within the Central Intelligence Agency . The film also stars Franka...
where the main character’s amnesia prevents him from understanding the initial events. The earliest example of this technique was used in the Arabian Nights tale "The Three Apples", which begins with the discovery of a young woman's dead body; after the murderer later reveals himself, he narrates his reasons for the murder as a flashback of events leading up to the discovery of her dead body at the beginning of the story.
A framing device is also used in the 1997 disaster
Disaster
A disaster is a natural or man-made hazard that has come to fruition, resulting in an event of substantial extent causing significant physical damage or destruction, loss of life, or drastic change to the environment...
romance film
Romance film
Romance films are love stories that focus on passion, emotion, and the affectionate involvement of the main characters and the journey that their love takes through courtship or marriage. Romance films make the love story or the search for love the main plot focus...
Titanic
Titanic (1997 film)
Titanic is a 1997 American epic romance and disaster film directed, written, co-produced, and co-edited by James Cameron. A fictionalized account of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, it stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson, Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater and Billy Zane as Rose's fiancé, Cal...
, where Old Rose tells a modern day treasure hunter
Treasure hunting
Treasure hunting is the physical search for treasure which has been a notable human activity for millennia. -In modern times:In recent times, the early stages of the development of archaeology included a significant aspect of treasure hunt; Heinrich Schliemann's excavations at Troy, and later at...
her story of love and loss on the RMS Titanic.
A framing device of this kind may also be a scene or event that is slowly explained over the course of the main narrative. An example of this can be seen in the 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire
Slumdog Millionaire
Slumdog Millionaire is a 2008 British epic romantic drama adventure film directed by Danny Boyle, written by Simon Beaufoy, and co-directed in India by Loveleen Tandan. It is an adaptation of the novel Q & A by Indian author and diplomat Vikas Swarup...
(adapted from the 2005 novel Q & A), where the protagonist Jamal comes close to winning Kaun Banega Crorepati
Kaun Banega Crorepati
Kaun Banega Crorepati is an Indian reality/game show based on the UK game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? which offers a maximum cash prize of £1 million. The show first aired in 2000 and was hosted by Amitabh Bachchan. This was the first appearance of Bachchan on Indian television...
(the India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is a television game show which offers large cash prizes for correctly answering a series of multiple-choice questions of increasing difficulty. The format is owned and licensed by Sony Pictures Television International. The maximum cash prize is one million pounds...
) and is then accused of cheating. The film begins with an interrogation at a police station serving as a framing device, where Jamal narrates how he answered the questions correctly by relating them to flashbacks of his own life.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle often structured his detective stories in frames. The crime was reported, Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
solved the crime, and then he explained the solution to Dr. Watson. Thus the reader gets three looks at the same event.
Framing devices may also take the form of a recurrent element that appears at the beginning and the end of the narrative. For example, a story may begin with a character visiting a park under one set of circumstances, then returning at the end to the same park under a different set of circumstances, having undergone a change that allows him or her to see the park in a new light.
A framing device might also simply be a defining image of the narrative or art that is used at the beginning and end of the work. An example of this is in the film Chariots of Fire
Chariots of Fire
Chariots of Fire is a 1981 British film. It tells the fact-based story of two athletes in the 1924 Olympics: Eric Liddell, a devout Scottish Christian who runs for the glory of God, and Harold Abrahams, an English Jew who runs to overcome prejudice....
which begins and ends with the characters running along a beach, accompanied at both times by the movie’s famous theme music. This scene, although chronologically occurring in the middle of the film and unimportant to the straightforward plot, serves to convey a defining emotion and tone that sets the context for the main story.
At the beginning of the 1992 movie Far and Away
Far and Away
Far and Away is a 1992 adventure-drama-romance film directed by Ron Howard from a script by Howard and Bob Dolman, and stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Cinematography by Mikael Salomon, with a music score by John Williams...
, the father "dies" and then returns to life briefly. The same thing happens in Vanilla Sky
Vanilla Sky
Vanilla Sky is a 2001 American psychological thriller film directed, co-produced and co-written by Cameron Crowe. The film is an English-language remake of the 1997 Spanish movie Abre los ojos , the screenplay for which was written by Alejandro Amenábar and Mateo Gil...
where Tom Cruise's character "dies" and then comes back to life.
In the 2010 film The Social Network
The Social Network
The Social Network is a 2010 American drama film directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin. Adapted from Ben Mezrich's 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires, the film portrays the founding of social networking website Facebook and the resulting lawsuits...
, Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is an American computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur. He is best known for co-creating the social networking site Facebook, of which he is chief executive and president...
testifies in the deposition
Deposition (law)
In the law of the United States, a deposition is the out-of-court oral testimony of a witness that is reduced to writing for later use in court or for discovery purposes. It is commonly used in litigation in the United States and Canada and is almost always conducted outside of court by the...
of two Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
-related lawsuits. The framing device gives perspective and narration to the flashback storyline beginning in 2003.
Compared to reprise
In musical sonata formSonata form
Sonata form is a large-scale musical structure used widely since the middle of the 18th century . While it is typically used in the first movement of multi-movement pieces, it is sometimes used in subsequent movements as well—particularly the final movement...
or rondo
Rondo
Rondo, and its French equivalent rondeau, is a word that has been used in music in a number of ways, most often in reference to a musical form, but also to a character-type that is distinct from the form...
, a theme occurs at the beginning and end of the work, or returns periodically. This could most simply be a recurrence or restatement of a melody or song. For example, the Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
song "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (song)
"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" is a song written by Paul McCartney , and first recorded and released in 1967, on the The Beatles' album of the same name. The song appears twice on the album: as the opening track , and as "Sgt...
" works as a framing device for their album of the same name
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by the English rock band The Beatles, released on 1 June 1967 on the Parlophone label and produced by George Martin...
, appearing at the beginning and end of the album. Other albums with similar devices include Paul McCartney & Wings
Wings (band)
Wings were a British-American rock group formed in 1971 by Paul McCartney, Denny Laine and Linda McCartney that remained active until 1981....
' Band on the Run
Band on the Run
Band on the Run is an album by Paul McCartney & Wings, released in 1973. It was Wings' third album. It became Wings' most successful album and remains the most celebrated of McCartney's post-Beatles albums...
, the recurring heartbeats in Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd were an English rock band that achieved worldwide success with their progressive and psychedelic rock music. Their work is marked by the use of philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows. Pink Floyd are one of the most commercially...
's album The Dark Side of the Moon
The Dark Side of the Moon
The Dark Side of the Moon is the eighth studio album by English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, released in March 1973. It built on ideas explored in the band's earlier recordings and live shows, but lacks the extended instrumental excursions that characterised their work following the departure...
and Wish You Were Here ("Shine On You Crazy Diamond
Shine On You Crazy Diamond
"Shine On You Crazy Diamond" is a nine-part Pink Floyd composition written by Roger Waters, Richard Wright, and David Gilmour. The song is a tribute to former band member Syd Barrett, although it was not originally explicitly written with him in mind. It was first performed on their 1974 French...
"), Supertramp
Supertramp
Supertramp are a British rock band formed in 1969 under the name Daddy before renaming to Supertramp in early 1970. Though their music was initially categorised as progressive rock, they have since incorporated a combination of traditional rock and art rock into their music...
's Crime of the Century (the harmonica riff at the beginning of "School" is reprised at the end of the title track), and Spirit
Spirit (band)
Spirit was an American jazz/hard rock/progressive rock/psychedelic band founded in 1967, based in Los Angeles, California.- The original lineup :...
's Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus
Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus
Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus is the fourth album by the psychedelic rock ensemble Spirit. Produced by David Briggs, who is best known for his work with Neil Young. The original LP was released in 1970 by Epic....
("You have the world at your fingertips/No one can make it better than you"). Another is Junior Senior's 'D-D-D-Don't Stop The Beat' album which ends with a reprise of the first notes from the opening track. The closing track of Genesis
Genesis (band)
Genesis are an English rock band that formed in 1967. The band currently comprises the longest-tenured members Tony Banks , Mike Rutherford and Phil Collins . Past members Peter Gabriel , Steve Hackett and Anthony Phillips , also played major roles in the band in its early years...
' Selling England by the Pound
Selling England by the Pound
- Sound and live performance :The piano introduction to "Firth of Fifth" has not been included in a performance since 1974, in a Drury Lane Theatre concert, when Banks misplayed and Collins covered by starting the song from after the intro...
is a reprise of the opening track "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight
Dancing with the Moonlit Knight
"Dancing with the Moonlit Knight" is the first track on the Genesis album Selling England by the Pound, released in 1973.The a cappella voice of Peter Gabriel opens the track. Then, the song progressively gets louder and more upbeat, becoming a powerful rock number...
."
A reprise may be expressed in narrative: at the beginning and the end of the movie The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is a 1966 Italian epic spaghetti western film directed by Sergio Leone, starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach in the title roles. The screenplay was written by Age & Scarpelli, Luciano Vincenzoni and Leone, based on a story by Vincenzoni and Leone...
, Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood
Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...
's character shoots the noose to save his partner from hanging.