THE FICTIONAL ART OF INDIRECT SPEECH IN CONTEMPORARY VIETNAMESE HISTORICAL NOVELS (An analysis on the historical works by Hoang Quoc Hai, Nguyen Xuan Khanh, Nguyen Quang Than, and Nguyen Mong Giac)

Abstract

To review the success of contemporary Vietnamese historical novels, it is a must to mention the role of the writers who fictionalize in different styles of speech in their works, especially the indirect speech. Indirect speech is entirely composed by the writers or the story-tellers that describes the whole world, the content and meaning of what was spoken by the fictional characters to allow the readers to understand better. This article primarily analyzes the contemporary Vietnamese historical novels in terms of the arts of one-voice indirect speech and two-voice indirect speech. Thereby, this article contributes to clarify the features that bring to the success of contemporary Vietnamese historical novels.

Keywords: the art of narration, fiction, indirect speech, historical novels