Стилистический анализ текста. Учебное пособие
.pdfand feel his presence beside her and be reassured that she was doing the right thing after all”.
4.What EMs and SDs stress the contradictory character of bourgeois society? (Pick out epithets, contextual antonyms, oxymoronic combinations, etc.).
5.Analyze the SDs of zeugma in the sentence “There was a wholesome bulkiness about his person and his position”, and say how it reveals the author’s attitude to Tom Buchanan.
6.Analyze the last two paragraphs of the passage. Comment on the implication suggested by a kind of antithesis “Doubtless there was a certain struggle and a certain relief”, and the unpredictability of the clinching sentence.
7.Summing up the analysis discuss the SDs used to describe Daisy’s “artificial world”.
2. Although Bertha Young was thirty she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the pavement, to bowl a hoop, to throw something up in the air and catch it again, or to stand still and laugh at – nothing, simply.
What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the corner of your own street, you are overcome, suddenly, by a feeling of bliss – absolute bliss! – as though you’d suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle, into every finger and toe?…
Oh, is there no way you can express it without being “drunk and disorderly”? How idiotic civilization is! Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle?
“No, that about the fiddle is not quite what I mean”, she thought, running up the steps and feeling in her bag for the key – she’d forgotten it, as usual – and rattling the letter-box. “It’s not what I mean, because – Thank you, Mary” – she went into the hall. “Is nurse back?”
“Yes, M’m.”
“And has the fruit come?”
“Yes, M’m. Everything’s come”.
“Bring the fruit up to the dining-room, will you? I’ll arrange it before I go upstairs”.
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“It was dusky in the dining-room and quite chilly. But all the same Bertha threw off her coat; she could not bear the tight clasp of it another moment, and the cold air fell on her arms.
But in her bosom there was still that bright glowing place – that shower of little sparks coming from it. It was almost unbearable. She hardly dared to breathe for fear of fanning it higher, and yet she breathed deeply, deeply. She hardly dared to look into the cold mirror – but she did look, and it gave her back a woman, radiant, with smiling, trembling lips, with big, dark eyes and an air of listening, waiting for something… divine to happen… that she knew must happen… infallibly. Mary brought in the fruit on a tray and with it a glass bowl, and a blue dish, very lovely, with a strange sheen on it as though it had been dipped in milk.
“Shall I turn on the light, M’m?” “No, thank you, I can see quite well”.
There were tangerines and apples stained with strawberry pink. Some yellow pears, smooth as silk, some white grapes covered with a silver bloom and a big cluster of purple ones. These last she had bought to tone in with the new dining room carpet. Yes, that did sound rather far-fetched and absurd, but it was really why she had bought them. She had thought in the shop: “I must have some purple ones to bring the carpet up to the table”. And it had seemed quite sense at the time.
When she had finished with them and had made two pyramids of these bright round shapes, she stood away from the table to get the effect – and it really was most curious. For the dark table seemed to melt into the dusky light and the glass dish and their blue bowl to float in the air. This, of course, in her present mood, was so incredibly beautiful… She began to laugh.
“No, no. I’m getting hysterical”. And she seized her bag and coat ran upstairs to the nursery. (K. Mansfield. “Bliss”).
Assignments for stylistic analysis
1.The content of the extract. Its emotional colouring (the meaning of the title). The imagery. The basic trope (in each part its own).
2.The composition of the extract (3 parts). Parallelism in composition. The role of direct speech.
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3.The first part. Bertha’s mood. The antagonistic contradiction of a person’s natural expression of his mood and social conventions. The lexical, grammatical expressive means and stylistic devices employed (simile, climax, reiteration, rhetorical questions, enumeration). The tempo of the part. The meaning of the present participle.
4.The second part. The description of the dining-room, its connection with Bertha’s mood. The lexical, grammatical expressive means and stylistic devices employed (antithesis, metaphor – the repetition of the image from the first part, epithets. The syntax of the sentence expressing contrast). The tempo of the part.
5.The third part. The still-life – an instance of masterly word-painting. Its connection with Bertha’s mood – the influence of her mood, her test and sense of beauty. Words denoting form, colour, texture. The use of epithets, periphrases. The tempo of the part. The use of compound nominal predicates in the Past Indefinite, verbs denoting action in the Past Perfect.
6.Bertha’s characterization.
