Н. С. Кузнецова, Н. А. Шайдорова практикум по стилистике английского языка учебное пособие Великий Новгород
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CHAPTER IVI. V. Arnold INTERPRETATION of the LITERARY TEXT (Abridged Lecture) Part I. Fundamentals of Decoding Stylistics The aim of this lecture is to show the future teacher of English how the language of a poetic or prose text should be analyzed in order to achieve a fuller understanding of the relationships existing between the linguistic form and literary function. It takes its direction from decoding stylistics, applying concepts of modern linguistics and Information Theory to text analysis. Its purpose is to introduce some additional precision into the theory and practice of interpretation. The term Decoding Stylistics, first suggested by M. Riffaterre, does not mean that we propose to exclude intuition and personal judgement and provide instead some mechanical technique of stylistic analysis. Intuition is welcome, only it must be verified by what is actually said in the text. The term decoding implies that we concentrate our attention on the receiving end of Shannon’s chain of communication (objective reality ---- transmitter/encoder ---- message/text --- receiver/decoder ---- objective reality surrounding the addressee) and define our basic notions in conformity with Information Theory. Decoding Stylistics furnishes a theoretical basis for text interpretation concerned with the message and not with the individual style of the author, although traditionally style was regarded in connection with the author’s individuality in the first place which lead to the underestimation of the reader’s reaction. For the sake of the holistic approach our illustrations are largely taken from poetry because very size of the prose text is too bulky for grasping it as a whole. Decoding Stylistics finds ways of prompting, directing and checking the reader’s intuition with the help of observing the vocabulary and its contextual organization in texts of various size and scope. Foregrounding. The main concept we study is that of foregrounding. The term is self-explanatory – to assure the hierarchy of meanings they are given artistic emphasis which brings them to the foreground. Foregrounding is a special contextual organization focusing the reader’s attention on some elements of the contents of the message and establishing meaningful relations between juxtaposed or distant elements of the same or different levels and the text as a whole. From the point of view of Decoding Stylistics foregrounding comprises both additional regularities and additional irregularities and may be regarded as a level above that of tropes. The notion of foregrounding is more comprehensive than that of a stylistic device or trope. The units may include tropes both taxonomically and syntagmatically. Foregrounding may cover bigger parts of texts containing several devices. The idea of foregrounding appeared first in the Prague School, where the phenomenon was mostly called deautomatization of the linguistic code. In foregrounding the reader’s attention is attracted to the formal means through which the meaning is conveyed, and the interpretation of sense demands some creative effort on the part of the reader. This attention to sense was suggested by the following scholars: P.L. Garvin in 1964 described foregrounding as a stimulus not culturally expected in a social situation and hence capable of provoking special attention; M.A.K. Halliday describes foregrounding as “motivated prominence”; G. Leech considers foregrounding to be of vital importance for stylistic analysis. Various aspects of foregrounding were described under different names in different publications. They were first collected, systematized and classified in Decoding Stylistics. Under the general heading of foregrounding we include the following phenomena: coupling, convergence, defeated expectancy, semantic repetition, sailent feature and some others. They differ from expressive means known as tropes and stylistic figures because they possess a generalizing force and function and provide structural cohesion of the text and the hierarchy of its meanings and images, bringing some to the fore and shifting others to the background. They also enhance the aesthetic effect and memorability. Coupling Coupling is defined as a semantically relevant appearance of equivalent elements in equivalent positions in the text. Coupling was suggested and worked out by the American scholar S. Levin (S. Levin. Linguistic Structures in Poetry - The Hague, 1962). R. Jakobson before him also analyzed similar structures calling them parallel constructions. Levin’s contribution is valuable because he managed to show the almost universal character of coupling. The possibilities of coupling are almost unlimited. It occurs on every level. In poetry a well studied example is the rhyme. The equivalence of the elements of the code is manifested in a certain resemblance of identity of sounds occurring in equivalent positions according to a certain scheme (mostly but not necessarily on the ends of lines). Coupling is especially pronounced in poetry, in proverbs, in aphorisms. So long as men can breathe or eyes can see So long lives this and this gives life to thee. (Sonnet 18 W. Shakespeare) Coupling serves here to join two of Shakespeare’s two themes – that of all-destroying time and the power of poetry opposing time and making beauty immortal. Its most obvious part is the anaphoric repetition: So long … So long. This is sustained by elements whose equivalence is synonymic: