Scarlet Sails ( Russian : Алые паруса , Alye parusa ) is a 1923 romantic novel with elements of fantasy by Russian writer Alexander Grin . The author described the genre of the novel as féerie . It is a story about a dream coming true no matter how futile it seems. It was written during 1916–1922.
105-519: The novel has two plot lines: Assol's line and Gray's line, that join in the finale. Assol's plot line: The sailor Longren returns home to the village of Kaperna, and finds that his wife has died from illness and left him a 3-month-old daughter, Assol. Longren gives up his life as a sailor and spends his days raising Assol and making toys. After an incident where Longren leaves the man he considers responsible for his wife's death to drown, Longren and Assol are shunned entirely by human society. One day Assol
210-475: A flashback of events leading up to the murder. Within this flashback, an unreliable narrator tells a story to mislead the would-be murderer, who later discovers that he was misled after another character narrates the truth to him. As the story concludes, the " Tale of Núr al-Dín Alí and his Son " is narrated within it. This perennially popular work can be traced back to Arabic , Persian , and Indian storytelling traditions. Mary Shelley 's Frankenstein has
315-496: A "bonus material" style inner story is the chapter "The Town Ho's Story" in Herman Melville 's novel Moby-Dick ; that chapter tells a fully formed story of an exciting mutiny and contains many plot ideas that Melville had conceived during the early stages of writing Moby-Dick —ideas originally intended to be used later in the novel—but as the writing progressed, these plot ideas eventually proved impossible to fit around
420-591: A character within a story becomes the narrator of a second story (within the first one). Multiple layers of stories within stories are sometimes called nested stories . A play may have a brief play within it, such as in Shakespeare's play Hamlet ; a film may show the characters watching a short film; or a novel may contain a short story within the novel. A story within a story can be used in all types of narration including poems , and songs . Stories within stories can be used simply to enhance entertainment for
525-408: A couplet that was added, possibly by religious zealots intent on giving the play extra moral gravity, are said only on the night that Oedipa sees the play. From what Pynchon relates, this is the only mention in the play of Thurn and Taxis' rivals' name—Trystero—and it is the seed for the conspiracy that unfurls. A significant portion of Walter Moers ' Labyrinth of Dreaming Books is an ekphrasis on
630-464: A deeply nested frame story structure, that features the narration of Walton, who records the narration of Victor Frankenstein, who recounts the narration of his creation, who narrates the story of a cabin dwelling family he secretly observes. Another classic novel with a frame story is Wuthering Heights , the majority of which is recounted by the central family's housekeeper to a boarder. Similarly, Roald Dahl 's story The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
735-585: A history compiled by several of the characters. The subtitle of The Hobbit ("There and Back Again") is depicted as part of a rejected title of this book within a book, and The Lord of the Rings is a part of the final title. An example of an interconnected inner story is "The Mad Trist" in Edgar Allan Poe 's Fall of the House of Usher , where through somewhat mystical means the narrator's reading of
840-480: A man who finds a manuscript telling the story of a documentary that may or may not have ever existed, contains multiple layers of plot. The book includes footnotes and letters that tell their own stories only vaguely related to the events in the main narrative of the book, and footnotes for fake books. Robert A. Heinlein 's later books ( The Number of the Beast , The Cat Who Walks Through Walls and To Sail Beyond
945-420: A more famous composer is told in a series of letters to his lover Rufus Sixsmith, which are interrupted halfway through and revealed to be in the possession of an investigative journalist named Luisa Rey and so on. Each of the first five tales are interrupted in the middle, with the sixth tale being told in full, before the preceding five tales are finished in reverse order. Each layer of the story either challenges
1050-542: A narrative counterpoint and add a touch of surrealism to the main narrative. They additionally raise the question of whether works of artistic genius justify or atone for the sins and crimes of their creators. Auster's The Book of Illusions (2002) and Flicker by Theodore Roszak (1991) also rely heavily on fictional films within their respective narratives. This dramatic device was probably first used by Thomas Kyd in The Spanish Tragedy around 1587, where
1155-731: A noble story, the boring character tells a very dull tale, and the rude miller tells a smutty tale. Homer 's Odyssey too makes use of this device; Odysseus ' adventures at sea are all narrated by Odysseus to the court of king Alcinous in Scheria . Other shorter tales, many of them false, account for much of the Odyssey . Many modern children's story collections are essentially anthology works connected by this device, such as Arnold Lobel 's Mouse Tales , Paula Fox 's The Little Swineherd , and Phillip and Hillary Sherlock's Ears and Tails and Common Sense . A well-known modern example of framing
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#17327918212331260-483: A period of drastic change because of the spread of the Bhakti movement in the northern parts of India, resulting in the emergence of devotional poets like Kabīr , Tulsīdās , and Guru Nānak . This period was characterised by a varied and wide spectrum of thought and expression; as a consequence, medieval Indian literary works differed significantly from classical traditions. The Buddhist Charyapadas are often cited as
