III. Standards for evaluation

An effective literary analysis…

· is written in the present tense;

· has a well-defined purpose;

· provides precise definitions of the terms used;

· identifies clearly the title and author of the literary text;

· uses author’s background to substantiate interpretation;

· provides a short summary of the important plot events (the whole story should not be told or irrelevant details repeated);

· gives a clear presentation of the theses (states the central problem of the text and establishes the author’s approach), consisted and coherent argumentation;

· ties the background information to the problem;

· clarifies the meaning of the text and reveals how the text operates;

· provides textual evidence for interpretation in advances and shows how the evidence supports the interpretation;

· cites supporting quotations;

· provides symbolic interpretation;

· concludes by tying the ideas in the essay together;

· takes into account any plausible alternative interpretations and any contradictory evidence;

· gives the precise bibliography.

 

 

IV. THEORETICAL APPROACHES

Modern literary theory has taken up many ideas from philosophy, psychology, sociology, linguistics, and cultural theory. It uses a number of general methods as well as special ones characteristic of a particular school / trend (neocritical method of close reading) or suggested by one school and then incorporated by the others (method of intertextual analysis).

The approaches to studying literature can be grouped in the following way:

· author-oriented (biographical, psychoanalytic, hermeneutic, cognitive) that consider the history of the literary work creation, the author’s biography, his/her conscious intention, and the unconscious;

· context-oriented (typological, cultural and historical approach, sociological approach, mythological criticism, Marxism, cultural materialism, New Historicism, Reconstructing Historicism, feminism, post-colonial studies, ecocriticism) that consider the interrelation of the text and the context(the system of cultural practices);

· text-oriented (New Criticism, formalism, structuralism, semiotics) that ignore extra-textual influences and focus on inter-textual processes;

· reader-oriented (reader response theory) that consider a work of literature as the result of the text-reader contact.

Author-oriented approaches

Psychological and psychoanalytic approaches ( V. Woolf, H. Read, F. Lucas, D.H. Lawrence, I. Richards, J. Krutch, M. Bowie, B. Simon, Theodor Reik, Wilhelm Stekel, Ernest Jones, Marie Bonaparte) are based on the assumption that fiction shows human emotions and it is preconditioned by the psyche of its creator. The critics use Karl Jung’s, Jacques Lacan’s and Otto Rank’s ideas as well as I. Richards’s theory of emotive creation. Psychological criticism makes use of the achievements in experimental psychology (behaviorism, the theory of instincts, etc.).

Psychoanalysis emerges specifically from a therapeutic technique which the Viennese neurologist Sigmund Freud developed for the treatment of hysteria and neurosis at the end of the XIX century. It ventured into the study of literary works insisting that creative writings are the product of unconscious processes. Psychoanalytical method considers the work of literature to be derived from the author’s complexes and anxieties, sexual frustrations and repressions (attachment to the mother, penis envy, ambivalence towards the father, narcissism, anxiety of castration, Oedipus complex, Electra complex, etc.), it traces the erotic motif, relates the symbols and themes to the creator’s life. Freud’s model of the human psyche consists of three areas, the superego (consciousness ), which contains the social and cultural norms, the id (unconscious), which harbours the drives, and the rational ego (conscious), which tries to mediate between social norms and individual drives. While Freud did not ignore the conscious creation of art, he was more interested in the way unconscious reveals itself in complex images. The transposition of Freudian ideas into concepts in linguistics and philosophy underlies all of Lacan’s work exploring the link between unconscious mechanisms, language, and rhetoric. Post-structuralist Lacan described the processes of condensation and replacement as following the patterns of metaphor and metonymy. According to Lacan, the child’s development has two stages: a mirror one (identification with the mother’s image) and the one that gives the notion of the symbolic order and is associated with the father. Feminists reproach psychoanalysis of phallocentrism.

Psychological approach adopts primarily biographical method (Saint-Boeve) tracing the relation of the work with the wide spectrum of the writer’s personality. The method is based on recording facts about the author’s life and times, identifying the parallels between the author’s life and work, describing the ways imagination transforms experience.

Hermeneutic approach (Friedrich Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Dilthey, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, F. Cermode, E.D. Hirsh, Andrés Ortíz-Osés, Bernard Lonegran, Karl-Otto Apel) is aimed at working out the hidden meaning of the text. Hermeneutics is the theory of interpretation. In XVIII-XIX centuries the context for such issues was predominantly religious (correct interpretation of the Bible). Hermeneutics deals with the influence of the new historical and social environment on the text reception, with the conventions of the time and the author’s free will. The text is considered the bearer of the meaning that can be traced by studying the author’s life and language. This approach is also context-oriented.

