Stylistic Analysis of Mary Shelley’s “The Mortal Immortal”

Abstract

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley made a huge contribution to Gothic literature with her short stories alongside her undoubtedly most famous work “Frankenstein; or, "The Modern Prometheus”, which became the inspiration to generations of writers. Shelley’s work is also interesting because of the fact, that following the publication of “Frankenstein”, science fiction, a genre which was almost entirely unknown to the 19^th century society, experienced a revival. Since one of the primary missions of Gothic works is to evoke intense emotions in the reader, Gothic literature is rich in stylistic devices. Shelley’s texts represent classical examples of Gothic fiction, therefore, their linguistic analysis is particularly interesting.

This article serves the purpose of providing stylistic analysis of Mary Shelley’s short story “The Immortal Mortal” on lexical and syntactical levels, to examine its linguistic features within the framework of Gothic literature and to describe how various stylistic devices are realized in the story. The present article constitutes the first stylistic analysis of “The Mortal Immortal”, which is the novelty of the research.