Abstract

Literary authors, poets, dramatists and novelists often use all structural means in order to meet their needs in their works. One best example is Edgar Allan Poe, a famous American novelist, who often resorts to certain structural forms in order to attain his messages through his writings. On a sentence level, he employs all parts of speech which serve his purpose, express his ideas and show the aesthetic values of his work. Among these parts of speeches, stance manner adverbials are often noticeable in his “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Based on Quirk et al. (1985) and Biber’s et al. (1999) treatments of stance manner adverbials, a survey of the use of these adverbials in Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” focusing on the functions that these constructions exhibit is made. The study concludes that Poe affectedly manipulates these adverbials to contribute in developing the events in the story and making the readers more easily conceive what is going on in the story. They exhibit evaluative comments on clauses they are inserted into, whether employed as adjuncts or disjuncts and thus have touching effects on the readers to sense the ongoing events in the story. For Poe, they play an important role in conveying the narrator’s attitudes and purposes.

Key words: Stance adverbials, Manner adverbials, Edgar Allan Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, story