1365-463: A small but dedicated writers have engaged in writing short stories, plays and poetry. Tripuri(Kokborok/Tiprakok) is the native language of Tripuri people in present Tripura state in North East of India. The written literature of Tulu is not as large as the literature of other literary Dravidian languages such as Tamil. During the early Muslim period, Persian became the official language of
1470-461: A sprawling, loosely interconnected science fiction narrative, as do the albums of Janelle Monae . On Tom Waits 's concept album Alice (consisting of music he wrote for the musical of the same name), most of the songs are (very) loosely inspired by both Alice in Wonderland , and the book's real-life author, Lewis Carroll , and inspiration Alice Liddell . The song "Poor Edward", however,
1575-508: A surreal version of Madam Mao 's Red Detachment of Women , illuminating the ascendance of human values over the disillusionment of high politics in the meeting. In Bertolt Brecht 's The Caucasian Chalk Circle , a play is staged as a parable to villagers in the Soviet Union to justify the re-allocation of their farmland: the tale describes how a child is awarded to a servant-girl rather than its natural mother, an aristocrat, as
1680-459: A tale told through the music of Coheed and Cambria , tells a story for the first two albums but reveals that the story is being actively written by a character called the Writer in the third. During the album, the Writer delves into his own story and kills one of the characters, much to the dismay of the main character. The critically acclaimed Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
1785-459: A young boy. Both the book and the movie assert that the central story is from a book called "The Princess Bride" by a nonexistent author named S. Morgenstern . In the Welsh novel Aelwyd F'Ewythr Robert (1852), by Gwilym Hiraethog , a visitor to a farm in north Wales tells the story of Uncle Tom's Cabin to those gathered around the hearth. Sometimes a frame story exists in the same setting as
1890-427: Is the 16th century biography of Guru Nanak, Janam-sakhi, written by his companion Bhai Bala . However, some say that Punjabi literature may have evolved much earlier, perhaps in the 9th or 10th centuries, based on the high level of Punjabi poetry written by Baba Farid, Guru Nanak, and Bhai Gurdas. Baba Farid (1173–1266) is often considered the first major Punjabi poet, and his Sufi poetry was compiled after his death in
1995-549: Is James Merrill 's 1974 modernist poem " Lost in Translation ". In Rabih Alameddine 's novel The Hakawati , or The Storyteller , the protagonist describes coming home to the funeral of his father, one of a long line of traditional Arabic storytellers. Throughout the narrative, the author becomes hakawati (an Arabic word for a teller of traditional tales) himself, weaving the tale of the story of his own life and that of his family with folkloric versions of tales from Qur'an,
2100-504: Is a graphic novel about a middle-school musical production, and the tentative romantic fumblings of its cast members. In Manuel Puig 's Kiss of the Spider Woman , ekphrases on various old movies, some real, and some fictional, make up a substantial portion of the narrative. In Paul Russell 's Boys of Life , descriptions of movies by director/antihero Carlos (loosely inspired by controversial director Pier Paolo Pasolini ) provide
2205-552: Is about a rich bachelor who finds an essay written by someone who learned to "see" playing cards from the reverse side. The full text of this essay is included in the story, and itself includes a lengthy sub-story told as a true experience by one of the essay's protagonists, Imhrat Khan. Lewis Carroll 's Alice books, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871), have several multiple poems that are mostly recited by several characters to
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#17327918212332310-499: Is about a troupe of actors who perform a play about marital infidelity that mirrors their own lives, and composer Richard Rodney Bennett and playwright - librettist Beverley Cross 's The Mines of Sulphur features a ghostly troupe of actors who perform a play about murder that similarly mirrors the lives of their hosts, from whom they depart, leaving them with the plague as nemesis. John Adams ' Nixon in China (1985-7) features
2415-515: Is about the production of a fictitious musical, The Taming of the Shrew , based on the Shakespeare play of the same name , and features several scenes from it. Pericles draws in part on the 14th-century Confessio Amantis (itself a frame story), by John Gower , and Shakespeare has the ghost of Gower "assume man's infirmities" to introduce his work to the contemporary audience and comment on
2520-592: Is also found in classic religious and philosophical texts. The structure of The Symposium and Phaedo , attributed to Plato , is of a story within a story within a story. In the Christian Bible , the gospels are accounts of the life and ministry of Jesus . However, they also include within them the parables that Jesus told. In more modern philosophical works, Jostein Gaarder 's books often feature this device. Examples are The Solitaire Mystery , where
2625-501: Is also the world's longest epic, has a nested structure. The experimental modernist works that incorporate multiple narratives into one story are quite often science-fiction or science fiction influenced. These include most of the various novels written by the American author Kurt Vonnegut . Vonnegut includes the recurring character Kilgore Trout in many of his novels. Trout acts as the mysterious science fiction writer who enhances
2730-601: Is known as Charyapada or Charyageeti, which were Buddhist hymns from the 8th century. Charyapada is in the oldest known written form of Bengali. The famous Bengali linguist Hara Prasad Shastri discovered the palm leaf Charyapada manuscript in the Nepal Royal Court Library in 1907. The most internationally famous Bengali writer is Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore , who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 for his work "Gitanjali". He wrote
