Modernist literature

Modernism (literature), a literary and cultural movement which flourished in the first decades of the 20th
century. The term is generally used to refer to English literature in the broad sense, though its major figures
included American and Irish writers, such as Eliot, Yeats, and Joyce, as well as the Norwegian and Swedish
dramatists Ibsen and Strindberg. Moreover, the roots of Modernism are European rather than British, and indeed
the determination to take European culture as a model was one of the hallmarks of the Modernist movement.
The term “Modernist” was not generally used by the exponents of the movement themselves, who rather
referred to their works and aesthetic theories as “modern”, but became popular later, when the group in question
were clearly no longer modern in a historical sense. The one notable early use of the term was in the critical
work by Robert Graves and Laura Riding entitled A Survey of Modernist Poetry (1927).

Modernism as a movement can be recognized not only in literature but also in painting, music, sculpture, and
architecture, as well as in the sciences and in theology, aesthetics, and anthropology. The turn of the century was
a key moment when a number of theories, to prove influential for Modernism, were elaborated, such as
Einstein's treatise on relativity (1905), Max Planck's on quantum theory (1900), and Freud's on the unconscious
(The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900). In the literary domain, major influences on Modernism include the late
19th-century French novelist Flaubert, and the Symbolist poet, Mallarmé.

Modernism is not a term to which a single meaning can be ascribed. It may be applied both to the content and to
the form of a work, or to either in isolation. It reflects a sense of cultural crisis which was both exciting and
disquieting, in that it opened up a whole new vista of human possibilities at the same time as putting into
question any previously accepted means of grounding and evaluating new ideas. Modernism is marked by
experimentation, particularly manipulation of form, and by the realization that knowledge is not absolute. Marx,
Freud, and Darwin had unsettled the human subject from its previously secure place at the centre of at least the
human universe, and had revealed its unwitting dependence on laws and structures outside its control and
sometimes beyond its knowledge. Historical and material determinism, psychoanalytic theories which reveal the
self as a pawn in a process dominated by an inaccessible unconscious play of forces, and a conception of
evolution and heredity which situates humanity as no more than the latest product of natural selection—these
theories conspired to threaten humanist self-confidence and to provoke a feeling of ideological uncertainty. In
so far as the Arts were concerned, such insecurity proved immensely productive. It engendered an aesthetics of
experimentation, fragmentation, ambiguity, and nihilism. Modernism was built on a sense of lost community
and civilization. It embodied a series of contradictions and paradoxes. Since it had no stable centre it could
embrace a multiplicity of features of the modern sensibility which might have appeared, in a logical sense,
mutually exclusive. The loss of a sense of tradition, for example, was a theme common to Modernist writers,
but it was lamented by some in an extreme form of reactionary conservatism, and celebrated by others as a
means of liberation from the stranglehold of past practices. Revolution and conservatism coexisted, not
necessarily peaceably, under the Modernist umbrella. The increasing dominance of technology was another
prevalent Modernist preoccupation, but it was condemned by some as vehemently as it was embraced by others
who saw it as the flagship of 20th-century progress.

Not surprisingly, the diversity of Modernist theory is matched by the variety of Modernist practice. Poets like T.
S. Eliot in his Waste Land (1922), and Ezra Pound in his Cantos (1917-1970) express the concerns of
Modernism in a form which itself breaks radically with previous poetic tradition. Similarly, Virginia Woolf's
Mrs Dalloway (1925) and James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) explore the disintegration and fragmentation of
conscious control in their protagonists, adopting a style which itself mirrors the disconnectedness of experience
and the triumph of the random and contingent over the structured and unified. In works such as these it is
impossible to separate form from content in any meaningful way. The dissolution of meaning, the incoherence
of character, the lack of recognizable “plot” are features which not only transmit but actually constitute the
“theme” of the art-work. Flaubert's famous desire to write a “book about nothing” was never realized by him
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(or, at least, not in Madame Bovary, about which he made the comment) but his successors sometimes seem to
have come as close to accomplishing his aim as is possible using language which, of course, can never escape
meaning entirely. Indeed, this relationship to linguistic meaning is one of the aspects of Modernism which is
most commonly misrepresented: the desire expressed by the poets Mallarmé and Valéry, for example, to
achieve the condition of music does not refer primarily to the aim of harmonious or “musical” sonorities. It
represents rather the attempt to use language in a way that is driven by the signifier as much as by the signified
(see de Saussure; semiotics), that is to say by the formal qualities of language as much as by the desire to
communicate a “message”. Modernist novelists as well as poets viewed the work of art more as an aesthetic
object than as a representation of reality. Their legacy survives in both contemporary theory and practice.

