Your attitude towards the things described.

Supplement 2

Introduction and suggested plan for text analysis

(Cf. Supplement #3)

1. Preliminary information about the text under interpretation. Say if it is a complete text or an excerpt; ascertain its genre. Specify its themes, ideas, problems, conflicts. Mention some significant peculiarities of the composition of a text: say if it is simple, complicated or complex (many protagonists and plot-lines); scenic or dynamic; chronological or kaleidoscopic; if it is based on contrast, etc. Discuss the mode of narration (first or third person). Keep this part to a minimum. Speak only about those features, which, to your mind, are worthy of mention. Whenever possible, substantiate your statements with the text and always specify the effect this or that feature brings about.

2. Text interpretation. This part of your analysis should be the longest. Combine retelling with stylistic analysis. State what constituent parts the plot of the text falls into. If it is a complete fiction text, establish the exposition, the entanglement of a story, the part where the build-up of action comes, the climax and the denouement; say if any parts are missing or reversed. In the case of an excerpt from a larger work ascertain what sense blocks can be distinguished within it (they often correspond to the traditional constituent parts of a plot – exposition, entanglement, etc.). State how the action develops, whether it reaches the climax, whether it has an open or a closed plot structure. While analyzing the plot part after part, name the most significant expressive means and stylistic devices for each part. Always speak about the function of this or that stylistic device or expressive means, what sense it imports and what impression produces. You may follow the order «factual information -> expressive means -> sense» or «factual information -> sense -> expressive means». If you tackle a psychological text, it is sometimes expedient to proceed from a portrayal of its protagonists and the conflict in which they are involved. Discuss the characters' appearance, psychological portraits, attitudes to the events, to each other, conceptual roles in the text. Ascertain how the characters are portrayed (directly or indirectly – through speech and actions).

3. Discuss the peculiarities of the author's style: the syntactical, lexical, incidentally morphological and phonetic peculiarities of the text under analysis, the purpose of their employment by the author (for example, the use of slang, baby talk, etc. to reproduce the idiolect of this or that character; the use of alliteration, paronomasia, etc.).

4. Expand on the implicit side of the text (implications, subtext, and sense). Ascertain the key ideas of the text and how they are conveyed. Speak about the main thematic fields (leitmotifs) present in the text (e.g., love, social antagonism, morality and depravity, estrangement and isolation, etc.). How are they created (using symbolic details, words of similar meanings, etc.)? Say whether you can identify several layers of implications in the text. Comment on the author's skill and the literary merits of the text in general. Formulate your personal impression from the text. It must be grounded on the synthesis – interrelation of sense of different parts.

Supplement 3

Interpretation of a text (a short plan)

1. Speak of the author in brief.

   • the facts of his biography relevant for his creative activities

   • the epoch (social and historical background)

   • the literary trend he belongs to

   • the main literary pieces (works)

2. Give a summary of the extract (story) under consideration (the gist [суть], the content of the story in a nutshell).

3. State the problem raised (tackled) by the author.

4. Formulate the main idea conveyed by the author (the main line of the thought, the author's message).

5. Give a general definition of the text under study.

   • a 3rd person narrative

   • a 1st person narrative

   • narration interlaced [переплетается] with descriptive passages and dialogues of the personages

   • narration broken by digressions [отклонение от темы] (philosophical, psychological, lyrical, etc.)

   • an account of events interwoven with a humorous (ironical, satirical) portrayal of society, or the personage, etc.

6. Define the prevailing mood (tone, slant) of the extract. It may be lyrical, dramatic, tragic, optimistic / pessimistic, melodramatic, sentimental, un / emotional, pathetic, dry and matter-of-fact, gloomy, bitter, sarcastic, cheerful, etc.

7. The composition of the story. Divide the text logically into complete parts and entitle them. If possible choose the key-sentence (the topic sentence) in each part that reveals its essence. The compositional pattern of a complete story (chapter, episode) may be as follows:

1. the exposition (introduction)

2. the development of the plot (an account of events)

3. the climax (the culminating point)

4. the denouement (the outcome of the story)

1. Give a detailed analysis of each logically complete part. Follow the formula-matter form. It implies that firstly you should dwell upon the content of the part and secondly comment upon the language means (Expressional Means and Stylistic Devices) employed by the author to achieve desired effect, to render his thoughts and feelings.

NB: Sum up your own observations and draw conclusions. Point out the author's language means which make up the essential properties of his individual style.

Supplement 4

SUGGESTED CLICHES FOR TEXT ANALYSIS

1) The story / excerpt under analysis (interpretation) was written by / belongs to the pen of / is the work by the famous / prominent / renowned / controversial English / American writer of the ... century...

2) The text under interpretation belongs to the genre of narrative prose, in particular, to the form of short story / is an excerpt from the novel by...

3) The story features / highlights / focuses on the... The subject matter of the story is...

4) The author addresses / tackles / treats / applies himself to / poses and tries to solve the thorny (difficult, involved, complicated, eternal, ever-lasting, evergreen and ever topical) problem of (e. g. fathers and sons, generation gap, social inequity, etc.).

5) The author raises his voice in denunciation of / in support of... By this piece of writing the author seems to voice his protest against... / to express his concern about... / attempts to impart / communicate to the reader his vision of... / an important message...

6) The action takes place / The scene is set / laid (in the mid 1960's / in post-war Britain) / The setting of the story is (Victorian England)

7) The action revolves around... / The story recounts a dramatic (remarkable,

significant) event that occurred in the life of... / The narration traces the life history of/ depicts a certain period in the life of...

8) We are presented with third-person narration / The narration is told in the third person; from the viewpoint / vantage point of an omniscient narrator. This feature is important, because (e. g., it widens the perspective of the narration, enabling the reader to take an objective view of the events, etc.).

9) The plot of the story is quite simple / intricate / has one line (several lines).

10) The plot has a closed structure, since all the constituent parts are present here. The plot has an open structure, because it lacks climax (denouement).

11) In the exposition we are presented with.. .The exposition gives us a portrayal of... (e. g. the bleak life of urban clerks).

12) The entanglement of the plot comes with (+ Gerund, Noun) / begins when (+ clause). The build-up of the action begins with... / when...

13) As the action develops / unfolds / builds up / the collision between the characters begins.

14) As the action develops the tension / suspense / the reader's emotion is worked up.

15) The action drags a little at first / picks up from the very start / slows down when... By and by the pace of the narration quickens / becomes brisk.

16) The climax of the story falls on the characters' final conversation / is built up by the previous developments.

17) The action culminates in... (e. g. the heroine's announcement that she was going to marry another man).

18) The highlight / high point of the story is the scene where ...

19) The culminating episode of the story is when... / The action culminates in + Noun, Gerund... The action comes to a head when...

20) The denouement, bringing the action to a close, falls on the final passage, where...

21) The action comes to a tragic (unexpected, comical) denouement / outcome.

22) The story has a decidedly happy (upbeat) / unhappy (downbeat) ending, as...

23) The narrative abounds in bookish words. / The narration is done in plain language.

24) The characterization in the story is skilful indeed / The author draws / depicts / delineates the heroes with great skill. We encounter / come across / run across / observe both direct and indirect characterization here.

25) The use of swear-words (educated literary language / juvenile slang / child language, / language of the underworld) enhances the realistic sounding / ring of the story.

26) The protagonists' parlance in the text also serves to characterize them. The swear-words (elegant language, etc.) bring out such features in the protagonist as: ...

27) To characterize this hero, the author aptly uses such stylistic devices as...

28) These words / devices reflect the overall ironic / sarcastic treatment of this character by the writer.

29) The key of this description is ironical / sarcastic.

30) This dramatic / interior dialogue brings about a peculiar effect.

31) What strikes / leaps to / bursts into the reader's eye is...used for the purpose of...

32) Note / observe / mark / witness the use of..., which serves the purpose of...

33) It is worth mentioning / worthy of mention that...

34) Regard must be paid to the fact that... / It is noteworthy that...

35) Throughout the text the author employs...

36) Thanks to these stylistic devices one gets the impression of/ that...

37) This stylistic device (trope, figure of speech) conveys the idea of / that...

38) The employment of this device suggests that / is suggestive of the fact that...

39) It becomes manifest from this phrase that...

40) From this sentence we may infer that (...we may draw the following inference:…)

41) The underlying idea / implication of the story appears to be...

42) One may draw far-reaching inferences from this text.

43) We may identify / specify / single out at least three layers of sense here: psychological, social and philosophic. The first layer of sense appears to be...

44) The message of the story seems to be... The ideas derived from this text are that...

Supplement 5

PATTERNS FOR INTERPRETATION DICTION

General information about the fragment, point of view

• This fragment is taken from the story (book) ... by ... This fragment belongs to the fiction literature. It goes without saying that the title of the story is significant. The author has chosen it in order to emphasise the …. . The author has chosen a ... person narrator. He is (isn't) a participant of the story. The narrator doesn't express his plain attitude towards the character. He gives us opportunity to make up our own point of view. It means that he wants to emphasise the major character's perception of things.

