A Stylistic Analysis on the Nightingale and the Rose
Abstract
Oscar Wilde’s The Nightingale and the Rose, similar to other Oscar Wilde’s short stories, is written in an aesthetic voice. Throughout the story, Oscar Wilde employs various stylistic devices for the expression of aesthetic concept. In order to show how Oscar Wilde engross readers in this incredible story through stylistics analysis, this paper firstly presents an overview of stylistics based on the textbook English Stylistics by Xu Youzhi and gives a brief introduction of Oscar Wilde and some knowledge on The Nightingale and the Rose. Then, with the basis of stylistic theory, a comprehensive stylistic analysis of the story in phonetic, lexical, syntactic, semantic and contextual aspects will be carried out. Finally, this thesis will try to summarize the stylistic features, which help Oscar Wilde create a story that successfully absorbs and shocks whoever reads it. Key words: stylistic analysis, The Nightingale and the Rose, Oscar Wilde, aesthetic voice Comment:
1. A table of contents is needed to show the organization of your ideas. 2. A literature review on the previous studies of the story by critics is a must, so that you can find the features and limitations of their studies, and then decide on your own aspect of study. 3. You failed to indicate the theme of The Nightingale and the Rose. 4. For a story, the creation of a setting, the spots, the portrayal of characters, the conflict between characters shown by their actions and speeches are the conventional means for the author to present the theme. Therefore, it is essential for you to elaborate how the author succeeds in the above-mentioned aspects by means of language. 5. The linguistic features in the text are demonstrated by high frequency. For example, on the lexical level, what are the author’s preferences? Nouns or Verbs? What are their ratios? Among nouns, what is the ratio of abstract ones as against concrete ones?