Modernist literature is the literary form of Modernism and especially High modernism;[1] it should not be
confused with modern literature, which is the history of the modern novel and modern poetry as one. There is a
separate section on modernist poetry.

Modernism as a literary movement reached its height in Europe between 1910 and 1920, and addressed
aesthetic problems similar to those found in non-literary forms of contemporaneous Modernist art, such as
painting. Gertrude Stein's abstract writings, for example, have often been compared to the fragmentary and
multi-perspectival Cubism of her friend Pablo Picasso[2].

The general thematic concerns of Modernist literature are well-summarized by the sociologist Georg Simmel:

"The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and
individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external
culture, and of the technique of life."[3]

The Modernist emphasis on a radical individualism can be seen in the many literary manifestos issued by
various groups within the movement; the concerns expressed by Simmel above are echoed in Richard
Huelsenbeck's "First German Dada Manifesto" of 1918:

"Art in its execution and direction is dependent on the time in which it lives, and artists are creatures of their
epoch. The highest art will be that which in its conscious content presents the thousandfold problems of the day,
the art which has been visibly shattered by the explosions of last week ... The best and most extraordinary artists
will be those who every hour snatch the tatters of their bodies out of the frenzied cataract of life, who, with
bleeding hands and hearts, hold fast to the intelligence of their time."

The Modernist re-contextualization of the individual within the fabric of a received social heritage can be seen
in the "mythic method" which T.S. Eliot expounded in his discussion of James Joyce's Ulysses:

"In using the myth, in manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity, Mr. Joyce is
pursuing a method which others must pursue after him ... It is simply a way of controlling, of ordering, of
giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary
history."[4]

Through an aesthetic examination of these and related concerns, Modernist literature developed a style that can
be characterized by a preoccupation with stylistic novelty, formal fragmentation, multiple perspectives, and
alternatives to traditional narrative forms.

Modernist literature involved such authors as Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, H.D., Ezra Pound,
Mina Loy, James Joyce, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Franz Kafka, Robert Musil, Joseph Conrad,

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Andrei Bely, W. B. Yeats, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Luigi Pirandello, D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Jaroslav
Hašek, Samuel Beckett, Menno ter Braak, Marcel Proust, Mikhail Bulgakov, Robert Frost and Boris Pasternak.

Modernist literature attempted to move from the bonds of Realist literature and introduce concepts such as
disjointed timelines. Modernism was distinguished by emancipatory metanarrative. In the wake of Modernism,
and post-enlightenment, metanarratives tended to be emancipatory, whereas beforehand this was not a
consistent characteristic. Contemporary metanarratives were becoming less relevant in light of the implications
of World War I, the rise of trade unionism, a general social discontent, and the emergence of psychoanalysis.
The consequent need for a unifying function brought about a growth in the political importance of culture.

Modernist literature can be viewed largely in terms of its formal, stylistic and semantic movement away from
Romanticism, examining subject matter that is traditionally mundane--a prime example being The Love Song of
J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot. Modernist literature often features a marked pessimism, a clear rejection of the
optimism apparent in Victorian literature. In fact, "a common motif in Modernist fiction is that of an alienated
individual--a dysfunctional individual trying in vain to make sense of a predominantly urban and fragmented
society".

However, many Modernist works like T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land are marked by the absence of a central,
heroic figure; in rejecting the solipsism of Romantics like Shelley and Byron, these works reject the notion of
subject associated with Cartesian dualism, and collapse narrative and narrator into a collection of disjointed
fragments and overlapping voices.

Modernist literature often moves beyond the limitations of the Realist novel with a concern for larger factors
such as social or historical change; this is prominent in "stream of consciousness" writing. Examples can be
seen in Virginia Woolf's Kew Gardens and Mrs Dalloway, James Joyce's Ulysses, Katherine Porter's Flowering
Judas, Jean Toomer's Cane, William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, and others.