Cognitive literary criticism (Mark Turner, Roger Schank, Robert Abelson) represents a recent attempt on the part of scholars to bring literary studies into dialogue with the new sciences of mind and brain in order to understand subjectivity, agency, consciousness, language, and psychological development behind the work of literature.

Context-oriented approaches

Typological approach identifies the inner links between the works of one author or different authors; describes common trends of the literary works (typology of literary trends, typology of genres, typology of styles, etc.). The approach allows to identify some general principles forming a literary and aesthetic unity, to define to which type or genre the literary work belongs.

Cultural and historical as well as comparative approaches provide the tools for exploring the influences and interrelations among the literatures.

Humanistic, or ethical, approach (Matthew Arnold) claims human values to be important in the work of literature. Ethical criticism roots back to the ancient philosophers. American Neohumanists (Irving Babbitt, Paul Elmer More) develop the methodology based on the new conception of humanism and egalitarianism (literature should follow the moral standards synthesized from the world philosophic and literary tradition). Modern scholars (Eugene Goodheart) combine historic and ethical approaches.

Social and cultural approach (Frank Raymond Leavis, Herbert Richard Hoggart) claim that peculiarities of the certain literary epoch are shaped by social and cultural environment.

Sociological approach (Randolph Born, Van Wyck Brooks, F. Dell, S. Finkelstein, John Govard Lawson, Philip Bonosky) provides critical interpretation from some political point of view.

Mythological approach (archetypal literary criticism, comparative mythology) (J. Grimm, James George Frazer, Archer Taylor, E. Chambers, Friederich Max Müller, Joseph Campbell) is based on the theory that the myth originated from ritual and is the source of spiritual life. Myth generates literature. A number of books can be deciphered using mythological codes (mythological themes and motives), the transhistorical archetypes can be identified (K. Jung).

According to Marxism the material reality of economic circumstances forms the base that conditions the social, political, and cultural life of the superstructure. Marxism is a theory of determinancy and historical materiality. Literature is seen as a by-product of its historical and cultural milieu. It can be identified as a mere vehicle of ideology predetermined by the base or as a reflection of ideology.

Cultural materialism locates a text in its material contexts but greatly enhances the relevance of language, communication, and culture. So the critics try to find the cultural forces of the period and the author’s position to them, social and economic conflicts represented, implicit ideology.

New Historicism (Michel Foucault, Stephen Greenblatt) maintains that the problem of historiography lies in the contradiction between past events and their retrospective subjective representation. The past is not a stable, coherent entity, and therefore cannot serve as a firm background and reference point of literature. History exists in multiple texts, which do not add up to one version. Michel Foucault analyses the historical formation of thinking and knowledge in discourses. The literary text is embedded in a dynamic network of interdependent cultural discourses and social practices. The term discourse draws attention to the role of language as the vehicle of ideology. The New Historicists try to find out how the literary text describes, exposes, or takes part in negotiations of power, truth, and values. Reconstructing Historicism (Leo Strauss, Wolfgang Iser, Hans-Robert Jauss) claims that the pastness of the texts under interpretation demands accommodation of critical approach to negotiate historical differences; it studies relations between fact and fiction, history and aesthetics.

Feminism and gender theory (Simone de Beauvoir, Elaine Showalter, Erica Jong, Marge Piercy, Julia Kristeva, Irigaray) address literary texts raising questions about the women’s writing, concepts of femininity and gender, absence of women from literature, sexual identity. Feminists brought to literature a suspicion of established ideas. They were interested in literature as a powerful means of creating and perpetuating belief system. Feminism takes issue with real forms of discrimination and discriminating cultural gender constructions. There is a difference between the biological sex (biological constitution as female or male) and the cultural construction of gender roles (cultural programming as feminine or masculine, which are categories created by society rather than by nature). Gender studies tend to analyse cultural constructs, whereas lesbian and gay theorists shift the balance towards the body and sexuality. Feminist readings of literature have exposed masculine representations of women and retrieved neglected literature by women. Feminist theory constantly incorporates new ideas from other fields and can be seen as interdisciplinary.

Postcolonialism and multiculturalism in criticism (Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Franz Fanon, Neil Lazarus, Homi Bhabha, Henry Louis Gates) are concerned with the impact of colonialism and postcolonialism on both British cultures and identities and those of the peoples under the British Empire. They address themselves to the historical, political, cultural, and textual ramifications of the colonial encounter between the West and the non-West, dating from the XVI century to the present day. There are two traditions of postcolonial thinking – the theoretical post-structuralist and the practical political. Postcolonial and multicultural theories are concerned with the multiple relationships between dominant and subordinate cultures. Both postcolonial and multicultural critics research the ethnic re-reading and rewriting of canonised literary and historical texts, the recuperation of indigenous cultures, and the construction of multicultural identities and literatures. They introduced the concepts of orientalism, subalternity, hybridity.

