This article studies the popular children’s book The Gruffalo (1999) written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler. Its popularity is attested to by the fact that the book has sold over 13.5 million copies and has been translated into more than 80 different languages. The question that this article seeks to address is, to what extent has the language and style of The Gruffalo played a part in these commercial and cultural achievements. The article primarily explores the phenomena of meter, rhyme, rhythm and lexical repetition from interrelated linguistic and stylistic perspectives. It also brings these findings into a dialogue with some of the precepts and principles from both classical rhetoric and modern orality theory, especially pertaining to memory and delivery. Having weighed the linguistic evidence, the supposition is put forward that it is highly probable that the motivated language choices that have been made by the author, and the way those choices have been arranged and deployed in the story, have played a substantial role in the book’s success.

本文研究由 Julia Donaldson 撰写并由 Axel Scheffler 绘制的广受欢迎的儿童读物The Gruffalo (1999)。这本书的销量已超过 1350 万册，并被翻译成 80 多种不同的语言，这证明了它的受欢迎程度。本文试图解决的问题是， Gruffalo的语言和风格在多大程度上具有在这些商业和文化成就中发挥了作用。本文主要从相互关联的语言和文体角度探讨韵律、韵律、韵律和词汇重复现象。它还将这些发现与古典修辞和现代口语理论中的一些戒律和原则进行对话，特别是与记忆和传递有关的内容。在权衡了语言证据后，作者提出了一个假设，即作者所做出的动机性语言选择，以及这些选择在故事中的安排和部署方式，很可能在故事中发挥了重要作用。书的成功。