1. 研究目的与意义（文献综述包含参考文献）

rhetorical devices in jane austin#8217;s pride and prejudices had been studied in many ways.

caterpiller once said ”pride and prejudice is famous for its use of irony. in irony, the intended or literal meaning of words is different from their actual meaning. the irony that begins with the novel's first sentence extends through the entire work as elizabeth's prejudice against darcy leads her to misread the world around her, seeing him as a blackguard and the wicked wickham as wronged by darcy.”(23) we can see the irony at the beginning of the novel and it is the most important rhetorical device in the whole novel. it is a wonderful analysis of the rhetorical devices in the novel.

auerbach once mentioned in his book searching for jane austin ”the use of verbal irony particularly expresses austen's use of wit. verbal irony is usually recognized as sarcasm. it is the moment someone, such as a character or narrator, says one thing, but means the complete opposite. one perfect example of verbal irony can be seen in the very opening line of the book, ”it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife#8217;. the irony in this line is that, while the women of an english village in austen's time might "acknowledge" the truth above, the wealthy men the line is referring to actually might not; therefore, the above is not really a "truth universally acknowledged." instead, this opening line is a perfect example of sarcasm, or verbal irony, and a perfect example of austen's wit.”(28)

2. 研究的基本内容、问题解决措施及方案

i did the following steps to figure out what pride and prejudice tells about,. firstly, i read the english version of this novel with the assistance of the chinese version. in this way, i can know more about the novel and also more details in it. secondly i search the internet for a great deal of background informations. finally i tried my best to search more valuable reference materials in school library so that i can have a extensive research.

also the internet provides me a quantity of background information of the author and writer. i used traditional library and e-libraries to find a lot of documents which can give me a better understanding of the novel. the most important is that my supervisor give me lots of help, giving me the method of finding information, correcting the grammar mistakes in my passages and so on.

this thesis consists of four parts. the first part will primarily provide the purpose and significance of the study including the brief introduction of jane austin and pride and prejudice and the significance of the novel. the second part is literature review. then more details will be in the third part for the analysis of rhetorical devices in pride and prejudice. in the end the thesis will draw a conclusion to summarize the whole essay especially the rhetorical devices.