Ecocriticism (William Rueckert, Raymond Williams, Annette Kolodny) is a literary and cultural criticism from an environmentalist viewpoint. Texts are evaluated in terms of their environmental harmful or helpful effects. Ecocriticism analyses the history of concepts such as “nature”, in an attempt to understand the cultural developments that have led to the present global ecological crises.

Text-oriented approaches

The formal method (V. Shklovsky, R. Jakobson, V. Zhirmunsky, V. Vinogradov, B.Tomashevsky) is based on the assumption that literature is a set of devices, its development lies in their renewing regardless to the personality and biography of its creator. Formalists consider literature as a deviation from the conventional language rules: stylistic devices help defamiliarise our perception of common things. Y. Tynyanov and J. Propp contributed to the method development by introducing the notion of literary function; they proved that elements of a literary work should not be summed up, but relate. Formalists comment on the functional roles of agents in stories and the function of the plot, which rearranges the temporal sequence of a story. R. Jakobson developed an influential model of communication, according to which language has six functions which are of various importance in different utterances and texts: the emotive (expressive), referential (conveying information), conative (convincing the addressee), phatic (maintaining the contact with the adressee), aesthetic (reflecting on the structure and diction), and metalingual function (referring to the codes). Yury Lotman defined literature as a secondary modelling system, which uses elements from the primary modelling system, that is the way ordinary language and culture construct reality.

Among the weaknesses of such approach is its descriptive statistical method that neglects broad contexts. Russian formalism and structuralist linguistics caused a shift from content to form, from meaning to text arrangement.

The aesthetic approach (T.S. Eliot, Alfred Alvarez, Northrop Frye) is based on the conception of “the meaningful form”. A work of literature is considered as an autonomous aesthetic object.

Neocriticism is based on a wide range of literary analysis methods. Being influential from the end of the 1930s on into the 1950s it revolutionized the teaching of literature. The New Critics (J.C. Ransom, I. Richards, R. Brooks, A. Tate, Kenneth Burke, R.P. Blackmoore, Y. Winters, W.K. Wimsatt) focus on the inner structures of the text, special features of literary language. Each literary text is considered as a timeless, unique and autonomous artifact, self-sufficient verbal object. Literature was regarded as an autonomous aesthetic object independent of authorial intention, historical circumstances, and its emotional effect upon the reader. Rhetoric, poetics, and metrics serve the close reading of a text (the term is introduced by I. Richards), which is scrutinised for the aesthetic arrangement of its elements into an organic whole. While the text is closely read, all the formal evidence provided by the language is taken into account – the images, symbols, metaphors, rhyme, meter, point of view, setting, characterization, plot, etc. For Neocriticism, the complexity of a text is created by the multiple and often conflicting meanings woven through it. And these meanings are a product primarily of four kinds of linguistic devices: paradox, irony, ambiguity, and tension. The limitations of neocritical approach are its formalism and dehistorisation of the text.

The method of semantic analysis (A. Richardson, W. Empson, J.C. Ransom) puts perception of a literary work in connection with analytical brain work, taking into account polysemy and semantic associations, tension between the semantic elements of the text (A. Tate), “poetic paradox” (C. Brooks), “texture” (J. Ransom), etc.

Susanne Katherine Langer, K. Burke use the ideas of psychoanalysis and Neocriticism and the method of symbolic interpretation. The method involves consideration of the key words, metaphors, symbols, images. Literary symbol is considered not only as verbal but as constructed by the rhythm and structure of the text.

The existential and phenomenological approaches (E. Husserl, M. Heidegger, K. Jaspers, J. Poule, J.-P. Richar) deny the necessity of typological generalisations, emphasise transcendental and human character of literature. A work of literature is regarded as closed in itself, outside its context.

Structuralism and narrative poetics (Roman Jacobson,Claude Levi-Strauss, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Algirdas J. Greimas, Tzvetan Todorov, Gerard Genette) draw an analogy between language systems and social systems, focus on the abstract system of signs and the status of words in society. Structuralist approaches to literature have tended to focus on three specific areas of literary studies: the classification of literary genres, the description of narrative operations, and the analysis of literary interpretation. Structuralists identify the fundamental semantic, syntactic, rhetorical, and poetic binary oppositions and the way they are interrelated; how these elements and their functions relate to the conventions of the genre. Structures are not physical entities; they are conceptual frameworks that we use to organize and understand physical entities. Structuralism shows that a work of literature possesses wholeness (the system functions as a unit), transformation (the system is not static), and self-regulation (the elements belong to the system and obey its laws). Structuralists devised all-encompassing theory of narrative discourse.

