近两百年来，简•奥斯丁已经被读者和批评家公认为经典作家了。她小说中的戏剧性成分得到了广泛的关注。一些批评家甚至将奥斯丁与莎士比亚相提并论，认为她艺术的伟大之处在于她运用于作品中的戏剧性表现手法。生长在英国伟大的喜剧时代，奥斯丁的确从戏剧中获得了小说创作灵感。从童年时期，她就对舞台艺术表现出浓厚的兴趣。她经常去看戏，还曾在私人戏剧演出中扮演过角色，并在早期创作中尝试过戏剧形式。戏剧对她的小说产生了一定的影响。在她创作的六部小说中，《爱玛》被认为是最出色、最具代表性的一部小说。它有着突出的戏剧性特点。本论文将《爱玛》作为研究的对象，试图证明戏剧性成分是奥斯丁小说取得成功的重要原因之一。本文从三个方面分析了小说《爱玛》中的戏剧性成分：从戏剧性语言方面说，奥斯丁主要运用人物的对话推进故事情节和塑造人物性格；从戏剧性反讽方面说，奥斯丁巧妙地运用一些叙述技巧，如叙述视角的转换，人物的内心活动等，使读者了解的内容比人物多，从而产生戏剧性反讽；从戏剧性场景方面说，为凸现戏剧性冲突，奥斯丁简化了故事发生的场景，同时使用了像喜剧一样严密的结构布局。本文通过对《爱玛》的戏剧性成分分析得出的结论是，奥斯丁的伟大之处在于她小说中表现出的戏剧性特征。奥斯丁成功地将戏剧技巧与她的道德观、思想观相结合，从而对读者产生持久的吸引力。

Jane Austen has been universally regarded as one of the classic writers by the readers and critics for over two hundred years. The dramatic elements in her novels are paid much attention to. Some critics even put Austen on an equal position to Shakespeare, thinking the greatness of the novelist lies in her marvelous dramatic power. Living in a great age of English stage comedy, Austen did draw inspiration from dramas. Since her childhood Austen showed great passion for the stage. She went to the theaters whenever she could, acted in private theatricals, and wrote a number of her early works in play form. Her interest in dramatic literature has left its mark on her novels. Emma, of all her six novels, is considered as Austen’s most perfect and fully representative work. The dramatic effect in this novel is strong, and this thesis takes it as the research target to prove that the dramatic elements are one of the most important reasons for the success of Austen’s art. The thesis tries to demonstrate that Emma is dramatically powerful in three aspects: dramatic language, which depends largely on dialogues to develop the plot and portray the characters; dramatic irony, which is achieved when the readers’ knowledge is superior to the characters by several narrative skills, for example, the shifts of point of view, the inside views of characters, etc; and dramatic settings. To make the conflicts in her novel prominent, Austen adopts the dramatic settings that as simple as stage one and a structural layout that is as neat as that of a comedic drama.Through the analysis of the three aspects of dramatic elements in Emma, the thesis reaches a conclusion that the “greatness” of Jane Austen lies in the dramatic features in her novels. By harmonizing the dramatic skills with her ideas about the society and moral value, Jane Austen succeeds in creating a novel with lasting aesthetic appeal to the readers.