A Study Of The Stylistic Functions Of The Syntax In The Beast In The Jungle And Its Translation

A representative masterpiece of Henry James' later novella, the Beast in the Jungle is featured by intricate, embedded syntax which, apart from constituting the dubbed "Jamesian Style", also reflects aesthetic needs in portraying characters, plots and settings. The difficulty of understanding and translating Henry James chiefly lies with its syntax therefore, certain translators have made drastic adaptations to the syntax—smoothing and simplifying the sentences—in an attempt to facilitate the target-language readers. Despite the ease some readers may find in reading the short, lucid sentences in Chinese, such a translation weakens the particular meaning conceived in the original syntactic forms and fails to represent the true, stylistic value of the novella.This thesis intends, focusing on the syntax under the guidance of pertinent stylistics theories, to conduct a thorough and insightful analysis of its stylistic functions, explore ideal translating strategies and, with a comparative study of the three versions of translation, and investigate their strengths and weaknesses so as to support the point that in translating syntax, the translator should attach sufficient importance to the aesthetic value of the form and represent it in the target language appropriately. The thesis is composed of three chapters. Chapter I, concerned with the dominant periodic sentence, provides an analysis of the stylistic functions of periodic sentences in terms of its thematic iconicity, its depiction of characters and its creation of suspense. It argues that Henry James, carrying forward this classic sentence type in English literature, has used it instrumentally in the presentation of characters and their consciousness, which, ultimately, strengthens and deepens the theme of the novella. These forms, therefore, should best be transplanted into the target language so as to preserve its aesthetic value. Chapter II concerns segmentation, proclaiming that the segmentation bears some pre-stream-of-consciousness characteristics: the unpunctuated long sentences reflects the flowing of stream of consciousness, the seeming redundantly punctuated sentences the complexity, the alternation of long and short sentences the presenting ability. These variations in segmentation should also be restored in the rendering to effect spiritual resemblance via formal resemblance. Chapter III focuses on such syntactic figures of speech as aposiopesis, repetition and parallelism, and antithesis, discusses their respective stylistic functions and evaluates the representation of them in the three renderings. It suggests that the best way to reproduce their stylistic effects is to convey them with the corresponding figures in...