A Preliminary Study Of Suspense In Middlemarch From Literary Stylistic Perspective

This thesis studies the aesthetic effect - suspense - in the typical classic realistic novel Middlemarch from the literary stylistic perspective. In this thesis, the text of the novel is considered as a piece of message communicated between the narrator and the reader in a certain context of situation (socio-cultural situation, context, etc.). In order to encourage the reader to read on, the narrator designs suspense through some linguistic forms in some places. This thesis approaches how the narrator chooses foregrounded linguistic forms to generate suspense in the reader. Ten typical examples are analyzed under four headings, Lexical Foregrounding, Grammatical Foregrounding, Figures of Speech and Textual Foregrounding, from which a conclusion is drawn that though Middlemarch is not a suspense story, it can still generate suspense in all the four aspects. The narrator mainly adopts three methods to achieve it, such as challenging the reader's way of thinking or changing his understanding of the story, detaining some needed information, covering some information, etc. From the examples, it can also be inferred that suspense is not only to draw the reader's attention or to stimulate his interest in reading on, but also to vitalize the characters and enrich the text.