Free Indirect Speech
While free indirect speech is also technically in the realm of diegesis, as it is mediated by the narrator, it also, like mimetic speech representations, calls up for the reader the voice of a character. Here, the narrator summarizes a character's speech or thought act, but does so as if adopting the perspective of that character.
Many examples of free indirect speech can be found in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. Catherine's thoughts at having found what she believes to be a mysterious manuscript are, for instance, technically offered from the viewpoint of the narrator but are colored by Catherine's excitement: "The manuscript so wonderfully found, so wonderfully accomplishing the morning's prediction, how was it to be accounted for?--What could it contain? . . . and how singularly strange that it should fall to her lot to discover it!" (117). Were this speech instead represented directly, the passage would likely read, "'How is this to be accounted for?' Catherine thought. 'What can it contain?'" An indirect representation, on the other hand, would be akin to the following: "Catherine wondered how it could be accounted for, and what it could contain." |