Modernism as a literary movement is seen, in large part, as a reaction to the emergence of city life as a central
force in society. Furthermore, an early attention to the object as freestanding became in later Modernism a
preoccupation with form. The dyadic collapse of the distance between subject and object represented a
movement from means to is. Where Romanticism stressed the subjectivity of experience, Modernist writers
were more acutely conscious of the objectivity of their surroundings. In Modernism the object is; the language
doesn't mean it is. This is a shift from an epistemological aesthetic to an ontological aesthetic or, in simpler
terms, a shift from a knowledge-based aesthetic to a being-based aesthetic. This shift is central to Modernism.
Archibald MacLeish, for instance, said, "A poem should not mean / But be."

Many Modernist works are studied in schools today, from Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, to T.
S. Eliot's The Waste Land, to James Joyce's Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Characteristics of Modernism

Formal characteristics

 Open Form
 Free verse
 Discontinuous narrative
 Juxtaposition

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  Intertextuality
 Classical allusions
 Borrowings from other cultures and languages
 Unconventional use of metaphor
 Metanarrative
 Fragmentation
 Multiple narrative points of view (parallax)

Thematic characteristics

 Breakdown of social norms and cultural sureties

 Dislocation of meaning and sense from its normal context
 Valorization of the despairing individual in the face of an unmanageable future
 Disillusionment
 Rejection of history and the substitution of a mythical past, borrowed without chronology
 Product of the metropolis, of cities and urbanscapes
 Stream of consciousness
 Free indirect discourse
 Overwhelming technological changes of the 20th Century

Intertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can refer to an author’s borrowing and
transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another. The term
“intertextuality” has, itself, been borrowed and transformed many times since it was coined by poststructuralist
Julia Kristeva in 1966. As critic William Irwin says, the term “has come to have almost as many meanings as
users, from those faithful to Kristeva’s original vision to those who simply use it as a stylish way of talking
about allusion and influence” (Irwin, 228).

Intertextuality and poststructuralism

Kristeva’s coinage of “intertextuality” represents an attempt to synthesize Ferdinand de Saussure’s structuralist

semiotics—his study of how signs derive their meaning within the structure of a text—with Bakhtin’s dialogism
—his examination of the multiple meanings, or “heteroglossia,” in each text (especially novels) and word
(Irwin, 228). For Kristeva (69), “the notion of intertextuality replaces the notion of intersubjectivity” when we
realize that meaning is not transferred directly from writer to reader but instead is mediated through, or filtered
by, “codes” imparted to the writer and reader by other texts. For example, when we read Joyce’s Ulysses we
decode it as a modernist literary experiment, or as a response to the epic tradition, or as part of some other
conversation, or as part of all of these conversations at once. This intertextual view of literature, as shown by
Roland Barthes, supports the concept that the meaning of an artistic work does not reside in that work, but in the
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viewers. More recent post-structuralist theory, such as that formulated in Daniela Caselli's Beckett's Dantes:
Intertextuality in the Fiction and Criticism (MUP 2005), re-examines "intertextuality" as a production within
texts, rather than as a series of relationships between different texts. Some postmodern theorists [citation needed] like to
talk about the relationship between "intertextuality" and "hypertextuality"; intertextuality makes each text a
"mosaic of quotations" (Kristeva, 66) and part of a larger mosaic of texts, just as each hypertext can be a web of
links and part of the whole World-Wide Web.

"Intertextuality" and competing terms

Some critics have complained that the ubiquity of the term "intertextuality" in postmodern criticism has
crowded out related terms and important nuances. Irwin (227) laments that intertextuality has eclipsed allusion
as an object of literary study while lacking the latter term's clear definition. Linda Hutcheon argues that
excessive interest in intertextuality obscures the role of the author, because intertextuality can be found "in the
eye of the beholder" and does not necessarily entail a communicator's intentions. By contrast, parody,
Hutcheon's preferred term, always features an author who actively encodes a text as an imitation with critical
difference. However, there have also been attempts at more closely defining different types of intertextuality.
The Danish film theoretician has made a distinction between what he labels 'vertical' and 'horizontal'
intertextuality. Horizontal intertextuality denotes references that are on the 'same level' ie. when books make
references to other books, whereas vertical intertextuality is found when, say, a book makes a reference to film
or song or vice versa. Similarly, Linguist Norman Fairclough distinguishes between 'manifest intertextuality'
and 'constitutive intertextuality,'(Fairclough 1992: 117). The former signifies intertextual elements such as
presupposition, negation, parody , irony, etc. The latter signifies the interrelationship of discursive features in a
text, such as structure, form, or genre. Constitutive Intertextuality is also referred to interdiscursivity. (Gunhild
Agger, "Intertextuality Revisited: Dialogues and Negotiations in Media Studies." Canadian Journal of
Aesthetics, 4, 1999.)

