Sprung from a comment on a Substack post.
It became rather long, so I moved it here and put a link in its place.
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The timeline of literary devices is absolutely fascinating. Looking at the oldest known examples of concepts that we now take for granted.
Many texts that claim to date back to 500+ BCE (the further back, the more it becomes clear that language developed quite slowly at first, but then, spread quickly) show that the Concept of I wasn’t yet understood. We simply could not write something from the 1st person perspective. Why? It’s a heavy concept. Narration is what movies all stories. The narrator may write from a large number of viewpoints, the historical gap between the tale and the narrator, the voice, or perspective. The narrative tense develops even closer to modern times, and its focus is on the conjugation of verbs. I’ve known several writers who learned English as a second language, and many of them come to blocks in learning that have to do with the tense , because the narrator’s conjugation is a foreign idea.
To illustrate this a bit, I did a pass for a man in Western Europe(I didn’t ask for further detail) whose English was quite good, when spoken. When editing as I read, I would have to correct the narrative tense every few sentences. In English Composition, it is extra important that the narrative tense of a document remain the same. There are exceptions to this, and there are manuscripts that are divided in such a way, changing focus as a pivot, and a few other examples of when it’s okay to change tense.
The narrator as both the storyteller and protagonist comes along before, as papyrus use spreads and writing therefore, begins to develop and evolve more quickly. The narrator being the speaker, and removing the audience is what we called the first person perspective.
It was handled differently depending on where on the globe we look. One school of thought is that for a long time, anything written was limited to the bare minimum. Etching in stone ain’t easy.
At roughly this same time time, Hammurabi is credited for the first codified system of law. Most scribes were priests, the two endeavors dovetail nicely. The religious viewed written language as a direct gift from the gods. In such a deeply literal setting, they could only imagine a story from a rather Top-Down style.
There’s some inclination to the idea that the first to put forth a manuscript in the first person were possibly treated as heretics by the most widespread beliefs of the time. It is good to note, however, the idea of heresy was a much later development.
Hersey is a very nuanced action, with numerous different definitions depending upon the writer and the reader. This would come much closer to present.
Over the last millennia is when in Western culture, the most interesting bits all come into play, either rather quickly in succession, or at basically the same time.
These concepts involve Omniscient narrators, multiple narrators, close or limited third-person, story structure, protagonists and antagonists, setting, past tense, present tense,future tense, stream of thought, or flow state writing, and, Hero’s Journey, archetypes, voice overs, pacing, unreliable narrators.(not all encompassing)
Indigenous communities that we can still witness, as well as other animistic societies of the past often shared their oral tradition through a multi-layered narrative, with planned, but often changing narrators. These occasions were special in the they involved members whose community roles were different, and in the way that the stories survived and changed down the line, as they changed each time told.
The past tense is the most common, present tense, and then future. Past tense is used to convey things currently taking place. The present tense is almost exclusively used when the narrator recalls a past event, memory, or dream. The future tense is rare to encounter. It takes place in a future which occurs after the narrator’s present tense. The tone of future tense is that which can give the work an unspoken eerie feeling. Its inclusion at all implies the narrator may be capable of foresight, or is privy to particular information of a future time. Prophetic works play with the future tense, but it’s a balancing act.
The most easily found examples of the advanced concepts mentioned here originate in Greek or Roman, Sanskrit, and later in Latin, and the Romance languages.
The Information in this article draws from my own personal knowledge and perspective. Some of these concepts are still widely debated. This does not include cultures outside of what is commonly referred to as Western. I am aware of the many cultures that are without mention. This is not a personal choice based on merit or comparison. It is simply the knowledge I possess, in the straightest of possible lines. If readers would like to share stories of relevance regarding storytelling or literature not told here, they are welcome to comment and share with us all.
- Jack Lhasa