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Jane Austen and the Invention of Free Indirect Speech

by Hatsuyo Shimazaki (Author) E. J. Clery (Foreword)
©2025 Monographs XIV, 332 Pages

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Summary

This book reveals a new dimension of Jane Austen’s writing. While her pioneering use of Free Indirect Discourse to present interiority and create irony has long been acknowledged, the range of effects generated by her use of Free Indirect Speech has remained unrecognised. This book provides an accessible introduction to both stylistic approaches and charts the historical emergence of the latter technique in a range of eighteenth-century genres, taking into account changing typographical conventions for presenting speech.

The author uses close textual analysis to demonstrate the remarkably diverse ways in which Free Indirect Speech enriched Jane Austen’s fiction. The narrator’s ‘mimicry’ of the verbal tics of her characters is just the starting point. Sections on effects such as Formal Politeness and Condensed Conversation offer an expanded conceptual vocabulary for analysing the nuanced variety of speech presentation in her novels. The culmination of the study is a detailed examination of Emma as a case study for investigating the use of Free Indirect Speech as part of an overall narrative strategy.

Details

Pages
XIV, 332
Publication Year
2025
ISBN (PDF)
9781787071667
ISBN (ePUB)
9781787071674
ISBN (MOBI)
9781787071681
ISBN (Softcover)
9781787070738
DOI
10.3726/b22678
Language
English
Publication date
2025 (April)
Keywords
Jane Austen Standardization of punctuation marks in eighteenth-century fiction Free Indirect Speech Stylistics
Published
Oxford, Berlin, Bruxelles, Chennai, Lausanne, New York, 2025. xiv, 332 pp., 3 fig. b/w, 4 tables.
Product Safety
Peter Lang Group AG

Biographical notes

Hatsuyo Shimazaki (Author) E. J. Clery (Foreword)

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Title: Jane Austen and the Invention of Free Indirect Speech