Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1-, University of Hamburg (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Proseminar: English Dialects, language: English, abstract: “Emily Brontë’s only novel is considered to be one of the most powerful and enigmatic works in English literature.” (Alexander/Smith 2003: 553)Wuthering Heights(first published in 1847) is indeed a very powerful novel which is to its greatest part achieved by its setting in the Yorkshire moors and the realistic representation of the local transactions. Emily Jane Brontë was born in 1818; at the age of two she moved with her family to Ha-worth, West Riding of Yorkshire. Except for a few short journeys, Emily Brontë stayed in Yorkshire all her life and could thus vividly describe her Yorkshire surroundings as the setting of her novel. Furthermore, the Yorkshire dialect (based on Haworth dialect) in the speech of some of her characters adds to the completeness of the novel’s setting (Waddin gton-Feather 2004: 1). Most characters in the novel use a dialect word or phrase every now and then; Joseph, however, speaks Yorkshire dialect almost exclusively. Joseph is the old servant at Wuthering Heights (which is both, the name of the novel and that of the house). Joseph is very religious and loyal to whoever is his master at the time. Ac-cording to Ellen Dean, the housekeeper at Wuthering Heig hts, he is “the wearisomest, selfrighteous Pharisee that ever ransacked a Bible to rake the promises to himself and fling the curses on his neighbours.” (Brontë 1994: 48-49) Hence, Joseph is an ambiguous character in the mind of the reader: on the one hand, he is always grumpy, quite harsh and even mean at times; on the other hand, he is an old man who is always truthful and loyal ; it seems he is always as good a person as his respective master is. Joseph’s use of dia lect reflects the roughness of Wuthering Heights and its surroundings. The old man speaks an old dialect and lives in the old farmhouse. The house is habitable but not comfortable and it is always exposed to stormy weather. The same holds true for Joseph’s dialect: it is intelligible but not easy to understand and it is constantly looked down upon by the higher classes. Joseph’s dialect sounds quite rough although there is a certain beauty in it, just like the Yorkshire moors are said to be rough but beautiful. Finally, it suggests a lack of education if a speaker uses dialect solely, as Joseph does. Nonetheless, Joseph and his dialect resist all the storms which approach throughout the novel.

Born into a poor family and raised by an oppressive aunt, young Jane Eyre becomes the governess at Thornfield Manor to escape the confines of her life. There her fiery independence clashes with the brooding and mysterious nature of her employer, Mr. Rochester. But what begins as outright loathing slowly evolves into a passionate romance. When a terrible secret from Rochester's past threatens to tear the two apart, Jane must make an impossible choice: Should she follow her heart or walk away and lose her love forever? Wuthering Heights is a gothic romance classic by Emily Brontë which revolves around the doomed romance of Catherine and Heathcliff. Charlotte Brontë (1816 – 1855) was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels have become classics of English literature. Emily Jane Brontë (1818 – 1848) was an English novelist and poet who is best known for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature.

Crammed with information, The Brontës in Context shows how the Brontës' fiction interacts with the spirit of the time.

Called "a feminist classic" by Judith Shulevitz in the New York Times Book Review, this pathbreaking book of literary criticism is now reissued with a new introduction by Lisa Appignanesi that speaks to how The Madwoman in the Attic set the groundwork for subsequent generations of scholars writing about women writers, and why the book still feels fresh some four decades later. "Gilbert and Gubar have written a pivotal book, one of those after which we will never think the same again."--Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Washington Post Book World

This volume is concerned with one of the few thorough-going Labovian studies carried out in Britain. Based on a survey of over hundred randomly selected informants from the towns of Bradford, Halifax and Huddersfield, it deals first with the methodology employed, and then sketches some aspects of the ‘traditional’ dialects of the area before describing a large number of variables. Other non-standard features encountered during the survey are described, since these too are part of the changing patterns of speech in West Yorkshire. The final chapter draws a distinction between ‘dialect’ and ‘accent’ which is slightly different from that generally employed, and suggests that while ‘dialect’ features seem to have declined under the pressure of the standard language, ‘accent’ still persists as a social differentiator.

This book surveys the features of nineteenth-century English and provides over 100 sample texts and numerous exercises.

Myths of Power - Anniversary Edition sets out to interpret the fiction of the Brontë sisters in light of a Marxist analysis of the historical conditions in which it was produced. Its aim is not merely to relate literary facts, but by a close critical examination of the novels, to find in them a significant structure of ideas and values which related to the Brontës' ambiguous situation within the class-system of their society. Its intention is to forge close relations between the novels, nineteenth-century ideology, and historical forces, in order to illuminate the novels themselves in a radically new perspective. When originally published in 1975 (second edition in 1988), it was the first full-length Marxist study of the Brontës and is now reissued to celebrate 30 years since its first publication. It includes a new Introduction by Terry Eagleton which reflects on the changes which have happened in Marxist literary criticism since 1988, and situates this reissue of the second edition in current debates.

This book argues that masculine identity is in deep crisis in Western culture - the old forms are disintegrating, while men struggle to establish new relations with women and with each other. This book offers a fresh look at gender, particularly masculinity, by using material from the author's work as a psychotherapist. The book also considers the contrubtions made by feminism, sociology and anthropology to the study of gender, and suggests that it must be studied from an interdisciplinary standpoint. Masculity is seen to have economic, political and psychological roots, but the concrete development of gender must be traced in the relations of the male infant with his parents. Here the young boy has to separate from his mother, and his own proto-feminine identity, and identify with his father - but in Western culture fathering is often deficient. Male identity is shown to be fractured, fragile and truncated. Men are trained to be rational and violent, and to shut out whole areas of existence and feeling. Many stereotypes imprison men - particularly machismo, which is shown to be deeply masochistic and self-destructive.

In this entertaining and enlightening collection David Lodge considers the art of fiction under a wide range of headings, drawing on writers as diverse as Henry James, Martin Amis, Jane Austen and James Joyce. Looking at ideas such as the Intrusive Author, Suspense, the Epistolary Novel, Magic Realism and Symbolism, and illustrating each topic with a passage taken from a classic or modern novel, David Lodge makes the richness and variety of British and American fiction accessible to the general reader. He provides essential reading for students, aspiring writers and anyone who wants to understand how fiction works.

We are living in a time of rapid radical social change. In New Accents each volume in the series will seek to encourage rather than resist the process of change, to stretch rather than reinforce the boundaries that currently define literature and its academic study. This book offers a new focus on various connected topics in the treatment of style as a human phenomenon, and especially the style of literary artefacts. The subject of style is of intense and continuing interest, and the bibliography in the field of literary style alone is enormous. The essays that follow are therefore an attempt to contribute to the literature of a continuing study.