Guide to Literary Terms

Chronicle (also called history) - a detailed and continuous record of events, usually a systematic account or narration of events that contain little or no interpretation or analysis.

The word is from the Greek khronos, meaning “time,” and khronik, meaning “annals.”

Chronicles were used as a form of history from Roman times until the early 1600s when they were largely replaced by biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, logs, travel books, and narratives of sea voyages and exploration.

Shakespeare adapted Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1577) for his history plays, such as Henry V.