Use Of Free Indirect Discourse Research Articles

Foucault and Sedgwick: The Repressive Hypothesis Revisited

This essay examines the Foucauldian foundations of queer theory in the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. The essay argues that Sedgwick’s increasing disappointment with Foucault’s critique of the repressive hypothesis is in part produced by the slippery rhetoric of The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction. Specifically, Foucault’s use of free indirect discourse in that volume destabilizes both the theory of repression and the critique Foucault mounts against it, thereby rendering ambiguous any political promise his critique might seem to offer. Returning to the fraught relation between Foucault and Sedgwick, the essay concludes by reading Foucault and Sedgwick together through the lens of a reparative ethics in which the felt experience of knowing the world is also an experiment in new ways of living.

Narrated perception revisited: The case of Jane Austen’s Emma

Jane Austen’s Emma (1816) is generally considered an ambiguous and unreliable narrative in terms of point of view (Morini, 2009: 53–57; Wallace, 1995: 77–97). These qualities are often attributed to the extensive use of free indirect discourse (Finch and Bowen, 1990: 5–6; Mezei, 1996: 72–75). This article aims to demonstrate that another narrative technique is also responsible for the ambiguity and unreliability of the novel. ‘Narrated perception’ (NP) portrays the sensory perceptions of a fictional character by describing events as they are experienced by that character (Fludernik, 1993: 305–309). NP has been pointed out by some critics to be a distinct narrative technique, but in general perception is included within the broader category of free indirect discourse (FID), and occasionally as an aspect of free indirect thought (FIT). This article suggests that there are some subtle differences between NP and FID/FIT, and thus it can be beneficial to examine NP separately. In fact, NP is frequently similar to pure narration in terms of form and function. As a case study, this article presents a stylistic analysis of a number of passages containing NP in Emma which do not typically feature in studies of FID/FIT. The analysis provides textual evidence of (1) the presence of Emma’s sensory perceptions within what looks like narration, (2) the close connection between perception, thought and emotion, and (3) the difficulty of distinguishing between perception and narration in some cases, which suggests the potential of NP to mislead the reader by presenting as a seemingly objective fact what later on turns out to be Emma’s mistaken assessment.

Trying it On: Narration and Masking in Edith Wharton's <em>The Age of Innocence</em>

The innocent, fair May Welland and the experienced, dark Ellen Olenska appear to be direct opposites of each other, representing the familiar virgin/whore binary. This essay examines Wharton’s text as it consistently questions this binary through formal and thematic interrogations of various distinctions. In addition to the opposition between May and Ellen, there is the problematic distinction between narrator and character, which the novel’s use of free indirect discourse brings to the fore. Further, the text uses multiple figures of masking or “trying on” of disguises, questioning the distinction between masks and the people who wear those masks and between the actual and the mimetic. The thematic oscillation between woman as traditionally conforming, innocent virgin on the one hand and threatening, corrupting temptress on the other takes place on the formal level as the narration calls into question the reality of any meaningful distinction between apparently oppositional binaries.