2835-573: Is of a great antiquity. The Lalitavistara mentions the Vaidehi script. Early in the latter half of the 7th century CE, a marked change occurred in the northeastern alphabet, and the inscriptions of Adityasena exhibit this change for the first time. The eastern variety develops and becomes the Maithili script, which comes into use in Assam, Bengal, and Nepal. The earliest recorded epigraphic evidence of
2940-511: Is presented as a stage show by the fictional eponymous band, and one of its songs, "A Day in the Life" is in the form of a story within a dream. Similarly, the Fugees album The Score is presented as the soundtrack to a fictional movie, as are several other notable concept albums , while Wyclef Jean 's The Carnival is presented as testimony at a trial. The majority of Ayreon 's albums outline
3045-450: Is presented as a story told by a narrator about Edward Mordrake , and the song "Fish and Bird" is presented as a retold story that the narrator heard from a sailor. In his 1895 historical novel Pharaoh , Bolesław Prus introduces a number of stories within the story, ranging in length from vignettes to full-blown stories, many of them drawn from ancient Egyptian texts, that further the plot, illuminate characters , and even inspire
3150-441: Is presented as a translation of a found manuscript by (fictional) Cide Hamete Benengeli . A commonly independently anthologised story is " The Grand Inquisitor " by Dostoevsky from his long psychological novel The Brothers Karamazov , which is told by one brother to another to explain, in part, his view on religion and morality. It also, in a succinct way, dramatizes many of Dostoevsky's interior conflicts. An example of
3255-434: Is sent to a city with a batch of toys, including a yacht with scarlet sails. Assol lets it sail along a stream, and as she followed it she met a stranger, old Egl, who prophesied that many years in the future a prince will carry her away on a ship with scarlet sails. Since then Assol has dreamt of this prophecy and the locals consider her insane. Gray's plot line: Arthur Gray is a rich heir given to flights of fancy. When he
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3360-662: Is the French term for a similar literary device (also referring to the practice in heraldry of placing the image of a small shield on a larger shield). The literary device of stories within a story dates back to a device known as a " frame story ", where a supplemental story is used to help tell the main story. Typically, the outer story or "frame" does not have much matter, and most of the work consists of one or more complete stories told by one or more storytellers. The earliest examples of "frame stories" and "stories within stories" were in ancient Egyptian and Indian literature , such as
3465-674: Is the ancient Tamil literature of the period in the history of south India (known as the Thamizhagam or the Tamilagam ) spanning from c. 300 BCE to 300 CE ( Akananuru (1, 15, 31, 55, 61, 65, 91, 97, 101, 115, 127, 187, 197, 201, 211, 233, 251, 265, 281, 311, 325, 331, 347, 349, 359, 393, 281, 295), Kurunthogai (11), Natrinai (14, 75) are dated before 300 BCE). This collection contains 2381 poems in Tamil composed by 473 poets, some 102 of whom remain anonymous. Most of
3570-641: Is the earliest existing literary work in Kannada. It is a writing on literary criticism and poetics meant to standardise various written Kannada dialects used in literature in previous centuries. The book makes reference to Kannada works by early writers such as King Durvinita of the 6th century and Ravikirti, the author of the Aihole record of 636 CE. An early extant prose work, the Vaddaradhane by Shivakotiacharya of 900 CE provides an elaborate description of
3675-399: Is the fantasy genre work The Princess Bride (both the book and the movie ). In the movie, a grandfather is reading the story of "The Princess Bride" to his grandson. In the book, a more detailed frame story has a father editing a much longer (but fictive) work for his son, creating his own "Good Parts Version" (as the book called it) by leaving out all the parts that would bore or displease
3780-421: Is the only fantastic element of the novel. The first version had a bit more of it: the "Scarlet Sails" was supposed to be a story within a story , with the frame story involving the narrator and a flying man Mas-Tuel. Scarlet Sails had a tremendous impact on Russian culture . Story within a story A story within a story , also referred to as an embedded narrative , is a literary device in which
3885-473: Is young, he is told that an ancestor of his left barrels of wine to his descendants claiming "Gray shall only drink this wine in paradise!" Inspired by a seascape painting, he runs away from home at age 15 and joined the crew of the schooner Anselm . Later, he becomes captain of his own ship, the Secret . When it sails to Kaperna, Gray sees a sleeping girl, falls in love with her and puts his ring on her finger. In
3990-516: The Bhaṭṭikāvya is written in what is called "like the vernacular" ( bhāṣāsama ), that is, it can be read in two languages simultaneously: Prakrit and Sanskrit . The canonical Pali literature includes Buddhist discourses ( suttas ), Abhidharma works, poetry, works on monastic discipline ( vinaya ), and the Jataka tales . The Sangam literature ( Tamil : சங்க இலக்கியம், Sanga ilakkiyam)
4095-814: The Dehlavi dialect of the Hindi Belt became more prominent than Sanskrit . Gujarati literature's history may be traced to 1000 CE. The oldest existing record of Kannada prose is the Halmidi inscription of 450 CE, and poetry in tripadi metre is the Kappe Arabhatta record of 700 CE. The folk form of literature began earlier than any other literature in Kannada. Gajashtaka (800 CE) by King Shivamara II, Chudamani (650 CE) by Thumbalacharya are examples of early literature now considered extinct. Kavirajamarga by King Nripatunga Amoghavarsha I (850 CE)
