Anachrony is a
literary term describing a change in the order of events in
discourse time from their logical flow in
story time.
Anachrony is split into two categories (assume actual order of events is 1-2-3-4):
Anachrony is measured in two ways:
- Distance - the time between the narrative NOW and the anachrony
- Amplitude - the length of the anachrony
Example:
You are watching a movie. We see Bob, who is watching his child
playing in the park. Suddenly, we
see Bob as a little boy playing in the same
park for a brief moment, than again we see the original
scene. This is an analeptic anachrony, or
flashback. The
amplitude of the anachrony would be brief,
since we only saw it for a moment, and the
distance of the anachrony would be the time it took for Bob
to
grow from being the little boy in the flashback to the
father we see at the park.