Examples and history of intertextuality

While the theoretical concept of intertextuality is associated with post-modernism, the device itself is not new.
New Testament passages quote from the Old Testament and Old Testament books such as Deuteronomy or the
prophets refer to the events described in Exodus (though on using 'intertextuality' to describe the use of the Old
Testament in the New Testament, see Porter 1997). Whereas a redaction critic would use such intertextuality to
argue for a particular order and process of the authorship of the books in question, literary criticism takes a
synchronic view that deals with the texts in their final form, as an interconnected body of literature. This
interconnected body extends to later poems and paintings that refer to Biblical narratives, just as other texts
build networks around Greek and Roman Classical history and mythology. Bullfinch's 1855 work The Age Of
Fable served as an introduction to such an intertextual network; [citation needed] according to its author, it was
intended "...for the reader of English literature, of either sex, who wishes to comprehend the allusions so
frequently made by public speakers, lecturers, essayists, and poets...".

Sometimes intertextualiy is taken as plagiarism as in the case of Spanish writer Lucía Etxebarria whose poem
collection Estación de infierno (2001) was found to contain metaphors and verses from Antonio Colinas.
Etxebarria claimed that she admired him and applied intertextuality.

Some examples of intertextuality in literature include:

 East of Eden (1952) by John Steinbeck: A retelling of the story of Genesis, set in the Salinas Valley of
Northern California.
 Ulysses (1918) by James Joyce: A retelling of Homer's Odyssey, set in Dublin.

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  The Dead Fathers Club (2006) by Matt Haig: A retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet, set in modern
England.
 A Thousand Acres (1991) by Jane Smiley: A retelling of Shakespeare's King Lear, set in rural Iowa.

Metanarrative

In critical theory, and particularly postmodernism, a metanarrative (sometimes master- or grand narrative) is
an abstract idea that is supposed to be a comprehensive explanation of historical experience or knowledge.
According to John Stephens it "is a global or totalizing cultural narrative schema which orders and explains
knowledge and experience".[1] The prefix meta means "beyond" and is here used to mean "about", and a
narrative is a story. Therefore, a metanarrative is a story about a story, encompassing and explaining other 'little
stories' within totalizing schemes.

The concept was criticized by Jean-François Lyotard in his work, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on
Knowledge (1979). In this text, Lyotard refers to what he describes as the postmodern condition, which he
characterized as increasing skepticism toward the totalizing nature of "metanarratives" (or "grand narratives,"
typically characterised by some form of 'transcendent and universal truth'):

“ Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives. This incredulity
is undoubtedly a product of progress in the sciences: but that progress in turn presupposes it. To the
obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of legitimation corresponds, most notably, the crisis of
metaphysical philosophy and of the university institution which in the past relied on it. The narrative
function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It is
being dispersed in clouds of narrative language elements--narrative, but also denotative, prescriptive,
descriptive, and so on [...] Where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside? - Jean-Francois
Lyotard[2] ”

Examples of metanarratives

 Many Christians believe that human nature, since the Fall (Genesis 3), is characteristically sinful, but
has the possibility of redemption and experiencing eternal life in heaven - thus representing a belief in a
universal rule and a telos for humankind. See also Universal History.
 The Enlightenment theorists believed that rational thought, allied to scientific reasoning, would lead
inevitably toward moral, social and ethical progress.
 The Marxist-Leninists believe that in order to be emancipated, society must undergo a revolution. Just as
the bourgeoisie (whose living depends on the control of capital or technology) took power from the
noble class (whose wealth was based on control over land), they believe that the present system of
capitalism will fall and the proletariat (who live by selling their labor) will take over. This change will be
driven by the unstable and cyclical nature of capitalism, and by the alienation felt by the labourers who
keep the system working.
 Freudian theory holds that human history is a narrative of the repression of libidinal desires.
 Categorical and definitive periodizations of history, such as the Fall of the Roman Empire, the Dark
Ages and Renaissance.
 Many feminists hold that the patriarchy has systematically oppressed and subjugated women throughout
history.
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Poststructuralist skepticism toward metanarratives