Imagery and expressive means of the text

• Speaking about imagery in the text I can't help saying that the author uses a lot of expressive means. For example...

Simile – is used to point the analogy between various qualities of objects.

Hyperbola – is used to sharpen our understanding of the utterance.

Enumeration – the author uses in order to display some kind of semantic homogeneity.

Metaphor – to underline the similarity of the given notions.

Oxymoron – to show the attitude of the speaker, to produce an epigrammatic effect.

Repetition – is used to fix our attention on the key word of the utterance to show that the speaker is under the stress of strong emotion.

The author uses a lot of SDs in order to emphasise the ideas of the story.

Character drawing in the text

• The protagonist of this fragment is...His name is significant. We realise from the story that he is a complex (flat, stereotyped) character as his personality changes (personality trades remains equal/unchangeable through the whole story. Speaking about motivation of the characters, I think the external/internal forces affect their behaviour.

Conflict and its resolution

• The main conflict here... We may say that the internal and external conflict are obvious here. The internal conflict is in the mind of... The conflict between ... and nature...

The composition and plot of the fragment

• The plot is organised chronologically. It goes without saying that the plot is open, because not all compositional elements are represented. The development of events is presented entirely by dialogue. We can predict... It might be a conflict. The author describes the setting very vividly.

• In the exposition the author introduces the characters and the circumstances to the reader. There is no exposition the author doesn't explain the situation in which the main action is to occur. The plot is directed by events / characters. The flashback occurs when...

Supplement 6

THE ESSENTIALS OF STYLISCTICS

The expressive means (EM) of a language are those phonetic, morphological, word-building, lexical, phraseological and syntactical forms which exist in language-as-a-system for the purpose of logical and/or emotional intensification of the utterance.

• Phonetic EM: pitch, melody, stress, pausation, drawling, whispering, a sing-song manner of speech (onomatopoeia, alliteration, rhyme, rhythm).

• Morphological EM: the Historical Present (the Present Indefinite instead of the Past Indefinite); use of shall in the 2^nd and 3^rd person; the diminutive suffixes; neologisms, literary coinage and nonce-words; etc.

• Lexical EM: words with emotive meaning, like interjections, qualitative adjectives, twofold meaning words, denotative and connotative; special groups and non-standard words (terms, poetic and highly literary, archaic, barbarisms and foreign, colloquial, slang, jargonisms, professionalisms, dialectal, vulgar); set expressions (clichés, proverbs and sayings, epigrams, quotations, allusions, catch-words: well-known and rare);metaphor, metonymy, irony; polysemy, zeugma and pun, interjections and exclamatory words, oxymoron; simile, periphrasis, euphemism, hyperbole.

• Syntactical EM: logical and emotional emphasis such as compositional (stylistic inversion, detached constructions, parallel construction, chiasmus, repetition, enumeration, suspense, climax, antithesis); particular (asyndeton, polysyndeton, the "Gap-Sentence" link; ellipsis, break-in-the-narrative, question-in-the-narrative, represented speech); rhetorical questions and litotes.

The Stylistic Device (SD) is an intentional intensification of some neutral or expressive language unit that in the course of usage became a model. Most SD may be regarded as aiming at the further intensification of the emotional and logical emphasis contained in the corresponding EM.

There exist several classifications of SD in linguistics. Below a classification suggested by I.R. Galperin is presented. It is simply organized and very detailed. The subdivision of EM and SD is based on the level approach.

PHONETIC EXPRESSIVE MEANS AND STYLISTIC DEVICES ONOMATOPOEIA [,ɔnəumətɔu’pi:ə] is a combination of speech-sounds which aims at imitating sounds produced in nature, by things, by people and by animals.

E.g.: ding-dong, buzz, bang, cuckoo, roar, ping-pong, etc.

A message, containing an onomatopoeic word supplies a vivid portrayal of the situation described. Indirect onomatopoeia is very effectively used by repeating word which themselves are not onomatopoeic, as in Poe’s poem “The Bells”, where the words “tinkle” and “bells” are distributed in the following manner:

E.g.: “To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells

From the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells, –

From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells” (E.A. Poe)

ALLITERATION [ə,litə’reiʃn] is the repetition of similar sounds, in particular consonants, in close succession, often in the initial position.

E.g.: "Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before." (E. A. Poe)

"The possessive instinct never stands still. Through florescence and feud, frosts and fires it follows the laws of progression." (Galsworthy) It is frequently used not only in verse but in emotive prose, in newspaper headlines, in the titles of books, in proverbs-and sayings, as, for example, in the following: Tit for tat; blind as a bat, betwixt and between; It is neck or nothing; to rob Peter to pay Paul.

Alliteration like most phonetic expressive means does not bear any lexical or other meaning. Certain sounds, if repeated, may produce an effect that can be specified. For example, the sound “m” gives somnolent effect:

E.g.: “How sweet it were…

To lend our hearts and spirits wholly

To the music of mildminded melancholy;

To muse and blood and live again in memory”.

(”The Lotus Eaters” A. Tennyson)

RHYME [raim] is the repetition of identical or similar terminal sound combinations of words. In verse rhyming words are usually placed at the end of the corresponding lines.

E.g.: "I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers." (Shelly) RHYTHM is a flow, movement, procedure, etc., characterized by basically regular recurrence of elements or features, as beat, or accent, in alternation with opposite or different element or features.

E.g.: "The high-sloping roof, of a fine sooty pink was almost Danish, and two 'ducky ' little windows looked out of it, giving an impression that every tall servant lived up there" (J. Galsworthy.)

The Western land, nervous under the beginning change. The Western states, nervous as horses before a thunderstorm. The great owners, nervous, sensing a change, knowing nothing of the nature of the change. The great owners, striking at the immediate thing, the widening government, the growing labor unity; striking at new taxes, at plans; not knowing these things are results, not causes. Results, not causes; results, not causes (J. Steinbeck.)

Lexical expressive means and stylistic devices

There are three subdivisions in this class.

I – Means based on the interaction of different types of word meanings.

A. Based on the interplay of dictionary and contextual meanings

METAPHOR [‘metɑfo:] means transference of some quality from one object to another based on the associated likeness between two objects, as in the "pancake", or "ball", or "volcano" for the "sun"; "silver dust", "sequins" for "stars"; "vault", "blanket", "veil" for the "sky".

The wider is the gap between the associated objects the more striking and unexpected - the more expressive - is the metaphor.

If a metaphor involves likeness between inanimate and animate objects, we deal with personification, as in "the face of London", or "the pain of the ocean".

Metaphor, as all other SDs, is fresh, orginal, genuine, when first used, and trite, hackneyed, stale when often repeated. In the latter case it gradually loses its expressiveness becoming just another entry in the dictionary, as in the "leg of a table" or the "sunrise", thus serving a very important source of enriching the vocabulary of the language.

Metaphor can be expressed by all notional parts of speech, and functions in the sentence as any of its members.

When the speaker (writer) in his desire to present an elaborated image does not limit its creation to a single metaphor but offers a group of them, each supplying another feature of the described phenomenon, this cluster creates a sustained (prolonged) metaphor.

E.g.: "We need you so much here. It's a dear old town, but it's a rough diamond, and we need you for the polishing, and we're ever so humble...". (S. Lewis.)

METONYMY [me’tɔnimi] is the term used when the name of an attribute or object is substituted for the object itself. It is based on some kind of association connecting two concepts. Transference of names in metonymy does not involve a necessity for two different words to have a common component in their semantic structures, as is the case of metaphor, but proceeds from the fact that two objects (phenomena) have common grounds of existence in reality. Such words as "cup" and "tea" have no linguistic semantic nearness, but the first one may serve the container of the second, hence – the conversational cliché "Will you have another cup?".

E.g.: the Stage = the theatrical profession; the Crown = the King or Queen; a hand = a worker; etc. "My brass will call your brass," says one of the characters of A. Hailey's Airport to another, meaning "My boss will call your boss." The transference of names is caused by both bosses being officers, wearing uniform caps with brass cockades.

E.g.: "Miss Tox's hand trembled as she slipped it through Mr. Dombey's arm, and felt herself escorted up the steps, preceded by a cocked hat and a Babylonian collar." (Dickens)

The prevalent types of relations between objects and phenomena in metonymies are as follows:

• based on the relations between a part and the whole - synecdoche.

E. g.:

Do you think such an old moustache as I am is not a match for you all!

What humbles these hills has raised

The arrogance of blood and bone.

• whole-part

E. g. The seaweed parted and gave to us the murmuring shore («murmuring» things on the shore).

• instrument – action

E. g. Give thy thoughts no tongue.

• attendant circumstances – phenomenon

E. g. But all his efforts to concoct

The old heroic bang from their money and praise

From the parent's pointing finger and the child's amaze,

Even from the burning of his wreathed bays,

Have left him wrecked...

(Money, praise, the parent's pointing finger, the child's amase-> fame)

• characteristic – object characterized

E. g. She is all youth,

All beauty, all delight,

All that a boyhood loves and manhood needs...

• cause-effect

E. g. Power is built on fear and empty bellies (empty bellies -> hunger)

IRONY is a figure of speech by means of which a word or words express the direct opposite of what their primary dictionary meanings denote.

