Speech, Writing, and Thought Presentation in 19th-Century Narrative Fiction: A Corpus-Assisted Approach (Oxford Studies in the History of English)

Reference to or quotation from someone's speech, thoughts, or writing is a key component of narrative. These reports further a narrative, make it more interesting, natural, and vivid, ask the reader to engage with it, and reflect historical cultural understandings of modes of discourse presentation. To a large extent, the way we perceive a story depends on the ways it presents discourse, and along with it, speech, writing, and thought. In this book, Beatrix Busse investigates speech, writing, and thought presentation in a corpus of 19th-century narrative fiction including Frankenstein , Jane Eyre , Wuthering Heights , Oliver Twist , and many others. At the intersection between corpus linguistics and stylistics, this book develops a new corpus-stylistic approach for systematically analyzing the different narrative strategies of discourse presentation in key pieces of 19th-century narrative fiction. Speech, Writing, and Thought Presentation in 19th-Century Narrative Fiction identifies diachronic patterns as well as unique authorial styles, and places them within their cultural-historical context. It also suggests ways for automatically identifying forms of discourse presentation, and shows that the presentation of characters' minds reflects an ideological as well as an epistemological concern about what cannot be reported, portrayed, or narrated. Through insightful interdisciplinary analysis, Busse demonstrates that discourse presentation fulfills the function of prospection and encapsulation, marks narrative progression, and shapes readers' expectations. Reference to or quotation from someone's speech, thoughts, or writing is a key component of narrative. These reports further a narrative, make it more interesting, natural, and vivid, ask the reader to engage with it, and reflect historical cultural understandings of modes of discourse presentation. To a large extent, the way we perceive a story depends on the ways it presents discourse, and along with it, speech, writing, and thought. 0In this book, Beatrix Busse investigates speech, writing, and thought presentation in a corpus of 19th-century narrative fiction including Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Oliver Twist, and many others. At the intersection between corpus linguistics and stylistics, this book develops a new corpus-stylistic approach for systematically analyzing the different narrative strategies of discourse presentation in key pieces of 19th-century narrative fiction. Speech, Writing, and Thought Presentation in 19th-Century Narrative Fiction identifies diachronic patterns as well as unique authorial styles, and places them within their cultural-historical context. It also suggests ways for automatically identifying forms of discourse presentation, and shows that the presentation of characters' minds reflects an ideological as well as an epistemological concern about what cannot be reported, portrayed, or narrated. Through insightful interdisciplinary analysis, Busse demonstrates that discourse presentation fulfills the function of prospection and encapsulation, marks narrative progression, and shapes readers' expectations "The present study investigates speech, writing, and thought presentation in a corpus of 19th-century narrative fiction including, for instance, the novels Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Oliver Twist, and many others. All narratives typically contain a reference to or a quotation of someone's speech, thoughts, or writing. These reports further a narrative, make it more interesting, natural, and vivid, ask the reader to engage with it, and, from a historical point of view, also reflect cultural understandings of the modes of discourse presentation. To a large extent, the way a reader perceives a story depends upon the ways discourse is presented, and among these, speech, writing, and thought, which reflect a character's disposition and state of mind. Being at the intersection of linguistic and literary stylistics, this study develops a new corpus-stylistic approach for systematically analyzing the different narrative strategies of historical discourse presentation in key pieces of 19th-century narrative fiction, thus identifying diachronic patterns as well as unique authorial styles, and places them within their cultural-historical context. It shows that the presentation of characters' minds reflects an ideological as well as an epistemological concern about what cannot be reported, portrayed, or narrated and that discourse presentation fulfills the narratological functions of prospection and encapsulation, marks narrative progression, and shapes readers' expectations as to suspense or surprise"--Publisher's description Cover CONTENTS List_of_Tables_and_Figures Acknowledgments List_of_Abbreviations Title_Pages (1) Introduction The_Discourse_Presentation_Model_So_Far Methodology Types_Distribution_and_LexicoGrammatical_Realization_of_Discourse_Presentation_Categories_and_Their_Functional_Implications Scales_and_Modes_of_Discourse_Presentation_and_Their_Functions Toward_Developing_a_Procedure_for_Automatically_Identifying_Speech_Writing_and_Thought_Presentation Narrative_Progression_and_CharacterizationThe_Functional_Interplay_between_Narration_and_Discourse_Presentation Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index