Post-structuralists and deconstructivists (Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Julia Kristeva) question all philosophical assumptions, consider life phenomena through the prism of the text. Jacques Derrida claims that there is nothing outside the text. Roland Barthes claimed that texts can hardly be reduced to binary oppositions but reveal multiple and indeterminate meanings. The reader employs codes to unfold the meaning of the text, which are potentially endless because each text is intertextual in a wide sense. Deconstructivistslook for ambiguities and contradictions, shifts in perspective and judgement, subversive information in the text, self-referential statements and intertextual links that undermine the basic assumptions. The main purpose in deconstructing a literary text is to reveal the complex operations of the ideologies of which the text is constructed.

Intertextual approach originated from understanding literary development as constant interaction of the texts and outlooks – as the result each new text incorporates and processes the previous literary and cultural material. The approach is based on M.M. Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism and was further developed by J. Kristeva, R. Barthes, C. Levi-Strauss, M. Foucault, U. Eko, A. Zholkovsky, I. Arnold, B.M. Kasparova, Z. Turaeva. The intertextual method presupposes scrutinising the text for borrowings, quotations, reminiscences, allusions, parallel structures and images, comparing and contrasting typologically similar phenomena.

Reader-oriented approaches

Impressionistic approach (H. Menken) emphasises immediate emotional perception of literary works.

Modern reader-oriented approaches hold on to consciousness as the central instance of reading, they are influenced by phenomenology, which maintains that the self and the world are only given in consciousness, and Gadamer’s hermeneutics, which argues that meaning is generated in a dialogue between the reader and the text, which is always a process situated in historical circumstances.

The reader-response theory (Wolfgang Iser, Norman Holland, Hans Robert Jauss) aims at studying the reader’s psychological and intellectual response; it questions the stability of the textual meaning. The representative of the reader-response theory W. Iser states that a literary work is the combination of the actual text and the response of the reader to it. The unsaid, specific information and gaps of indeterminacy are filled by each reader differently. Norman Holland realised that a reader’s personal identity theme conditions their typical reaction to the text. H.R. Jauss included historical circumstances (horizon of expectations, values, models of reality and of art) in his version of reception theory. R. Ingarden introduced the notion of actualization mechanism, meaning the way a small detail turns into a long chain of associations.

Narratology (M. Riffater, G. Gennett, Wolf Schmid) combines studying the text as well as the reader’s response. A literary work is treated as aesthetic communication between the narrator and the recipient.

At present we can observe the process of integration of different critical methodologies.

REFERENCES

1. Abrams, H.M. A Glossary of Literary Terms /H.M. Abrams.- 7^th ed. - Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1999.

2. Contemporary Literary Criticism: Literary and Cultural Studies / Ed. by Davis, Robert Con, and Ronald Schleifer. – N.Y.; L.: Longman, 1988.

3. Dijk, Teun A. van. Discourse Semantics and Ideology / Teun A. van Dijk // Discourse as Structure and Process. – L., 1997.

4. Eddy, Steve; Hartley, Mary. Study and Revise. AS and A2 Level English / Steve Eddy, Mary Hartley. – Bath: The Bath Press, 2000.

5. Gould, Eric; DiYanni, Robert; Smith, William; Stanford, Judith. The Art of Reading: Contexts for Writing / Eric Gould; Robert DiYanni; William Smith; Judith Stanford. – N.Y.: McGraw-Hill, Inc, 1990. – 695 p.

6. Halliday, M.A.K. Comparison and Translation / M.A.K. Halliday. – L.: Longman, 1994.

7. Literary Theory and Criticism. An Oxford Guide / Ed. by Patricia Waugh. – Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2006.

8. Lototska, Karolina. English Stylistics / Karolina Lototska. – Lviv: Ivan Franko National Univ. of Lviv Publishing Centre, 2008.

9. Maclin, Alice. Reference Guide to English: A Handbook of English as a Second Language / Alice Maclin. – Washington, D.C.: USIA, 1994.

10. Multiculturalism. A Critical Reader / Ed. by Golberg, David Theo. – Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.

11. The Writer’s Craft. Idea to Expression / Ed. by Sheridan Blau and others. –McDougal, Littell and Company Evaston, Illinois, 1992.

12. Гальперин И.Р. Стилистика английского языка / И.Р. Гальперин. – М.: Высш.шк., 1981. – 335c.