can breathe, can see, live – all these render the same notion – life and occupy syntactically equivalent positions. Finally, anadiplosis is also a form of coupling, more sophisticated than all the others: the pronoun “this” whose referent is the whole sonnet, is the last word of the first half-line and the first word in the second half-line. Coupling has many points of similarity with parallelism but parallelism is above all associated with syntactic repetition, and in coupling other types of positional equivalence are also possible. Defeated Expectancy In Defeated Expectancy some element of the text receives prominence due to an interruption in the pattern of predictability. An unexpected change may be created due to some combination of extra regularity and extra irregularity. The low predictability of elements disturbs the pattern which the reader has been conditioned to expect. This causes a temporary sense of disorientation compelling the reader’s attention. Defeated expectancy is mostly characteristic of humor and satire. The following example will make this point clear: A drunken G.I. shouts to his companion: “I cannot take another minute of it! The Army is brutal, dehumanized and full of morons. It’s time something was done. When I get back to the barracks, I’ll write my mother about it”. Defeated expectancy results from a glaring discrepancy between the decision taken and the scale of the denunciation of the state of things in the Army. The first three sentences make the reader expect that the soldier is ready for some action of revolt, and when we learn that all he is prepared is to complain to his mother, this is unexpected and amusingly childish. The decision is made prominent being abruptly detached from the rest of the context. It should be remembered that not all foregrounding is always based on this interplay of probability and improbability. There are several other recognized principles of artistic expression and they are also involved in foregrounding. These are contrast, repetition, implication and some others. All these are basic not only for cognition through art but for all types of human cognition in reflecting objective reality and communicating the results. Convergence The principles of reiteration and redundancy are at play in foregrounding called convergence. In convergence several stylistic devices converge to produce one striking effect, to create one image or to fulfill some other function together. The concept is due to M. Riffaterre. The type is very interesting because in it the relationship and difference between foregrounding and stylistic devices is most transparent. In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man J. Joyce depicts his protagonist in the state of exaltation: “His cheeks were aflame, his body was aglow, his limbs were trembling. On and on and on he strode far out over the sands singing wildly to the sea, crying to greet the life that had cried to him”. The reader feels how excited the hero is as he perceives the anaphoric parallel constructions, high-flown archaic metaphoric synonyms “aflame” and “aglow” used as epithets, but insistent repetition of “on”, rendering unstoppable energy of motion, metaphorical personification of life – all these make the reader share the hero’s feelings. The type of foregrounding to be taken next is a modification of the so-called “philological cycle” described by one of the most widely known stylistic critics of the beginning of the XX-th century Leo Spitzer. The method is based on the emphasis created by some salient feature of the text. Spitzer developed it as a way to concentrate on individual styles, indicative of the outlook of the writer, We shall make use of Spitzer’s procedures for a different purpose, namely that of solving the basic question of all text interpretation – how can we check our intuition and prove that our understanding is correct. Salient Feature The metaphorical term philological cycle or “cycle of understanding” is justified because the procedure demands a to-and-fro movement from linguistic peculiarity to a literary explanation. Linguistic observation stimulates and checks the literary insight, and this in turn stimulates further observation in which lexical proof is especially important. In illustrating the way in which the philological cycle and the salient feature are used in Decoding Stylistics it must be emphasized that a salient feature proves a convenient starting point for an analysis that is further continued on the basis of other types of foregrounding. To see this let us examine the Sonnet 66in the first line of which W. Shakespeare “cries for restful death”. We shall not attempt a complete interpretation but we shall only try to show how effective the salient feature may prove. There are several salient features in this famous poem. One of the most obvious peculiarities is the polysyndeton, i.e. the repetition in close succession of the conjunction “and” in the beginning of ten lines out of fourteen. Tired with all these, for restful death I cry, As, to behold desert a beggar born, And needy nothing trimmed in jollity, And purest faith unhappily forsworn, And gilded honour shamefully misplaced, And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, And right perfection wrongfully disgraced, And strength by limping sway disabled, And art made tongue-tied by authority, And folly doctor-like controlling skill, And simple truth miscalled simplicity, And captive good attending captain ill: Tired with all these, from these would I be gone, Save that, to die, I leave my love alone. Searching