Syntactical stylistic devices

SEMINAR 2

Antonomasia

Perihrasis

Euphemism

Decomposition of Set Phrases

Allusion

Exercise 1. Point out periphrasis and euphemisms, explain their meaning and discuss the functions. Comment on the interplay of two types of meaning in the following cases of antonomasia. What additional information is created in each case?

1) “Yeah, Gatsby’s very careful about women. He would never so much as look at a friend’s wife.” When the subject of this instinctive trust returned to the table and sat down, Mr. Wolfsheim drank his coffee with a jerk and got to his feet. (F.S. Fizgerald) 2) “I have been instructed to give you this,” he said. “You husband sent it to us shortly before he passed away.” (R.Dahl) 3) I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. (F.S. Fizgerald) 4) Their conference was put an end to by the anxious young lover himself, who came to breathe his parting sigh before he set off for Wiltshire. (J. Austen) 4) That’s the first time I’ve ever known him off colour. I think he says his prayers to the dear Lord for having spared him being taken home in seven basketfuls tonight. It’s a fool’s game to risk your all that way and leave the nation desolate.’ (K. Mansfield) 5) He expected to be lifted like a child by this black Gargantua who was tending him, but nothing of the sort happened (F. Fizgerald) 6) She is a twentieth-century Jane Eyre. (M. Spark) 7) She looked forward to the morrow, which would lead the Marquis again to the abbey, with impatience. Wearied nature at length resumed her rights and yielded a short oblivion of care. (A. Radcliffe) 8) ‘You lie. What fun our married life is turning out to be. No wonder you want to go home to dear old Hood House and Mrs. Placid.’ (I. Murdoch)

Exercise 2. Analyze the following cases of hyperbole and understatement from the point of view of their originality. What do you think is their stylistic aim in each of the cases? Pay attention to other stylistic devices promoting their effect.

1) ‘Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. (F.S. Fizgerald) 2) The fellow had ears as big as rhubarb leaves. (R. Dahl) 3) It was my mother, on the doorstep in floods of tears. (H. Fielding) 4) Oh! I am delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life in reading it. I assure you, if it had not been to meet you, I would not have come away from it for all the world. (J. Austen) 5) ‘You see, I regard you as a victim and not as a criminal’ – ‘Thanks a million.’ (I. Murdoch) 6) Only after a hundred years did the train stop (F.S. Fitzgerald) 7) Because he always bought cheap, very very cheap, and sold very very dear, he managed to make quite a tidy little income every year. (R. Dahl) 8) Enter Luca. His presence in the room altered everything down to the atoms and electrons. There was cosmic change. (I. Murdoch) 9) I nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw Cleave at the bottom of the message. (H. Fielding) 10) It was the last game of the year, and you were supposed to commit suicide or something if old Pencey didn’t win. (J. Salinger) 11) I rummaged the things up into much the same state that they must have been before the world was created, and when chaos reigned. (J. Jerome) 12) These upper bedrooms looked down on the opposite pavement on the park side of the street, and on the tiny people who moved along in neat-looking singles and couples, pushing little prams loaded with pin-head babies and provisions, or carrying little dots of shopping bags. (M. Spark)

Exercise 3.Analyze the cases of stylistic use of English phraselogy. Point out decomposed set phrases and comment on the stylistic effect of decomposition. Analyze the cases of allusion. What facts and figures (literary, historical, cultural, mythological, etc) are referred to? What is the stylistic function of the device?

1) Once upon a most early time there was a Neolithic man. (R. Kipling) 2) My Uncle Bill is the right lad for a fight. “A fight a day,” he says, “keeps the doctor away” (S. Chaplin) 3) She has been innocent and the black hands of jealousy have crushed her reed-like throat. (O. Wilde) 4) Ah! here comes the duchess, looking like Artemis in a tailor-made gown. (O. Wilde) 5) We were dashed uncomfortable in the frying-pan, but we should have been a damned sight worse off in the fire. (W.S. Maugham) 6) ‘Yes – we’re going to share him up like Solomon’s baby,’ said Beatrice. (D.H. Lawrence) 7) Well, you can bring an ass to the water, but you cannot make him drink. The world was the water and Egbert was the ass. (D.H. Lawrence) 8) The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one’s clean linen in public. (O. Wilde) 9) I ought to go back to England this year, but if I can scrape together enough to keep body and soul on speaking terms I shall stay another twelve months. (W.S. Maugham) 10) ‘And you can help me so easily, like Athena helping Heracles to hold the world up.’ (I. Murdoch) 11) When Mrs Monarch withdrew he passed across the room like a flash to open the door for her, standing there with the rapt, pure gaze of the young Dante spellbound by the young Beatrice. (H. James) 12) The rose nursery, Randall’s creation, still brought an income. But Randall’s heart was no longer in it: heaven knew indeed where it had fled by now, that most volatile organ. (I. Murdoch)

SYNTACTICAL STYLISTIC DEVICES

Repetition

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14