E.g.: It must be delightful to find oneself in a foreign country without a penny in one’s pocket.

Irony thus is a stylistic device in which the contextual evaluative meaning of a word is directly opposite to its dictionary meaning. To understand the value of irony we will have to turn to some context, like in J. Steinbeck's "She turned with the sweet smile of an alligator," – to the context of a whole book. This type of irony is called verbal irony. There are very many cases of irony where we can not put our finger on the exact word in which we can clearly trace the contradiction between the said and the implied. The effect of irony in such cases is created by a number of statements, by the whole of the text. This type of irony is called sustained, and it is formed by the contradiction of the speaker's (writer's) considerations and the generally accepted moral and ethical codes. Many examples of sustained irony are supplied by D. Defoe, J. Swift, by such contemporary writers as S. Lewis, K. Vonnegut, E. Waugh and others.

E.g.: “But every Englishman is born with a certain miraculous power that makes him master of the world. As the great champion of freedom and national independence he conquers and annexes half the world and calls it Colonization”. (B .Shaw)

PARADOX 1) a seemingly self-contradictory statement, presenting a fact in a new light, 2) a statement that contradicts some assumed belief, a self-evident or proverbial truth. The two renowned masters of paradox, the typical wits of English literature are Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw.

E. g. There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about [O. Wilde].

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing [O. Wilde].

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses [B. Shaw].

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches [B. Shaw].

SYMBOL is a synthetic sign of culture (art, literature, religion, etc.) which represents an essentially different, usually more abstract meaning, connected with the former by a metaphoric or metonymic link.

Among symbols language and speech symbols are specified. Language symbols are fixed in people's mind as stable complexes, existing in the lexical meaning of a word as «a symbolic aura». Examples of cultural stereotypes: e. g. rose – beauty, love; wall – obstacle, restriction of freedom, estrangement; mountain – spiritual elevation, also courage associated with overcoming difficulties; way – movement in time, progress, course of life.

Unlike language symbols, speech symbols are variables, rather than constants. Here the direct meaning of a word is used to denote the author's subjective, individual ideas.

The main types of symbols are metaphoric and metonymic. A few examples of metaphoric symbols, based on similarity between meanings:

a. rose-garden as the symbol of happiness, love, paradise (the ground is connotative: beauty and fragrance, bliss = good );

b. lotos as the symbol of spiritual growth and spiritual harmony (ground: grows, blossoms out and raises its flower = man holds up his head –> his spirit grows; purity of colour = evenness, uniformity of mind);

c. sunlight as the symbol of spiritual revelation (ground: illumines the earth, lets one see = lets one realize, understand) (taken from “Burnt Norton” by T. S. Eliot);

d. train as the symbol of time (ground: forward movement) in the poems “Train to Dublin” and “Trains in the Distance” by L. MacNeice;

e. the sea as the symbol of cyclic, recurring time in “Tides” by M. Hamburger (ground: tides and ebbs, to and fro, rhythmic movements and sounds; production and destruction of living creatures).

A few examples of metonymic symbols, based on contiguity between meanings:

a. fortress, chapel in the forest as the symbols of Spain in “Spain 1937” by W. H. Auden (synecdoche “part-whole”);

b. rat as the symbol of decay and deterioration in “The Waste Land” by T. S. Eliot, etc. (metonymy “cause-effect”)

c. new-mown hay smell as the symbol of strength, good health and full-blooded life in the country (metonymy “phenomenon-attendant circumstances”) in the poem “Population Drifts” by C. Sandburg, etc.

There is a difference in the functions of symbols and tropes (metaphors and metonymies). While the key function for tropes is that of characterisation of one object (concept) by means of another object (concept), the principal function of symbols is representation of a concept through an object.

B. Based on the interaction of primary and derivative meanings

ZEUGMA [‘zju:gmə] is the use of a word in the same grammatical but different semantic relations to two adjacent words in the context, the semantic relations being, on the one hand, literal and, on the other, transferred.

E.g.: She possessed two false teeth and a sympathetic heart. The ballet was on its last legs and night.

"...And May's mother always stood on her gentility, and Dot's mother never stood on anything but her active little feet" (Dickens)

"Dora, plunging at once into privileged intimacy and into the middle of the room". (B. Shaw)

PUN is another stylistic device based on the interaction of two well-known meanings of a word or phrase, more independent than zeugma.

Contextual conditions leading to the simultaneous realization of two meanings and to the formation of pun may vary: it can be misinterpretation of one speaker's utterance by the other, which results in his remark dealing with a different meaning of the misinterpreted word or its homonym, as in the famous case from the Pickwick Papers When the fat boy, Mr. Wardle's servant, emerged from the corridor, very pale, he was asked by his master: "Have you been seeing any spirits?" "Or taking any?" - added Bob Alien. The first "spirits" refers to supernatural forces, the second one – to strong drinks.

Punning may be the result of the speaker's intended violation of the listener's expectation, as in the jocular quotation from B. Evans "There comes a period in every man's life, but she is just a semicolon in his." Here we expect the second half of the sentence to unfold the content, proceeding from "period" understood as "an interval of time", while the author has used the word in the meaning of "punctuation mark" which becomes clear from the "semicolon", following it.

Misinterpretation may be caused by the phonetic similarity of two homonyms, such as in the crucial case of O. Wilde's play The Importance of Being Ernest.

E.g.: What is the difference between a schoolmaster and an engine-driver? One trains the mind and the other minds the train.

Seven days without water make one weak (week).

It is not my principle to pay the interest, and it is not my interest to pay the principal.

BATHOS [‘beiθəs] means bringing together unrelated elements as they denoted things equal in rank or belonging to one class, as if they were of the same stylistic aspect. By being forcibly linked together, the elements acquire a slight modification of meaning.

E.g.: "They grieved for those who perished with the cutter And also for the biscuit-casks and butter." (G. Byron)

C. Based on the opposition of logical and emotive meanings

EPITHET [‘epiθət] is usually an attributive word or phrase expressing some quality of a person, thing or phenomenon. The epithet always expresses the author's individual attitude towards what he describes, his personal appraisal of it, and is a powerful means in his hands of conveying his emotions to the reader and in this way securing the desired effect.

E.g.: wild wind, loud ocean, heart-burning smile, slavish knees, etc.

Semantically, there should be differentiated two main groups, the biggest of them being affective (or emotive proper). These epithets serve to convey the emotional evaluation of the object by the speaker. Most of the qualifying words found in the dictionary can be and are used as affective epithets (e.g. "gorgeous", "nasty", "magnificent", "atrocious", etc.). The second group – figurative, or transferred, epithets – is formed of metaphors, metonymies and similes (which will be discussed later) expressed by adjectives.

E.g. "the smiling sun", "the frowning cloud", "the sleepless pillow", "the tobacco-stained smile", "a ghost-like face", "a dreamlike experience”.

In the overwhelming majority of examples epithet is expressed by adjectives or qualitative adverbs (e.g. "his triumphant look" = he looked triumphantly). Nouns can be used in the function of epithets either as exclamatory sentences (You, ostrich!) or as postpositive, attributes ("Alonzo the Clown", "Richard of the Lion Heart").

Epithets are used singly, in pairs, in chains, in two-step structures, and in inverted constructions, also as phrase-attributes. Phrase-epithets always produce an original impression.

E.g.: "the sunshine-in-the-breakfast-room smell.”

REVERSED (INVERTED) EPITHET is composed of two nouns linked in an of-phrase. The device is based on the contradiction between the logical and the syntactical: logically defining becomes syntactically defined and vice versa. E.g. instead of "this devilish woman", where "devilish" is both logically and syntactically defining, and "woman", also both logically and syntactically defined, W. Thackeray says "this devil of a woman". Here "of a woman" is syntactically an attribute, i.e. the defining, and "devil"-the defined, while the logical relations between the two remain the same as in the previous example-"a woman" is defined by "the devil". The subjective, evaluating, emotional element is embodied not in the noun attribute but in the noun structurally described.

E.g.: "...a dog of a fellow" (Ch. Dickens); "a devil of a job" (W.S. Maugham); "A little Flying Dutchman of a cab" (J. Galsworthy.)

OXYMORON [,ɔksi’mɔ:rən] is a combination of two words (mostly an adjective and a noun or an adverb with an adjective) in which the meanings of the two clash, being opposite in sense. The most widely known structure of oxymoron is attributive, so it is easy to believe that the subjective part of the oxymoron is embodied in the attribute-epithet. But there are also others, in which verbs are employed. Such verbal structures as "to shout mutely" (I. Shaw) or "to cry silently" seem to strengthen the idea, which leads to the conclusion that oxymoron is a specific type of epithet. Non-attributive structures are used to express semantic contradiction as in "the street damaged by improvements" (O. Henry) or "silence was louder than thunder" (J. Updike).

E.g.: delicious poison, low skyscraper, pleasantly ugly, sweet sorrow, proud humility, etc. Sara was a menace and a tonic, my best enemy; Rozzie was a disease, my worst friend.