4200-700: The Khencho (pre-7th century CE musical composition), 6th-7th century CE copper plate inscriptions of king Khongtekcha, the Panthoibi Khonggul ( c. 8th century CE narrative work), the Loiyumpa Silyel (c. Written Constitution drafted in 429 CE, and finalised in 11th-12th century CE), etc. Many of Aśvaghoṣa 's plays were written in Shauraseni as were a sizable number of Jain works and Rajasekhara 's Karpuramanjari . Canto 13 of
4305-568: The Neil Gaiman series The Sandman feature an endless series of waking from one dream into another dream. In Charles Maturin 's novel Melmoth the Wanderer , the use of vast stories-within-stories creates a sense of dream-like quality in the reader. The 2023 Christian fictional novel Just Once by Karen Kingsbury features a series of three nested stories, all centering around the main characters of Hank and Irvel Myers: This structure
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4410-822: The Ougri , and heroic narratives like the Numit Kappa . In the medieval period, literature in Kannada and Telugu appeared in the 9th and 10th centuries, respectively. Later, literature in Marathi , Gujarati , Bengali , Assamese , Odia , and Maithili appeared. Thereafter literature in various dialects of Hindi , Persian and Urdu began to appear as well. In 1913, Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore became India's first Nobel laureate in literature . Examples of early works written in Vedic Sanskrit include,
4515-927: The Pāṇini 's Ashtadhyayi , which standardised the grammar and phonetics of Classical Sanskrit. The Laws of Manu (मनुस्मृति) is a famous text in Hinduism. Kālidāsa is often considered to be the greatest playwright in Sanskrit literature and one of the greatest poets in Sanskrit literature; his Recognition of Shakuntala (अभिज्ञानशाकुन्तलम्) and Meghaduuta are Kalidasa's most famous play and poem respectively. Other famous plays include Mricchakatika by Shudraka , Svapna Vasavadattam by Bhasa , and Ratnavali by Sri Harsha. Later poetic works include Gita Govinda by Jayadeva . Some other famous works are Chanakya 's Arthashastra and Vatsyayana 's Kamasutra . "The beginning of this old Manipuri literature (as in
4620-575: The Republic of India thereafter. The Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India has 22 officially recognised languages . Sahitya Akademi , India's highest literary body, also has 24 recognised literary languages . The earliest works of Indian literature were orally transmitted. Sanskrit literature begins with the oral literature of the Rig Veda , a collection of literature dating to
4725-446: The dramatic tension and also makes more poignant the inevitable failure of the relationship between the mortal Hans and water sprite Ondine. The Two-Character Play by Tennessee Williams has a concurrent double plot with the convention of a play within a play. Felice and Clare are siblings and are both actor/producers touring "The Two-Character Play". They have supposedly been abandoned by their crew and have been left to put on
4830-682: The 20th century, several Indian writers have distinguished themselves not only in traditional Indian languages but also in English, a language inherited from the British . As a result of British colonisation, India has developed its own unique dialect of English known as Indian English . Literature in Chhattisgarh reflects the regional consciousness and the evolution of an identity distinct from others in Central India. When Kodava
4935-603: The Adi Granth. Misplaced Pages Tamil literature has a rich and long literary tradition spanning more than 2500 years ( Sangam period : 5th century BCE-3rd century CE.) Tolkaappiyam (3rd century BCE) has been credited as the oldest work in Tamil available today. Telugu, the Indian language with the third largest number of speakers (after Hindi & Bengali), is rich in literary traditions. Literature has existed from 300 BCE in
5040-594: The Egyptian " Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor " and Indian epics like the Ramayana , Seven Wise Masters , Hitopadesha and Vikrama and Vethala . In Vishnu Sarma 's Panchatantra , an inter-woven series of colorful animal tales are told with one narrative opening within another, sometimes three or four layers deep, and then unexpectedly snapping shut in irregular rhythms to sustain attention. In
5145-675: The High Castle , each character comes into interaction with a book called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy , which was written by the Man in the High Castle. As Dick's novel details a world in which the Axis Powers of World War II had succeeded in dominating the known world , the novel within the novel details an alternative to this history in which the Allies overcome the Axis and bring stability to
5250-486: The Old Testament, Ovid, and One Thousand and One Nights. Both the tales he tells of his family (going back to his grandfather) and the embedded folk tales, themselves embed other tales, often 2 or more layers deep. In Sue Townsend 's Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years , Adrian writes the book Lo! The Flat Hills of My Homeland , in which the character Jake Westmorland writes a book called Sparg of Kronk , where
5355-558: The Sky (which adopts the conceit that it is a book from the future by an author called Gen Jaramet-Sauner), and J. R. Rasmussen's "Research" in the anthology Star Trek: Strange New Worlds II . Steven Barnes 's novelization of " Far Beyond the Stars " partners with Greg Cox 's The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh (Volume Two) to tell us that the story "Far Beyond the Stars"—and, by extension, all of Star Trek itself—is
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#17327918212335460-537: The Sunset ) propose the idea that every real universe is a fiction in another universe. This hypothesis enables many writers who are characters in the books to interact with their own creations. Margaret Atwood 's novel The Blind Assassin is interspersed with excerpts from a novel written by one of the main characters; the novel-within-a-novel itself contains a science fiction story written by one of that novel's characters. In Philip K. Dick 's novel The Man in
