English Literature / Unit 13 ENL 1231 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Austen's Irony and Free Indirect Style
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The idea
Austen's narrator often uses free indirect discourse, presenting a character's thoughts in the narrator's third-person voice, so that the two voices merge. The reader hears a heroine's opinions and the narrator's irony at once, and must judge where the character is mistaken.
In practice
Character's thought, narrator's voice.
Where people slip
Ask whose judgment a sentence carries.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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