Figurally Colored Narration

Figurally colored narration (FCN) is narrators discourse (whether in the first or third person) that adopts salient features of characters text, mainly valuation and designation, without signaling the figural part in any way. Unlike free indirect discourse, FCN does not refer to current acts of consciousness, but to typical, characteristic segments of the characters text. There are two main modes of FCN: contagion of the narrators discourse with a characters text, and the more or less ironical reproduction of a characters text in narrative discourse. In the latter case, the narrators criticism may refer to either the content of the characters text or to its form of expression. This study begins with a definition and an example of FCN as a narrative device, followed by an analysis of terms used for FCN in German, Anglophone and Russian literary criticism. Building on the perception of FCN as a phenomenon of interference between narrators and characters text (text interference), this book analyses the function and applications of FCN in narratives written in German, English and Russian.