Flashbacks

Ivanhoe

by Walter Scott

Ivanhoe: Flashbacks 1 key example

Volume 2, Chapter 14
Explanation and Analysis—Must Needs Retrograde:

At the beginning of Volume 2, Chapter 14 of Ivanhoe, Walter Scott utilizes flashbacks in a highly specific way to enrich the reader’s understanding of the events to follow:

Our history must needs retrograde for the space of a few pages, to inform the reader of certain passages material to his understanding the rest of this important narrative. His own intelligence may indeed have easily anticipated that, when Ivanhoe sunk down, and seemed abandoned by all the world, it was the importunity of Rebecca which prevailed on her father to have the gallant young warrior transported from the lists to the house which for the time the Jews inhabited in the suburbs of Ashby.