5565-584: The action of the play. In Francis Beaumont 's Knight of the Burning Pestle (ca. 1608) a supposed common citizen from the audience, actually a "planted" actor, condemns the play that has just started and "persuades" the players to present something about a shopkeeper. The citizen's "apprentice" then acts, pretending to extemporise, in the rest of the play. This is a satirical tilt at Beaumont's playwright contemporaries and their current fashion for offering plays about London life. The opera Pagliacci
5670-653: The available Sangam literature is from the Third Sangam , this period is known as the Sangam period , which refers to the prevalent Sangam legends claiming literary academies lasting thousands of years, giving the name to the corpus of literature. The Only religious poems among the shorter poems occur in paripaatal . The rest of the corpus of Sangam literature deals with human relationship and emotions. Sangam literature deals with emotional and material topics such as love, war, governance, trade and bereavement. Some of
5775-526: The case of Newari ) may go back to 1500 years, or even 2000 years, from now." — Suniti Kumar Chatterji , Padma Vibhushan awardee Indian scholar Some of the ancient literature of Meitei language (also known as Manipuri language ) include the Ougri ( c. 1st century CE musical composition), the Numit Kappa ( c. 1st century CE narrative work), the Poireiton Khunthok ( c. 3rd century CE narrative work),
5880-409: The character Sparg writes a book with no language. In Anthony Horowitz 's Magpie Murders , a significant proportion of the book features a fictional but authentically formatted mystery novel by Alan Conway, titled 'Magpie Murders'. The secondary novel ends before its conclusion returning the narrative to the original, and primary, story where the protagonist and reviewer of the book attempts to find
5985-465: The characters that Melville went on to create and develop . Instead of discarding the ideas altogether, Melville wove them into a coherent short story and had the character Ishmael demonstrate his eloquence and intelligence by telling the story to his impressed friends. One of the most complicated structures of a story within a story was used by Vladimir Nabokov in his novel The Gift . There, as inner stories, function both poems and short stories by
6090-486: The content and process of the text and novelist was discussed rather than the lives of the patients. In this way subconscious defenses could be circumvented. Farmer took the real life case-studies and melded these with adventures of his characters in the series. The Quantum Leap novel Knights of the Morningstar also features a character who writes a book by that name. In Matthew Stover 's novel Shatterpoint ,
6195-682: The core Vedas and Upanishads . Other examples include the Sulba Sutras , which are some of the earliest texts on geometry . Ved Vyasa 's Mahabharata and Valmiki 's Ramayana , written in Epic Sanskrit, are regarded as the greatest Sanskrit epics. The famous poet and playwright Kālidāsa wrote one epic: Raghuvamsha ( Dynasty of Raghu ); it was written in Classical Sanskrit rather than Epic Sanskrit. Other examples of works written in Classical Sanskrit include
6300-458: The creation of 1950s writer Benny Russell. The book Cloud Atlas (later adapted into a film by The Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer ) consisted of six interlinked stories nested inside each other in a Russian doll fashion. The first story (that of Adam Ewing in the 1850s befriending an escaped slave) is interrupted halfway through and revealed to be part of a journal being read by composer Robert Frobisher in 1930s Belgium. His own story of working for
6405-665: The earliest example of Assamese literature. The Charyapadas are Vajrayana Buddhist songs composed in the 8th to 12th centuries. These writings bear similarities to Oriya and Bengali languages as well. The phonological and morphological traits of these songs, some of which are extant, bear very strong resemblance to Assamese. A comprehensive introductory book Assamese Language-Literature & Sahityarathi Lakshminath Bezbaroa originally authored by leading Assamese littérateur of Awahon-Ramdhenu Era and pioneer Assam economist Bhabananda Deka together with his three deputies, Parikshit Hazarika, Upendra Nath Goswami and Prabhat Chandra Sarma,
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#17327918212336510-735: The epic Mahabharata , the Kurukshetra War is narrated by a character in Vyasa 's Jaya , which itself is narrated by a character in Vaisampayana 's Bharata , which itself is narrated by a character in Ugrasrava's Mahabharata . Both The Golden Ass by Apuleius and Metamorphoses by Ovid extend the depths of framing to several degrees. Another early example is the One Thousand and One Nights ( Arabian Nights ), where
6615-573: The exposure of a murderer (although not a king). The play I Hate Hamlet and the movie A Midwinter's Tale are about a production of Hamlet , which in turn includes a production of The Murder of Gonzago , as does the Hamlet -based film Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead , which even features a third-level puppet theatre version within their play. Similarly, in Anton Chekhov 's The Seagull there are specific allusions to Hamlet : in
6720-577: The fashioning of individual characters. Jan Potocki 's The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (1797–1805) has an interlocking structure with stories-within-stories reaching several levels of depth. The provenance of the story is sometimes explained internally, as in The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien , which depicts the Red Book of Westmarch (a story-internal version of the book itself) as
