A Literary Stylistic Analysis Of Women In Love

This thesis adopts the analytic methods of literary stylistics in order to study an eternal classic novel Women in Love created by David Herbert Lawrence. Lawrence is one of the greatest novelists in English literature of 20 th century, and in the meantime, he is one of the most controversial novelists. Lawrence was born in a working class family in Nottingham. His parents came from different social classes, his father was a miner, and however, his mother came from middle class family. Therefore, Lawrence’s literary works were deeply influenced by his special family setting. The novel Women in Love was produced in 1916, after the social changes brought by the First World War. Then women came to own the right to vote and enter the working field that only men could have been before. The social changes endowed women with new freedom and great economic independence. These changes are all reflected in this novel.To some extent, Lawrence sublimates the sex description to philosophical and aesthetic elevation. There also exits the thinking of a series of social problems in history, politics, religion, economic etc. This thesis emphasizes on the literary stylistics features within the whole novel from the angles of the lexical level, syntactical level and the textual level with the explanations and illustrations of several chosen excerpts. The distinctive aesthetic value could be revealed in a new way.Stylistics is a study that focuses on the varieties of language. In a broad sense, it refers to the various styles of a kind of language. In a narrow sense, stylistics focuses on the analysis of the individual styles of language, especially the literary styles. The main task of literary stylistics is analyzing the language style of a particular literary work. It connects linguistics and literary criticism. The analysis of the features in literary stylistics focuses on poetry, novel or other types of literary works with the adoption of the theory of linguistics from various angles including phonology, lexis, syntax, discourse or context. It is necessary to employ the literary stylistics analytic methods to deal with a literary work so that a more rational and objective appreciation of the literary work could be obtained. In this respect, we could realize the comprehensive aesthetic values of a literary work scientifically. This thesis concentrates on the distinctive features expressed in the language of Women in Love at the lexical level, syntactical level and the textual level through the literary stylistics analytic methods based on the theory of stylistics.This thesis consists of three parts. The first one is introduction mainly filled with the literature review of Women in Love in abroad and at home. There are also the argument, the study purpose, analytic methods and the researching significance from the perspectives of literary stylistics in this paper.The second part is the main body which includes four chapters.Chapter One is the literature review which introduces the term stylistics, the brief history and the development of stylistics in the western countries and in our homeland. It is a study that mainly focuses on the features of the style in language with the employment of the analytic methods of linguistics. And then the general introduction to literary stylistics is offered in order to construct the theoretical framework of this thesis. Literary stylistics is seen as the branch of stylistics and the main concepts of it are presented in this chapter. It refers to a discipline that studies the methods of the utilization of language in literary via the linguistics analytic ways and it mainly focuses on and researches the language traits in literary works such as poems, novels and plays. That is to say, literary stylistics adopts the linguistics approach to literary appreciation. The following chapters concentrate on the the various levels of the text in Women in Love.Chapter Two emphasizes on the distinctive traits at lexical level and the adoption of various lexical figures of speech. Firstly, the analysis of the nouns in the novel consists of the abstract nouns and the concrete nouns. The abstract nouns often appeared in the explanation of the characters’ thoughts or ideas. As to the concrete nouns frequently used in the depictions of the environment and the appearances and clothes of the characters. Besides, the verbs are continually used to illustrate the movements of one character or the change of his or her inner world in a few chosen paragraphs. Thirdly, the adoptions of various adjectives is primarily described the “foul kind of beauty” at Beldover and the humanity transformation which is roused by the great change of the society in the late nineteenth century. In addition, the employment of different kinds of figures of speech such as simile, metaphor, personification, antonomasia and transferred epithet brings a more vivid and easier realization of the situation and inner thoughts of the fictional figures.Chapter Three concentrates on the particular sentence structures at the syntactical level and the syntactic overregularity. The short sentences in this novel are used to express the characters’ actions, the rhythm of dynamic changes and the tension of the plot. Long sentence is often used to reflect the characters’ thoughts and their points of view. In this way, the readers can get a more comprehensive understanding of the character’s inner world and the unique outlook on life of one character. The perfect combination of long sentences and short sentences aims at demonstrating the beauty of language better. Syntactic overregularity is aimed at stressing the theme, stirring one’s emotion as well as showing the highlighted traits of the characters through several devices, including repetition and parallelism etc.Chapter Four fixes on the unique features of the text and register characteristics. Textual cohesion and textual coherence contribute to portray the characters’ personality and the thematic meaning of this novel. Textual cohesion means the associated relationship in the whole discourse. The devices of it are conjunction, ellipsis, reference, substitution. Textual coherence emphasizes on the deep concept of language and the unification in logic, as well as gives rise to the readers’ thinking. Register plays a significant role in shaping the characters and expressing the relationships, etc. It can be realized easily about the intimate or distant relationships among the figures in Women in Love in accordance with the different language used in different situations.The third part is conclusion, which summarizes the researching findings mentioned above on the basis of different levels of language. It points out the creating goal of this thesis. And in the meanwhile, the limitations exist in the thesis and the suggestions for the subsequent exploration are also concluded in this part. In addition, there also exist the necessities and the significance of adopting the literary stylistics analysis to the literary works appreciation in this part. The English learners should be able to understand this novel from a new angle with the realization of the distinctive features in language. Therefore, the aesthetic values of Women in Love can be appreciated and accepted widely.