{"product_id":"speaking-parts-9780691235813","title":"Speaking Parts","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eHow direct speech in the novel shapes our understanding of literary characters and their social worlds\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor many readers, to think of nineteenth-century fiction is to recall characters speaking: Elizabeth refusing Darcy in \u003ci\u003ePride and Prejudice\u003c\/i\u003e; Jane excoriating Rochester in \u003ci\u003eJane Eyre\u003c\/i\u003e; Dorothea and Celia discussing Mr. Casaubon in \u003ci\u003eMiddlemarch\u003c\/i\u003e. And yet literary critics have had surprisingly little to say about the narrative effects of dialogue. In \u003ci\u003eSpeaking Parts\u003c\/i\u003e, Tara Menon shows how direct speech—words enclosed in quotation marks that appear to be the exact utterances of characters—shapes our understanding of fictional characters and the social worlds they inhabit. Combining computational tools and close literary analysis, Menon reinstates direct speech to its rightful place in narrative theory, worthy of the critical seriousness afforded to such other features of narrative as free indirect discourse.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAfter quantifying direct speech in nearly one thousand British novels written between 1789 and 1901, Menon turns her attention to several canonical nineteenth-century works of fiction by Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and George Eliot. She considers, among other things, the ways that Austen establishes sympathy for certain characters through her allotment of speech; the narrative significance of speaking characters not given proper names in \u003ci\u003eJane Eyre\u003c\/i\u003e; and the social isolation of Dorothea in \u003ci\u003eMiddlemarch\u003c\/i\u003e, as revealed by speech networks. Menon shows not only how the study of direct speech allows us to make new arguments about these well-known texts but also that data analysis of speech can change the way we think about characters, individual novels, and even genres.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Tara Menon","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43489486078070,"sku":"9780691235813","price":29.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0671\/1374\/6550\/files\/CoreSourceHub_1ddc35a4-e6b2-463a-a641-8112babbce88.jpg?v=1780868502","url":"https:\/\/ingramacademic.com\/products\/speaking-parts-9780691235813","provider":"Ingram Academic \u0026 Professional","version":"1.0","type":"link"}