6825-409: The final chapter. As this progresses characters and messages within the fictional 'Magpie Murders' manifest themselves within the primary narrative and the final chapter's content reveals the reason for its original absence. Dreams are a common way of including stories inside stories, and can sometimes go several levels deep. Both the book The Arabian Nightmare and the curse of "eternal waking" from
6930-513: The first act a son stages a play to impress his mother, a professional actress, and her new lover; the mother responds by comparing her son to Hamlet. Later he tries to come between them, as Hamlet had done with his mother and her new husband. The tragic developments in the plot follow in part from the scorn the mother shows for her son's play. Shakespeare adopted the play-within-a-play device for many of his other plays as well, including A Midsummer Night's Dream and Love's Labours Lost . Almost
7035-652: The flourish of Meitei civilization . Khamba Thoibi Sheireng ( Meitei for 'Epic of Khamba Thoibi '), the third longest Indian epic poem , next to the Mahabharata and the Ramayana , is a Meitei epic poem , based on the classic tale of Khamba and Thoibi , having 39,000 lines, is regarded as the national epic of the Manipuris . Marathi literature began with saint-poets like Dnyaneshwar , Tukaram , Ramdas , and Eknath . Modern Marathi literature
7140-422: The form of inscriptions. The earliest written literature dates back to the 7th century CE. Among other traditions, Urdu poetry is a fine example of linguistic and cultural synthesis. Arab and Persian vocabulary based on the Hindi language resulted in a vast and popular class of ghazal literature, usually written by Muslims in contexts ranging from romance and society to philosophy and Tassawuf (Sufism). In
7245-401: The general story is narrated by an unknown narrator, and in this narration the stories are told by Scheherazade . In many of Scheherazade's narrations, there are also stories narrated , and even in some of these, there are some other stories. An example of this is " The Three Apples ", a murder mystery narrated by Scheherazade. Within the story, after the murderer reveals himself, he narrates
7350-420: The greatest Tamil scholars, like Thiruvalluvar , who wrote on ethics, and on the various issues of life like virtue, wealth and love, or the Tamil poet Mamulanar , who explored historical incidents that happened in India, lived during the Sangam period. The Bhakti movement was a significant religious movement in medieval Hinduism that sought to bring religious reforms to all strata of society by adopting
7455-700: The life of Bhadrabahu of Shravanabelagola . Since the earliest available Kannada work is one on grammar and a guide of sorts to unify existing variants of Kannada grammar and literary styles, it can be safely assumed that literature in Kannada must have started several centuries earlier. Pampa who popularised Champu style which is unique to Kannada wrote the epic " Vikramarjuna Vijaya ". He also wrote " Adipurana ". Other famous poets like Ponna wrote "shantinatapurana", "Bhuvanaikaramabhyudaya", "Jinaksharamale", and "gatapratyagata". Ranna wrote "Shantipurana" and "Ghadayudha". The Jain poet Nagavarma II wrote "Kavyavalokana", "Karnatabhashabhushana" and "Vardhamanapurana" . Janna
7560-553: The literary level. Nagpuri literature refers to literature in the Nagpuri language , the language of Jharkhand , Chhattisgarh and Odisha . The earliest literature started in the nagpuri language when the Nagvanshi king and king of Ramgarh Raj started writing poetry in the 17th century. Since then, various literature has been written. Although in the present century, Nagpuri was never considered worthy of literary development,
7665-406: The local tavern he is told (by the son of the man Longren left to die) that the girl is a local crazy named Assol, but a friend of Assol claims that she is not in fact insane. He makes sails of scarlet silk and sails to Assol's village. Finale: Assol sees a white ship with scarlet sails, Gray takes Assol in a boat to the ship, and they drink the wine. Both prophecies are fulfilled. The prophecy
7770-409: The main character Fyodor Cherdyntsev as well as the whole Chapter IV, a critical biography of Nikolay Chernyshevsky (also written by Fyodor). This novel is considered one of the first metanovels in literature. With the rise of literary modernism , writers experimented with ways in which multiple narratives might nest imperfectly within each other. A particularly ingenious example of nested narratives
7875-480: The main story. On the television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles , each episode was framed as though it were being told by Indy when he was older (usually acted by George Hall , but once by Harrison Ford ). The same device of an adult narrator representing the older version of a young protagonist is used in the films Stand by Me and A Christmas Story , and the television show The Wonder Years and How I Met Your Mother . In The Amory Wars ,
7980-560: The method of devotion to achieve salvation. Originating in Tamilakam during 6th century CE, it gained prominence through the poems and teachings of the Vaishnava Alvars and Shaiva Nayanars before spreading northwards. It swept over east and north India from the 15th century onwards, reaching its zenith between the 15th and 17th century CE. From the 14th to the 18th centuries, India's literary traditions went through
8085-490: The morals of the novels through plot descriptions of his stories. Books such as Breakfast of Champions and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater are sprinkled with these plot descriptions. Stanisław Lem 's Tale of the Three Storytelling Machines of King Genius from The Cyberiad has several levels of storytelling. All levels tell stories of the same person, Trurl. House of Leaves is the tale of
8190-409: The murder of Hamlet's father in the main action, and Prince Hamlet writes additional material to emphasize this. Hamlet wishes to provoke the murderer, his uncle, and sums this up by saying "the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king." Hamlet calls this new play The Mouse-trap (a title that Agatha Christie later took for the long-running play The Mousetrap ). Christie's work
