ABSTRACT
This essay has several purposes. It confirms that free indirect discourse is indeed 'double-voiced' (as in Bakhtin, 1984: 190) but suggests that this double voice is not unique to literary narrative. It therefore also counters the tendency to seek linguistic differences between fictional, literary narratives, and other kinds of discourse. It demonstrates wh at has been neglected - that free indirect discourse is already widespread in eighteenth-century fiction. Since 1 argue too that free indirect discourse is often easily identifiable and attributable in eighteenth-century fiction, my essay implies that, though the ambiguity of free indirect discourse may be its most intriguing feature, free indirect discourse, even in later fiction, is not always undecidable. Finally, as 1 discuss free indirect discourse in one particular eighteenth-century novel, Sir Charles Grandison, 1 suggest why reported discourse in general is so prevalent in this novel and others like it - why it supports the novel's moral endeavour. The way characters in this and similar novels remember and quote from each other, with or without attribution, suggests how some eighteenthcentury novelists hoped to be remembered and assimilated by readers - indeed, how readers do sometimes remember and assimilate their reading.
