Even though an excursus is usually found in modern nonfiction in the appendix, it used to have other purposes. In Middle Ages literature, an excursus — from the Latin “excurrere,” meaning “run out” — would have had nothing to do with the topics being discussed in the main work; rather, it was a digression used to lighten the atmosphere in a tragic story. An excursus was a rhetorical device that allowed the narrator to comment or suspend the action for the audience to reflect on what was going on in the story.