8295-643: The national anthem of India and Bangladesh namely, "Jana Gana Mana" and "Amar Sonar Bangla", respectively. He was the first Asian who won the Nobel Prize. Rabindranath has written an enormous number of poems, songs, essays, novels, plays and short stories. His songs remain popular and are still widely sung in Bengal. Hindi literature started as religious and philosophical poetry in medieval periods in dialects like Avadhi and Brij . The most famous figures from this period are Kabir and Tulsidas . In modern times,
8400-462: The northern part of Indian subcontinent, used by most of the educated and the government. The language had, from its earliest days in the 11th century CE, been imported to the subcontinent by various culturally Persianised Central Asian Turkic and Afghan dynasties. Literature from North East India included Assamese literature , Meitei or Manipuri literature , Naga literature, among others. Ancient India has many intensive examples, like that of
8505-402: The outer story, but also in the real world. When a story is told within another instead of being told as part of the plot, it allows the author to play on the reader's perceptions of the characters—the motives and the reliability of the storyteller are automatically in question. Stories within a story may disclose the background of characters or events, tell of myths and legends that influence
8610-524: The performance of all or part of the play, as in Noises Off , A Chorus of Disapproval or Lilies . Similarly, the musical Man of La Mancha presents the story of Don Quixote as an impromptu play staged in prison by Quixote ' s author, Miguel de Cervantes . Indian literature Indian literature refers to the literature produced on the Indian subcontinent until 1947 and in
8715-467: The period 1500–1200 BCE. The Sanskrit epics Ramayana and Mahabharata were subsequently codified and appeared towards the end of the 2nd millennium BCE. Classical Sanskrit literature developed rapidly during the first few centuries of the first millennium BCE, as did the Pāli Canon and Tamil Sangam literature . Ancient Meitei appeared in the 1st century CE with sacred musical compositions like
8820-452: The play broadly mirror those of the novel and give the character Oedipa Maas a greater context to consider her predicament; the play concerns a feud between two rival mail distribution companies, which appears to be ongoing to the present day, and in which, if this is the case, Oedipa has found herself involved. As in Hamlet , the director makes changes to the original script; in this instance,
8925-416: The play by themselves. The characters in the play are also brother and sister and are also named Clare and Felice. The Mysteries , a modern reworking of the medieval mystery plays , remains faithful to its roots by having the modern actors play the sincere, naïve tradesmen and women as they take part in the original performances. Alternatively, a play might be about the production of a play, and include
9030-535: The play is presented before an audience of two of the characters, who comment upon the action. From references in other contemporary works, Kyd is also assumed to have been the writer of an early, lost version of Hamlet (the so-called Ur-Hamlet ), with a play-within-a-play interlude. William Shakespeare 's Hamlet retains this device by having Hamlet ask some strolling players to perform The Murder of Gonzago . The action and characters in The Murder mirror
9135-407: The plot, or even seem to be extraneous diversions from the plot. In some cases, the story within a story is involved in the action of the plot of the outer story. In others, the inner story is independent, and could either be skipped or stand separately, although many subtle connections may be lost. Often there is more than one level of internal stories, leading to deeply-nested fiction. Mise en abyme
9240-423: The protagonist Mace Windu narrates the story within his journal, while the main story is being told from the third-person limited point of view. Several Star Trek tales are stories or events within stories, such as Gene Roddenberry 's novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture , J. A. Lawrence 's Mudd's Angels , John M. Ford 's The Final Reflection , Margaret Wander Bonanno 's Strangers from
9345-456: The protagonist receives a small book from a baker, in which the baker tells the story of a sailor who tells the story of another sailor, and Sophie's World about a girl who is actually a character in a book that is being read by Hilde, a girl in another dimension. Later on in the book Sophie questions this idea, and realizes that Hilde too could be a character in a story that in turn is being read by another. Mahabharata , an Indian epic that
9450-401: The reader or viewer, or can act as examples to teach lessons to other characters. The inner story often has a symbolic and psychological significance for the characters in the outer story. There is often some parallel between the two stories, and the fiction of the inner story is used to reveal the truth in the outer story. Often the stories within a story are used to satirize views, not only in
9555-737: The script is found in the Mandar Hill Stone inscriptions of Adityasena in the 7th century CE, now fixed in the Baidyanath temple of Deoghar . The language of the Buddhist dohas is described as belonging to the mixed Maithili—Kamrupi language. Modern Meitei literature, the descendant of Ancient Meitei literature , is written in modern Meitei language (also known as Manipuri language ), composed by writers from Manipur, Assam, Tripura, Myanmar and Bangladesh. The history of Meitei literature can be traced back to thousands of years with
9660-525: The start of the Malayalam calendar which commenced in 825 CE, Malayalam literature remained in preliminary stage. During this time, Malayalam literature consisted mainly of various genres of songs. Maithili literature is the entire collection of poetry, novels, short stories, documents and other writings in the Maithili language . The Maithili script, Mithilakshara or Tirhuta as it is popularly known,
