The Reading of the Main Characters in Witches’ Loaves From the Perspective of Rhetorical Reader-response_英语论文

摘要

欧·亨利是美国著名的批判现实主义作家，小说大师之一，美国现代短篇小说之父。他的小说以其自身的戏剧性结局而闻名，我们常常将其视为“欧亨利式结尾”。本文旨在以詹姆斯·费伦的修辞读者反应的理论为依据，从场景、对话和心理描写几个角度分析欧亨利的短篇小说《女巫的面包》中的两位主要人物玛莎小姐以及布鲁姆伯格先生的人物性格特征。由于小说中对人物的描写主要集中在场景、对话、心理描写这三个角度，同时该三个角度包含了对小说人物的正面以及侧面描写，故从此出发更能将小说的人物分析得透彻。所有的分析都将按顺序和细节进行展开，以达到在修辞读者反应视觉下精确理解小说《女巫的面包》中主人公的目的。

关键词：詹姆斯·费伦  修辞读者反应  《女巫的面包》  玛莎小姐  布鲁姆伯格先生

Abstract

O. Henry is a famous American critical realist writer, one of the masters of novels and the father of American modern short stories. His novels are especially famous for its own feature of dramatic ending which we often regarded as “O. Henry-style ending”. Based on the perspective of rhetoric reader-response from James Phelan, this thesis analyzes the two main characters Miss Martha and Mr. Blumberger in O. Henry’s short story Witches’ Loaves from the angles of scene, dialogue and psychological portrait. Because the description of the characters in the novel mainly focuses on these three aspects of scene, dialogue and psychological portrait, containing the front and side descriptions of the characters, it is more forcible to analyze the characters of the novel. All analyses will be carried out in order and in details to achieve an accurate understanding of the main characters in the novel Witches’ Loaves under the perspective of rhetorical reader-response.

Key words: James Phelan  Rhetorical Reader-response  Witches’ Loaves  Miss Martha  Mr. Blumberger

Contents

Chapter One  Introduction 1

1.1  A Brief Introduction to O. Henry 1

1.2  A Brief Introduction to Witches’ Loaves 1

1.3  Purpose of the Thesis 2

1.4  Structure of the Thesis 2

Chapter Two  Literature Review 4

2.1  Previous Studies on Witches’ Loaves 4

2.2  Previous Studies on Rhetorical Reader-response 5

2.3  Summary 8

Chapter Three  Theoretical Framework 9

3.1  Introduction to Rhetorical Narrative 9

3.2  Definition of Rhetorical Reader-response 11

Chapter Four  The Analysis of the Main Characters in Witches’ Loaves fromRhetorical Reader-response 14

4.1  The Representation of Miss Martha and Mr. Blumberger 14

4.2  Rhetorical Reader-response of Miss Martha and Mr. Blumberger 14

4.2.1 Scene 14

4.2.2 Dialogue 17

4.2.3 Psychological Portrait 19

4.3  Summary of the Characters 20

Chapter Five  Conclution 21

Bibliography

Acknowledgments