forehistory

plural forehistories

1. countableuncountableThe period of history preceding a given time or event; prior history.

   Tolkien's lengthened sense of forehistory is concomitant with this dilation.

   2023, Nicholas Birns, The Literary Role of History in the Fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien

   3 more examples

   "[…] On this territory of dawning forehistory the prophetic narrator has operated with great freedom."

   1881, Alexander Balmain Bruce, The Chief End of Revelation, page 84

   Tregarvon knew nothing of this man's antecedents; of the forehistory of any of them, for that matter.

   1916, Francis Lynde, After the Manner of Men, page 30

   Reflecting a virtual correspondence between separate moments in time, and characteristically between the "forehistory" and "afterhistory" of a particular historical phenomenon (Baudelaire, for example, has a forehistory in medieval allegory, an afterhistory in Jugendstil), the Arcades passage brings to light for the present — in a flash of legibility — a "dialectical image," something at once documentary and metaphysical.

   2014, Howard Eiland, Michael W. Jennings, Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life