3. One night, after George Augustus was asleep, Isabel got up and stole £5 from his sovereign-purse. Next morning, she took the baby for a walk as usual, but took it to the railway station and fled to the Hartly home in rural Kent. This was certainly not the boldest thing Isabel ever did – she afterwards did things of incredible rashness – but it was one of the most sensible, from her point of view. It was the first of her big efforts to force George Augustus to action. It reminded him that he had taken on certain responsibilities and that responsibilities are realities which cannot always be avoided. She bombed him out of the dug-out of dear Mamma’s tyranny, and eventually arched him out of the empyrean of aestheticism and writing.
But she didn’t let herself or George Augustus down to the Hartly family. She reckoned – and reckoned rightly – that George Augustus would follow her up pretty smartly, for fear of “what people would say”. So she sent a telegram to Pa and Ma to say she was coming to see them for a few days – they were pretty well accustomed to Isabel’s impulsive moves by this time – and she left a note, a dramatic and naturally (not artistically) tear-stained note for George Augustus on the bed-room dressing-table. She took a few inexpensive presents home, and played her part so well that at first even Ma Hartly only vaguely suspected that something was wrong.
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The loving and united home at Sheffield was in some consternation when Isabel did not return for lunch; and the consternation almost became panic – it certainly became rage in dear Mamma – when George Augustus found and communicated Isabel’s letter.
She must be found and brought back here at once, said dear Mamma decisively, already scenting carnage from afar; “she has disgraced herself, disgraced her husband, and disgraced the family. I have long noticed that she is inattentive at family prayers. She must be given a good lesson. It was an ill day for us when Augustus married: so far beneath him. He must go and fetch her back from her low, vulgar family – to think of our little George being in such immoral surroundings”.
“Suppose she won’t come?” said dear Papa, who had suffered so many years from dear Mamma that he had a fellow-feeling for Isabel.
“She must be made to come”, said dear Mamma. “Augustus! You must do your duty and assert your authority as a Husband. You must leave to-night.”
“But what will people say?” murmured George Augustus dejectedly.
At these fatal words even dear Mamma flushed beneath the pallor of fifty years’ bad temper and cloistered malevolence. What indeed! What would the Minister say? What would Mrs. Standish say? And Mrs. Gregory? And Miss Stint, who was another Minister’s niece? And Cousin Joan, who had an eye like a brace of buzzards, and a nose for scandal and other carrion which would have been surprising in a starving condor of the Andes? What would they say? Why, they would say that young Mrs. Winterbourne had run away with a ticketcollector on the G.W.R. They would say young George had turned out to have a touch of the tar-brush owing to the prolonged residence of Captain and Mrs. Hartly in the West Indies; and that, consequently Mrs. Winterbourne and the infant had been spirited away “to a home”. They would say that there was a “dreadful disease” in the Wintebourne family, and that Isabel had run away with an infected baby. They would also say things which, being nearer the truth, would be even more painful. They would say that dear Mamma had plagued Isabel beyond the verge of endurance – and so she had run away, with or without an accomplice. They would say that George Augustus was unable to support his family, and that Isabel had grown tired of thumb-twiddling and “all this nonsense about books”. They would say – what would they not say? And the Winter-
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bournes, unique in this among human beings, were sensitive to “what people said”. (R. Aldington. “Death of a Hero”).
Assignments for Stylistic Analysis
I. The message of R. Aldington’s book “Death of a Hero”.
II.The extract under study.
1.The content of the extract. (What does the extract deal with?)
2.The typicalness of the Winterbourne family as a unit of bourgeois society. Its characteristic features: philistinism, snobbishness, hypocrisy. The keywords of the extract – “What would people say?”. Their culmination in dear Mamma's inner represented speech.
3.Two levels of emotional coloring of the extract:
a)the author's subjective attitude, its active character; characterization of the
irony;
b)the event in the family and its tense dramatic quality.
4.The composition of the extract. The place of the personages in the different compositional units.
5.The characterization of the personages. The lexical, grammatical, stylistic means employed.
A. The active forces in the family:
a)Mrs. Winterbourne senior – dear Mamma. All the typical feature of bourgeois society are incarnated in her character. Her psychological characteristics. Her attitude to other people: her immediate family; and the people of her acquaintance. The psychological and emotional quality of her direct speech and inner represented speech.
b)Mrs. Winterbourne junior – Isabel. Her character as opposed to dear Mamma's. Is there any difference in their characteristics? The future development of Isabel as seen in the insertions.
B. The passive forces in the family:
a) Mrs. Winterbourne – dear Papa. His characteristic features. His attitude to the happening.
b) George Augustus. The contrast in his characterization: what he pretends to be – what he is – how other people see him.
6. The prevalent role of grammar in creating the emotional coloring of the text. The emotional words and stylistic devices contained in it.