Kate Chopin’s Narrative Techniques and Separate Space in The Awakening

Kate Chopin’s Narrative Techniques and Separate Space in The Awakening Xianfeng Mou (bio) In this essay, I approach Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899) from the perspective of Chopin’s narrative techniques, especially her dexterous use of free indirect discourse.1 Through this approach, I disentangle the elaborate methods Chopin employed to make her novel fascinating and puzzling. More importantly, I argue that Chopin’s purpose behind her techniques was to deliver the first modern American female artist onto the American cultural landscape. By definition, free indirect discourse is a technique that involves “a mixture or merging of character and narrator” in a single utterance (Martin 138–139).2 An author chooses free indirect discourse to represent what a character is thinking or speaking while simultaneously indicating the narrator’s attitude toward the character. For instance, when describing Edna’s relationship to her husband Léonce, Chopin’s narrator first relates what Edna thinks, then adds her authorial comment: “[Edna] fancied there was a sympathy of thought and taste between them, in which fancy she was mistaken” (Chopin 62; emphasis added). The first half of this statement describes Edna’s belief that she and her husband share similar thoughts and tastes. In her opinion they are very compatible. The second half reveals the narrator’s opinion that Edna’s perception is quite wrong. Chopin uses similar techniques extensively throughout the novel. [End Page 103] Chopin uses free indirect discourse because she is concerned with representing the emotional, spiritual, and artistic awakening of a female artist battling against prevalent cultural norms of wifehood, motherhood, romance, seduction, and conventions of female writing. By separating what Edna is thinking from the narrator’s comments, Chopin shows the changing distance between the narrator and Edna, which enables the reader to see Edna’s gradual development over a series of conversations along the plotlines of the novel. During the process, Chopin also allows Edna to approach closer and closer to the narrator’s opinions. Through these subtle techniques, Chopin charts Edna’s remarkable journey of growth both as a woman and as a female artist. Edna’s growth and its artistic meaning can be illustrated by looking at seven representative passages through which Chopin develops a female quest for a separate spiritual and artistic space. She embodies that idea in Edna’s voice, letting Edna talk with representative voices of the era, sometimes more than once, including Léonce Pontellier, Robert Lebrun, Madame Ratignolle, Alcée Arobin, and Mademoiselle Reisz. Chopin thus offered Edna as the first modern American female artist, at the same time giving birth to herself as an artist. Critical literature on The Awakening reflects a gradual shift in literary scholarship—a moving away from interpreting thematic contestations to evaluating Chopin’s artistry at creating fiction, most recently separating Chopin’s authorial discourse from the characters’ discourses. I roughly categorize the readings into four groups. Since its publication in 1899, the novel has been read on four major levels, all of which have enriched our understanding. The first level, also the most accessible, focuses on Edna’s sexual awakening. For instance, in 1994 one critic thinks Edna acts only for “her own pleasure” (Dawson 6), which presumably refers to sexual pleasure. The second level goes deeper and takes the cultural approach, focusing on Edna’s quest for a feminine mode of subjectivity. These critics believe that Edna is negotiating a difficult position between the abject mode of a mother-woman and the masculine mode of an assertive artist. Critics conclude that Edna is dissatisfied with both choices but that she cannot find a third way out because the American society does not allow a “symbiotic” world of power at that time (Schweitzer 161–191). The third level goes still further and deals with women’s relationship with language. It examines women’s right to discourse and analyzes Edna’s quest for independent thinking and self-consciousness through self-articulation. Patricia Yaeger, for example, points out that the novel gives conflicting [End Page 104] signals. She believes that Edna’s struggles illustrate that American women largely lack the language to express themselves at the end of the nineteenth century. Jacqueline Buckman, however...

Irish Strands and the Imperial Eye: Henry James's "The Modern Warning"

This essay considers the representation of Ireland in James 1888 novella "The Modern Warning." It begins by arguing that James's representation of Ireland more broadly is divided between his use of anti-Irish stereotypes common in the nineteenth century and his fiction's simultaneous critique and undermining of the very figures who employ those same stereotypes. The essay then explores the impact that Ireland has on "The Modern Warning"'s modes of representation. These include the relationship between naming and sound, the strategic manipulation of the very term "Irish," and the story's increasingly uncontrolled use of free indirect discourse as it progresses towards a suicidal conclusion.

