Classification Paragraph. Iryna Nikolaichuk

The narrative voice is the name for the group of narrative techniques which illustrate the special manners of storytelling in literature; and all the types of narrative voices can be divided into four groups: stream-of-consciousness voice, character voice, epistolary voice, and third-person voice. The most specific type of narrative voice is stream-of-consciousness one that was explicated especially by modernistic type of literary writing and gives the (almost always first-person) narrator’s perspective through reproduction of the thought processes (as opposed to simply spoken words) of the fictional character. Another type is character voice that is used more widely than the one mentioned previously and represents the text as a result of narration done by one of the fictional characters. One more type of narrative voice is epistolary voice that describes the plot through the series of letters or other documents, for example, diaries written by fictional characters. And the last type of narrative voice can be represented as third-person voice, and this name describes the group of narrative techniques referring to the category of the third-person view (it can be subjective, when the plot is represented through reflections of one of the fictional characters; or objective, when the author appears in a role of the narrator). To sum up, the narrative voice is one of the main components of the mode of narration, and it provides the whole complex of stylistic, grammatical, and lexical features, which are determining elements of the narrative style.
Source: bachelor paper "Narrative technique of 'stream of concsiousness' in British literature of modernism: James Joyce, Virginia Woolf" by Iryna Nikolaichuk; tutor - Rostyslav Semkiv. - Kyiv, 2012. - 100 p.