Reading the Mind of Experiencing-I in The Fall of the House of Usher. A Systemic-Functional Perspective
In first-person narrative, experiencing-I refers to an early self-undergoing the events recounted by the older self. The experiencing-I in The Fall of the House of Usher is responsible for the overall construal of the storyworld. While most critical attention has drawn to the study of the Ushers, this paper aims to a close-reading of the mind of experiencing-I through his configuration of settings. Different from previous studies on mind style, the emotion factor of the narrator would be emphasized. Using Systemic-Functional descriptive framework, the stylistic feature of language is examined from two aspects: 1) Premodification in nominal phrase; 2) Participant, process and circumstantial element. Such an analysis finally reveals that the narrator, contrast with his own claim, is a sensitive, fragile and incapable figure in the story. The potential of unreliability might open up new possibility of interpretation.
experiencing-i mind setting description systemic-functional framework
PAN Lu
Foreign Languages Department, Tsinghua University
国际会议
The 36th International Systemic Functional Congress(第36届国际系统功能语言学大会暨第十一届全国功能语言学研讨会ISFC36)
北京
英文
80-84
2009-07-14（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）