Analepsis as narrative framework and structural core in Virgil’s “Aeneid”

The article examines analepsis in Virgil’s «Aeneid» as a key element of the narrative structure that serves not a secondary, but a strategic function in the overall architectonics of the poem. Special attention is given to Aeneas’s embedded narrative (Books II–III), which not only disrupts the linear unfolding of events, but also creates a semantic framework for interpreting the entire poem. The analysis demonstrates that the return to the past is not merely an artistic device of retrospection, but a tool for constructing the epic identity of the hero and intertwining personal trauma with historical destiny. The article explores the functioning of analepsis in «Aeneid» as a leading narrative strategy that shapes the poem’s structure and semantic perspective. Central to this is the interpolated narrative block in Books II–III, in which Aeneas reconstructs the past. The methodological basis of the study draws on classical philology, structural poetics, and modern narratology. Particular attention is paid to the Latin text, the compositional logic of analepsis, and the frame structure that provides the structural, emotional, and symbolic justification of the epic recollection. The «Aeneid» presents both external analepsis, which historicizes the narrative through immersion into events outside the main plot, and extensive analepsis, which reproduces epic memory via the transformation of memory into action through narrative recollection. In addition to these, Virgil’s epic features both extradiegetic and intradiegetic levels of analepsis. Thanks to this device, the narrative model of the «Aeneid» represents one of the most sophisticated structures of ancient epic, wherein analepsis and the frame structure operate in dialectical interaction: the frame sets the boundaries and context, while analepsis fills the narrative with existential meaning.