Free indirect speech is a style of third-person narration which uses some of the characteristics of third-person along with the essence of first-person direct speech; it is also referred to as free indirect discourse, free indirect style, or, in

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

, ''discours indirect libre''. Free indirect speech has been described as a "technique of presenting a character's voice partly mediated by the voice of the author" (or, reversing the emphasis, "that the character speaks through the voice of the narrator") with the voices effectively merged. It has also been described as "the illusion by which third-person narrative comes to express...the intimate subjectivity of fictional characters." The word "free" in the phrase is used to capture the fact that with this technique, the author can "roam from viewpoint to viewpoint" instead of being fixed with one character or with the narrator. According to British

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined ...

Roy Pascal,

Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as tr ...

and

Jane Austen Jane Austen (; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique, and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots of ...

were the first novelists to use this style consistently and 19th-century French novelist

Gustave Flaubert Gustave Flaubert ( , , ; 12 December 1821 – 8 May 1880) was a French novelist. Highly influential, he has been considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country. According to the literary theorist Kornelije Kvas, "in Flauber ...

was the first to be aware of it as a style.

Naming

Randall Stevenson suggests that the term free indirect discourse "is perhaps best reserved for instances where words have actually been spoken aloud" and that cases "where a character's voice is probably the silent inward one of thought" should be described as free indirect style.

Distinguishing marks of the technique

Free indirect speech is characterized by these features: * The lack of an introductory expression such as "he said" or "he thought". It is as if the

subordinate clause A subordinate clause, dependent clause, subclause, or embedded clause is a clause that is embedded within a complex sentence. For instance, in the English sentence "I know that Bette is a dolphin", the clause "that Bette is a dolphin" occurs as t ...

carrying the content of the indirect speech were taken out of the

main clause An independent clause (or main clause) is a clause that can stand by itself as a ''simple sentence''. An independent clause contains a subject and a predicate and makes sense by itself. Independent clauses can be joined by using a semicolon or ...

which contains it, becoming the

itself. * Free indirect speech can convey the character's words more directly than in normal indirect speech. Devices such as interjections and psycho-ostensive expressions like curses and swearwords can be used that cannot be normally used within a subordinate clause. When deictic pronouns and adverbials are used, they refer to the coordinates of the originator of the speech or thought, not of the narrator. * "The anomalous presence within third-person, past-tense narrative of linguistic features indicating a character's perspective and voice." * Backshifted exclamations, such as, "How differently did every thing now appear in which he was concerned", an example from ''

Pride and Prejudice ''Pride and Prejudice'' is an 1813 novel of manners by Jane Austen. The novel follows the character development of Elizabeth Bennet, the dynamic protagonist of the book who learns about the repercussions of hasty judgments and comes to appreci ...

''. * Unshifted modals, such as, "She must own that she was tired of great houses", also from ''

''. * Exclamatory questions, character-specific locutions and syntactical informalities and fragments. Free indirect discourse can be described as a "technique of presenting a character's voice partly mediated by the voice of the author", or, in the words of the French narrative theorist

Gérard Genette Gérard Genette (7 June 1930 – 11 May 2018) was a French literary theorist, associated in particular with the structuralist movement and such figures as Roland Barthes and Claude Lévi-Strauss, from whom he adapted the concept of ''bricolage ...

, "the narrator takes on the speech of the character, or, if one prefers, the character speaks through the voice of the narrator, and the two instances then are ''merged''".Randell Stevenson, ''Modernist Fiction: An Introduction'', p.32. Following are examples that use direct, indirect and free indirect speech: * Quoted or

direct speech As a form of transcription, direct or quoted speech is spoken or written text that reports speech or thought in its original form phrased by the original speaker. In narrative, it is usually enclosed in quotation marks, but it can be enclosed in ...

: ''He laid down his bundle and thought of his misfortune. "And just what pleasure have I found, since I came into this world?" he asked.'' * Reported or normal

indirect speech In linguistics, indirect speech (also reported speech or indirect discourse) is a grammatical mechanism for reporting the content of another utterance without directly quoting it. For example, the English sentence ''Jill said she was coming' ...

: ''He laid down his bundle and thought of his misfortune. He asked himself what pleasure he had found since he came into the world.'' * Free indirect speech: ''He laid down his bundle and thought of his misfortune. And just what pleasure had he found, since he came into this world?''

Use in literature

Roy Pascal cites

and

as the first novelists to use this style consistently, and writes that

was the first to be aware of it as a style.Roy Pascal,
The Dual Voice
, Manchester University Press, 1977, page 34 This style would be widely imitated by later authors, called in

''discours indirect libre''. It is also known as ''estilo indirecto libre'' in Spanish, and is often used by Latin American writer Horacio Quiroga. In

German literature German literature () comprises those literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, South Tyrol in Italy and to a less ...

, the style, known as ''erlebte Rede'' (experienced speech), is perhaps most famous in the works of

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typ ...

