Syntipas
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| - | A '''frame story''' (also '''frame tale''', '''frame narrative''', etc.) is a narrative technique whereby a main story is composed, at least in part, for the purpose of organizing a set of shorter stories, each of which is a [[story within a story]]—or for surrounding a single story within a story. | + | '''Syntipas''' (the Greek form of '''Sindibad''' or '''Sendabar''') was an [[History of India|Indian]] [[Indian philosophy|philosopher]] and [[Indian literature|writer]] supposed to have lived around 100 BC, and the reputed author of a collection of tales known generally in Europe as ''[[Seven Wise Masters|The Story of the Seven Wise Masters]]''. |
| - | ==Origins== | + | They enjoyed immense popularity, and appeared in many Oriental and Western languages. A Greek translation (probably from a Syriac version), the earliest specimen of Romaic prose (nth century), is extant under the title of ''The most pleasing Story of Syntipas the Philosopher''. It is preceded by an introduction in iambic verse by a certain [[Michael Andreopulos]], who states that it was executed by order of Michael, probably the duke of [[Melitene]] in [[Armenia]]. The translator is evidently a Christian, although he has generally preserved the Oriental coloring. |
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| - | The earliest known frame stories can be traced back to [[History of India|ancient India]] sometime in the [[1st millennium BC|first millennium]] [[Common Era|BCE]], when the [[Indian epic poetry|Sanskrit epics]] ''[[Mahabharata]]'' and ''[[Ramayana]]'', [[Vishnu Sarma]]'s ''[[Panchatantra]]'', [[Syntipas]]' ''[[Seven Wise Masters|The Seven Wise Masters]]'', and the [[fable]] collections ''[[Hitopadesha]]'' and ''[[Baital Pachisi|Vikram and The Vampire]]'' were written. This form gradually spread west through the centuries and became popular, giving rise to such classic frame tale collections as the ''[[One Thousand and One Nights]]'' (''Arabian Nights''), ''[[The Decameron]]'', and ''[[Canterbury Tales]]''. This format had flexibility in that various narrators could retain the stories they liked or understood, while dropping ones they didn't and adding new ones they heard from other places. This occurred particularly with ''One Thousand and One Nights'', where different versions over the centuries have included different stories. | + | |
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| - | ==A set of stories== | + | |
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| - | This [[literary device]] acts as a convenient [[conceit]] for the organization of a set of smaller narratives which are either of the devising of the author, or taken from a previous stock of popular tales slightly altered by the author for the purpose of the longer narrative. Sometimes a story within the main narrative can be used to sum up or encapsulate some aspect of the framing story, in which case it is referred to in literary criticism by the French term ''[[mise en abyme]]''. | + | |
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| - | An early example of the frame story is ''[[The Book of One Thousand and One Nights]]'', in which the character [[Scheherazade]] narrates a set of [[fairy tale]]s to the Sultan [[Shahriyar]] over many nights. Many of Scheherazade's tales are also frame stories, such as ''[[Sindbad the Sailor|Tale of Sindbad the Seaman and Sindbad the Landsman]]'' is a collection of adventures related by Sindbad the Seaman to Sindbad the Landsman. | + | |
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| - | An extensive use of this device is [[Ovid]]'s ''[[Metamorphoses (poem)|Metamorphoses]]'' where the stories nest several deep, to allow the inclusion of many different tales in one work. [[Emily Brontë]]'s ''[[Wuthering Heights]]'' uses this literary device to tell the story of Heathcliff and Catherine, along with the subplots. | + | |
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| - | [[Mary Shelley]]'s novel ''[[Frankenstein]]'' is another good example of a book with multiple framed narratives. In the book, Robert Walton writes letters to his sister describing the story told to him by Victor Frankenstein; Frankenstein's story contains the monster's story; the monster's story even briefly contains the story of a family he had been living among. | + | |
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| - | Frame stories are often organized as a gathering of people in one place for the exchange of stories. Each character tells his or her tale, and the frame tale progresses in that manner. Historically famous frame stories include [[Geoffrey Chaucer|Chaucer]]'s ''[[The Canterbury Tales|Canterbury Tales]]'', about a group of pilgrims who tell stories on their journey to Canterbury; and [[Giovanni Boccaccio|Boccaccio]]'s ''[[The Decameron|Decameron]]'' about a group of young aristocrats escaping the Black Death to the countryside and spending the time telling stories. | + | |
