Figurally colored narration (FCN) is narrator's discourse (whether in the first or third
person) that adopts salient features of character's 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
character's text. There are two main modes of FCN: contagion of the narrator's discourse with a
character's text and the more or less ironical reproduction of a character's text in narrative
discourse. In the latter case the narrator's criticism may refer to either the content of the
character's 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 narrator's and character's text (text interference) this book analyses
the function and applications of FCN in narratives written in German English and Russian.