A neon sign reads "Welcome to Reno – the biggest little town in the world."

D. Based on the interaction of logical and nominal meanings

ANTONOMASIA [,æntənə’meiʃə] is the interplay between the logical and nominal meanings of a word. In this SD a proper name is used instead of a common noun or vice versa, i.e. the nominal meaning of a proper name is suppressed by its logical meaning or the logical meaning acquires the new - nominal – component.

In Th. Dreiser we read: "He took little satisfaction in telling each Mary, shortly after she arrived, something...." The attribute "each", used with the name, turns it into a common noun denoting any female.

Another type of antonomasia we meet when a common noun serves as an individualizing name, as in D. Cusack: "There are three doctors in an illness like yours. I don't mean only myself, my partner and the radiologist who does your X-rays, the three I'm referring to are Dr. Rest, Dr. Diet and Dr. Fresh Air."

Still another type of antonomasia is presented by the so-called "speaking names" - names whose origin from common nouns is still clearly perceived. Such are names from Sheridan's School for Scandal as Lady Teazle or Mr. Surface immediately raise associations with certain human qualities due to the denotational meaning of the words "to tease" and "surface".

E.g.: "Her mother is perfectly unbearable. Never met such a Gorgon." "I don't really know what a Gorgon is like, but I am quite sure, that Lady Bracknell is one. In any case, she is a monster without being a myth."(O. Wilde)

II – Means based on the interaction between two lexical meanings simultaneously materialized in the context.

SIMILE [‘simili] is an expressed imaginative comparison based on the likeness of two objects or ideas belonging to different classes. Simile should not be confused with simple (logical, ordinary) comparison. Structurally identical, they are semantically different: objects belonging to the same class are likened in a simple comparison, while in a simile we deal with the likening of objects belonging to two different classes. So, "She is like her mother" is a simple comparison, used to state an evident fact. "She is like a rose" is a simile used for purposes of expressive evaluation, emotive explanation, highly individual description. Similes have formal words in their structure such as like, as, such as, as if, seem.

In a simile two objects are compared on the grounds of similarity of some quality. This feature which is called foundation of a simile, may be explicitly mentioned as in: "He stood immovable like a rock in a torrent", or "His muscles are hard as rock". You see that the "rock" which is the vehicle of two different similes offers two different qualities as their foundation - "immovable" in the first case, and "hard" in the second. The foundation may remain implicit, not mentioned directly. Like in the example "She is like a rose", "the rose allows to simultaneously recollect such features as "fresh, beautiful, fragrant, attractive", etc.

A simile, often repeated, becomes trite and adds to the stock of language phraseology. Most of trite similes have the foundation mentioned and conjunctions "as", "as...as" used as connectives. E.g.: "as brisk as a bee", "as strong as a horse", "as live as a bird" and many many more.

E.g.: "I saw the jury return, moving like underwater swimmers..." (L. Harper) "His strangely taut, full-width grin made his large teeth resemble a dazzling miniature piano keyboard in the green light."

"The ball appeared to the batter to be a slow spinning planet looming toward the earth."

PERIPHRASIS [pə’rifrəsis] (CIRCUMLOCUTION [,sə:kəmlə’kju:ʃn]) is the use of a longer phrasing in place of a possible shorter and plainer form of expression. In other words, it is a round-about or indirect way to name a familiar object or phenomenon.

E.g.: a gentleman of the long robe (a lawyer), the fair sex (women), a play of swords (a battle), etc.

Periphrases are classified into figurative (metonymic and metaphoric), and logical. The first group is made, in fact, of phrase-metonymies and phrase-metaphors, as you may well see from the following example: "The hospital was crowded with the surgically interesting products of the fighting in Africa" (I. Shaw) where the extended metonymy stands for "the wounded".

Logical periphrases are phrases synonymic with the words which were substituted by periphrases: "Mr. Du Pont was dressed in the conventional disguise with which Brooks Brothers cover the shame of American millionaires." (M. Stuart) "The conventional disguise" stands here for "the suit" and "the shame of American millionaires" – for "the paunch (the belly)".

E.g.: The villages were full of women who did nothing but fight against dirt and hunger and repair the effects of friction on clothes.

EUPHEMISM [‘ju:fəmizm] is a word or phrase used to replace an unpleasant word or expression by a conventionally more accepted one.

E.g.: to pass away/to join the majority (to die), a four-letter word (an obscenity), etc. HYPERBOLE [hai’pə:bəli] is a deliberate overstatement or exaggeration of a feature essential (unlike periphrasis) to the object or phenomenon. In its extreme form this exaggeration is carried to an illogical degree, sometimes ad absurdum. Like many stylistic devices, hyperbole may lose its quality as a stylistic device through frequent repetition and become a unit of the language-as-a-system, reproduced in speech in its unaltered form. Here are some examples of language hyperbole: “A thousand pardons”; “scared to death”, “immensely obliged”, “I’d give the world to see him.” Hyperbole differs from mere exaggeration in that it is intended to be understood as an exaggeration.

E.g.: Four loudspeakers attached to the flagpole emitted a shattering roar of what Benjamin could hardly call music, as if it were played by a collection of brass bands, a few hundred fire engines, a thousand blacksmiths' hammers and the amplified reproduction of a force-twelve wind.

She was a giant of a woman. Her bulging figure was encased in a green crepe dress and her feet overflowed in red shoes. She carried a mammoth red pocketbook that bulged throughout as if it were stuffed with rocks. (Fl. O'Connor)

III – Stable word combinations and phrases in their interaction with the context

CLICHE [‘kli:ʃei] is an expression that has become hackneyed and trite.

E.g.: rosy dreams of youth, to grow by leaps and bounds, the patter of rain, to withstand the test of time, etc. ALLUSION [[ə’lu:ʒn] is an indirect reference, by word or phrase, to a historical, literary, mythological, biblical fact or to a fact of everyday life made in the course of speaking or writing.

E.g.: "'Pie in the sky for Railmen" means nothing but promises (a line from the well-known workers' song: "You'll get pie in the sky when you die").

Syntactical expressive means and stylistic devices

The principal criteria for classifying syntactical SD are

1) The juxtaposition of the parts of an utterance

INVERSION aims at attaching logical stress or additional emotional colouring to the surface meaning of the utterance. The following patterns of stylistic inversion are most frequently met in both English prose and poetry:

1.  The object is placed at the beginning of the sentence: “Talent Mr. Micawber has; capital Mr. Micawber has not.”

2. The attribute is placed after the word it modifies. This model is often used when there is more than one attribute: “With fingers weary and worn…”

3. The predicative is placed before the subject: “A good generous prayer it was”

The predicative stands before the link verb and both are placed before the subject: “Rude am I in my speech…”

4. The adverbial modifier is placed at the beginning of the sentence: “My dearest daughter, at your feet I fall.”

5. Both modifier and predicate stand before the subject: “Down dropped the breeze…”

PARALLEL CONSTRUCTION is a device in which the necessary condition is identical, or similar, syntactical structure in two or more sentences or parts of a sentence in close succession.

E.g.: "There were,..., real silver spoons to stir the tea with, and real china cups to drink it out of, and plates of the same to hold the cakes and toast in ". (Ch. Dickens) CHIASMUS (REVERSED PARALLEL CONSTRUCTION) [kai’æzməs] is based on the repetition of a syntactical pattern, where the order of the words in the first structure is reversed in the second.

E.g. He went to London, to Paris went she.

Her face was veiled with a veil of gauze, but her feet were naked. Naked were her feet, and they moved over the carpet like little pigeons (O. Wilde). "Down dropped the breeze, The sails dropped down." (Coleridge)

"His jokes were sermons, and his sermons jokes". (G. Byron)

REPETITION is an expressive means of language used when the speaker is under the stress or strong emotion.

E.g.: "I am exactly the man to be placed in a superior position in such a case as that. 1 am above the rest of mankind, in such a case as that. I can act with philosophy in such case as that." (Ch. Dickens)

• ANAPHORA [ə’næfərə] is when the repeated word (or phrase) comes at the beginning of two or more consecutive sentences, clauses or phrases.

E. g. My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,

My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer... (R. Burns)

• EPIPHORA [ə’pifərə] is when the repeated unit is placed at the end of consecutive sentences, clauses or phrases.

E.g. Do all the good you can,

By all the means you can...

To all the people you can,

As long as ever you can (Wasley).

• ANADIPLOSIS (CATCH REPETITION) [,ənədip’lousis] is structured so that the last word or phrase of one part of one part of an utterance is repeated at the beginning of the next part, thus hooking the two parts together.

E.g. Three fishers went sailing out into the West,

Out onto the West, as the sun went down (Kingsley).

• FRAMING is an arrangement of repetition in which the initial parts of a syntactical unit, in most cases of a paragraph, are repeated at the end of it.

E.g. Adieu, adieu – I fly, adieu,

I vanish in the heaven's blue

Adieu, adieu! (G. Byron)

ENUMERATION [i,njume’reiʃn] is a stylistic device by which separate things, objects, phenomena, actions are named one by one so that they produce a chain, the links of which are forced to display some kind of semantic homogeneity, remote though it may seem.