, blurring the subject's first-person experiences with a grammatically third-person narrative perspective. Arthur Schnitzler's

novella A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most short stories. The English word ''novella'' derives from the Italian ''novella'' meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) fact ...

Leutnant Gustl
' first published in Neue Freie Presse newspaper in

1900 As of March 1 ( O.S. February 17), when the Julian calendar acknowledged a leap day and the Gregorian calendar did not, the Julian calendar fell one day further behind, bringing the difference to 13 days until February 28 ( O.S. February 15), 2 ...

is considered the earliest book length example. In Danish literature, the style is attested since Leonora Christina (1621–1698) (and is, outside literature, even today common in colloquial Danish speech). Some of the first sustained examples of free indirect discourse in Western literature occur in

Latin literature Latin literature includes the essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings written in the Latin language. The beginning of formal Latin literature dates to 240 BC, when the first stage play in Latin was performed in Rome. Latin literature ...

, where the phenomenon often takes the name of oratio obliqua. It is characteristic, for instance, of the style of

Julius Caesar Gaius Julius Caesar (; ; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC), was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war, an ...

, but it is also found in the historical work of

Livy Titus Livius (; 59 BC – AD 17), known in English as Livy ( ), was a Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled , covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditional founding in ...

English, Irish and Scottish literature

As stated above, Austen was one of its first practitioners. According to Austen scholar Tom Keymer, "It has been calculated that ''Pride and Prejudice'' filters its narrative, at different points, through no fewer than nineteen centres of consciousness, more than any other Austen novel (with ''Mansfield Park'', at thirteen, the nearest competitor)." The American novelist

Edith Wharton Edith Wharton (; born Edith Newbold Jones; January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) was an American novelist, short story writer, and interior designer. Wharton drew upon her insider's knowledge of the upper-class New York "aristocracy" to portray ...

relies heavily on the technique in her 1905 novel '' The House of Mirth''. Irish author

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the Modernism, modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important ...

also used free indirect speech in works such as "The Dead" (in '' Dubliners''), '' A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'', and '' Ulysses''. Scottish author James Kelman uses the style extensively, most notably in his

Booker Prize The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. ...

winning novel '' How Late It Was, How Late'', but also in many of his short stories and some of his novels, most of which are written in Glaswegian speech patterns.

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born ...

in her novels '' To the Lighthouse'' and '' Mrs Dalloway'' frequently relies on free indirect discourse to take us into the minds of her characters. Another modernist,

D. H. Lawrence David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English writer, novelist, poet and essayist. His works reflect on modernity, industrialization, sexuality, emotional health, vitality, spontaneity and instinct. His best-k ...

, also makes frequent use of a free indirect style in "transcribing unspoken or even incompletely verbalized thoughts". Lawrence most often uses free indirect speech, a literary technique that describes the interior thoughts of the characters using third-person singular pronouns ('he' and 'she') in both '' The Rainbow'' and ''

Women in Love ''Women in Love'' (1920) is a novel by English author D. H. Lawrence. It is a sequel to his earlier novel '' The Rainbow'' (1915) and follows the continuing loves and lives of the Brangwen sisters, Gudrun and Ursula. Gudrun Brangwen, an artist, ...

''. According to Charles Rzepka of Boston University,

Elmore Leonard Elmore John Leonard Jr. (October 11, 1925August 20, 2013) was an American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. His earliest novels, published in the 1950s, were Westerns, but he went on to specialize in crime fiction and suspense th ...

's mastery of free indirect discourse "is unsurpassed in our time, and among the surest of all time, even if we include

, and Hemingway in the mix." Some argue that free indirect discourse was also used by

Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for '' The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He w ...

in ''

The Canterbury Tales ''The Canterbury Tales'' ( enm, Tales of Caunterbury) is a collection of twenty-four stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. It is widely regarded as Chaucer's '' magnum opus ...

''.E.g. Helen Phillips,
An introduction to the Canterbury tales
', Palgrave Macmillan, 2000 When the narrator says in "The General Prologue" that he agrees with the Monk's opinion dismissing criticism of his very unmonastic way of life, he is apparently paraphrasing the monk himself: :And I seyde his opinion was good: :What! Sholde he studie, and make himselven

wood Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin ...

, :Upon a book in cloistre alwey to poure? :Or swinken with his handes, and laboure, :As

Austin Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...

bit? How shal the world be served? :Lat Austin have his swink to him reserved! These

rhetorical question A rhetorical question is one for which the questioner does not expect a direct answer: in many cases it may be intended to start a discourse, or as a means of displaying or emphasize the speaker's or author's opinion on a topic. A common example ...

s may be regarded as the monk's own casual way of waving off criticism of his aristocratic lifestyle. Similar examples can be found in the narrator's portrait of the friar.

References

External links

The Literary Encyclopedia: Free Indirect Discourse
English grammar Semantics Linguistics Narrative techniques