for an explanation, one sees that “and” links together object clauses to the verb “behold” and reduces a multitude of things to unity in one vast canvas. But a canvas of what? To explain this one pays attention to the fact that the canvas is structured as a coupling in a series of parallel constructions. Its equivalent elements – a series of nouns given prominence by the preceding “and” have a common denominator – a strongly marked evaluative seme of ethical character, they are also semantically equivalent because they denote ethical categories (virtue, faith, perfection), a third point of equivalence is that they are marked by syncretism, they denote not only the qualities but also people personifying them. One more salient feature is that the sonnet is divided vertically; there is a pause after each of the noun phrases. In the right-hand side of the poem another set of parallel constructions is correlated with the first. It has a predicative force. The pattern is again clear-cut. Participle II of the verbs meaning “to do great wrong to” is enhanced by adverbs of the strongest negative evaluation: “unhappily”, “shamefully”, “rudely”. A third type of foregrounding present is that of contrast. Everything good is wronged and everything evil prospers. This prompts the most important step of interpretation – the canvas drawn is that of universal injustice and cruelty that makes the poet indignant. The first insights thus justified the reader is stimulated for further careful interpretation of every linguistic detail. In conclusion of this brief description of foregrounding it is important to stress that there is a strong tendency for various types of foregrounding to occur and interact within the same text. Part II. Theory of Information We have seen that the term Decoding Stylistics is convenient because it reveals the connection of text interpretation with information theory and also shows which end of communication process the attention of that branch of Stylistics is focused on, that our major interest is concentrated on the receiving end. The Process of Communication It seems obvious enough that language is used for communication and sharing experience. The process of communication is studied not only in linguistics but also in semiotics, in the Theory of Information, and many other disciplines. Information theory is actually a branch of mathematical physics that has emerged to meet the demands of modern engineering but very soon proved to be of very general usefulness. Its principles, ideas and notions are applied in many different fields. Not only it is the basis of cybernetics but becomes more and more indispensable in biology and semiotics, economics and warfare, medical sciences and last but not least linguistics. It is necessary to emphasize and remember that Decoding Stylistics, we discuss, is interested not in the engineering possibilities of Information Theory but in its philosophical and heuristic possibilities. Moreover, this does not mean that all other critical approaches should be cast aside in worshipping what is new. One should not confuse this application of Information Theory with its use for information retrieval, machine translation or any other use of computers in applied linguistics. There exists nowadays computer-oriented stylistics but we shall not discuss it here. It may be helpful to note in this connection that the first to mention the importance of Information Theory for linguistics were not linguists but mathematicians – those who created Information Theory. Claude Shannon and H. Weaver in their classical book The Mathematic Theory of Communication, (Urbana, 1949) pointed it out that the analysis of communication will pave the way for a theory of meaning. Information Theory is steadily making its way into poetics and linguistics. To prove that one could list quite a number of names A.N. Kolmogorov, R. Jakobson, V.V. Ivanov, J.M. Lotman, I. Galperin, I. Levi, V.A. Zaretsky, A.M. Kondratov, J.A. Filippov and many other scholars in this country and abroad made good use of its possibilities. Not to mention many scholars dealing with the application of Information Theory in aesthetics, such as Moles or M. Bruce. The important thing is for a scholar to be sufficiently acquainted with the notions he transfers from other areas into his own. Amateurish showing off and snobbishness does more harm that anything else. Using terms without understanding them is a sort of modern malapropism not to be tolerated. Information Theory makes use of such terms as information, message, code, communication, channel, encode, decode, feedback, redundancy and some others that are less important for our needs. We shall explain these terms by and by and see their relevance for linguistics, stylistics and text interpretation. Their importance and value for us depends on the possibility they give to grasp common features in apparently different phenomena, make new powerful generalizations and formulate laws common to different branches of knowledge in a united system of terms and notions. This permits very different and distant branches of knowledge to cooperate in development. As an example of this cooperation one might consider the scheme of communication offered by Claude Shannon and mentioned in the opening paragraph of this lecture, and some of the many adaptations of this scheme by linguists. Source of TransmitterSignalChannelSignalReceiverAddressee Information Message Source of noise Message Roman Jakobson adapted this scheme for linguistics in the following form: Addresser Context Addressee Message Contact Code