Assignments for stylistic analysis

1. Analyse the theme and the idea disclosed in the extract.

2. Define the way of the subject matter presentation, and the notion “author” of the piece.

3. How many and what logical parts can the extract be subdivided into?

4. Characterise the tone of the extract utterances. What lexical expressive means help to identify it?

5. Analyse the types and functions of the syntactic expressive means and stylistic devices observed in the extract.

6. Explain what is expressed in the repetition of the following enumerated objects: "pens, ink or paper" and the phrase "leisured litterateur."

7. Analyse pragmatic stylistic essence of the quotation: "Eats well, sleeps well, but the moment he sees a job of work he comes over queer." What are the other means characterising the protagonist? What image is created trough them?

8. What is the compositional and pragmatic correspondence between the first and the subsequent paragraphs? Specify the stylistic essence of the rhetoric question "what more is needed to complete the picture of a leisured litterateur embarking upon his delicate labour?" and the elliptical answer "Alas! too much." Make a conclusion about the author's judgement ofthe profession of a writer.

Item 2

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, couriers'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine tonight in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.

From Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood

Assignments for stylistic analysis

1. Say what can be considered the subject matter of the extract.

2. What tone prevails in the piece?

3. Analyse the syntactic and compositional arrangement of the three utterances within the extract.

4. What are the stylistic functions of simile and detachment in the second sentence? What effect is produced by the second instance of simile contain­ing allusion?

5. Point out all cases of alliteration observed in the text and analyse whether they serve any pragmatic function.

6. Characterise the types and stylistic functions of all metaphoric ex­pressions used in the extract. What image is created by their means?

Item 3

It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood it was a town of unnat­ural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machin­ery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of buildings full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness.

From Charles Dickens' Hard Times

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