Knowra Free indirect discourse Free indirect discourse A mode of third-person narration that incorporates a character’s language and perspective without quotation marks or reporting clauses. It lets narration shift toward a character’s voice while retaining grammatical distance.
Narrative voice : The voice that tells a narrative, distinct from the author and potentially distinct from any character. Free indirect discourse makes the narrator’s voice sound partly like a character’s.
Jane Austen : An English novelist whose works include Pride and Prejudice and Emma. Her fiction is widely studied for its subtle shifts between narration and characters’ perspectives.
Third-person narrative : Narration that refers to characters using third-person pronouns such as he, she, or they. Free indirect discourse retains third-person narration even as it adopts a character’s idiom.
Pride and Prejudice : Jane Austen’s 1813 novel about Elizabeth Bennet, her family, and her changing judgment of Fitzwilliam Darcy. Austen’s shifts into Elizabeth’s judgments make the technique especially visible.
Direct thought : A representation of a character’s thought presented as if in the character’s own words, often typographically marked. Unlike free indirect thought, direct thought usually makes the character’s words formally distinct from narration.
Focalization : The restriction or shaping of narrative information through a particular perspective. A character’s perceptions can shape the passage even when the narrator remains grammatically present.
Gustave Flaubert : A French novelist best known for Madame Bovary and meticulous prose style. Madame Bovary helped establish the technique’s association with modern realist fiction.
Indirect speech : A way of reporting speech by integrating its content into a reporting clause, often with changes in person or tense. Free indirect discourse resembles indirect speech but typically omits its reporting clause.
Emma : Jane Austen’s 1815 novel about Emma Woodhouse, a wealthy young woman who misreads the people around her. The narration often shares Emma’s assumptions while allowing dramatic irony to expose them.
Indirect thought : A report of a character’s thought integrated into a narrator’s sentence, commonly with a phrase such as “she thought.” Its explicit reporting frame distinguishes it from free indirect thought.
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