/lit/ - Literature

>>13027522
I said nothing about dialogue. Free indirect speech does not refer to dialogue. It refers to a narrative technique. It is when the narrator of a story disrupts realist description of the events taking place to give us a hint of a character's inner thought processes as the events happen. It does not require a great leap of the imagination to see how that is an ancestor of the stream-of-consciousness technique. Nabokov would not disagree with me that what is labeled as stream-of-conscious narration is merely another form of realism hence his reasoning that Bloom's walk about Dublin could be followed in real life, or whatever it was he said.

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?"

The narrator here suddenly becomes the voice of the burdened man. Realists who used this technique are direct influences on Modernist prose writers.

James certainly does not write this constantly (nor does any other 19th century Realist), because he is indeed helping the narrative along with displays and comments that can seem obtrusive to our modern eyes. However, these displays and comments from the narrator are pretty much standard in 19th century novels... it's nearly impossible to find a writer working in that century who does not feel the need to burden us with constant commentary and assessments of a character's choices and actions. Nonetheless, there are some authors from that time, such as James and Conrad, where we can see that style beginning to break down. Forster and Ford parody the chatty, judgmental third-person narrator in some of their own novels, such as Howards End and The Good Soldier. That is what became passe in the Modernist era, not the free indirect discourse.