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GCSE English Literature · key term
A narrative movement back to events before the story’s present moment.
Used by AQA, Edexcel, OCR and Eduqas
Paper 1
A scene that returns to an earlier time in the story, revealing information about a character’s past.
Revise: Plot overviewThe Ghost of Christmas Past takes Scrooge through scenes from his own earlier life. These flashbacks reveal that he was not always the harsh man introduced in Stave One.
A narrative return to an earlier event. Dickens uses Scrooge’s past to explain how his attitudes to money developed.
Remember that the conversations about Silas’s past in Chapter 16 are flashbacks to Eppie’s childhood, not conversations first taking place when she is eighteen.
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A narrative movement back to events that happened before the main action of a story.
An interruption of the present sequence of events to recount earlier events. Small’s retrospective story explains the origins of the London mystery.
Paper 2
A return to earlier events within a narrative, allowing the reader to learn about the past after seeing its consequences.
A scene that returns to an earlier time within a narrative.
An account of earlier events inserted into a narrative, allowing readers to reconsider the present through knowledge of the past.
A return to events earlier than the story’s current moment, used to reveal information about the past.
A movement backwards in narrative time to explain events that happened before the current action.
Paper 1
A movement away from the narrative present to show earlier events. Stave Two uses Scrooge’s memories to reveal how he became the man introduced in Stave One.
Revise: Stave TwoThe journey then follows the main stages of his earlier life: childhood loneliness, Fan’s rescue, apprenticeship with Fezziwig, the loss of Belle, and a later Christmas in Belle’s family home. These flashbacks interrupt the novella’s present-day action but move forward through Scrooge’s past. Their order reveals how he changed, rather than merely listing things that happened to him.
An interruption of a narrative’s present-time events to show something that happened earlier.
Component 1, Component 2
An involuntary experience of reliving a traumatic event as though it were happening again.
Revise: RemainsPost-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, can develop after a traumatic experience and involve intrusive memories, nightmares and flashbacks. A flashback is an involuntary reliving of an event as though it is happening again. This context helps explain why physical distance from the war does not bring the speaker mental peace.
A movement backwards in narrative time to reveal an earlier event.
A movement away from the narrative’s present to recount earlier events. Silas’s Lantern Yard history explains his withdrawn life in Raveloe.
A return to earlier events within a narrative. Chapter 16 looks back at conversations between Dolly and Silas during Eppie’s childhood.
A passage that returns to events before the narrative’s current moment.