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| - | Sometimes only one storyteller exists, and in this case there might be different levels of distance between the reader and author. In this mode, the frame tale can become more fuzzy. In the case of [[Washington Irving]]'s ''Sketch Book'', which contains "[[The Legend of Sleepy Hollow]]" and "[[Rip Van Winkle]]" among others, the conceit is that the author of the book is not Irving, but a certain gentleman named Crayon. Here the frame includes both the world of the imagined Crayon, his stories, and the possible reader who is assumed to play along and "know" who Crayon is. | + | |
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| - | [[Donald Westlake]]'s short story "No Story" is a parody of frame stories, in which a series of narrators start to tell stories, each of which contains a narrator who starts to tell a story, culminating in a narrator who announces that there will be no story. Essentially, it is a frame story without a story to be framed. | + | |
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| - | ==Single story== | + | |
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| - | When there is a single story, the frame story is used for other purposes -- chiefly to position the reader's attitude toward the tale. One common one is to draw attention to the [[Unreliable narrator|narrator's unreliability]]. By explicitly making the narrator a character within the frame story, the writer distances himself from the narrator; he may also characterize the narrator to cast doubt on his truthfulness. In [[P. G. Wodehouse]]'s stories of [[Mr Mulliner]], Mulliner is made a fisherman in order to cast doubt on the outrageous stories he tells. | + | |
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| - | Another use is a form of [[procatalepsis]], where the writer puts the readers' possible reactions to the story in the characters listening to it. In ''[[The Princess Bride]]'' the frame of a grandfather reading the story to his reluctant grandson puts the cynical reaction a viewer might have to the romantic fairytale into the story in the grandson's persona, and helps defuse it. This is the use when the frame tells a story that lacks a strong [[narrative hook]] in its opening; the narrator can engage the reader's interest by telling the story to answer the curiosity of his listeners, or by warning them that the story began in an ordinary seeming way, but they must follow it to understand later actions, thereby identifying the reader's wondering whether the story is worth reading to the listeners'. | + | |
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| - | A specialized form of the frame is a [[dream vision]], where the narrator claims to have gone to sleep, dreamed the events of the story, and then awoken to tell the tale. In medieval Europe, this was a common device, used to indicate that the events included are fictional; [[Geoffrey Chaucer]] used it in ''[[The Book of the Duchess]]'', ''[[The House of Fame]]'', ''[[Parlement of Foules]]'', and ''[[The Legend of Good Women]]'' (the last also containing a multi-story frame story within the dream). In modern usage, it is sometimes used in works of [[fantasy]] as a means toward [[suspension of disbelief]] about the marvels depicted in the story. [[J.R.R. Tolkien]], in his essay "[[On Fairy Stories]]" complained of such devices as unwillingness to treat the genre seriously. ''[[Alice's Adventures in Wonderland]]'' includes such a frame, but unlike most usages, the story itself uses dream-like logic and sequences; most dream frames frame stories that appear exactly as if occurring in real life. | + | |
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| - | Still, even when the story proceeds realistically, the dream frame casts doubt on the events. In the book, ''[[The Wonderful Wizard of Oz]]'', the events really occur; the dream frame added for the movie detracts from the validity of the fantasy.<ref>Steven Swann Jones, ''The Fairy Tale: The Magic Mirror of Imagination'', Twayne Publishers, New York, 1995, ISBN 0-8057-0950-9, p94</ref> | + | |
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| - | ==Use of frame stories== | + | |
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| - | As with all [[conceit|literary conceit]]s, the frame tale has many variations, some clearly within the confines of the conceit, some on the border, and some pushing the boundaries of understanding. The main goal of a frame tale is as a conceit which can adequately collect otherwise disparate tales. It has been mostly replaced, in modern literature, by the short story collection or anthology absent any authorial conceit. | + | |
