Ellipsis (narrative device)  

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Ellipsis (…) is the narrative device of omitting a portion of the sequence of events, allowing the reader to fill in the narrative gaps.

An ellipsis in narrative leaves out a portion of the story. This can be used to condense time, or as a stylistic method to allow the reader to fill in the missing portions of the narrative with their imagination.

A famous example of ellipsis in narrative is offered by Virginia Woolf's novel, To the Lighthouse. Between the first and second parts of the novel, many years pass and World War I is fought and won. The reader is left to infer the events that have taken place during the elapsed time by the changes evident in the characters in the novel.

Contents

Ambiguity

The use of ellipses can either mislead or clarify, and the reader must rely on the good intentions of the writer who uses it. An example of this ambiguity is ‘She went to… school.’ In this sentence, ‘…’ might represent the word ‘elementary’, or the word ‘no’. Omission of part of a quoted sentence without indication by an ellipsis (or bracketed text) (e.g. ‘She went to school.’ as opposed to ‘She went to Broadmoor Elementary school.’) is considered misleading. An ellipsis at the end of the sentence which ends with a period (or such a period followed by an ellipsis), appears, therefore, as four dots.

Double entendre

An ellipsis may also imply an unstated alternative indicated by context. For example, when Count Dracula says "I don't drink … wine", the implication is that he does drink something else, which in the context would be blood. In such usage the ellipsis is stronger than a mere dash, where for example "I don't drink - wine" might only indicate that the Count, not a native English speaker, was pausing to get the correct word without other implication.

In film

jump cut

Ellipsis is also commonly employed in the narrative of films. One such usage is found in Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey", where the film goes from the first tool of the humankind (a bone) to the latest (a spaceship). In this case the ellipsis was made possible by a match cut.

Arthur Schnitzler

  • Reigen by Schnitzler makes frequent use of it.

Céline

  • Céline, whose use of ellipsis is his trademark
    • In 1936 he published Mort à crédit (Death on the Installment Plan), giving innovative, chaotic, and antiheroic visions of human suffering. Here, he extensively uses ellipses scattered all throughout the text to enhance the rhythm and to emphasise the style of speech.
    • In Conversations with Professor Y (1955) Céline defends his style, indicating that his heavy use of the ellipse and his disjointed sentences are an attempt to embody human emotion in written language.




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Ellipsis (narrative device)" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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