From ovo

Helena hatches from the egg

The expression ab ovo ( Latin ; literally "from the egg ") means something like "from the (very distant) beginning / origin". In narrative theory , this refers to the technique of starting a narration at the earliest possible point in time .

It goes back to the Ars poetica of the Roman poet Horace , in which he wrote about 20 BC. BC describes an ideal epic poet as someone "who does not start the war for Troy with the twin egg, but leads the reader straight into medias res [in the middle of the action]":

" Nec reditum Diomedis from interitu Meleagri
nec gemino bellum Troianum orditur from ovo
semper ad eventum festinat et in medias res "

What is meant here is Homer , whose Iliad begins in the ninth year of the Trojan War, but does not speak of how beautiful Helena , whose robbery by the Trojan prince Paris started the war, once slipped from one of the two eggs, hers Mother Leda laid after she was impregnated by the god father Zeus (in the form of a swan ).

Tristram Shandy, the protagonist and narrator of Laurence Sterne's novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759–1767) willfully defies this classic poetics of rules by critically examining all the circumstances that led to his conception undergoes and reports his birth in the fifth chapter, but then thinks he must describe the previous mishaps of his midwife and her extended clientele before he can continue with his autobiography in good conscience.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Horace, Ars poetica 146-149.
2. ↑ […] For which cause, right glad I am, that I have begun the history of myself in the way I have done; and that I am able to go on, tracing every thing in it, as Horace says, ab Ovo. Horace, I know, does not recommend this fashion altogether: But that gentleman is speaking only of an epic poem or a tragedy ;—( I forget which,) besides, if it was not so, I should beg Mr. Horace's pardon; - for in writing what I have set about, I shall confine myself neither to his rules, nor to any man's rules that ever lived. To such however as do not choose to go so far back into these things, I can give no better advice than that they skip over the remaining part of this chapter; for I declare before-hand, 'tis wrote only for the curious and inquisitive. (Lawrence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman , I.IV.)