Henry James’ Periodic Style And His Anxiety Of Modern Experience

Universally acknowledged as a master in British and American literary history,Henry James boasts grandeur in both his writing style and themes. James’ readers arealways deeply impressed by his complicated narrative techniques and overwhelminglength as well as his profound and ambivalent themes. Among all his voluminousworks, The Golden Bowl (1904) and The Wings of the Dove (1902) as twomasterpieces in his later phase, mark the highest level of his unique style of novelisticwriting. In particular, his periodic style also arrives at the peak, typically representedby syntactic features and discursive arrangement as well as the wholesomeorganization of the two literary texts. According to Henry James’ own opinion aboutthe art of fiction, the form and content are anticipated to make a perfect match in theway that they mutually resonate with each other with the development of the texts.With reference to some linguistic theories of stylistics and cognitive semantics,this thesis aims to analyse how Henry James’ periodic style and the common themesof the two later novels interplay with each other so as to demonstrate that the cue thatrelates the style and themes together is James’ epistemic anxiety. The introductorypart firstly clarifies its studying objects The Golden Bowl and The Wings of the Dovefrom the aspects of their significance and their relevance with research topic. Then itgives a brief review of the general research basis of Jamesian studies, particularlyfrom its research perspectives, pointing out the limitation of the existing scholarshipand raising the thesis statement. The introduction also presents the general theoretical framework and the dominant concepts of the thesis.Based on the relevant theories introduced in the introductory part, the three majorchapters sequentially follow the order of discussing the three elements of modernexperience—Henry James’ experience of uncertainty in life, observation ofalienation between people, and suggestion of modern people’s disillusionment fromthe cognitive stylistic perspective. Chapter One begins with a micro exploration intothe periodic syntax of the two novels by combining qualitative studies from thefunctionalist-semantic angle with quantitative studies from a structuralist-syntactocentric angle together, and goes further to expand the stylistic studies to thediscursive level. Chapter Two analyses James’ periodic style at the discursive level bytreating each of the whole literary texts as metaphor so as to assume that his adoptingsymbolism, which contributes to generating ambiguity of characterization, belongs topart of his style reflecting his anxiety of the alienation of interpersonal relationship.Chapter Three, also treating the literary texts as metaphor, goes further to anatomizethe collapse of the characters’ inner worlds by exploring their streams ofconsciousness, the syntax and discourse of which not only expose their complicatedpsychological activities—the increasingly deepening anxiety, but also intensivelyreflect James’ anxiety about their destinies as well as such ubiquitous phenomena inmodern time.The conclusion naturally comes into being that the conveyance of Henry James’epistemic anxiety of modern experience in the two later novels is conducted throughhis complicated writing style at both syntactic and discursive levels, known asperiodic style, and such a preference of narration in circumlocution complies with hisdominant emotion of anxiety that permeates all through the two literary texts whichalso abides by his own principle of novelistic composition that the novel’s task is torepresent the real life the author experiences in reality in both the form and content.