E.g.: "Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend and his sole mourner." (Ch. Dickens) SUSPENSE is arranging the matter of a communication in such a way that the less important, subordinate parts are amassed at the beginning, the main idea being withheld till the end of the sentence. Thus the reader's attention is held and his interest is kept up.

E.g.: "Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. Was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw." (Charles Lamb) CLIMAX (GRADATION) [‘klaiməks] is an arrangement of sentences (or homogeneous parts of one sentence) which secures a gradual increase in significance, importance, or emotional tension in the utterance.

E.g.: "Little by little, bit by bit, and day by day, and year by year the baron got the worst of some disputed question." (Ch. Dickens) ANTICLIMAX is an arrangement of ideas in ascending order of significance, or they may be poetical or elevated, but the final one, which the reader expects to be the culminating one, as in climax, is trifling or farcical. There is a sudden drop from the lofty or serious to the ridiculous.

E.g.: "This war-like speech, received with many a cheer, Had filled them with desire of flame, and beer." (G. Byron) ANTITHESIS [ə’ntiθəsis] is a semantic opposition of two homogeneous words or parallel syntactical structures. Its purpose is to express contrast or confrontation of some notions or ideas. Antithesis is based on relative opposition which arises out of the context through the expansion of objectively contrasting pairs.

Compare lexical antitheses through thick and thin, to hunt for something high and low, and syntactical antitheses: e.g. The prodigal robs his heir, the miser robs himself. They are not beautiful: they are only decorated. They are not clean: they are only shaved and starched (Shaw). "A saint abroad, and a devil at home." (Bunyan)

"Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." (J. Milton)

In a broad sense antithesis implies contrasting two characters, world outlooks, fates, etc. in a piece of writing. For example, the antithesis of Pyle in G. Greene's «The Quiet American» is Fowler.

PARENTHESIS [pə’renθəsis] is an explanatory or qualifying comment inserted into the midst of a passage, without being grammatically connected with it, and marked off by upright curves (), brackets [], commas or dashes. Parentheses serve to supply additional information, evaluate what is said or sometimes to create the second plane, the background, to the narrative.

E.g. I have been accused of bad taste. This has disturbed me, not so much for my own sake (since I am used to the slights and arrows of outrageous fortune) as for the sake of criticism in general (S. Maugham).

2) The type of connection

ASYNDETON [ə’sindetən] is a connection between parts of a sentence or between sentences without any formal sign, the connective being deliberately omitted.

E.g.: "Soames turned away; he had an utter disinclination for talk, like one standing before an open grave, watching a coffin slowly lowered." (J. Galsworthy) POLYSYNDETON [pɔli’sindetən] is the connection of sentences, or phrases, or syntagms, or words by using connectives (mostly conjunctions and prepositions) before each component part.

E.g.: "The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect." (Ch. Dickens)

3) The peculiar use of colloquial constructions:

ELLIPSIS [ə’lipsis] is the omission of one or both principal parts of the sentence (subject, predicate or part of a predicate). It is characteristic of colloquial speech and serves to render a person's idiolect or their attitude to something, etc. Ellipsis imitates the common features of colloquial language, where the situation predetermines not the omission of certain members of the sentence, but their absence.

E.g. “Where is he? – Out in the garden.”

“Police sure he did it, eh?” (A. Christie).

“Nothing so difficult as the beginning.” (G. Byron) BREAK-IN-THE-NARRATIVE (APOSIOPESIS) [ə,pəsiɔ’pi:sis] is a break in the narrative used for some stylistic effect.

E.g.: “You just come home or I'll...” ”My God! If the police come – find me here – ” (J. Galsworthy)

4) Transferred use of structural meaning:

RHETORICAL QUESTIONS – peculiar interrogative construction which semantically remains a statement. Unlike an ordinary question, the rhetorical question does not demand any information but serves to express the emotions of the speaker and also to call the attention of listeners. Rhetorical questions make an indispensable part of oratory speech for they very successfully emphasize the orator's ideas.

E.g.: Could a man own anything prettier than this dining-table with its deep tints, the starry, soft-petalled roses, the ruby-coloured glass, and quaint silver furnishing; could a man own anything prettier than the woman who sat at it?(J. Galsworhty)

A variety of a rhetorical question is quasi-affirmative sentences (“Isn’t that too bad?”, “Don’t I remember!”); quasi-negative sentences (“Did I say a word about the money?”, “What’s the good of a man behind a bit of glass?”); quasi-imperative sentences (“Tea. For two. Out here”, “Off with you!”)

LITOTES [lai’tɔuti:s] is a peculiar use of negative constructions aimed at establishing a positive feature in a person or thing.

E.g.: "He was not without taste ..."

"It troubled him not a little ... "

REVISION EXERCISES:

Point out, name and explain the value of the SD employed in the following texts

a) But as soon as the Mariner... found himself truly inside the Whale's warm, dark, inside cupboards, he stumped and he jumped and he thumped and he bumped, and he pranced and he danced, and he banged and he clanged, and he hit and he bit, and he leaped and he creeped, and he prowled and he howled, and he hopped and he dropped, and he cried and he sighed, and he crawled and he bawled, and he stepped and he leaped, and he danced hornpipes where he shouldn't, and the Whale felt most unhappy indeed (R. Kipling).

b) It was toward evening, and I saw him on my way out to dinner. He was arriving in a taxi; the driver helped him totter into the house with a load of suitcases. That gave me something to chew on: by Sunday my jaws were quite tired (T. Capote).

c) And the anthem that organist played cemented Soapy to the iron fence, for he had known it well in the days when his life contained such things as mothers and roses and ambitions and friends and immaculate thoughts and collars (O’Henry).

d) He wrote fervently, that was pining for her, that he could not exist without her, that life to him was now an endless waiting until he should see her, be near to her, be with her always (A. Cronin).

e) In the succeeding weeks George's death was the source of other, almost unclouded joys to Mrs. Winterbourne. She pardoned – temporarily – the most offending of her enemies to increase the number of artistically tear-blotched letters of bereavement she composed. Quite a few of the near-gentry, who usually avoided Mrs. Winterbourne as a particularly virulent specimen of the human scorpion, paid calls – very brief calls – of condolence. Even the Vicar appeared and was treated with effusive sweetness... (R. Aldington).

Supplement 7

SAMPLES OF TEXT INTERPRETATION

THE STORY OF AN HOUR

Kate Chopin (1851-1904)

Kate Chopin was a forgotten American voice until her literary reputation was resuscitated by critics in the 1950s. Today her novel The Awakening (1899) the story of a sensual, determined woman who insists on her independence, is widely read and highly honored, a feminist work which was decidedly ahead of its time. Born Katherine O’Flaherty into an upper-middle-class family in St.Louis, she married Oscar Chopin when she was twenty and moved to her husband's home in Louisiana. In the ten years that she resided in Louisiana she was aware of and receptive to Creole, Cajun, black, and Indian cultures, and when she later came to write fiction, she would incorporate people from these cultures in her work, especially her short stories. When her husband died as a young man, Kate Chopin returned to St. Louis with her six children. Financially secure, she began writing fiction as best she could while rearing her children. She is a good example of an American realist, someone trying to represent life the way it actually is lived, and she acknowledged her debt to the contemporary French naturalists Emile Zola and Guy de Maupassant

Does the psychological ambivalence dramatized in "The Story of an Hour" ring true or uncomfortably real when we consider honestly our own feelings?

THE STORY OF AN HOUR

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death.

It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.

She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.

There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.

She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.

There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.

She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.

She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.

There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.

Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will – as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been.

When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under her breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.

She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial.

She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.

There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.

And yet she had loved him – sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!

"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.

Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhole, imploring for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg, open the door – you will make yourself ill. What are you doing Louise? For heaven's sake open the door."

"Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.

Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.

She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.

Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.

But Richards was too late.

When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease – of joy that kills.

Sample interpretation

The story is a unit of literary fiction. The author uses different expressive means and stylistic devices to show the reader the idea of the story, such as epithets, metaphor, similar, oxymoron, irony, hyperbola, understatement, etc.

The major character of this story is Mrs. Mallard. This is a complex character, round, dynamical. She is the protagonist. Her surname is rather significant. "Mallard" - a wild duck - expresses here her veiled intention to get free, her eagerness for realization of herself. From her interaction with the minor characters it occurs that though her relatives and friends consider her to be weak and powerless, she is rather independent, strong, even self-dependent. The most important action of the protagonist is her inner search, her choice in using sudden circumstances, her impulse to begin a new life.

The minor characters are: Mrs. Mallard's sister Josephine, Mr. Mallard's friend Richard, Mr. Mallard.

Josephine and Richard are shown as kind, careful persons, who take care about Mrs. Mallard, about her health. But at the same time they don't care about her inner world, they don't interpret her as a person.

Mr. Mallard appears to be a kind, tender man, but at the same time a man "with powerful will bending her".

The main conflict in the story is the inner conflict of Mrs. Mallard, her trying to understand herself, her life, her relationship with the husband, other people, world and nature.

