Speech, Writing, and Thought Presentation in 19th-Century Narrative Fiction

Abstract

The present study investigates speech, writing, and thought presentation in a corpus of 19th-century narrative fiction including, for instance, the novels Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Oliver Twist, and many others. All narratives typically contain a reference to or a quotation of someone’s speech, thoughts, or writing. These reports further a narrative, make it more interesting, natural, and vivid, ask the reader to engage with it, and, from a historical point of view, also reflect cultural understandings of the modes of discourse presentation. To a large extent, the way a reader perceives a story depends upon the ways discourse is presented, and among these, speech, writing, and thought, which reflect a character’s disposition and state of mind. Being at the intersection of linguistic and literary stylistics, this study develops a new corpus-stylistic approach for systematically analyzing the different narrative strategies of historical discourse presentation in key pieces of 19th-century narrative fiction, thus identifying diachronic patterns as well as unique authorial styles, and places them within their cultural-historical context. It shows that the presentation of characters’ minds reflects an ideological as well as an epistemological concern about what cannot be reported, portrayed, or narrated and that discourse presentation fulfills the narratological functions of prospection and encapsulation, marks narrative progression, and shapes readers’ expectations as to suspense or surprise.

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