The use of literary devices employed in the story in regard to the structure of compound sentences

In this subparagraph we will analyze the compound sentences stylistically on the syntactic level taking into account their structural features.

There is a distinct correlation between the stylistic devices employed and different syntactic means by which they are expressed [36]:

1) Reduction of the initial sentence model: ellipsis, aposiopesis, nominative sentences, asyndeton, anapodoton;

2) Extension of the initial syntactic structure: repetition, enumeration, amplification, anaphora, epistrophe, tautology, polysyndeton, parenthesis;

3) Change of the word-order: inversion, detachment;

4) Interaction of syntactic structures in context: parallel constructions, antithesis;

5) Transposition of meaning and connection of constituent parts: rhetoric questions, parceling.

Let us recount the peculiarities of the stylistic devices in regard to compound sentence structure in O. Wilde's short story “The Nightingale and the Rose”.

Tautology is a stylistic repetition of language units [23]. For example:

1) Bitter, bitter was the pain, and wilder and wilder grew her song, for she sang of the Love that is perfected by Death. Here tautology carries a strong emotional charge.

2) She passed through the grove like a shadow, and like a shadow she sailed across the garden. In this sentence, the tautology occurs in two coordinate clauses. The simile is being repeted in order to emphasize the fact that the Nightingale was working behind the scene, with no one actually knowing.

3) ' One red rose is all I want,' cried the Nightingale, 'only one red rose!” Here the emotional tension of the exclamation is empasized by the tautology.

Polysyndeton is stylistically motivated redundant repetition of conjunctive words that modifies rhythmical organization of the sentence to highlight the most important information [23], for example:

1) But the winter has chilled my veins, and the frost has nipped my buds, and the storm has broken my branches, and I shall have no roses at all this year. Here polysyndeton is used to emotionally recount the many hardships the Red Rose Tree went through.

2) And he went into his room, and lay down on his little pallet-bed, and began to think of his love; and, after a time, he fell asleep. In this passage the coordinator and is used to render a quick course of actions and the change in emotional state.

Anaphora is a rhetorical device that consists of repeating a sequence of words at the beginnings of neighboring clauses, thereby lending them emphasis [23]. Anaphora serves the purpose of delivering an artistic effect to a passage and appealing to the emotions of the recipient: All night long she sang with her breast against the thorn, and the cold crystal Moon leaned down and listened. All night long she sang, and the thorn went deeper and deeper into her breast, and her life-blood ebbed away from her.

Inversion is an intentional diversion from the natural word-order of the sentence [23], as in these examples:

1) Crimson was the girdle of petals, and crimson as a ruby was the heart.

2) Fainter and fainter grew her song, and she felt something choking her in her throat.

3) “ But with me she will not dance, for I have no red rose to give her;” and he flung himself down on the grass, and buried his face in his hands, and wept.

4) Flame-coloured are his wings, and coloured like flame is his body.

In these examples the secondary members of the sentence (namely, attribute and object) precede the predicative line which disrupts the natural word-order. However, it effectively serves stylistical purpose, putting a logical stress on certain parts of the sentences.

Rhetoric questions

A rhetoric question is a syntactical stylistic device based on the stylistic use of structural meaning. Although it is put in interrogative form, a rhetoric question poses no question per se; it is only used for the sake of dramatical effect rather than to elicit an actual answer, for example: “ Yet Love is better than Life, and what is the heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man?”

Parallelisms

As a stylistic device, parallelism represents two or more syntactic structures that have the same syntactic pattern [23]. The examples from the short story are:

1) Pearls and pomegranates cannot buy it, nor is it set forth in the market-place; it may not be purchased of the merchants, 'or can it be weighed out in the balance for gold.

2) His hair is dark as the hyacinth-blossom, and his lips are red as the rose of his desire; but passion has made his lace like pale Ivory, and sorrow has set her seal upon his brow.

3) The white Moon heard it, and she forgot the dawn, and lingered on in the sky. The red rose heard it, and it trembled all over with ecstasy, and opened its petals to the cold morning air.

