Jones uses dizzying free
indirect discourse to completely inhabit the minds of these uncanny, exaggerated characters.
Miller draws our attention to an essential quality of free
indirect discourse. By focusing on a single sentence repeated before and after the chapter break of volume 2, chapters 2 and 3--"She could not forgive her" (1)--Miller observes that the repetition of this sentence allows us to see the two ways in which it may be read: as "the indirect and impersonal performance of Emma's consciousness" and as "the mere matter-of-fact notation of that thought." (2) It is able to "perform" what Emma would think about Jane Fairfax, in the sense that she might say "I cannot forgive her," and is also able to denote a fact about Emma's state of mind as part of a third-person omniscient narrative.
You can use free
indirect discourse to inject your own construction of your subject's ideas in a way that preserves or alters their meaning.
On the other hand, if it was, I do not see why character dialogue should be privileged above any other resource, such as free
indirect discourse (FID) for instance.
To that end, rather than examining content, I will offer a close reading of form, of narrative strategies--such as free
indirect discourse and the (ab)use of readerly identification with the protagonist--whose goal is to lead his readers to see themselves in the place of the protagonist in order to advance his ideological agenda.
In the later perspective, there is a tendency to attenuate the clear, exterior outlines of the other speaker's words, allowing the author to infiltrate his responses and commentaries (characteristic of
indirect discourse without an apparent subject and of free
indirect discourse).
It is through Austen's use of free
indirect discourse (FID) that we capture as if in real time Fanny's effort to move from her tumultuous feelings to a rational understanding of what has occurred.
Tacitus use of
indirect discourse (the narrator's 'they'
He relies often on difficult concepts from narrative theory such as focalisation and free
indirect discourse and a complicated critical vocabulary--including terms such as 'humanimal' and 'naturecultures'--without pausing to define them clearly.
McHale suggests a progressive scale, ranging from the "purely" diegetic to the "purely" mimetic: 1) Diegetic summary; 2) Less "purely" diegetic summary; 3) Indirect content-paraphrase (or
indirect discourse); 4)
Indirect discourse, mimetic to some degree; 5) Free
indirect discourse; 6) Direct discourse; and 7) Free direct discourse (249-87).
The Semantics of Free
Indirect Discourse: How Texts Allow Us to Mind-Read and Eavesdrop
Methodologically, Febles pursues meticulous readings of the novels as they are interwoven with dialogue and
indirect discourse that embed Zola's changing views on anarchism; there is also a hint of genetic criticism where Febles introduces to good effect elements from Zola's correspondence, preparatory notes and draffs in order to further disclose the novelists changing views on anarchism as he composed these novels.
