Like a foreword or précis, a prolepsis gives a reader a condensed version of an argument at the beginning so that during the process of reading it is easier to trace the development of ideas. In a prolepsis, the whole truth of a book is laid out in advance in a way that will be developed with greater clarity, specificity and detail in the future reading of the entire work. However, if a prolepsis is well written, when readers look back to it after having finished reading the book, they will see that everything they needed to know was present from the very beginning and was always there.