These compound sentences follow the same syntactical and logical pattern.

Parceling is intentional splitting of sentences into smaller parts separated by full stops [23]: Fainter and fainter grew her song, and she felt something choking her in her throat. Then she gave one last burst of music. Here parceling is used for the sake of dramatical effect so as to build up emotional tension.

One of the peculiar syntactic features used in the story is a presence of syntactical returns, as in: “ the Chamberlain's nephew has sent me some real jewels, and everybody knows that jewels cost far more than flowers”. This helps the reader understand some logical relations and emphasizes a cold reasoning of the heroine.

In general, it worth noting that compound sentences contribute to the rythmical organisation of the speech and sometimes even make it sound more melodic: Echo bore it to her purple cavern in the hills, and woke the sleeping shepherds from their dreams.

Conclusion

In the chapter 2 there were outlined the main syntactic and stylistic characteristics of the compound sentences represented in O. Wilde's short story “The Nightingale and the Rose”.

The first paragraph characterized the many facets of O. Wilde's literary legacy.

In particular, we've focused on the facts of his biography in the subsection 2.1.1. The main aspects reviewed were social background, education, personal and social life.

The list of the most prominent literary works by O. Wilde is also included along with the topics he addressed in the subparagraph 2.1.2. We've outlined the main ideas that were professed and advocated by the writer and described the literary works that served this cause. In particular, we've expended upon his ideas of the nature of art and the functions it plays in society. It was determined that O. Wiled belonged to an Aethsetical movement which professed the “art for the sake of art”. Some of the contradictions of the Victorian era and the way they were portrayed in O. Wilde's works were also pointed out.

Subsection 2.1.3. is dedicated to the literary analysis of the chosen short story – “The Nightingale and the Rose”. It encompasses defining genre, theme, main idea, conflict, range of problems, type of narration, and mood; describing system of characters, stylistic devices and symbols, and also interpreting the short story.

The second paragraph of the chapter focuses mainly on the syntactic analysis of the compound sentences represented in the short story “The Nightingale and the Rose” from the point of view of their type, structure, connective devices and semantical relations employed, as well as their stylistic value.

Subparagraph 2.2.1 makes a review of all of the sentence types that occur within the story. Subsection 2.2.2. is dedicated only to the analysis of compound sentences in the literary work. These two subparagraphs contain statistical data, which is represented in the form of pie charts. Our findings concerning the stylistic value of the compound sentences in connection to their structure are described in the subparagraph 2.2.3.

GENERAL CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE COURSE PAPER

 

Compound sentences constitute a huge part of our daily communication. Moreover, they can present such types of relations between clauses that the sequence of simple sentences simply cannot convey, for they can render different types of semantical and logical relations.

Although a compound sentence is a polypredicative stucture that is organized on the basis of parataxis and doesn't involve elements of dependency, the relation between the coordinate clauses if often assymetrical (with the first clause taking on the leading role in the sentence).

These semantical and structural features of compound sentences also create conditions for employing differet stylistic devices.

The present paper doesn't claim to be exhaustive concerning the ways in which compound sentences function in modern English. However, we have taken a fresh perspective on different explanations of this grammatical phenomenon, outlined its typology and the peculairities of its stylistic function in the narration. To sustain our theoretical assumptions we have carried out linguistical analysis of the short story "The Nightingale and the Rose" by O. Wilde.

Upon conducting the present research we fulfiled the following aims:

1) to provide a general account of the main sentence types in English in order to promote the basic understanding of the place that compound sentences occupy in this classification;

2) to define syntactical nature of the compound sentence and its structural constituents;

3) to analyze and systematize different types of compound sentences;

4) to find the correlation between compound and complex sentences;

5) to research the short story "The Nightingale and the Rose" by O. Wildein regard to the syntactic characteristics of compound sentences;

6) to identify the role of compound sentences in the story as it pertains to the use of different stylistic devices.

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