ABSTRACT
In this essay, William Galperin explores the interplay of plot and free indirect discourse and dialogue across Austen’s works. The essay contends that in recognizing the absence of plot and the unplotted, detail-laden present that takes over, early readers were not only forced to concede that Austen was doing something very different in substituting ‘no story’ for story; they were also practicing a jerry-built formalism in recognizing a fundamental distinction between what happens in an Austen novel and its plot.
