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Literature vocabulary · Plot and Structure

Frame narrative

Meaning in literature, with examples

nounAdvanced term

In literature, frame narrative means: A story structure in which one main narrative surrounds and presents one or more shorter stories inside it.

In Turkish: çerçeve anlatı

How it is used

Common in novels and short-story collections. Critics use it when an outer storyteller, setting, or situation introduces embedded tales.

Example sentences

  1. Our reading group mapped the frame narrative first, then traced how each traveler's tale changed the meaning of the inn scenes.

    Here frame narrative refers to the outer story that organizes and gives context to the separate tales told within it.

  2. The editor preferred the frame narrative because the elderly narrator's letters made the historical episodes feel less distant.

    In this sentence, the term highlights how an enclosing narrative voice shapes the reader's access to embedded events.

Common collocations

  • use a frame narrative
  • outer frame narrative
  • frame narrative structure
  • frame narrative device
  • narrativeA story or account of connected events, and the way it is told; also used as an adjective for anything that tells a story.
  • plotThe series of connected events in a story and the way the writer arranges them, especially how one event causes another.

More terms: Plot and Structure

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