The plot is organized in chronological arrangement. In the exposition the author introduces the characters and the circumstances to the reader. She shows us Mrs. Mallard, Richard, Josephine. The development of events begins since Mrs. Mallard gets to know about the tragedy happened to her husband. Later, sitting in her room and thinking over all her life and the sudden circumstances, she finds out that this is her opportunity to begin a new life, her saving from the routine of family life. And here comes the climax.

Theoretically, after the climax, the falling action usually comes. I think in this story it is expressed by the following: have made up her mind and getting out of the room, she by this entered into her new life, free and independent. And so, the appearance of her pseudo-dead husband symbolizes the end of her new life. So I think the ending - the death of Mrs. Mallard because of heart disease - is rather logical; it embodies the end of her new life, which has just begun.

The narration in the story is effected from the third person. The narrator does not express his plain attitude towards the characters. The author uses various expressive means and stylistic devices to give the reader the opportunity to make up his own point of view, to form own personal attitude. The setting also had a great value and helps the reader to understand the idea of the author. The time plays a significant role, because the action is taking place during the definite period of time - one hour. The place of action also gives us much information. The main conflict of the story is taking place while the main character is sitting near the window and staring out of it. Describing her feelings and impression, the author tries to show the reader that Mrs. Mallard is rather sensitive person, intelligent, susceptive, able to be influenced by the blossoming nature, the wind of changes, of new life.

The end of the story is rather significant by containing situational irony. The appearance of reviving husband leads to the death of his wife. And nobody understands her: everyone considers her death as a result of "joy that kills", and no one can guess the real cause.

The author uses some symbols in the story. Thus, the describing of Mr. Mallard's hands - kind, tender - can be understood in two ways. From one side, the hands symbolize the care Mr. Mallard take towards his wife; but from the other side, these hands can symbolize the chains, bondage, something that keep and hold and does not allow to feel freely ("powerful will bending her").

Another symbol of the story is the describing of nature. Nature always was a symbol of life. The spring, the blossom of nature is a symbol of a new life, a symbol of changes.

And very important symbols are: Mrs. Mallard's leaving the room and appearance of Mr. Mallard.

Leaving the room, Mrs. Mallard thereby makes the first steps towards her new life. She leaves all cares and troubles in this room and fearlessly comes into her new life, free and independent (so the fact of her leaving the room symbolizes the beginning of her new life). But having just begun, her new life is to be interrupted by the appearance of her husband - the major, principle factor of existence of her former life. So the appearance of her husband is a symbol of the end of Mrs. Mallard's new free life, a symbol of broken hopes and dreams.

It is likely that if Mrs. Mallard wasn't afflicted with any heart trouble and if she didn't die, she would do begin a new, suitable to her, life.

Supplement 8

TEXTS FOR GUIDED ANALYSIS

THE LIGHT THAT FAILED (1890)

Rudyard Kipling (1865 –1936)

Rudyard Kipling is a well-known English poet, novelist and short-story writer. Kipling’s literary heritage is marked by crude imperialist tendencies – the glorification of the British empire, the assertion of the superiority of the white colonizer over the native of Asia and Africa, the cult of strength and courage. But Kipling is by no means all of a piece. Although reactionary in many of his political opinions, he was nevertheless a piercing critic of the society in which he lived. Everyone knows and loves “The Jungle Book” and “Just So Stories” written for children with a deep understanding and subtle humour. He often feels for the failures, the underdogs, the men whom life has beaten. It is when he speaks of any true sorrow or misfortune that he becomes a really penetrative writer. The present selection is illustrative of all this. “The Light that Failed” is Kipling’s first novel. It belongs to the early period in his literary career. The novel centers round the tragic fate of the painter Dick Helder. A gifted artist, he goes blind in the prime of life. When Kipling portrays Dick at the crucial moment of his life, when he speaks of the terrible loneliness

Dick faces, he does it with profound intuition and understanding.

Chapter X

Dick sought an oculist, – the best in London. He was certain that the local practitioner did not know anything about his trade, and more certain that Maisie would laugh at him if he were forced to wear spectacles. “I’ve neglected the warnings of my lord the stomach too long. Hence these spots before the eyes, Binkie. I can see as well as I ever could”.

As he entered the dark hall that led to the consulting-room a man cannoned against him. Dick saw the face as it hurried out into the street. “That’s the writer-type. He has the same modelling of the forehead as Torp. He looks very sick. Probably heard something he didn’t like.”

Even as he thought, a great fear came upon Dick, a fear that made him hold his breath as he walked into the oculist’s waiting-room, with the heavy furniture, the dark-green paper, and the sober-hued prints on the wall. He recognised a reproduction of one of his own sketches.

Many people were waiting their turn before him. His eye was caught by a flaming red-and-gold Christmas-carol book (a book of Christmas hymns (carols)). Little children came to that eye-doctor, and they needed large-type amusement.

“That’s idolatrous bad Art,” he said, drawing the book towards himself “From the anatomy of the angels, it has been made in Germany.” He opened it mechanically, and there leaped to his eyes a verse printed in red ink –

The next good joy that Mary had,

It was the joy of three,

To see her good Son Jesus Christ

Making the blind to see:

Makings the blind to see, good Lord,

And happy may we be.

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost

To all eternity!

Dick read and re-read the verse till his turn came, and the doctor was bending above him seated in an arm-chair. The blaze of a gas-microscope in his eyes made him wince. The doctor’s hand touched the scar of the sword-cut on Dick’s head, and Dick explained briefly how he had come by it. When the flame was removed, Dick saw the doctor’s face, and the fear came upon him again. The doctor wrapped himself in a mist of words. Dick caught allusions to “scar”, “frontal bone”, “optic nerve”, “extreme caution”, and the “avoidance of mental anxiety.”

“Verdict?” he said faintly. “My business is painting, and I daren’t waste time. What do you make of it?” Again the whirl of words, but this time they conveyed a meaning. “Can you give me anything to drink?” Many sentences were pronounced in that darkened room, and the prisoners often needed cheering. Dick found a glass of liqueur brandy in his hand.

“As far as I can gather,” he said, coughing above the spirit, “you call it decay of the optic nerve, or something, and therefore hopeless. What is my time-limit, avoiding all strain and worry?” “Perhaps one year.” “My God! And if I don’t take care of myself?” “I really could not say. One cannot ascertain the exact amount of injury inflicted by the sword-cut. The scar is an old one, and – exposure to the strong light of the desert, did you say? – with excessive application to fine work? I really could not say.” “I beg your pardon, but it has come without any warning. If you will let me, I’ll sit here for a minute, and then I’ll go. You have been very good in telling me the truth. Without any warning; without any warning. Thanks.”

Dick went into the street, and was rapturously received by Binkie. “We’ve got it very badly, little dog! Just as badly as we can get it. We’ll go to the Park to think it out.”

They headed for a certain tree that Dick knew well, and they sat down to think, because his legs were trembling under him and there was cold fear at the pit of his stomach. “How could it have come without any warning? It’s as sudden as being shot. It’s the living death, Binkie. We’re to be shut up in the dark in one year if we’re careful, and we shan’t see anybody, and we shall never have anything we want, not though we live to be a hundred.” Binkie wagged his tail joyously. “Binkie, we must think. Let’s see how it feels to be blind.” Dick shut his eyes, and flaming commas and Catherine-wheels floated inside the lids. Yet when he looked across the Park the scope of his vision was not contracted. He could see perfectly, until a procession of slow-wheeling fireworks defiled across his eyeballs. “Little doglums, we aren’t at all well. Let’s go home. If only Torp were back, now!”

Assignment I

I. Read the preface and get ready to speak on the author’s biography.

II. Study the following vocabulary notes and comments. Fetch the most important points for your general analysis.

1. “I’ve neglected the warning of my lord the stomach too long.”

The seemingly jocular reference to the stomach shows Dick’s desire to cheer himself up, his attempt at putting down his eye trouble to indigestion, at fighting his growing fear.

2. “Dick saw the face as it hurried out into the street.”

An instance of metonymy can be observed in this sentence. Speaking of the face that hurried out into the street Kipling means the man whose face really impressed Dick. The use of metonymy here draws attention to the expression of the man’s face, the expression that caught Dick’s eye and gave rise to a new wave of fear.

3. “Many people were waiting their turn before him.”

Note the transitive use of the verb “to wait”. This is rather a rare case. Commonly the verb “to wait” is used intransitively with the preposition “for”.

4. “That’s idolatrous bad Art,” he said, drawing the book towards himself. “From the anatomy of the angels, it has been made in Germany”.

The blinding and the illustrations of the Christmas-carol book revealed bad taste and God-worship. The manner of painting the bodies of the angels (sentimental and photographic) was of the German school.

5. “The doctor wrapped himself in a mist of words. Again the whirl of words...”

In these sentences the novelist uses one of the most expressive tropes – a metaphor. It consists in the use of a word or a phrase to describe an object with which it is not commonly associated. This figurative use of a word or a phrase is based on some exciting or supposed resemblance. The unusual application of a name or a descriptive

term fixes the attention on those characteristics of the object described that are meant to be accentuated. The metaphor can be expressed by any part of speech. In the present selection one comes across the metaphorical use of verbs:

“... a man cannoned against him.”