13. Гальперин И.Р. Текст как объект лингвистического исследования / И.Р. Гальперин. – М.: Наука, 1981. – 139 c.

14. Галеева Н.Л. Параметры художественного текста и перевод / Н.Л. Галеева. – Тверь: Изд-во ТГУ, 2000.

15. Ивашкин М.П. Практикум по стилистике английского языка / М.П. Ивашкин, В.В. Сдобников, А.В. Селяев. – М.: АСТ: Восток-Запад, 2005. – 101с.

16. Кухаренко В.А. Практикум по стилистике английского языка / В.А. Кухаренко. – М.: Высш. шк., 1986. - 144 с.

17. Лукин В.А. Художественный текст. Основы лингвистической теории и элементы анализа / В.А. Лукин. – М.: Изд-во «Ось-89», 1999. – 192 с.

18. Шмид Вольф Нарратология / Вольф Шмид. – М.: Языки славянской культуры, 2008.

Appendix 1.

GLOSSARY OF STYLISTIC TERMS

 

Allegory is anextended metaphor through an entire speech or passage so that objects, persons, and actions in the text are equated with meanings that lie outside the text.In Aesop’s fables and in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, for example, the animal characters represent people.

e.g. The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches there of (Mattew; 13:31-32).

It is used:

- to enlighten the hearer by answering questions and suggesting some principles;

- for the purpose of moral instruction.

Alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sound in two or more words following each other immediately or at short intervals.

e.g. For my part, I abominate all honorable respectable t oils, t rials and t ribulations of every kind whatsoever. (H. Melville)

It is used:

- to emphasise certain words or a line;

- to unite words through a kind of repetition;

- to make phrases catchy;

- to achieve a melodic or emotional effect;

- to enhance the rhythm of the sentence;

- as a substitute for rhymes.

 

Allusion is a reference to a fact that the writer thinks the reader already knows. Allusions can be made to matters of general knowledge such as sports, to characters and incidents connected with well-known works of literature, Bible, to historical events and characters.

e.g. Out she swept like the bad fairy at the christening. (Driddle)

It is used:

- to characterise through analogy;

- to broaden the nominal meaning of a word or a phrase into a generalised

concept.

Anadiplosis is the repetition of the final unit of one utterance at the beginning of the next utterance.

e.g. I was home in a sleeping world, a world as harmless as a sleeping cat. (R. Chandler)

It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window. (R. Chandler)

It is used:

- to attract the reader’s attention to the key-word of the utterance;

- to give rhythm to the utterance.

Anaphora implies identity of one or several initial elements in some successive sentences.

e.g. Hunger stole upon me so slowly that at first I was not aware of what hunger really meant. Hunger had always been more or less at my elbow when I played, but now I began to wake up at night to find hunger standing at my bedside, staring at me gaunly. (R. Wright)

It is used:

- to attract the reader’s attention to the key-word of the utterance;

- to give rhythm to the utterance.

Anticlimax consists in adding one weaker element to one or several strong ones, mentioned before.

e.g. Not all men are annoying. Some are dead. (anonymous)

In twenty minutes you can sink a battleship, down three or four planes, hold a double execution. You can die, get married, get fired and find a new job, have a tooth pulled, have your tonsils out. In twenty minutes you can even get up in the morning. (R. Chandler)

It is used:

- to produce “defeated expectancy” effect;

- to attract the reader’s attention;

- to produce humorous or satirical effect;

- to decline from a noble (pompous), impressive tone to a less exalted one.

Antithesis consists in putting together two ideas that are quite opposite.

e.g. Imagination was given to man to compensate for what he is not, and a sense of humour to console him for what he is. (anonymous)

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect. (R.W. Emerson)

It may be used:

- to create certain rhythmic effect;

- to compare two objects or to set a contrast between them;

- to connect words, clauses or sentences and to unite their senses;

- to disconnect words and disunite their senses.

Antonomasia is the use of a common name as a proper name and vice versa.

e.g. He is still Mr. New Broom, slightly feared. (D. Lodge)

Mr. Altruism. Mr Al Truism. (P. Auster)

It may serve:

- to characterise the bearer of the name;

- to create some humorous effect.

Aposiopesis denotes intentional break in the narrative.

e.g. He had a gopher-wood stave with which… well, some of the animals carry stripes to this day. (J. Barnes)

He almost smiled. And I was grateful. He is a source of guilt and annoyance to me now, but he was my friend, and – … (J. Banville)

It is used to convey:

- the emotional state of the speaker depriving him of the ability to express himself in terms of language;

- unwillingness to proceed;

- the speaker’s uncertainty as to what should be said;

- hint, warning, promise.

