In medias res or medias in res (“into the middle of affairs”) is a Latin phrase denoting the literary and artistic narrative technique wherein the relation of a story begins either at the mid-point or at the conclusion, not at the beginning (cf. ab ovo, ab initio), establishing setting, character, and conflict via flashback and expository conversations relating the pertinent past.
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The Roman lyric poet and satirist Horace (65–8 BC) introduced the terms in medias res (“into mid-affairs”) and ab ovo (“from the egg”) in the Ars Poetica (“Poetic Arts”, ca. 13 BC), wherein lines 147–148 describe the ideal epic poet:[1]
| “ | 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. . . . |
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The “double egg” mythological reference is to the Trojan War originating with the birth of Helen and Clytemnestra from an egg laid by Leda, after Zeus rapes her, as a metamorphosed swan.
Likely original to the oral tradition, the narrative technique of beginning a story in medias res is a stylistic convention of epic poetry, the exemplar in Western literature being the Iliad (9th c. BC) and the Odyssey (9th c. BC), by Homer.[2] Like-wise, the technique features in the Indian Mahābhārata (ca. 8th c. BC – ca. AD 4th c.); the Portuguese The Lusiads (1572); the Spanish Cantar de Mio Cid (ca. 14th c.); the German Nibelungenlied (12th c.); and the Finnish Kalevala (19th c.), and the stories “Sinbad the Sailor” and “The Three Apples” from the One Thousand and One Nights (ca. 9th c.).[3]
The Classical-era poet Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro, 70–19 BC) established this literary narrative technique in the Aeneid, which is part of the Greek literary tradition of imitating Homer,[2] medias in res narration continued in Jerusalem Delivered (1581), by Torquato Tasso, Paradise Lost (1667), by John Milton, and the “Inferno” book of the Divine Comedy (1555), by Dante de Alighieri, and generally in Modernist literature.[4]. In the science fiction cinema genre, the Star Wars (1977) series is a contemporary example of stories beginning in medias res.
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