Advanced textual analyses:
the cases of poems, prose
and plays
Dr. Codruţa Goşa
[email protected]
Approaches
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Stylistics
Narratology
Genre
Cognitive linguistics
Pragmatics
Unit 1: Stylistics
Key bibliographical resources:
Short, M. 1996: Exploring the
Language of Poems, Plays and
Prose, London and New York:
Longman
Verdonk, P. 2002: Stylistics,
Oxford: Oxford University Press
What is stylistics?
‘ a method of linking linguistic
form, via reader inference, to
interpretation in a detailed way
and thereby providing as much
explicit evidence as possible for
and against particular
interpretation of texts.’ (Short,
1996)
Key concept

Foregrounding
a means by which an author of
a text, consciously or
unconsciously ‘highlights’ the
parts which he considers crucial
to our understanding of what
s/he has written;
an abnormal ‘use’ of language;
Example

‘Come, we burn daylight, ho’
(William Shakespeare, Romeo
and Juliet)
Means of achieving foregrounding

Deviation

Parallelism
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Style variation
Types of deviation (1)
Phonological and graphological:
‘Love’ said God. ‘Say Love.
‘No, no,’ said God, ‘Say Love.
Now try it. LOVE.’
‘A final try,’ said God. Now, LOVE.’
(Ted Hughes, Crows First Lesson)

Types of deviation (1)
Lexical:
‘The boys are dreaming
wicked…of the night and the
jollyrodgered sea.’
(Dylan Thomas,Under Milk Wood)

Types of deviation (1)
Semantic (‘figures of speech’)
‘Where no sea runs, the waters of
the heart
Push in their tides;’
(Dylan Thomas, Light Breaks
Where no Sun Shines)

Types of deviation (1)
Morphological (at the level of
morpheme):
‘perhapsless mystery of paradise’
(e.e. cummings, from spiralling
ecstatically this)

Types of deviation (1)
Grammatical (Syntactic, at
sentence level): ‘And there are
so many stories to tell, too
many, such an excess of
intertwined lives events
miracles places rumours, so
dense a commingling of the
improbable and the mundane!
(Salman Rushdie’s Midnight
Children)

Types of deviation (1)
Discoursal:
- Think you are in
Heaven?
Well – you’ll soon be
In H
E
L
L–
(Michael Horovitz; Man-to-Man-Blues)

Types of Deviation (2)


External
Internal
Yes is a pleasant country (fragment)
cummings(1894 - 1962)
yes is a pleasant country:
if's wintry (my lovely)
let's open the year
both is the very weather
(not either)
my treasure,
when violets appear
love is a deeper season
than reason;
my sweet one
(and april's where we're)
e.e.
Parallelism
Repetition and parallelism
 Simple repetition: deviation
The repetition of one word or
structure:
‘Blow, blow, though winter
wind’ (…)
‘Come hither, come hither,
come hither.
(Shakespeare, As You

Parallelism
A different method of foregrounding where:
‘Some features are held constant (usually
structural features) while others (usually
lexical items, e.g. words, idioms are
varied)’. In other words: the repetition of
grammatical structures (parallel structures)
while varying the meanings of the words
repeated.
The ‘parallelism rule for interpretation’: ‘invites
the reader to search for meaning
connections between parallel structures, in
particular, in terms of the parts which are
varied’ (Short, 1996, p.14)

Example
She is a woman, therefore may
be wooed,
She is a woman, therefore may
be won,
She is Lavinia, therefore must
be loved.
(William Shakespeare’s Titus
Andronicus)
Love is… (Adrian Henri)
Love is feeling cold in the back of vans
Love is a fanclub with only two fans
Love is walking holding paintstained
hands
Love is
Love is fish and chips on winter nights
Love is blankets full of strange delights
Love is when you don’t put out the
lights
Love is
Love is presents in Christmas shops
Love is when you’re feeling Top of the
Pops
Love is what happens when the music
stops
Love is
Love is white panties lying all forlorn
Love is pink dresses still slightly warm
Love is when you have to leave at
dawn
Love is
Love is you and love is me
Love is a prison and love is free
Love’s what’s there when you’re
away from me
Love is
Chronological Injustice
(Raymond Brooks)
She came.
She saw.
She thought.
She said.
She did.
She’s gone
for good!
Love (Roger McGough)
40 middle
couple
ten
when
game
and
go
the
will
be
tween
love
aged
playing
nis
the
ends
they
home
net
still
be
them