Assonance is the repetitionof the same stressed vowelsfollowed by different consonants in two or more neighbouring words.

e.g. Str i ps of t i nfoil w i nking like people.

It is used:

- to enrich ornament within the line;

- as a substitute for end-rhyme;

- to give the poet more flexibility as it doesn’t so much determine the

structure or form of a poem.

Asyndeton is deliberate omission of conjunctions.

e.g. The day, water, sun, moon, night – I do not have to purchase these things with money (T.M. Plautus)

It is used:

- to impart dynamic force to the text;

- to produce strong rhythmic impact.

Chiasmus is a kind of parallelism (reverse parallelism) in which the word order followed in the first phrase or clause is inverted in the second.

e.g. Few rich men own their own property. The property owns them. (R.G. Ingersoll)

It is used:

- to bring in some additional meaning;

- to emphasise certain parts of the utterance;

- to break the monotony of parallel constructions;

- to contribute to the rhythmical quality of the utterance.

Climax (Gradation) denotes such an arrangement of notions, expressed by words, word-combinations or sentences in which what precedes is less significant than what follows.

e.g. I am not in recession. I’m doing fine. I’m well-off. I’m almost rich. (D. Lodge)

It is used:

- to intensify the logical importance or emotional (nervous) strain;

- to show the increase in the volume, quantity, size, etc.

Detachment is tearing a secondary part of the sentence away from the word it refers to, and gaining some independence and greater degree of significance. Detached parts are separated by means of commas and dashes.

e.g. She set her face and gazed under half-dropped lids at the funeral, stoic, fate-like. (D.H. Lawrence)

It is used:

- to emphasise a word or a phrase;

- to impart some additional syntactical meanings to the word or a phrase.

Ellipsis means the omission of one or both principle parts of a sentence.

e.g. If word got out, just think what would happen. Dogs as smart as men? A blasphemous assertion. (P. Auster)

It is used:

- to reproduce the direct speech of characters;

- to impart brevity, a quick tempo and emotional tension to the

narrative;

- as a means of dynamic description.

Emphatic construction “It is he...who” is turning the simple sentence into a complex one.

e.g. It was only then that I realized it was she I had seen on the lawn that day at Professor Something’s party. (J. Banville)

Emphatic construction with “do” reveals a certain degree of logical and emotional emphasis.

e.g. Nature never did betray

The heart that loved her. (W. Wordsworth)

Enumeration is built up by means of the repetition of homogeneous syntactical units.

e.g. She had lived through and noticed a certain amount of history. A war, a welfare state, the rise of meritocracy, European unity, little England, equality of opportunity, women liberation, the death of the individual. (A.S. Byatt)

Heterogeneous enumeration is used:

- to give the insight into the mind of the observer who pays attention to the variety of miscellaneous objects;

- for the purpose disorderly and therefore striking description;

- to arrest the reader’s attention, making him decipher the message.

Epiphora is the repetition of the same unit at the end of two or more successive clauses or sentences.

e.g. World is evil

Life is evil

All is evil

if i ride the horse of hate

with its evil hooded eye

turning world to evil. (L. Ferlinghetti)

It is used:

- to attract the reader’s attention to the key-word of the utterance;

- to give rhythm to the utterance.

Epithet is a word or a group of words giving an expressive characterization of the object described.

e.g. Trite epithets: blood-thirsty thoughts, dead silence, etc.

Genuine epithets: knifing hangover, elephantine body, industrial-looking food, much-to-long-and-tight-under-the arms dress, she said it in an I-don't-think-you're-being-very-sensitive sort of voice, the tiny box of a kitchen.

It is used to show individual attitude of the speaker towards the person or thing described.

Euphemism is a word that replaces another word of similar but stronger meaning.

e.g. I was thinking an unmentionable thing about your mother. (I. Shaw)

It is used:

- to soften an otherwise coarse or unpleasant idea, to produce mild effect;

- to avoid any kind of discrimination (agism, sexism, etc).

Graphon is intentional violation of the spelling of a word/word combination used to reflect its authentic pronunciation.

e.g. “Thith thtuff thtics in my mouth’, complained the rat. ‘It’th worth than caramel candy’. (E.B. White)

It is used:

- to characterise the speaker as a person of a certain locality, breeding,

education and even social standing;

- to show the speaker’s inability to pronounce words according to the

standard (intoxication, lisp, stammer, etc);

- to reproduce the emphatic pronunciation of words.

Hypallage – metonymical/transferred epithet.

e.g. He took his sad chair and lit a cigarette.

