Narrative & Time
Prolepsis
Anticipation: treating a future event as already settled, or answering an objection before it is raised. In stories, the flash-forward; in argument, the pre-emptive answer.
"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember…" — García Márquez
Don't confuse it with Analepsis. Analepsis looks backward (flashback); prolepsis looks forward. In rhetoric, procatalepsis is the objection-answering subtype.
In the Reader — 4 excerpts
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed
The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance agent promised to fly from Mercy to the other side of Lake Superior at three o'clock. Two days before the event was to take place he
…its air of ugly threat, and at the heart of it, her older sister, her back arched, her arm upraised, made Briony's writing ambitions, which were to be a post office clerk, seem childish.
Travels with
Devices that share a passage with prolepsis most often — company reveals character.
Asyndeton 4 Passive Voice 3 Hyperbole 3 In Medias Res 3
The rest of the family
In Medias Res Analepsis Foreshadowing Free Indirect Discourse Stream of Consciousness Stichomythia