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4. Here the nurse’s voice was heard calling from the top landing. Andrew glanced at the clock, which now showed half-past three. He rose and went up to the bedroom. He perceived that he might now begin his work.
An hour elapsed. It was a long, harsh struggle. Then, as the first streaks of dawn strayed past the broken edges of the blind, the child was born, lifeless.
As he gazed at the still form a shiver of horror passed over Andrew. After all that he had promised! His face, heated with his own exertions, chilled suddenly. He hesitated, torn between his desire to attempt to resuscitate the child, and his obligation towards the mother, who was herself in a desperate state. The dilemma was so urgent he did not solve it consciously. Blindly, instinctively, he gave the child to the nurse and turned his attention to Susan Morgan, who now lay collapsed, almost pulseless, and not yet out of the ether, upon her side. His haste was desperate, a frantic race against her ebbing strength. It took him only an instant to smash a glass ampule and inject pituitrin. Then he flung down the hypodermic syringe and worked unsparingly to restore the flaccid woman. After a few minutes of feverish effort, her heart strengthened; he saw that he might safely leave her. He swung round, in his shirt sleeves, his hair sticking to his damp brow.
“Where’s the child?”
The midwife made a frightened gesture. She had placed it beneath the bed. In a flash Andrew knelt down. Fishing amongst the sodden newspapers be-
low the bed, he pulled out the child. A boy, perfectly formed. The limp warm body was white and soft as tallow. The cord, hastily slashed, lay like a broken stem. The skin of a lovely texture, smooth and tender. The head lolled on the thin neck. The limps seemed boneless.
Still kneeling, Andrew stared at the child with a haggard frown. The whiteness meant only one thing: asphyxia pallid, and his mind, unnaturally tense, raced back to a case as once had seen in the Samaritan, to the treatment that had been used. Instantly he was on his feet.
“Get me hot water and cold water”, he threw out to the nurse. “And basins too. Quick! Quick!”
“But, Doctor” – she faltered, her eyes on the pallid body of the child. “Quick!” he shouted.
Snatching a blanket he laid the child upon it and began the special method of respiration. The basins arrived, the ewer, the big iron kettle. Frantically he
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splashed cold water into one basin; into the other he mixed water as hot as his band could bear. Then, like some crazy juggler, he hurried the child between the two, now plunging it into the icy, now into the steaming bath.
Fifteen minutes passed. Sweat was now running into Andrew’s eyes, blinding him. One of his sleeves hung down; dripping. His breath came pantingly. But no breath came from the lax body of the child.
A desperate sense of defeat pressed on him, a raging hopelessness. He felt the midwife watching him in stark consternation, while there, pressed back against the wall where she had all the time remained, – her hand pressed to her throat, uttering no sound, her eyes burning upon him, – was the old woman. He remembered her longing for a grandchild, as great as had been her daughter's longing for this child. All dashed away now; futile, beyond remedy.
The floor was now a draggled mess. Stumbling over a sopping towel, Andrew almost dropped the child, which was now wet and slippery in his hands, like a strange white fish.
“For mercy's sake, Doctor”, whimpered the midwife. “It's stillborn”. Andrew did not hear her. Beaten, despairing, having laboured in vain for half an hour, he still persisted in one last effort, rubbing the child with a rough towel, crushing and releasing the little chest with both hands, trying to get breath into that limp body.
And then, as by a miracle, the pigmy chest, which his hands enclosed, gave a short convulsive heave. Another... And another… Andrew turned giddy. The sense of life, springing beneath his fingers after all that unavailing striving, was so exquisite it almost made him faint. He redoubled his efforts feverishly. The child was gasping, deeper. A bubble of mucus came from one tiny nostril, a joyful iridescent bubble. The limbs were no longer boneless. The head no longer lay back spinelessly. The blanched skin was slowly turning pink. Then, exquisitely, came the child’s cry.
“Dear Father in Heaven”, the nurse sobbed hysterically, it's come – it’s come alive”.
Andrew handed her the child. He felt weak and dazed. About him the room lay in a shuddering litter: blankets, towels, basins, soiled instruments, the hypodermic syringe impaled by its point in the linoleum, the ewer knocked over, the kettle on its side in a puddle of water. Upon the huddled bed the mother still dreamed her way quietly through the anaesthetic. The woman still stood against
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the wall. But her hands were together, her lips moved without sound. She was praying. (A. Cronin. The Citadel).
Assignments for Stylistic Analysis
I. The message of the extract.
II. The composition of the extract.
III.Andrew's characterization.
1.The first paragraph. The character of the actions. Is the reader led to expect something out of the usual routine of doctor's work to happen?
