A Study Of The Stylistic Features Of Persuasion From The Perspective Of Literary Stylistics

Jane Austen is an outstanding novelist in the19th century, and she is evaluated as one of the greatest novelists in the history of English literature. Some critics highly praise that she enjoys the equal popularity with Shakespeare; Persuasion is Jane Austen’s last novel. And it is considered to be one of the most mature and the most profound novels. Although many critics and scholars make the studies of this novel from different angles, however the majority of researches are from feminist perspective or focus on the exploration of the theme of the story and the profound ideological significance, or simply interested in the characters of the novel, the research on it from the perspective of literary stylistics is far from enough. Based on the above considerations, this thesis is to analyze the stylistic features of the novel through the method of literary stylistics.Literary stylistics aims to study literature text by using the appropriate method, in order to achieve the interpretation of the theme and aesthetic value of the works. It combines linguistics and literary criticism, and makes the research of literary language complement and perfect. It plays a positive role on the development of the linguistics and literary criticism. This thesis explores aesthetic effect and the theme of the novel using the linguistic mode of analysis.This thesis makes an analysis of the stylistic features of the Persuasion from multiple perspectives including the lexical level, the syntactic level, the rhetorical level and modern linguistic model. Such as the lexical selection and syntactic features, as well as the lexical collocation and the connotation of specific vocabulary, the application of coordination and subordination, the techniques of parallelism and repetition to portray the characters. Referring to the part of the modern linguistics mode, it mainly studies from two aspects of the novel:the diction and the discourse, that is, the point of view and Free Indirect Speech. And it concluded the function of Free Indirect Speech in Persuasion. Above all, we can draw a conclusion that Persuasion has the time style of the19th century, and the dramatic style with conciseness and irony. We understand the theme of novel deeply and further deepen the features of characters through analysis of the choice of word, the narrative technique, the application of rhetoric. A study of the stylistic features of Persuasion from the perspective of literary stylistics helps readers understand the theme and the aesthetic effect of the novel more deeply. At the same time it also reflects the aim of literary stylistics.