The Art Of Suspense In Detective Stories

Detectives stories have been popular among the readers since they became one of the literary genres,which is largely owed to the fascinating suspense involved in them.The suspense arouses the eager expectation in the readers towards the development of the twisted plots in literary works,thus effectively stimulating the reading process.It is an important technique of expression in literary works and also a significant artistic means to attract numerous readers.As one of the most famous full-length detective novels by the British detective novelist,Conan Doyle,The Hound of the Baskervilles is a representative and excellent object for the study of suspense in detective stories,considering the twisted and fantastic plot as well as the breathtaking suspense involved in it.And the still growing interdisciplinary subject-stylistics featuring the characteristics of independence,interdiscipline and comprehensiveness can no doubt provide scientific and systematic support for this study.Considering that not many studies on suspense in detective stories from stylistic perspective have been done both at home and abroad,the thesis chooses the famous detective story The Hound of the Baskervilles as research data and studies the art of suspense in the text with the theoretical framework of stylistics,combining various subjects to comprehensively explore the design and aesthetic effects of the suspense in detective stories.The concrete makings of suspense and aesthetic effects of the suspense in the detective story The Hound of the Baskervilles are analyzed by exploring the narrative methods of the detective story,studying the discourses in the story(including the analysis of conversational implicatures and the flouting of different maxims of cooperative principles)and studying the linguistic features such as lexical,syntactic and rhetoric foregrounding in the novel.The thesis applies stylistics to the study of suspense in detective stories,which is not only an extension of the practical research of stylistics but also a new trial in the study of detective stories.Therefore,this study is prospective in some way.