Ivor Richards gave a more elaborate variant, considering not the participants or means of communication but the process itself: Source Selection Encoding Transmission Reception Decoding Development Destination. The most interesting additions are context with Jakobson and selection and development with Richards. The adaptability of the scheme for the literary process from the point of view of the theory of reflection is comprehensibly analyzed by I. Levy, although he emphasizes that this does not yield the whole truth about literature because in his opinion it is unable to show the historical conditioning of literary facts. However, the fact that this scheme has not been used to show this conditioning does not mean that it cannot be used. The element of development introduced by Richards is of great importance because it permits to account for that distinguishing feature of literary perception – imagination based on imagery (I.A. Richards Variant Readings and Misreading. Style in Language. Th. A. Sebeok (ed)., 1960). Basic Terms C. Shannon gave a new interpretation to such notions as information and message. In the above scheme the information source is the source where the message to be sent is selected from an array of possible messages. The transmitter encodes the message into a signal. The signal is sent through a communication channel. The message is received and decoded by a receiver. There is a destination analogous to the source which makes use of the signal. Undesirable but inevitable variations in the signal due to various external causes affecting transmission are called noise. In Shannon’s definition information refers not to the meaningful content of a particular message but to the degree of freedom of choice with which the information source may choose the elements to compose a given message. This information is non-semantic but probabilistic. On a later occasion Shannon described information as what remains invariant in all reversible operations of coding or translation. This idea seemed so attractive to many linguists that they adopted it for a definition of meaning. In my opinion, however, the very general concept of information and the linguistic meaning should not be confused. It is much more important to regard information as the reflection of one object of reality upon another leaving some trace on the second. The scope of this notion is very great. In Decoding Stylistics we are concerned with that trace as the influence of literature on the mind and personality of the reader and on his/her further active position in life. The process of communication does not stop with the first decoding point but goes on. Among so many different choices the writer has to make in the stage of selection, note the selection of genre suitable for this or that subject-matter and idea. He has to decide when he encodes it, whether he does it as a novelist, a poet, a dramatist with further subdivisions of lyrical, satirical or comical approach and further still: an elegy, a ballad, a sonnet, etc. These organize and connect the message and may be regarded as very general code systems, imposing some choice of elements, and some further restrictions. The next step is the choice of images. As we read the elements of the text and their connections are gradually perceived, feedback plays the most important role because our response continuously changes, adapting to succeeding events going on as a process of retrospective patterning combined with some expectation from what is coming. The conclusion of a text is the point when the total pattern is revealed. As we read the poem our expectations of the probable further development depend on the interaction of what we read in the text and our thesaurus that is the contents of our memory, and these expectations are constantly readjusted in feedback. We shall now try to see what these terms mean for us and how this general scheme works in the field of communication by the channel of literature. The process of communication starts when a writer or a poet, who receives a vast stream of information from the surrounding reality, selects in this mass of information something that he wants to impart to others. This stage is a complicated creative process studied in the history of literature. It results in compressing and encoding the message, i.e. choosing the necessary items from a system of codes. The codes involved are studied by linguistics, poetics, semiotics, etc. A code is a set of signs and rules in which they are arranged used for transmitting messages through some specific channel (i.e. suitable for some specific channel). The term sign can be used to mean a discrete physical element that carries information, i.e. something material that can be distinguished by the senses and stands for something else. Thus, in each letter of the alphabet we recognize a distinct shape different from that of any other letter, and standing for some sound. As elements of a code simple signs combine into more complicated codograms, and these, in their turn, form codograms of a higher level. Finally, a complete message is a result. In language all units (sounds, morphemes, words, sentences, etc.) are defined by placing them into larger units of higher levels. The theory of signs is studied by semiotics. The term signal should be distinguished from the term sign. A text is an arrangement of static material signs situated on a page, framed by a margin and arranged typographically in a certain way. A signal is a dynamic nerve impulse transmitting the message of the reader’s mind. The transmission is