Narrative as rhetorical processes: a study of persuasion in Henry James’s work

Henry James assumed irreplaceable importance in world literature. Jamesian studies has lasted one and a half centuries and is undergoing a revival in the twenty-first century. This dissertation conducts a formal-structural study of James’s works. It examines from the perspective of “persuasion” five of James’s works which represent his three creative themes, with classical, new rhetoric and rhetorical poetics as the theoretical bases. Among them, The Portrait of a Lady represents the “marriage” theme, The Ambassadors the “International Theme” and “The Ghostly Rental”, “The Way It Came” and The Turn of the Screw the “Wonder, Ghost and the Supernatural” theme. As for the two novels, the dissertation focuses on “persuasion” at the story level, discussing the important role the “persuasion” plot has played in the two works. In regard to the three tales, the dissertation focuses on “persuasion” at the discourse level. By viewing the tales mainly as the “persuasion” process conducted between James and his audience, the dissertation examines the recursive interactions among the implied James, the text and reader response. On this basis, the dissertation generalizes the “persuasion” mode unique to each of the three themes.