9765-420: The stories of their predecessors in a manner that validates a belief stated in the sixth tale that "Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present and by each crime, and every kindness, we birth our future." The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon has several characters seeing a play called The Courier's Tragedy by the fictitious Jacobean playwright Richard Wharfinger. The events of
9870-459: The story within a story influences the reality of the story he has been telling, so that what happens in "The Mad Trist" begins happening in "The Fall of the House of Usher". Also, in Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes , there are many stories within the story that influence the hero's actions (there are others that even the author himself admits are purely digressive). Most of the first part
9975-536: The subject of an epic puppet theater presentation. Another example is found in Samuel Delany 's Trouble on Triton , which features a theater company that produces elaborate staged spectacles for randomly selected single-person audiences. Plays produced by the "Caws of Art" theater company also feature in Russell Hoban's modern fable, The Mouse and His Child . Raina Telgemeier 's best-selling Drama
10080-612: The titular character. The most notable examples are " You Are Old, Father William ", " 'Tis the Voice of the Lobster ", " Jabberwocky ", and " The Walrus and the Carpenter ". Chaucer 's The Canterbury Tales and Boccaccio 's Decameron are also classic frame stories. In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales , the characters tell tales suited to their personalities and tell them in ways that highlight their personalities. The noble knight tells
10185-429: The veracity of the previous layer, or is challenged by the succeeding layer. Presuming each layer to be a true telling within the overall story, a chain of events is created linking Adam Ewing's embrace of the abolitionist movement in the 1850s to the religious redemption of a post-apocalyptic tribal man over a century after the fall of modern civilization. The characters in each nested layer take inspiration or lessons from
10290-420: The whole of The Taming of the Shrew is a play-within-a-play, presented to convince Christopher Sly , a drunken tinker, that he is a nobleman watching a private performance, but the device has no relevance to the plot (unless Katharina's subservience to her "lord" in the last scene is intended to strengthen the deception against the tinker ) and is often dropped in modern productions. The musical Kiss Me, Kate
10395-462: The woman most likely to care for it well. This kind of play-within-a-play, which appears at the beginning of the main play and acts as a "frame" for it, is called an " induction ". Brecht's one-act play The Elephant Calf (1926) is a play-within-a-play performed in the foyer of the theatre during his Man Equals Man . In Jean Giraudoux 's play Ondine , all of act two is a series of scenes within scenes, sometimes two levels deep. This increases
10500-600: The world – a victory which itself is quite different from real history. In Red Orc's Rage by Philip J. Farmer a doubly recursive method is used to intertwine its fictional layers. This novel is part of a science-fiction series, the World of Tiers . Farmer collaborated in the writing of this novel with an American psychiatrist, Dr. A. James Giannini. Dr. Giannini had previously used the World of Tiers series in treating patients in group therapy. During these therapeutic sessions,
10605-400: Was marked by a theme of social reform. Odia language literary history started with the charyapadas written in the 8th century CE. Odia has a rich literary heritage, the medieval period dating back to the 13th century. Sarala Das who lived in the 14th century is known as the Vyasa of Odisha. He translated the Mahabharata into Odia. The first work considered to be Punjabi literature
10710-651: Was parodied in Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound , in which two theater critics are drawn into the murder mystery they are watching. The audience is similarly absorbed into the action in Woody Allen's play God , which is about two failed playwrights in Ancient Greece. The phrase The Conscience of the King also became the title of a Star Trek episode featuring a production of Hamlet which leads to
10815-547: Was published in 1968. This book was officially released in New Delhi on 24 Nov 1968 by then President of India Zakir Husain in commemoration of the birth centenary celebration of doyen of Assamese literature Lakshminath Bezbaroa . After almost half a century, this historic book has been recovered and re-edited by Assamese award-winning short-story writer & novelist Arnab Jan Deka, which was published by Assam Foundation-India in 2014. The first evidence of Bengali literature
10920-568: Was the author of "Yashodhara Charitha". Rudhrabhatta and Durgashima wrote "Jagannatha Vijaya" and "Panchatantra" respectively. The works of the medieval period are based on Jain and Hindu principles. The Vachana Sahitya tradition of the 12th century is purely native and unique in world literature. Konkani is a language with a complex and much-contested history. It is one of the few Indian languages to be written in five scripts—Roman, Nagari, Kannada, Persian-Arabic and Malayalam-and also has an extensive oral literature. Even up to 500 years since
11025-567: Was written, it was usually with Kannada script, sometimes with minor modifications. Mizo literature is the literature written in Mizo ṭtawng , the principal language of the Mizo peoples , which has both written and oral traditions . It has undergone a considerable change in the 20th century. The language developed mainly from the Lushai language , with significant influence from Pawi language , Paite language and Hmar language , especially at
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