simultaneously an interpretation directed by the signs of the text serving as directions. A message is a sum total of the properties of the source reflected and transmitted to the addressee or, in other words, it is the state of one system rendered by the elements of another system. By encoding or coding we mean the operation of identification of symbols and groups of symbols of one kind with symbols and groups of symbols of a different kind. Decoding by the receiver is the reverse operation – reconstruction of the message by knowing code combinations. A communication channel serves as a medium of contact. The transmitter encodes the message and transmits it in signals suitable for the channel serving as the medium of contact. In our case we regard literature as an analogy of the channel. At the stage of transmission the signal is mixed with inevitable noise, i.e. with various disturbances in the communication system that interfere with the reception of information. The source of noise may be different. There may be for example changes that occur in one of the codes used during the time that passes between the moments of encoding and decoding. Changes may affect language or manners. Manners that were considered quite polite in the 17th century may seem revolting in the 20th. I.A. Richards thinks the codes that rule wit are peculiarly variable. Jokes are apt to become tasteless or lose their point with the passage of time. Comparing our scheme with the original one as used in engineering it seems more appropriate to take the addresser, the transmitter and receiver as human, i.e. writer and reader respectively, and consider the end items, source and addressee, to be the social reality surrounding them. Adaptation of Shannon’s Model This model permits Decoding Stylistics to give a correct representation, reflecting the active role of literature in history, and the feedback between art and society. This shows that as given by the theory of information the scheme is general and comprehensive. Information theory does not claim that it can substitute any other particular science or branch of knowledge. Its merit lies in creating a common language that facilitates the contacts between the languages; showing some basic universal laws and relationships, it creates the basis for a general approach and permits each science comparing its results with those of the other science to find the specific and peculiar features in a clearer and more rigorous way. Thus the general notion of code that presupposes a system of signs of any nature is particularized in many different branches of knowledge according to their object. Linguists have adopted Shannon’s scheme for their model of verbal communication for a very long time already. The term code is now used by most authors writing on style; R. Jakobson was one of the first. Now we find the word in the books by I. Levy, G. Leech and Chatman, by I.R. Galperin, V. Kukharenko and J. Lotman and many others. To be operative the verbal message requires: 1) a code fully or at least partially common to the addresser and the addressee, i.e. to the encoder and the decoder of the message; 2) a context that the addressee can recognize, and that is either verbal or capable of being verbalized; 3) a contact, i.e. a physical channel and psychological connection enabling both participants to enter and stay in communication. It must be emphasized that the definition of a code given above does not mention or presuppose the unchangeability of the system. On the contrary, the system of a code may develop adapting itself to the conditions under which it is used. With a literary text even if the poet and his reader speak the same language and are contemporaries there is always some difference in the codes they use, moreover a poet always introduces some innovations by which he mobilizes the reader’s attention, his verbal code changes in the interaction with the message. Different philologists offered different variants of Shannon’s scheme so as to adapt it to what happens in verbal communication. Compare the scheme by Cl. Shannon, I.A. Richards and R. Jakobson with the following scheme suggested here for the process of literary communication: Social reality writer literature reader Social reality surrounding (encoder) (decoder) surrounding the writer the reader This last scheme brings, as we have already pointed out, Decoding Stylistics in correspondence with our view of literature as a social phenomenon. It is also an essentially cybernatical view of literature because it shows that literature controls the reader’s perception of reality and his activity in real life. Very roughly it might be illustrated by W. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 66, as follows. The life in Tudor England on the threshold of the 17th century made Shakespeare indignant with its social injustice. He chose several general but discrete images, those of faith, maiden virtue, art, truth etc. that are oppressed, and misjudged, creating typical images of injustice, and encoded these in the form of a sonnet. During four centuries the sonnet decoded by many generations of readers influenced in some degree their mentality and even their behavior towards the reality of other different epochs. Decoding Stylistics concentrates on the decoding and development processes. Literary stylistics on the contrary, is primarily interested in the first stage, i.e. how the source of information influences the encoder. Every message is sent by someone, sometime, somewhere to someone else. It is sent under the influence of a particular situation, external