Stylistic Perspectives On The Great Gatsby

Literary stylistics is a "meeting ground of linguistics and literary study". Dependent on the description of the observable linguistic facts of the text, literary stylistics explores how the thematic significance and aesthetic values of a literary text are produced and enhanced through the writer's different choices of linguistic features, thus helping to provide a less intuitive, less subjective method of interpreting and appreciating literary works. Stylistically speaking, the significance of a literary text lies in the unity of form and content, therefore literary stylistics lays emphasis on literary language, the choice of which is motivated by theme. As far as fiction is concerned, literary linguistic form involves micro and macro perspectives. From the micro perspective, stylistic analysis examines specific categories such as lexical choice, grammatical choice, rhetorical devices, cohesion and context; while from the macro perspective, stylistics studies the way to construct the whole work, which includes narrative point of view and modes of speech presentation. This thesis, with a detailed stylistic analysis of The Great Gatsby, aims to explain how the thematic and aesthetic significance of the novel is created through the writer's linguistic choices and narrative techniques, and to argue that a comprehensive stylistic concept contributes to a better and more profound understanding of the theme and the significance of the narrative. From the analysis and illustration of The Great Gatsby from a stylistic perspective, we draw a conclusion that by stylistic analysis we can develop an awareness of the subtleties of language use and pave the way for literary appreciation, therefore it is of use and necessity to introduce stylistics into literary interpretation and appreciation and to arm critics with adequate stylistic competence.