“The doctor wrapped himself in a mist of words.”

And nouns:

“Again the whirl of words...”

“... a mist of words.”

6. “frontal bone”, “optic nerve”, “mental anxiety”.

The introduction of medical terms into the narration creates the atmosphere of a doctor’s consulting-room.

7. “Many sentences were pronounced in that darkened room, and the prisoners often needed cheering.”

Another instance of the metaphorical use of nouns could be observed here (sentence, prisoner). These words are commonly associated with the court of justice, not with the doctor’s consulting-room. Their use in this context stresses the hopelessness of Dick’s position. The word “verdict” used above plays the same role.

8. “One cannot ascertain the exact amount of injury inflicted by the sword-cut”.

Note a vast difference in the vocabulary used by the doctor and by Dick. A careful selection of dry-unemotional terms characterizes all the doctor’s remarks. Professional coolness and indifference of a successful practitioner are felt beyond his measured speech. It is all the more evident, as contrasted with Dick’s informal emotional utterances: “Verdict?” “What do you make of it?”, etc.

9. “Dick went into the street, and was rapturously received by Binkie. Binkie wagged his tail joyously.”

The enthusiastic way in which the dog met his master only accentuates Dick’s loneliness. The only living being that was with him at the moment was his dog.

10. “We’ve got it very badly, little dog!” “We’re to be shut up…”

The use of the pronoun “we” is of interest here. Kipling subtly reflected Dick’s attempt to share his tragedy with someone if only a dog.

11. “How could it have come without any warning?”

“Could +Perfect Infinitive” expresses Dick’s incredulity, his refusal to believe in due coming blindness. Note that “could” is used to express doubt, incredulity only in interrogative and negative sentences.

12. “We’re to be shut in the dark... and we shan’t see anybody, and we shall never have anything we want…”

We observe here the arrangement of similarly built clauses (parallel constructions) called climax. It means that each clause (phrase or sentence) is more significant in meaning than the previous one. The stylistic value of this figure of speech is emphasis. And indeed the emotional tone of this sentence where each clause surpasses the previous one in intensity of expression is suggestive of great nervous strain.

Assignment II

I. Speak on the text stating whether it presents an account of events, a description, a dialogue or portraiture. If you find several components, name all of them.

II. Comment on the tone of the message (lyrical, dramatic, pathetic, ironical).

III. Characterize each part of the excerpt.

1. Comment on the title.

2. Note the incongruity between the tragic verdict pronounced on Dick by the oculist and the trifling character of his worries about Maisie’s displeasure at his wearing spectacles.

3. Does it stress the finality, the tragedy of his position?

IV. Comment on the emotional gamut of the following: “I can see as well as I ever could”. What effect does the author achieve by making Dick affirm the very opposite of what he feared might be the truth?

1. Denote the collision with another patient to the growing tension?

2. What figure of speech helps the author to achieve it?

V. Comment on the stylistic value of the reiteration of the word “fear” throughout the extract. Could we call it the author’s message? Pick out all the sentences in which it occurs.

VI. List all the artistic devices that help the author create an atmosphere of impending tragedy.

1. Speak about Dick. How did he behave at the crucial moment of his life when all his moral powers were put to test?

2. Did he give way to his feelings or did he retain in his self-control and dignity despite the terrible shock?

VII. Note the ways of moulding a portrait Kipling used.

a) did he resort to direct characterization?

b) how do Dick’s conduct and speech characterize his nature?

c) what is the role of the little dog Binkie in the scene discussed?

d) why did Dick use the pronoun “we” while speaking to the dog?

e) did it help him fight the coming loneliness of the blind?

VIII. Comment on the syntax of the passage beginning with the words “How could it have come without any warning?” What figures of speech are used there? Account for their use.

IX. Give a summary of your analysis (mentioning the author’s style) and your views are of great value.

DANDELION WINE (1957)

Ray Bradbury (born 1920)

Ray Bradbury (born in Illinois in 1920) began to publish in pulp magazines, but after 1945 became known for serious stories. These include works of both fantasy and science fiction, now macabre, now humorous, collected in volumes including “Dark Carnival” (1947), “The Martian Chronicles” (1950) about Mars a century hence. Then came satirical sketches “The Golden Apples of the Sun” (1953) and some others. His novels include “Fahrenheit 451” (1953), presenting a future totalitarian state in which super-television presents all that people are to think or know, and the ownership of books is cause for the state to burn both volumes and owners. He has written many plays and film scripts, including “Moby Dick”(1954). His poems appear in “When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed” (1973) and “Complete Poems”(1982). “The Toynbee Convector” (1988) and some others of many collections of short stories.

“Dandelion Wine” (1957) and “Something Wicked This Way Comes” (1962) are about boyhood experiences in the Midwest. Both are of lyrico-philosophic Bradbury’s best brand. His Douglas in “Dandelion Wine” bears some autobiographical features of the author. The narration is of extreme emotional tension and poetic approach. The main theme of the novel is the inevitable rush of time and the struggle against this inevitability.

At noon the motorman stopped his car in the middle of the block and leaned out. “Hey!” And Douglas and Charlie and Tom and all the boys and girls on the block saw the gray glove waving and dropped from trees and left skip ropes in white snakes on lawns, to run and sit in the green plush seats, and there was no charge. Mr. Tridden, the conductor, kept his glove over the mouth of the money box as he moved the trolley on down the shady block, calling.

“Hey!” said Charlie. “Where we going?”

“Last ride,” said Mr. Tridden, eyes on the high electric wire ahead. “No more trolley*. Bus starts to run tomorrow. Going to retire me with a pension, they are. So – a free ride for everyone! Watch out!”

He ricocheted the brass handle, the trolley groaned and swung round an endless green curve, and all the time in the world held still, as if only the children and Mr. Tridden and his miraculous machine were riding an endless river, away. [...]

And then they were at the end of the line; the silver tracks, abandoned for eighteen years, ran on into rolling country*. In 1910 people took the trolley out to Chessman’s Park with vast picnic hampers. The track, never ripped up*, still lay rusting among the hills.

“Here’s where we turn around,” said Charlie.

“Here’s where you’re wrong!” Mr. Tridden snapped the emergency generator switch. “Now!”

The trolley, with a bump and a sailing glide, swept past the city limits, turned off the street, and swooped* downhill through intervals of odorous sunlight and vast acreages of shadow that smelled of toadstools. Here and there creek waters flushed* the tracks and filtered through trees like green glass. They slid whispering on meadows washed with wild sunflowers past abandoned way stations empty of all save transfer-punched confetti* to follow a forest stream into a summer country, while Douglas talked.

“Why, just the smell of a tro1Iey, that’s different. I been on Chicago buses; they smell funny.”

“Trolleys are too slow,» said Mr. Tridden. «Going to put busses on. Busses for people and busses for school.”

The trolley whined to a stop. From overhead Mr. Tridden reached down huge picnic hampers. Yelling, the children helped him carry the baskets out by a creek that emptied into a silent lake where an ancient bandstand stood crumbling into termite dust. […]

Bing! went the soft bell under Mr. Tridden’s foot and they soared back over sun-abandoned, withered flower meadows, through the woods, towards a town that seemed to crush the sides of the trolley with bricks and asphalt and wood when Mr. Tridden stopped to let the children out in shady streets. Charlie and Douglas were the last to stand near the opened tongue of the trolley, the folding step, breathing electricity, watching Mr. Tridden’s gloves on the brass controls. Douglas ran his fingers on the green creek moss, looked at the silver, the brass, the wine colour of the ceiling.

“Well... So long again, Mr. Tridden.” “Good-by, boys.” “See you around, Mr. Tridden.” “See you around.”

There was a soft sigh of air; the door collapsed gently shut, tucking up its corrugated tongue. The trolley sailed slowly down the late afternoon, brighter than the sun, all tangerine, all flashing gold and lemon, turned a far corner, wheeling, and vanished, gone away.

“School buses!” Charlie walked to the curb. “Won’t even give us a chance to be late to school. Come get you at your front door. Never be late again in all our lives. Think of that nightmare, Doug, just think it all over.”

But Douglas, standing on the lawn, was seeing how it would be tomorrow, when the men would pour hot tar over the silver tracks so you would never know a trolley had ever run this way. He knew it would take as many years as he could think of now to forget the tracks, no matter how deeply buried. Some morning in autumn, spring, or winter he knew he’d wake and if he didn’t go near the window, if he just lay deep and snug and warm on his bed, he would hear it, faint and far away. And around the bend of the morning street, up the avenue, between the even rows of sycamore*, elm and maple, in the quietness before the start of living, past his house he would hear the familiar sounds. Like the ticking of a clock, the rumble of a dozen metal barrels rolling, the hum of a single immense dragonfly at dawn. Like a merry-go-round, like a small electrical storm, the color of blue lightning coming, here, and. gone. The trolley’s chime! The hiss like a soda fountain spigot* as it let down and took up its step, and the starting of the dream again, as on it sailed along its way, traveling a hidden and buried track to some hidden and buried destination.