or psychological as a response to it. Specialists in literary stylistics look for what is peculiar in the codes of each writer as compared with his predecessors and contemporaries. They are more interested in poets than in their works or their readers. A work of art for them is in the first place a result, the causes of which have to be investigated. Decoding Stylistics considers a text as a source of impressions for the reader affecting his mental make-up and personality. Stylistics that is particularly interested in stylistic devices, above everything else concentrates itself on the code. It is worth remarking that all this does not mean that either of the trends disregards the other stages completely, it only concentrates the bias chosen. The Interaction of Various Codes To illustrate the interaction of various codes in rendering an idea we turn to a poem by Wilfrid Owen (1893-1918). Wilfrid Owen – the poet of the First World War was killed just before Armistice, and before he was able to complete the book of poetry he had planned. The subject of this book was, as he said in the preface, “War and the pity of War”. His friend Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), another well-known English poet, published the book of his poems after Owen’s death. The theme of the sonnet below is the Pity of War, and the sonnet itself owes its expressiveness to the combined effect of many codes. Anthem for Doomed Youth What passing bells for those who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells, Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,- The shrill demented choirs of wailing shells; And bugles calling for them from sad shires. What candles may be held to speed them all? Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes Shall shine the holy glimmer of good-byes. The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall; Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds. And each slow dusk a drawing –down of blinds. Exhaustive analysis of this poem has been done by N.J. Diakonova in Philologica (L., 1973). Our analysis although done from a different angle does not contradict it but adds some points. The very first code any reader has to confront for every text is the graphic code. The very first glance at the page informs him that the length and arrangement of lines are those of poetry. The number of lines, as an experienced reader will also notice, is that of the sonnet. This is a through-level effect pointing out the genre and the genre has its particular code of rules connecting form and meaning. It demands, for instance a change of tone and theme after the octave, i.e. the first eight lines. The division in our case is emphasized by questions signaled by question marks: one at the end of the first line of the octave, the other at the end of the first line of the sextet. We shall keep that in mind and return to it later. The main elements of the graphic code are the letters. The letters of the English alphabet are changed into sounds characteristic of the English language according to orthoepic rules. Blanks show the limits of words. A further graphical segmentation is the division of punctuation. The effect of punctuation is a through-level effect, as it signals not words but syntactic structures. Sounds are combined into elements of the next subcode, i.e. words, in these they form metrical patterns and simultaneously in some parts of the poem produce an additional effect of onomatopoeia depicting and emphasizing by sound imitation and by a change of metric stress the wailing of shells and the rattling of rifles: “Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle”. An iambic foot has a stress on even syllables. Here the stress is shifted in the first words of each line onto the first syllable. This rhythmic violation creates a sort of deformation and tension emotionally affecting the reader. The relevance of the feeling is explicit on the lexical level in such words and phrases as “die as cattle”, “guns”, “rifles”, “shells”. Throughout the sonnet other words of the lexical field connected with death and sorrow combine with these making the war and “the pity of war” (in the poet’s own words) to be the main theme of the poem. In decoding the message of the poem we have to do not only with linguistic and genre codes but also with the extra-linguistic semiotic code of funeral rites introduced by verbal description. Each element of this code carries its own symbol and its own wealth of sad associations. In the octave it is the sounds – the tolling of bells, the funeral prayers and requiem. In the sextet it is things perceived through the eye. The words render the predominantly visual quality of imagery. Yet it is not simple visualization – complex emotional associations are introduced by the attributes one sees at a funeral service – the candles, the pall, the flowers, and finally the sad custom of pulling down the blinds when somebody is dead. All these things are the customary expressions of grief denied to the doomed youth. All these are said to be substituted by the terrible “monstrous” sounds of guns, the deep sorrow of people and friends and the bugles calling for more victims in the recruiting offices of the shires. The division of the sonnet into two parts is very marked. The octave is imbued with protest and indignation at the fate of those who are doomed “to die as cattle”. The second part is more resigned – contains the denouement; it speaks of the sorrow of those left behind. The very last line is a kind of elegiac closure, describing one more extra-linguistic