Analysing Embedded Discourse Presentation: Bridging Disciplines

Literary texts are core material in Cultural Studies, especially as taught in German universities. This paper shows how the analysis of literature can be fruitfully enhanced by a linguistic analysis. Recourse is made to what is called New Historical Stylistics, which is first explained in its complexity and then applied to the analysis of embedded discourse presentation in 19th-century narrative fiction. The functions of embedded speech, writing and thought presentation will be explained via recourse to a cognitive stylistic framework drawing on Text World Theory (Werth 1999) and blending theory (Fauconnier / Turner 2002).