| William Wordsworth (1770-1850), the founder of English romantic poems,proposed a new way of writing in the period of English Romantic literature. Theauthoritative critic and poet Arnold has claimed that the supreme greatness ofWordsworth is second to Milton and Shakespeare in the English history of literature.As a matter of fact, the most thriving period of his poem creation was the ten yearsfrom1797to1807. All the literary materials used in the thesis are from Wordsworth‘spoems, including The Daffodils, My Heart Leaps Up and The Solitary Reaper.However, the current studies of Wordsworth‘s poems are mostly from the viewpointsof subject, mainly focusing on the nature or humanity in his poems. There are fewstudies of Wordsworth‘s poems from the perspective of Systemic FunctionalGrammar (SFG), especially the textual function.Systemic-functional Grammar (SFG), was proposed by M. A. K. Halliday in the1960s, provides a theoretical framework for the analysis of text and has had a greatinfluence on the linguistic field in the late20th century. It takes semantics as thegrammartical basis, regarding that all the uses of language are expressing threemetafunctions, namely, ideational function, interpersonal function and textualfunction. From the perspective of SFG, by using the theory of thematic structure,information structure and cohesion system included in the textual function as thetheoretical framework, the author tentatively analyzes Wordsworth‘s poems to verifythat textual function is feasible to poetry analysis and makes known the textualfeatures of Wordsworth‘s poems.This thesis consists of four chapters. It begins with an introduction which makesa brief review of SFG, discussing the importance of the textual function and exploringthe relevant field for the thorough research. Chapter One presents the author‘sliterature review, including the review of previous research on textual analysis athome and abroad, the previous studies of Wordsworth‘s poems, and the application ofSFG to English poems. Chapter Two is the framework about Halliday‘s SFG, and theelaboration of the three components of textual function. Chapter Three introduces thelife experience of Wordsworth and the background knowledge of his poems. Chapter four, the most important part of the whole thesis, is a textual analysis ofWordsworth‘s poems. Firstly, the author briefly surveys the evolution of thematictheory, which is followed by the discussion of the function and realization of thematicstructures in Wordsworth‘s lyric The Daffodils. The study finds that simple theme andmarked theme take the largest percentage of the poem, which conforms to the poeticstyle, helps to make the poem readable and fluent, and also makes the theme―daffodils‖highly marked in the poem. Secondly, the author explores the similaritiesand differences between thematic structure and information structure, and also tries toanalyze the information structure in the poem My Heart Leaps Up. It is found that thenew information in a clause has a strong effect on the textual development and alsocould deepen the understanding of the poetic theme. Thirdly, the author appliesgrammatical and lexical cohesion devices to the analysis of Wordsworth‘s TheSolitary Reaper, tests and verifies that the cohesion system could facilitate theunderstanding of the poem with its special features.In the conclusion of my paper, the author summarizes the main content of thisthesis, evaluates the significance and further points out the limitation and the roomleft for further improvement of the research. |