Lyotard and many other poststructuralist thinkers have viewed this as a positive development for a number of
reasons. First, attempts to construct grand theories tend to dismiss the naturally existing chaos and disorder of
the universe. Second, metanarratives are created and reinforced by power structures and are therefore not to be
trusted. 'Metanarratives' ignore the heterogeneity or variety of human existence. They are also seen to embody
unacceptable views of historical development, in terms of progress towards a specific goal. The latent diverse
passions of human beings will always make it impossible for them to be marshalled under some theoretical
doctrine and this is one of the reasons given for the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

Replacing grand, universal narratives with small, local narratives

According to the advocates of postmodernism, metanarratives have lost their power to convince – they are,
literally, stories that are told in order to legitimise various versions of "the truth". With the transition from
modern to postmodern, Lyotard proposes that metanarratives should give way to 'petits récits', or more modest
and "localised" narratives.[citation needed] Borrowing from the works of Wittgenstein and his theory of the "models of
discourse",[3] Lyotard constructs his vision of a progressive politics that is grounded in the cohabitation of a
whole range of diverse and always locally legitimated language games. Postmodernists attempt to replace
metanarratives by focusing on specific local contexts as well as the diversity of human experience. They argue
for the existence of a "multiplicity of theoretical standpoints"[4] rather than grand, all-encompassing theories.

Is poststructuralism a metanarrative?

Lyotard's analysis of the postmodern condition has been criticized as being internally inconsistent. For example,
thinkers like Alex Callinicos[5] and Jürgen Habermas[6] argue that Lyotard's description of the postmodern world
as containing an "incredulity toward metanarratives" could be seen as a metanarrative in itself. According to this
view, post-structuralist thinkers like Lyotard criticise universal rules but postulate that postmodernity contains a
universal skepticism toward metanarratives; and this 'universal skepticism' is in itself a contemporary
metanarrative. Like a post-modern neo-romanticist metanarrative that intends to build up a 'meta' critic, or
'meta' discourse and a 'meta' belief holding up that Western science is just taxonomist, empiricist, utilitarian,
assuming a supposed sovereignty around its own reason and pretending to be neutral, rigorous and universal.
This is itself an obvious sample of another 'meta' story, self-contradicting the postmodern critique of the
metanarrative.

Thus, the postmodern incredulity towards metanarratives could be said to be self-refuting. If one is skeptical of
universal narratives such as "truth", "knowledge", "right", or "wrong", then there is no basis for believing the
"truth" that metanarratives are being undermined. In this sense, this paradox of postmodernism is similar to the
liar's paradox ("This statement is false."). Perhaps postmodernists, like Lyotard, are not offering us a Utopian,
teleological metanarrative, but in many respects their arguments are open to metanarrative interpretation. They
place much emphasis on the irrational, though in doing so apply the instruments of reason [citation needed].
Postmodernism is an anti-theory, but uses theoretical tools to make its case. The significance of this
contradiction, however, is of course also open to interpretation.

Stream of consciousness writing

In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a literary technique that seeks to portray an individual's point of
view by giving the written equivalent of the character's thought processes, either in a loose interior monologue,
or in connection to his or her sensory reactions to external occurrences. Stream-of-consciousness writing is
strongly associated with the modernist movement. The introduction of the term to describe literature, transferred
from psychology, is attributed to May Sinclair, and is mostly a dead metaphor.
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Literature

Stream-of-consciousness writing is usually regarded as a special form of interior monologue and is

characterized by associative (and at times--dissociative) leaps in syntax and punctuation that can make the prose
difficult to follow, tracing a character's fragmentary thoughts and sensory feelings. Stream of consciousness and
interior monologue are distinguished from dramatic monologue, where the speaker is addressing an audience or
a third person, and is used chiefly in poetry or drama. In stream of consciousness, the speaker's thought
processes are more often depicted as overheard in the mind (or addressed to oneself) and is primarily a fictional
device. The term was first introduced to the field of literary studies from that of psychology by philosopher and
psychologist William James, brother of the influential writer Henry James.

Several notable works employing stream of consciousness are:

 T. S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)

 James Joyce's
o A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

o Ulysses (1922) - in particular Molly Bloom's Soliloquy

o Finnegans Wake (1939)

 Virginia Woolf's
o Mrs. Dalloway (1925)

o To the Lighthouse (1927)

o The Waves (1931)

 William Faulkner's
o The Sound and the Fury (1929)

o As I Lay Dying (1930)

 Samuel Beckett's 'trilogy' :

o Molloy (1951)

o Malone Dies (1951)

o The Unnamable(1953)

The technique has been parodied, for example, by David Lodge in the final chapter of The British Museum Is
Falling Down.