symbol of grief – the custom of drawing down the blinds in the house of the deceased. The rules according to which a sonnet is formed, belong to one more subcode – that of versification. By its structural organization a sonnet stresses simultaneously both its unity and disunity. The reader sees the whole of the sonnet at once. But the rhyme scheme of a sonnet is such as to make several kinds of internal divisions corresponding to syntactic and logical structure. The two parts of the sonnet are united by coupling (the appearance of the equivalent elements in equivalent positions). Each begins with a question and contains a forceful answer. The questions are similar in meaning, they ask about the manner of funeral rites observed and the services held when the youth dies on the battlefield. The answers form a contrast. The first answer pictures the deafening maddening din of the slaughter, the second – the silent sorrow of parting. The bitter insulting contrast (as N.J. Dyakonova puts it) between the solemn ceremony becoming death and the appalling cynicism of war is revealed on the lexical level in the mixture of the solemn words and rude colloquialisms standing in immediate proximity. E.g. passing bells – die as a cattle, patter out – orisons. The paradoxical nature of the whole is continued on the level of stylistic devices in the metaphorical displaced epithets: Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs The shrill demented choirs of wailing shells The amount of information compressed in these two lines is very great. The unthinkable absurdity of war is revealed in the octave by presenting war as the killer and the mourner at the same time. This is expressed by the metaphorical use of the word “choirs” about the roar of the guns; the epithet “demented” refers more directly to people stunned by this roar, or may be to the war on the whole; “wailing” has a double reference too: it describes the sound of the flying shells that is similar to a groan, it reminds one of the suffering a shell carries to its victims, and it also means that the shells moan and mourn for those whom they kill. The word “shrill” means sharp, piercing and marked by great intensity, disharmonious. In the sextet the conflict is resolved albeit tragically. If in the first part the musical elements of the semiotic code of funeral rites: bells, prayers and funeral choirs were replaced by noise of cannonade and shooting, here the ritual objects: candles, the pall and flowers are substituted by human grief or reflected in the sad eyes and pale faces of the survivors. To sum up our commentary on Anthem for Doomed Youth: the poem on the whole is encoded in several codes closely interrelating and intertwined. When interpreting it in terms of the communication scheme, we see that the reality corresponding to the source of information is that of the World War I, the encoder (transmitter) is the young soldier – poet Wilfrid Owen, the message is the sonnet – a requiem for the killed. The main codes we have to take into consideration are: the English language (including as every other language several subcodes), the extra-linguistic code of funeral rites, rendered verbally and the code of a particular poetic form – sonnet. The message is received and decoded in our case by the Russian teachers of English. Part III. Norm and Deviation Preliminaries In what follows attention will be concentrated on the relevance of norm and deviation from norm in the text interpretation. This is a problem fast becoming the major focus of interest in Stylistics because much of the expressive affective or aesthetic emphasis added to the cognitive information conveyed by a text depends upon it. This emphasis constitutes the information of the second kind, which in its interaction with that of the first kind (cognitive) determines style. “Language expresses and style stresses” (M. Riffaterre). As a writer does not possess the extra-linguistic means of stressing his meaning such as intonation, loudness or voice, gestures his means of adding emphasis to information conveyed is a special organization of material, including various types of deviation. Note the word “including”. This means deviation is not the only basis, or rather that there is a sort of interaction between deviation from some general norm and creating a new norm specific to each given text. Neither regularity in itself nor any particular instance of creating linguistic prominence by deviating from it will be stylistically relevant unless it stresses something important in the meaning of the text. When the poet deviates from the usual semantic relations characteristic of the given language this reflects his looking at things in some new way. To clear up this crucial point we shall need the support of the notions described in the previous paragraph. We must return in more depth to the notion of the code. As stated in Information Theory, a code is a system of signs and rules of combining them which is used to transmit messages through a given channel. The notion of a set of rules implies here also constraints disallowing some combinations, and these have not yet been discussed. The fact that language is a social and psychological phenomenon, does not contradict the above definition and interfere with its being a system of signs. The difference of focus as compared to artificial codes leads among others to the priority of combinatorics. Many meanings are expressed not by separate signs – words but by the way they are employed in various codograms, i.e. combinations of signs. And this way implies not only rules but