Emergent Direct Discourse in the Vulgate Cycle

The Vulgate Cycle makes extensive use of 'emergent direct discourse,'a stylistic procedure that consists of frequent shifts — even in mid-sentence — from narration or indirect discourse to direct discourse and sometimes back again, often in situations where the points of shift are impossible to determine. The effect of the method is to support other efforts within the Cycle to merge all voices into a single overarching one: the voice of the conte.