The distinctive style of Charles Lamb’s essays has been interpreted in different ways-abundant allusions and rhetorical devices,quaintness and vernacular,antique colloquialism,witty humor,bitter sweetness,profound humanity,etc.Nevertheless,so far the extensive use of parentheses and dashes in his representative work Essays of Elia has not been paid enough attention and a detailed investigation is virtually absent.This paper presents an effort to analyze Essays of Elia through probing into the parentheses and dashes as paratexts in regard to their stylistic effects from two perspectives-the linguistic perspective and the semantic perspective,in hope of expanding the scope of“paratext”.The major finding of the paper is that in Essays of Elia,parentheses and dashes as paratexts serving as stylistic markers are indispensable supplements which have special stylistic effects.
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