Molly Bloom's soliloquy is presented in the eighteenth, and final, chapter of James Joyce's novel Ulysses. It is
a compilation of the thoughts of Molly Bloom, the concert-singing wife of advertising agent Leopold Bloom,
whose wanderings around Dublin are followed in much of the book. Molly's physicality is often contrasted with
the intellectualism of the male characters, and of Stephen Dedalus in particular.

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Joyce's novel presented the action with numbered episodes rather than named chapters. Most critics since Stuart
Gilbert, in his James Joyce's Ulysses, have named the episodes and they are often called chapters. The final
chapter is referred to as Penelope, after Molly's mythical counterpart. One major difference between Molly and
Penelope is that while Penelope is eternally faithful, Molly is not, having an affair with Hugh 'Blazes' Boylan
after ten years of her celibacy within the marriage.

Molly's soliloquy (or interior monologue) consists of eight enormous "sentences," with only two marks of
punctuation in the entire episode (periods after the fourth and eighth "sentences"). Molly accepts Leopold into
her bed, frets about his health, then reminisces about their first meeting and about when she knew she was in
love with him. The final words of Molly's reverie, and the very last words of the book, are:

"...I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or
shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as
another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes
my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel
my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. "

Joyce noted in a 1921 letter to Frank Budgen that "[t]he last word (human, all too human) is left to Penelope."
The episode both begins and ends with "yes," a word that Joyce described as "the female word" and that he said
indicated "acquiescence and the end of all resistance." This last, clear "yes" stands in sharp contrast to her
unintelligible first spoken line in the fourth chapter of the novel.

Internal monologue, also known as inner voice, internal speech, or stream of consciousness is thinking in
words. It also refers to the semi-constant internal monologue one has with oneself at a conscious or semi-
conscious level.

Much of what people consciously report "thinking about" may be thought of as an internal monologue, a
conversation with oneself. Some of this can be considered as speech rehearsal, and it seems to be that the
internal monologue is generally in the native language of the person concerned.

An internal monologue may be consciously used in order to organize thoughts to solve problems or keep track
of a long list. More mysterious is subconscious internal monologue, which is thought to be used in long term
memory and dreams.

In fiction, when one person reads the mind of another, it is often described as being able to hear this internal
monologue as if it were said out loud.

When children are taught to read out loud and then later taught to read quietly, they often subvocalize. This has
led to a discipline called Speed reading that attempts to suppress this.

There is uncertainty about what the source of these internal sentences are in some conditions. Attribution for a
recently produced internal sentence may lead to concerns over schizophrenia, hallucinations, or hearing voices.

Contemplation attempts to calm the internal voice by various means.

Free indirect speech (also free indirect discourse, free indirect style, or discours indirect libre in French) is
a style of third-person narration which combines some of the characteristics of third-person report with first-
person direct speech. Passages written using free indirect speech are often ambiguous as to whether they convey
the views, feelings and thoughts of the narrator or those of the character the narrator is describing. This allows a
flexible and sometimes ironic interaction of internal and external perspectives.[1]
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Comparison of styles

What distinguishes free indirect speech from normal indirect speech, is the lack of an introductory expression
such as "He said" or "he thought". It is as if the subordinate clause carrying the content of the indirect speech is
taken out of the main clause which contains it, becoming the main clause itself. Using free indirect speech may
convey the character's words more directly than in normal indirect, as he can use devices such as interjections
and exclamation marks, that cannot be normally used within a subordinate clause.

Examples

Direct speech:
He laid down his bundle and thought of his misfortune. "And just what pleasure have I found, since I
came into this world?" he asked.
Indirect speech:
He laid down his bundle and thought of his misfortune. He asked himself what pleasure he had found
since he came into the world.
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?

Usage in literature

The nineteenth century French novelist Flaubert is often cited as an early and influential example of free
indirect speech. This style would be widely imitated by later authors, called in French style indirect libre.

In German literature, the style, known as erlebte Rede, is perhaps most famous in the works of Franz Kafka,
blurring the subject's first-person experiences with a grammatically third-person narrative perspective.

In English literature, Jane Austen was among the first authors to use free indirect speech in a significant and
deliberate manner. The opinions of her narrators are frequently blurred with the thoughts of her characters.
James Joyce is also renowned for invoking the method in works such as "The Dead" (see Dubliners) and A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

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