Tradition, Convergence, and Innovation: The Literary Legacy of Anne Thackeray Ritchie

Tradition, Convergence, and Innovation:The Literary Legacy of Anne Thackeray Ritchie Carol Hanbery MacKay (bio) "We think back through our mothers if we are women." In Virginia Woolf's often-quoted pronouncement from A Room of One's Own, she thus comments on literary influence, suggesting that a woman writer's vocation may come from the outlook she shares with other women writers (Room 76).1 A decade earlier, in her centenary essay that reestablished George Eliot's reputation, Woolf cites a "a scrap of [Eliot's] talk" at one of her many Sunday gatherings that reaffirms a sense of tradition and influence: "We know by our own experience how very much others affect our lives, and we must remember that we in turn must have the same effect upon others" ("George Eliot" 231).2 These remarks about influence and women writers were originally recorded by Anne Thackeray Ritchie (1837-1919) and discussed with Leslie Stephen, her brother-in-law and the man who would later father Woolf. Until the past three decades, Ritchie was viewed in her own father's shadow. As William Makepeace Thackeray's daughter, Ritchie was presumed by most twentieth-century critics to have built her readership largely on Thackeray's reputation, although close examination of her work invites a critical dialogue with both his subject matter and stylistic techniques. In fact, Thackeray once observed that he expected his daughter's literary contributions would rival his own.3 And Eliot, the giant in the Anglophone female literary tradition, confided to her publisher, John Blackwood, that she had no desire to read the work of her contemporaries, excepting "Miss Thackeray" and occasionally Anthony Trollope (Letters 418).4 Critics aware of the family ties between Ritchie and Woolf tend to focus on how Ritchie, the aunt-by-marriage, modeled the role of the working woman writer for Woolf; however, Ritchie's oeuvre also reveals her as a subtle precursor to key themes and some of the technical virtuosity for which Woolf would become famous. I am interested in how Ritchie conjoins tradition with innovation—and particularly in how she draws on a range of narrative techniques for presenting states of consciousness. I see Ritchie as overcoming and bridging transitional moments through fictional consciousnesses that are at once constrained by boundaries and freed through stylistic techniques of her own creation. The technique that most innovatively acts as a connective and explores fresh ways [End Page 164] of expressing nuances is, of course, free indirect discourse.5 This article examines Ritchie's style of narrating consciousness—chiefly her use of free indirect discourse in two of her novels, Miss Angel (1875) and Mrs. Dymond (1885)—in order to demonstrate how her technical skills both draw on nineteenth-century methodologies and prefigure Modernist experimentation, particularly with stream of consciousness. "How is it possible, [the reader] will ask, that a writer capable of such wit, such fantasy, marked by such a distinct and delightful personality, is not at least as famous as Mrs. Gaskell, or as popular as Anthony Trollope?" ("Lady Ritchie" 13). So asks Woolf in her 1919 obituary for her aunt—and Ritchie was about to fall into greater obscurity during the next half century, her works increasingly going out of print.6 Today, Ritchie is being recognized in her own right and treated as a distinctive stylist. Apart from three biographies in the last thirty years, she will be the subject of her own volume with Shuli Barzilai's forthcoming book, Anne Thackeray Ritchie's Fairy Tales for Grown-Ups: The Moral Realism of a Victorian Writer. Yet until recently, a Ritchie scholar could rightly claim that she was "understudied" (Mourão, "Delicate Balances" 73). This has been the case partly because the studies of the past three decades are scattered: they have not always appeared in publications regularly read by Victorianists, nor have critics been sufficiently aware of their contemporaries' arguments. Investigation uncovers a substantial body of Ritchie criticism, and I will here provide an overview of those critiques to establish the groundwork for my own analysis and for future criticism. Moreover, I want to highlight the studies that have informed much of the critical work to date...

Narratorial Border Crossings in Major Early-Twentieth-Century English Novels

The point of departure for the article is Gérard Genette's distinction between “the world in which one tells” and “the world of which one tells,” the division between the worlds being referred to as a “boundary” and a “frontier.” I propose to discuss the crossing of four kinds of narratorial border: a third-person movement into first-person territory; a shift from the impersonal domain to the personal; a crossing of the line between the consistent and the inconsistent in the use of free indirect discourse; and a movement beyond the restricted area of a monologic code in interior monologue. The article concentrates on a detailed analysis of examples in novels by D. H. Lawrence, Joseph Conrad, Arnold Bennett, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce.

