First example of story told via dual timelines?
A few novels I read recently were told via dual timelines, with chapters alternating between a "current" plot and a "background" story.
It felt to me as a "modern" story-telling technique, since I mostly witnessed its occurrence in other contemporary media (movies, TV shows).
I guess its pacing can help maintaining the interest of a public whose attention is a more limited resource nowadays.
Is it really a recent thing however, or are there more "classical" examples of dual timelines story-telling?
What would be the first recorded one?
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I don't know about the first purely double timeline, the only one I can even think of that uses only two timelines is Diana Gabaldon's Outlander novels which started in 1991.
On the other hand Redshift, first published in 1973, uses three timelines, separated by a space of centuries to tell it's tale. H.P. Lovecraft's Call of Cthulhu, 1928, also uses several separate timelines from different POVs that all converge on the hapless narrator.
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