2.The second paragraph. The words denoting that the case was not usual one. The contrast presented by the words denoting the time of day (their connotation), and the epithet used to express the state of the child. The meaning of the detachment employed. Suspense. Andrew's state. Means employed to express it. The change that takes place in his state throughout the whole of the proceeding.
3.The third paragraph. The meaning of the past perfect at the beginning of the paragraph.
4.Andrew’s struggle for the mother’s life. Epithets, emotionally colored words showing his struggle, the quickness of his actions. Words denoting the mother's condition. The extensive use of medical terms. The repetition of the word desperate which becomes the key-word of the extract. Are there words in this part indicating that besides his professional duty Andrew had a personal interest in reviving the woman?
5.Andrew’s struggle for the child's life. What shows that Andrew had more than just a professional interest: resuscitating the child? The use of similes and epithets. The choice of words and expressive means employed to denote actions and state. Antithesis of situation — Andrew and child. Suspense.
The baby's coming to life. Epithets denoting Andrew’s state. The contrast presented by the description of the baby's body in this part and the previous description.
The description of the room as evidence of Andrew's struggle.
IV. The nurse's characterization. The contrast between her and Andrew.
V. The old woman's characterization. The contrast between her and the nurse. The meaning of the Past Continuous at the end of the extract.
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5. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two haemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them. They're quite touchy about anything like that, especially my father. They're nice and all – I’m not saying that
– but they're also touchy as hell. Besides, I’m going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything, I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy. I mean that's all I told D.B. about, and he's my brother and all. He's in Hollywood. That isn't too far from this crumby place, and he comes over and visits me practically every week-end. He’s going to drive me home when I go home next month maybe. He just got a Jaguar. One of those little English jobs that can go around two hundred miles an hour. It cost him damn near four thousand bucks. He’s got a lot of dough now. He didn't use to. He used to be just a regular writer, when he was home. He wrote this terrific book of short stories, the Secret Goldfish, in case you never heard of him. The best one in it was “The Secret Goldfish”. It was about this little kid that wouldn't let anybody look at his goldfish because he’d bought it with his own money. It killed me. Now he’s out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute. If there's one thing I hate, it's the movies. Don’t even mention them to me. (J.D. Salinger. The Catcher in the Rye).
Assignments for analysis
1.The content of the extract.
2.She peculiarities of familiar colloquial as found in the extract. The meaning of the vulgarisms employed. Words below the neutral stylistic level. Slang. Superabundance of words having no meaning. Grammar. Syntax. Polysyndeton.
3.The boy's characterization. His attitude to the movies, his allusion to David Copperfield.
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C. DRAMA
M r s. C h e v e 1 e y: Sir Robert, I will be quite frank with you. I want you to withdraw the report that you had intended to lay before the House, on the ground that you have reasons to believe that the Commissioners have been prejudiced or misinformed, or something. Then I want you to say a few words to the effect that the Government is going to reconsider the question, and that you have reason to believe that the Canal, if completed, will be of great international value. You know the sort of things ministers say in cases of this kind. A few ordinary platitudes will do. In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude. It makes the whole world kin. Will you do that for me?
S i r R o b e r t C h i 1 t e r n: Mrs. Cheveley, you cannot be serious in making me such a proposition!
M r s. C h e v e 1 e y: 1 am quite serious.
S i r R o b e r t C h i l t e r n (coldly): Pray allow me to believe that you are
not.
M r s. C h e v e l e y (speaking with great deliberation and emphasis): Ah! but I am. And if you do what I ask you, I... will pay you very handsomely!
S i r R o b e r t C h i l t e r n: Pay me! M r s. C h e v e l e y: Yes.
S i r R o b e r t C h i l t e r n: I am afraid I don’t quite understand what you mean.
M r s. C h e v e l e y (leaning back on the sofa and looking at him): How very disappointing! And I have come all the way from Vienna in order that you should thoroughly understand me.
S i r R o b e r t C h i l t e r n: I fear I don't.
M r s. C h e v e l e y (in her most nonchalant manner): My dear Sir Robert, you are a man of the world, and you have your price, I suppose. Everybody has nowadays. The drawback is that most people are so dreadfully expensive. I know I am. I hope you will be more reasonable in your terms.
S i r R o b e r t C h i l t e r n (rises indignantly): If you will allow me, I will call your carriage for you. You have lived so long abroad, Mrs. Cheveley, that you seem to be unable to realize that you are talking to an English gentleman.
M r s. C h e v e 1 e y (detains him by touching his arm with her fan; and keeping it there while she is talking): I realize that I am talking to a man who laid
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