Free Indirect Discourse and Narrative Authority in Emma

Jane Austen is generally acknowledged to be the first English novelist to make sustained use of free indirect discourse in the representation of figurai speech and thought.1 Unfortunately, however, the theory of free indirect discourse (FID) in Eng lish has not been congenial to Austen's work, often obscuring the way the technique functions in her novels.2 Two theoretical tendencies, in particular, have contributed to this confusion. First, the most influential accounts of FID in English have tended to stress the autonomy of FID representations of speech and thought and to contrast them with authoritative narrative commentary: FID is, on this account, the preemi nent technique of objective narration, in which the narrator supposedly withdraws or disappears in favor of impersonal figurai representation.3 Second, FID has often been characterized as innately disruptive and destabilizing?a technique that allows other voices to compete with and so undermine the monologic authority of the nar rator or the implied author.4 Whatever their relevance to later fiction, these character izations of FID are inadequate and misleading when applied to Austen's novels, which deploy FID in conjunction with a trustworthy, authoritative narrative voice and which repeatedly intertwine FID with narratorial commentary, sometimes inside of a single sentence. Indeed, much of the aesthetic pleasure in Austen's FID passages comes from subtle modulations among narrative registers, as the prose moves in and out of a complex array of voices, including that of the narrator herself. In this essay, I will examine Austen's use of FID in a series of passages from Emma, emphasizing the narrator's role in an effort to provide a more accurate picture of Austen's practice than has been available in criticism influenced by the prevailing theoretical accounts. In Emma, I will argue, FID is best seen not as a representation of autonomous figurai discourse but as a kind of narratorial mimicry, analogous to the flexible imitations of

From description to depiction: free indirect discourse and online graphical chat

Iconographic avatars in web-based graphical chat environments work to create a ‘shattered’ sense of self through the use of emblematics (the bringing together of text and image) coupled with a reformulated use of free indirect discourse, a style of indirect address found in the modern bourgeois novel. Free indirect discourse, or ‘middle voice’, is crafted by the novelist but takes on the characteristics of the person described, even as the difference between novelist and character creates an ironic distance directed at both the character and the reader who may be encouraged by the style to identify with the character. Avatar-driven graphical chat suggests a synthesis of the value of an avatar external to oneself and that of the ironic distance provided by free indirect discourse. The ‘middle ground’ of iconographic graphical chat environments exemplifies how images reformulate and seemingly mitigate the tensions inherent in text-based free indirect discourse – with its suggestion of ‘experience without a subject’ – to create greater ambiguity, irony and abstraction of the self and others. This mirrors how various forces of global capital work to reformulate the subject.

The English as They See others: England Revealed in Provence

Peter Mayle's best-selling accounts of his life in Provence have appealed to a wide audience in Britain but have also attracted harsh criticism. It is argued here that these works, although ostensibly about Provence, are better analysed as myths for the English. The contrast with an account from the 1930s reflects wider social change, showing a move from a confidently colonial to a self-consciously ‘anthropological’ mode. Doubts about the authenticity of Mayle's accounts are related both to his use of free indirect discourse and other literary devices in order to convey ethnographic colour, and to ideological tensions in post-colonial Britain.

The Dialogic of Narrative: The Use of Free Indirect Discourse in Elizabeth Bowen's "The Return"

In 1949, Elizabeth Bowen wrote a preface for a reissue of her 1923 collection of short stories, Encounters. In this preface she reviews the stories and finds that, while generally promising, they are a blend of precocity and naivety.' But she singles out for criticism one of the earliest of the stories, The Return, which she calls too-ambitious, the showy of the collection. Although she sees in the story the genuine love for the emptiness of an empty house, she feels that it lacks a satisfying donde, has a hollow kernel-a situation I must have thought up, rather than felt. Aside from the qualified praise Bowen gives to many other stories in the collection, the preface is most interesting for the forcefulness of this rejection of The Return. By the late forties, Bowen had already begun to express a desire to modify her narrative technique, especially the role she had assigned to authoritative commentary in presenting the consciousness of characters in of her mature fiction.