Hyperbole is an exaggerated statement.

e.g. She wore a hat with a crown the size of a whisky glass and a brim you could have wrapped the week’s laundry in. (R. Chandler)

The coffee shop smell was strong enough to build a garage on. (R. Chandler)

It is used:

- to exaggerate quantity or quality;

- to serve expressive and emotive purposes;

- to produce some humorous effect.

Inversion consists in unusual arrangement of words for the purpose of making one of them more emphatic.

e.g. Of my country and of my family I have little to say. (E.A. Poe)

Irony is the use of a word in a sense that is opposite of its usual meaning. There is always a contrast between the notion named and the notion meant.

e.g. A nice sense of humour – like a morgue attendant. (R. Chandler)

Irony is used:

- to intensify the evaluative meaning of the utterance;

- to produce humorous effect;

- to express very subtle, almost imperceptible nuances of meaning;

- to show irritation, displeasure, pity, regret, etc.

Litotes is expressing an idea by means of negating the opposite idea.

e.g. Mary was in a state of mind to rejoice in a connection with the Bertram family, and to be not displeased with her brother’s marrying a little beneath him. (J. Austen)

Metaphor is transference of names based on similarity between two objects.

e.g. Original metaphor: A man who cannot wonder is but a pair of spectacles behind which there are no eyes.

Trite metaphor: seeds of evil, roots of evil, to burn with desire.

If we do not make common cause to save the good old ship of the Union on this voyage, nobody will have a chance to pilot her on another voyage. (Abraham Lincoln)

It may serve:

- as an image-creative device;

- to characterise or describe objects or people;

- to impart some expressive or emotive force to utterance.

Meiosis is the opposite of Hyperbole. It is weakening, reducing the real characteristics of the object of speech.

e.g. The pennies were saved by bulldozing the grocer. (O. Henry)

It is used:

- to understate normal qualities of objects;

- to show the speaker’s intentional modesty.

Metonymy is based on contiguity of objects or phenomena having common grounds of existence in reality.

e.g. For several days he took an hour after his work to make inquiry taking with him some examples of his pen and inks. (T. Dreiser)

The pen is mightier than a sword. (anonymous)

It is used:

- to build up imagery;

- to show a property or an essential quality of the concept;

- to impart any special force to linguistic expression.

Onomatopoeia is using speech sounds to imitate the sound of what is being described – nature, people, things, animals etc.

e.g. buzz, whistle, ding-dong.

Crash! The old girl’s head went through the ceiling as though it were butter. (R. Dahl)

It is used:

- to bring out the full flavour of words, their expressive and emotive

connotations;

- to make the acoustic picture of reality;

- to make the sound of the utterance an echo of its sense.

Oxymoron is an attributive or an adverbial combination of two contradictory or incongruous words.

e.g.

O anything of nothing first create!

O heavy lightness, serious vanity!

Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!

Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!

(W. Shakespear)

Fresh oxymoron: I am a deeply religious unbeliever. (A. Einstein)

Trite oxymoron: awfully good, terribly nice, pretty dirty, etc.

It is used:

- to bring out new shades of meaning by putting together semantically contradictory words;

- to emphasize the emotive meaning;

- to show the author’s subjective individual perception of the object.

Paradox isan assertion seemingly opposed to common sense, but that may yet have some truth in it.

e.g. It takes a lifetime to become young. (P. Picassso)

It is used:

- to produce the “defeated expectancy” effect;

- to produce humorous or satirical effect.

Parallelism consists in similarity of the syntactical structure of successive phrases, clauses or sentences. Parallelism may be complete, which consists in repetition of identical syntactical structures.

e.g. Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self. (M. Sarton)

It is used:

- to convey the idea of semantic equality of the sentence parts;

- to produce some emotive impact on the reader;

- to emphasize the diversity or contrast of ideas (in combination with antithesis);

- to produce some rhythmic effect.

Parenthesis is a qualifying explanatory word or phrase, which interrupts a syntactic construction without effecting it.

e.g. His mouth was set grimly, and a nerve was twitching in his jaw – he had every right to be furious – but in his eyes all I could see was a sort of dreamy sadness. (J. Banville)

It is used:

- to create the second plane or background to the narrative;

- to make some part of a sentence more conspicuous.

Periphrasis is a stylistic device, which is used to replace the name of an object by description of its most specific features.

e.g. The man was shouting some choice Anglo-Saxon phrases at the policeman. (P. Auster)

It is used:

- to bring out and intensify some features or properties of the given object;

- to achieve a more elegant manner of expression;

- to avoid monotonous repetition.