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| - | To be a frame narrative, the story must act primarily as an occasion for the telling of other stories. If the framing narrative has primary or equal interest, then it is not usually a frame narrative. For example, [[Odysseus]] narrates much of the ''[[Odyssey]]'' to [[the Phaeacians]], but, even though this recollection forms a great part of the poem, the events after and before the interpolated recollection are of greater interest than the memory. | + | |
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| - | Another notable example that plays with frame narrative is the film ''[[Forrest Gump (film)|Forrest Gump]]''. Most of the film is narrated by Forrest to various companions on the park bench. However, in the last fifth or so of the film, Forrest gets up and leaves the bench, and we follow him as he meets with Jenny and her son. This final segment suddenly has no narrator unlike the rest of the film that came before it, but is instead told through Forrest and Jenny's dialogues. | + | |
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| - | A famous literary example is Emily Brontë's ''[[Wuthering Heights]]'', whereby we learn events through a visitor to the house of the title, who in turn has been told these events by the housekeeper of the Linton family. None of the main characters ever directly narrate. | + | |
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| - | Frame stories are found in many [[computer role playing game]]s, such as the early [[Dragon Quest IV]], released in 1990. This literary device can also be sparingly used to achieve secondary ends. For instance, the [[Shining Force]] series of RPGs use narrators within frame stories to implement things like starting, saving and exiting the game without breaking the [[fourth wall]] entirely, or rather by constructing a second fourth wall to shield the player from having to suspend his/her disbelief as much. | + | |
| + | The main outline is the same in the different versions, although they vary in detail and include different stories. A certain prince, who had taken a vow of silence for a time on the advice of his tutor, was tempted by his stepmother. Her advances having been rejected, she accused him to his father, who decided to put him to death. The device of the ''[[Arabian Nights]]'' is introduced by the wise men of the court, who in turn relate stories to dissuade the king from over-hasty punishment, each story being answered by the queen, who desires instant action to be taken. When the period of silence is over the prince speaks and establishes his innocence. In the Greek version the king is a king of [[Persian Empire|Persia]], named [[Cyrus the Great|Cyrus]], and Syntipas himself is the prince's tutor (text in [[A. Eberhard]], ''Fabulae Romanenses'', i., 1872, [[Teubner]] series). | ||
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Syntipas (the Greek form of Sindibad or Sendabar) was an Indian philosopher and writer supposed to have lived around 100 BC, and the reputed author of a collection of tales known generally in Europe as The Story of the Seven Wise Masters.
They enjoyed immense popularity, and appeared in many Oriental and Western languages. A Greek translation (probably from a Syriac version), the earliest specimen of Romaic prose (nth century), is extant under the title of The most pleasing Story of Syntipas the Philosopher. It is preceded by an introduction in iambic verse by a certain Michael Andreopulos, who states that it was executed by order of Michael, probably the duke of Melitene in Armenia. The translator is evidently a Christian, although he has generally preserved the Oriental coloring.
The main outline is the same in the different versions, although they vary in detail and include different stories. A certain prince, who had taken a vow of silence for a time on the advice of his tutor, was tempted by his stepmother. Her advances having been rejected, she accused him to his father, who decided to put him to death. The device of the Arabian Nights is introduced by the wise men of the court, who in turn relate stories to dissuade the king from over-hasty punishment, each story being answered by the queen, who desires instant action to be taken. When the period of silence is over the prince speaks and establishes his innocence. In the Greek version the king is a king of Persia, named Cyrus, and Syntipas himself is the prince's tutor (text in A. Eberhard, Fabulae Romanenses, i., 1872, Teubner series).
Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Syntipas" 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.
