Literary Stylistic Study Of "The Man Who Loved Children"

Stylistics, as a cross-disciplinary, can be simply defined as the study of style by applying modern linguistic theories and methodology. The English Stylistics is an "ancient and young" subject. It is "ancient" because it is developing on the basis of traditional western rhetoric in the fifth century B.C. and celebrities such as Plato, Aristotle in the ancient Greek have done brilliant argumentations on rhetoric. Stylistics is "young" because people don't begin to explore the style by employing the theories and methodology of modern linguistics until the 20th century. In 1909, "Traitéde Stylistique Francaise" by French scholar Bally marks, the beginning of western modern stylistics. The thesis attempts to explore the possibility and inevitability in applying the theories and methodology of literary stylistics to fiction analysis.Stead is one of the most distinguished writers in the 19th century in Australia. She lived away from her native country to many countries such as England, France, America so that she had been nurtured in the multi-cultures and the wonderful experiences have brought up her unique creative imagination. Due to its superb artistic expressions and unique charm of the language, Famous American literary critic Randall Jarrell regards "The Man Who Loved Children", one of her representative novels, as "Australian Ulysses", and takes it for granted that it is a masterpiece in the modern novels.Based on the stylistics theories and its analysis modes developing persistently, the text in the novel can be analyzed at different levels such as rhetoric, lexis, syntax, and discourse. In this thesis, the stylistic analysis will be adopted, with an attempt to study "The Man Who Loved Children" from various aspects, which is the classic stream-of-consciousness novel by Australian woman writer Christina Stead.The thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter is the introduction which includes the purpose, the significance, methodology and the basic structure of this thesis. The second chapter introduces the background knowledge about the novel "The Man Who Loved Children". It describes the domestic violence in Washington in the United States, but the story has drawn its material from the adolescent experiences of Christina Stead in Australia, who is called a "drifting writer". The novel has a strong autobiographical nature. From literary stylistic perspective, chapter three will analyze the style in fiction in the three aspects. Stead mainly adopts a third-person narration. She has created a new artistic charm through the skillful arrangement and transformation of the narrative persons, which contribute to originality in point of view. At the same time, the author shows ingenuity in choosing different speech representations in which the direct speech is commonly employed. Rhetorical devices serve the theme of the fiction appropriately and enable the novel filled with shadow of "tragedy of marriage" from beginning to end. From rhetoric in literary stylistics, the readers can understand the original text more clearly, for the sake of a better analysis and appreciation of literary works. Chapter four explores a multi-level model of stylistic analysis in detail that deals with lexis, syntax and discourse based on text of the fiction, by applying theories and methodology of literary stylistics. This chapter focuses on analysis of language features with stylistic significance and aesthetic value. As to some language with "foregrounding" characteristics, we should try to explore the stylistic function of every language element in order to achieve the purpose of understanding and appreciating "The Man Who Loved Children". The fifth chapter is a summary of the thesis. This chapter looks back on the development of stylistics, and states that the application of literary stylistics is a must for analyzing the fictions. Via the language and text analysis based on stylistic theories, we can further to explore vocabulary selected, sentence structures and discourse variation, etc. in Australian women writers' works so as to reveal the positive role literary style plays in clarifying themes and strengthening the effect of expression. On the other hand, for the English language learners in our country, stylistic analysis of "The Man Who Loved Children" can help understand the fiction's structure, enhance the appreciation of foreign language and cultures and thereby improve the efficiency of learning a foreign language.