Personification is a kind of metaphor. It is a representation of inanimate objects or abstract ideas as living beings. The abstract ideas are often capitalized and can be substituted by the pronouns 'he' or 'she'.

e.g. When sorrows come, they come not single spies

But in battalions. (W. Shakespeare)

Experience is a good teacher, but she sends in terrific bills. (M. Antrim)

Personification may be used:

- as an image-creating device;

- to characterise or describe objects or people;

- to impart some expressive or emotive force to the utterance.

Polysyndeton is deliberate repetition of connectives before each component part, when it is generally not expected.

e.g. They come running to clean and cut, and pack, and cook, and can the fish.

It serves:

- to introduce strong rhythmic effect;

- to strengthen the idea of equal logical importance of connected components;

- to emphasise the simultaneity of actions or close connection of properties enumerated, or to promote a high flown tonality of a narrative.

Pun is a play of words based on polysemy or homonymy. In other words, pun is based on the interaction of two well-known meanings of a word or the interplay of word or word combination that sound the same.

e.g. Her real name is Marples. I call her Marbles for a joke. If she ever moves or retires, I’ll be able to say I’ve lost my Marbles. (D. Lodge)

“I have this fabulous idea for a kind of English Twin Peaks”. “What is it?’ I said, averting my eyes from her own twin peaks”. (D. Lodge)

Pun is used:

- to produce humorous effect;

- to make the two meanings more conspicuous or set a contrast between them.

Simile is an imaginative comparison that shows partial identity of two objects belonging to two different classes.

e.g. I felt like an amputated leg. (R. Chandler)

Simile is used:

- to characterise the given objects or phenomena;

- to create an image;

- to bring out unexpected, striking similarities of different objects.

Repetition is recurrence of the same element (word or phrase) within the sentence.

e.g.

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up…

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance…

A time to love, and a time to speak; a time of war and a time of peace.

Ecclesiastes

In much wisdom is much grief, and whoever increases knowledge increases sorrow.

Ecclesiastes

 

Afterwards I thought I might have heard the swish of a sap. Maybe you always think that - afterwards. (P. Auster)

She looked beyond the frightened pensioners, the girls who looked like women, the women who looked like men, the men who looked like psychos. (Tony Parsons)

It is used:

- for emphasis or for a special effect (e.g. intensifying the duration of the process);

- to attract the reader’s attention to the key-word of the utterance;

- to give rhythm to the utterance.

Rhetorical question implies asking question not to gain information, but to assert more emphatically the obvious answer to what is asked. No answer is expected by the speaker.

e.g. Who said you should be happy? Do your work. (Collette)

It is used:

- to express some additional shade of meaning (doubt, assertion, suggestion);

- to enhance the emotional charge of the utterance.

Synecdoche is a kind of metonymy. This term denotes using the name of a part to denote the whole or vice versa.

e.g. Miss Bertrams were too handsome themselves to dislike any woman for being so too, and were almost as much charmed as their brothers with her lively dark eye, clear brown complexion, and general prettiness. (J. Austen)

It is used:

- to show a property or an essential quality of the concept;

- to impart any special force to linguistic expression.

Syntactic tautology implies 1) recurrence of the noun subject in the form of the corresponding personal pronoun; 2) repetition of the sentence by means of the pronominal subject and an auxiliary or modal verb, representing the predicate.

e.g. That Willie Sawyer he don’t know how to have any fun at all. (E. Hemingway)

She knows a lot about religion, does Sally. (D. Lodge)

It is used:

- to make the noun subject of the sentence more prominent;

- to reproduce the peculiarities of colloquial speech or the speech of uneducated people.

Symbolism. A word functions as a symbol when it is used to indicate not only its usual referent, but also something quite different. Some symbols have traditional associations. For example, the word flag refers not only to a cloth banner, but it also symbolises the country that flies it. Other conventional symbols include a circle – perfection; the sun – power or reason; greenery – youth; winter – old age; and a road – the path of life. For example, when Walt Whitman used the symbol of the “ship of state” in his poem O Captain! My Captain! readers knew that the poem was actually referring to the ship of the United States and its lost captain, Abraham Lincoln. Writers can also create their own associations between unlike things, establishing personal symbols.

Synesthesia is adescription of a sensory experience as if it were perceived through another sense. For example, describing a painter’s colours – a visual experience – in auditory terms – as clashing or loud. The following lines from William Blake’s poem, London, use synesthesia to describe an auditory phenomenon – a soldier’s sigh – in visual terms: “And the hapless soldier’s sigh / Runs in blood down palace walls.”

Zeugma consists in combining unequal semantically heterogeneous or even incompatible words or phrases.

e.g. He lost his hat and his temper.

She dropped a tear and her pocket handkerchief.

It is used:

- to produce humorous effect;

- to make the two meanings more conspicuous.

 

 

Appendix 2.