In medias res

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For other uses, see In Medias Res (disambiguation).

In medias res, also medias in res (Latin for "into the middle of things") is a literary and artistic technique where the narrative starts in the middle of the story instead of from its beginning (ab ovo or ab initio). The characters, setting, and conflict are often introduced through a series of flashbacks or through characters relating past events to each other. Probably originating from an oral tradition, the technique was established in the 8th century BC in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and became a convention of epic poetry.[1] Other folk epics beginning in medias res include the Spanish Cantar de Mio Cid, Germany's Nibelungenlied (The Song of the Nibelungs), the East Indian Mahābhārata, and the Finnish Kalevala. Virgil's Aeneid began the tradition in literature of imitating Homer,[1] continued in Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, John Milton's Paradise Lost and Inferno from Dante's Divine Comedy.[2]

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[edit] Etymology

The terms in medias res and ab ovo (literally "from the egg") both come from the Roman poet Horace's Ars Poetica ("Art of Poetry", or "The Poetic Arts"), lines 147–148, where he describes his ideal for an epic poet[3]:

“ Nor does he begin the Trojan War from the double egg,

but always he hurries to the action, and snatches the listener into the middle of things …

 ”

The "double egg" is a reference to the origin of the Trojan War with the mythical birth of Helen and Clytemnestra from an egg laid by their mother, Leda, after she was raped by Zeus in the form of a swan.

[edit] Popular use

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This narrative method has proven very popular throughout the ages, including frequent use in Modernist literature, e.g. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier. The technique can also be seen in cinema, including Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers, Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, Taylor Hackford's Devil's Advocate, Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill, Stanley Kubrick's Lolita and the Korean film Oldboy.

The Pink Floyd movie The Wall, based on the album of the same name, also uses the technique, though whether the original story in the album does so is open to debate.

In television, the TV show Lost starts medias in res explicitly where the show starts with several characters crash-landing on an island. Over the course of several seasons of the show, we learn about the characters through flashbacks. A sitcom which uses the device is How I Met Your Mother on CBS.

All of the Star Wars films use this method to some extent in the beginning after the introduction, and the entire series itself uses this method, as the chronologically fourth film was released first. The anime series The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya takes this concept to an extreme, being a chronlogical story where the episodes are presented in a seemingly random order.

Many non-fiction articles from Reader's Digest use this technique of storytelling.

The video game Final Fantasy X uses this technique of storytelling.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Murray, Christopher John (2004). Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850. Taylor & Francis. p. 319. ISBN 1579584225
  2. ^ Forman, Carol (1984). Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy: The Inferno. Barron's Educational Series. p. 24. ISBN 0764191071
  3. ^ Horace. Ars Poetica (in Latin). “nec gemino bellum Troianum orditur ab ouo; semper ad euentum festinat et in medias res”