constraints and this is how the signal redundancy is ensured. Basic to all rules and constraints are the grammar rules and what was previously treated as “exceptions”. For example, English nouns can take a plural form (bell – bells) and be preceded by articles ( the bell, a bell). This, however, is not the case with all nouns. There are several meaningful constraints. Mass nouns and abstract nouns take zero articles and do not have a plural form. These constraints may be meaningfully broken in their turn. When they are broken the words where this deviation occurs are reclassified, i.e. they change their meaning, mostly their lexical-grammatical meaning (because of this reclassification) and also may acquire additional expressiveness. The mass noun “sand” by taking a plural form receives the meaning of a vast amount of sand, i.e. – a desert. On the other hand, count nouns, such as “ear”, “eye”, “lip”, “hand” normally used in the plural may be reclassified into abstract nouns and be used figuratively, sometimes also in set expressions (keep an eye on, to have a good ear for music, curl one’s lip). In P.B. Shelly’s sonnet Ozimandias the words “lip” and “sands” show syncretism, that is they are used in two possible lexical-semantic variants at once. Ozimandias* I met a traveler from an antique land. Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone, Stand in the desert… Near them on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that the sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: “My name is Ozimandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains”. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away. * Greek name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II (13th century B.C.) who is said to have erected a huge statue of himself. Thus, we have the general rule, the norm (the regular plural in –s), a constraint on this norm (no plural for mass nouns) and a meaningful deviation from this (reclassification) enhancing the impression produced by the picture of decay and loneliness presented in this sonnet. All three stages belong to the language and may be regarded as usual but very different in frequency. This may be compared with the case where a proper name has only the plural form: the Alps, the Andes, the Himalayas, the Rockies. The break of this constraint is occasional and sounds funny in the following: “… being a stranger in the place I did not know one Alp from another. I Alped my way for some weary hours, till the sun went down”. (Brendan Behan). The violation of one rule may be individual, occasional, creating an unorthodox meaning of a word or a whole sentence. This brings us to the so-called semi-marked structures. The following example is a famous case of linguistic deviation in poetry “a grief ago”(Dylan Thomas). The normal combination would be a minute, day, year ago. The poet, as G. Leech puts it, has gone beyond the normal range of choice. The word “grief”, being placed in a position normally taken by nouns denoting time, receives itself a temporal expressive meaning (compare: a few cigarettes ago, two wives ago). Two more examples by the same poet are: “all the sun long and all the moon long”. Here the words “sun” and “moon” acquire the additional meaning of “time full of light”. A code, therefore, consists of rules that may be kept and may be broken. When the breaking of rules results in the appearance of a new meaning and/or additional expressiveness we shall call that deviation, whereas the main rules and restrictions of arranging the code constitute its norm. On the other hand there are some rules which are rigid and if they are not observed the result is not a change of meaning but nonsense. For example, some types of inversion are emphatic others impossible as the following examples show. The head that wears a crown lies uneasy. – neutral Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. – emphatic Head the that wears crown a lies uneasy. – impossible The importance of deviation lies in compelling the reader’s attention and helping him to see what is or is not important in the text. Everybody knows that it is possible from part of a sequence (a sentence, a line, a paragraph, etc) to predict with greater or lesser accuracy the succeeding features and this is what makes elliptic decoding sufficient for the reader. M. Riffaterre points out that it is natural for the decoder to disregard a high percentage of what the text contains and reconstruct the whole from the few words he actually perceives. To be noticed by the reader the important elements have to be either repeated or unpredictable. The unpredictability may result from breaking the norms of linguistic code. It is not usual for the personal pronouns to be modified by adjectives and articles as in “a sadder he”. The other deviation is “sobra” instead of “more sober”. He who attempts to tease the cobra Is soon a sadder he and sobra. Ogden Nash Logical expectations also may be violated: in the sentence “Get a house and a wife and a fire to put her in.” the last verbal phrase breaks the expectation of marital bliss established by the previous enumeration of nouns after a sort of norm has been created within this very short space. СПИСОК ЛИТЕРАТУРЫ
ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ ОТ АВТОРОВ-СОСТАВИТЕЛЕЙ ГЛАВА I Стилистические приемы и выразительные средства языка
ГЛАВА II Стилистический анализ поэтических и прозаических произведений
ГЛАВА III Регистр ГЛАВА IV И.В. Арнольд Интерпретация литературного текста (выдержки из лекции) |
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