Literary Stylistic Study Of Caramelo

Caramelo is the novel published by Sandra Cisneros in 2002.Since its publication,the novel has won great attention and once was noted as an encyclopedia of the Mexican surface life to the history,and entered the final election of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.The novel includes three parts and each part is about the stories of Lala's generation,grandma's generation and mother's generation.The main character Lala travels to Mexico with her family every year to spend the summer vacation.Mexico is the hometown of her Awful Grandma and Little Grandpa.It seems that the novel is about a changing family history,but actually it is an epic of Mexican history,culture,family and love.It is full of values and worth studying.With the development of Chicana literature,more and more Chicana writers begin to gain fame in the mainstream literary research.Sandra Cisneros,a representative of Chicana writers,attracts the attention of literary critics.As a leading figure in Chicana literature,Cisneros embodies unique features both in forms and themes of her works.Caramelo is a representative work of her novel writing.There are many literary critics doing research on Caramelo since its publication.The research at home can be divided into the following three aspects.To begin with the study is devoted to the thematic meaning of the novel revealing the female theme and initiation theme.Then some researchers analyze the narrative strategies with narratology theories.Some other researchers pay attention to the Mexican culture background that Cisneros endows in the novel.With literature review,the author finds that the existing study focuses on the thematic meanings,the narrative strategies and the culture background of the novel.There are few literary critics adopts literary stylistics to analyze the textual forms,reveal the thematic meanings implied in the stylistic features and appreciate the aesthetic values of the novel.As a connection between linguistics and literature,literary stylistics advocates to reveal the implied meanings of the writer by close reading,thus the themes and aesthetic values of the work become understandable for readers.The analysis of literary stylistics can be divided into three steps:language level,psychological effects,themes and aesthetic effects,which constitute the main research paradigm of literary stylistics.Cisneros endows unique stylistic features in Caramelo and conveys abundant theme meanings.Therefore from the perspective of literary stylistics,with feminist stylistics and feminist narratology in the analysis,the author does a close reading on Caramelo to reveal the unique textual forms in the novel,and put them into three categories:writing as an innovator,writing as a subverter and writing as a female.By studying the stylistic features,the study aims to reveal the functions of the stylistic features in highlighting Mexican identity,subverting mainstream writing modes and constructing female voice,which lays a foundation for the appreciation of the aesthetic values in text,culture and theme.