“Kick-the-can* after supper?” asked Charlie.

“Sure,” said Douglas. “Kick-the-can.”

Vocabulary Notes:

trolley – первично значение слова «тележка», затем оно приобрело значение дуги, передающей ток мотору трамвая или троллейбуса; а также название экипажа, имеющего такую дугу. Здесь имеется ввиду трамвай (старинного образца)

rolling country – слегка холмистая местность

ripped up – разобраны

swoop – опускаться (стремительно и плавно)

flush – заливать

transfer-punched confetti – кружочки бумаги, остающиеся после пробивания билетов, похожие на конфетти

corrugated – ребристый

tongue – образное обозначение выдвижной лесенки-подножки

(the folding step)

spigot – затычка, кран; зд. ручка для наливания газированной воды из баллона

kick-the-can – игра (очевидно, мальчики гоняют жестянку вместо мяча)

ASSIGNMENT

I. Read the preface and be ready to speak on the biography of the author.

1. Comment on the title of the text.

2. State the theme and idea of the excerpt.

II. Characterize the syntax as narrative structure of the excerpt (mind types of sentences and their grammatical structure).

III. Depict lexical and grammatical features of the excerpt as stylistic devices.

a) features of literary stratum in colour and sound gamut;

b) colloquial stratum in direct speech and grammar forms;

c) synonymous variety of neutral stratum of the author’s vocabulary;

d) direct-indirect speech for expressing open and inner thoughts.

IV. Prove the great variety of epithets to be the most attractive stylistic feature in creating the atmosphere of lyric and dramatic tension in the excerpt:

a) choose epithets,

b) give examples of metonymical and metaphorical epithets.

V. Give examples of similes and comparisons in the excerpt. Comment on their stylistic value.

VI. Find out examples of metaphor in the text. How do they differ from comparisons in structure.

VII. State the composition of the excerpt in form and meaning:

1. prove the figurative characteristic of the protagonist;

2. comment on mentions of the time notion;

3. say if there is a denouement in the excerpt;

4. comment on the last two-line dialogue;

5. state autobiographical features of the narration; say if it is a first-person narration.

VIII. Summarize your analysis speaking about the author and your opinion of the excerpt.

Texts for independent analysis

CHRISTMAS CAROLS

from CIDER WITH ROSIE by Laurie Lee

The week before Christmas, when the snow seemed to lie thickest, was the moment for carol-singing; and when I think back to those nights it is to the crunch of snow and to the lights of the lanterns on it. Carol-singing in my village was a special tithe for the boys, the girls had little to do with it. Like hay-making, blackberrying, stone-clearing and wishing-people-a- happy-Easter, it was one of our seasonal perks.

By instinct we knew just when to begin it; a day too soon and we should have been unwelcome, a day too late and we should have received lean looks from people whose bounty was already exhausted. When the true moment came, exactly balanced, we recognised it and were ready.

So as soon as the wood had been stacked in the oven to dry for the morning fire, we put on our scarves and went out through the streets calling loudly between our hands, till the various boys who knew the signal ran out from their houses to join us.

One by one they came stumbling over the snow, swinging their lanterns around their heads, shouting and coughing horribly.

'Coming carol-barking then?'

We were the Church Choir, so no answer was necessary. For a year we had praised the Lord, out of key, and as a reward for this service - on top of the Outing - we now had the right to visit all the big houses, to sing our carols and collect our tribute.

Eight of us set out that night. There was Sixpence the Tanner, who had never sung in his life (he just worked his mouth in church); The brothers Horace and Boney, who were always fighting everybody and always getting the worst of it; Clergy Green, the preaching maniac; Walt the bully, and my two brothers. As we went down the lane, other boys, from other villages, were already about the hills, bawling 'Kingwensluch', and shouting through keyholes 'Knock on the knocker! Ring at the Bell! Give us a penny for singing so well!' They weren't an approved charity as we were, the Choir; but competition was in the air.

Our first call as usual was the house of the Squire, and we trouped nervously down his drive.

A maid bore the tidings of our arrival away into the echoing distances of the house. The door was left ajar and we were bidden to begin. We brought no music, the carols were in our heads. 'Let's give 'em 'Wild Shepherds', said Jack. We began in confusion, plunging into a wreckage of keys, of different words and tempos; but we gathered our strength; he who sand loudest took the rest of us with him, and the carol took shape if not sweetness.

Suddenly, on the stairs, we saw the old Squire himself standing and listening with his head on one side.

He didn't move until we'd finished; then slowly he tottered towards us, dropped two coins in our box with a trembling hand, scratched his name in the book we carried, gave us each a long look with his moist blind eyes, then turned away in silence.

As though released from a spell, we took a few sedate steps, then broke into a run for the gate. We didn't stop till we were out of the grounds. Impatient, at least, to discover the extent of his bounty, we squatted by the cowsheds, held our lanterns over the book, and saw that he'd written 'Two Shillings'. This was quite a good start. No one of any worth in the district would dare to give us less than the Squire.

MY FAMILY AND OTHER ANIMALS

By Gerald Durrel

We all travelled light, taking with us only what we considered to be the bare essentials of life. When we opened our luggage for Customs inspection, the contents of our bags were a fair indication of character and interests. Thus Margo's luggage contained a multitude of diaphanous garments, three books on slimming, and a regiment of small bottles each containing some elixir guaranteed to cure acne. Leslie's cases held a couple of roll-top pullovers and a pair of trousers which were wrapped around two revolvers, an air-pistol, a book called Be Your Own Gunsmith, and a large bottle of oil that leaked. Larry was accompanied by two trunks of books and a brief case containing his clothes. Mother's luggage was sensibly divided between clothes and various volumes on cooking and gardening. I travelled with only those items that I thought necessary to relieve the tedium of a long journey: four books on natural history, a butterfly net, a dog, and a jam jar full of caterpillars all in imminent danger of turning into chrysalids. Thus, by our standards, fully equipped, we left the clammy shores of England.

France rain-washed and sorrowful, Switzerland like a Christmas cake, Italy exuberant, noisy and smelly, were passed leaving only confused memories.

The tiny ship throbbed away from the heel of Italy out into the twilit sea, and as we slept in our stuffy cabins, somewhere in that tract of moon-polished water we passed the invisible dividing-line and entered the bright looking-glass world of Greece. Slowly this sense of change seeped down to us, and so, at dawn, we awoke restless and went on deck.

The sea lifted smooth blue muscles of wave as it stirred in the dawn light, and the foam of our wake spread gently behind us like a white peacock's tail, glinting with bubbles. The sky was pale and stained with yellow on the Eastern horizon.

Ahead lay a chocolate-brown smudge of land, huddled in mist, with a frill of foam at its base. This was Corfu and we strained our eyes to make out the exact shapes of the mountains, to discover valleys, peaks, ravines, and beaches, but it remained a silhouette. Then suddenly the sun shifted over the horizon, and the sky turned the smooth enamelled blue of a jay's eye. The endless, meticulous curves of the sea flamed for an instant and then changed to deep royal purple flecked with green. The mist lifted in quick, lithe ribbons, and before us lay the island, the mountains as though sleeping beneath a crumpled blanket of brown, the folds stained with the green of olive-groves. Along the shore curved beaches as white as tusks among tottering cities of brilliant gold, red, and white rocks. Rounding the cape, we left the mountains, and the island sloped gently down, blurred with the silver and green iridescence of olives, with here and there an admonishing finger of black cypress against the sky. The shallow sea in the bays was butterfly blue, and even above the sound of the ship's engine we could here, faintly ringing from the shore like a chorus of tiny voices, the shrill, triumphant cries of the cicadas.

A CHRISTMAS MEMORY

by Truman Capote

Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town. A great black stove is its main feature; but there is also a big round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front of it. Just today the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar.

A woman with shorn white hair is standing at the kitchen window. She is wearing tennis shoes and a shapeless gray sweater over a summery calico dress. She is small and sprightly, like a bantam hen; but, due to a long youthful illness, her shoulders are pitifully hunched. Her face is remarkable–not unlike Lincoln's, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind; but it is delicate too, finely boned, and her eyes are sherry-colored and timid. "Oh my," she exclaims, her breath smoking the windowpane, "it's fruitcake weather!"

The person to whom she is speaking is myself. I am seven; she is sixty-something, We are cousins, very distant ones, and we have lived together–well, as long as I can remember. Other people inhabit the house, relatives; and though they have power over us, and frequently make us cry, we are not, on the whole, too much aware of them. We are each other's best friend. She calls me Buddy, in memory of a boy who was formerly her best friend. The other Buddy died in the 1880's, when she was still a child. She is still a child.

"I knew it before I got out of bed," she says, turning away from the window with a purposeful excitement in her eyes. "The courthouse bell sounded so cold and clear. And there were no birds singing; they've gone to warmer country, yes indeed. Oh, Buddy, stop stuffing biscuit and fetch our buggy. Help me find my hat. We've thirty cakes to bake."

It's always the same: a morning arrives in November, and my friend, as though officially inaugurating the Christmas time of year that exhilarates her imagination and fuels the blaze of her heart, announces: "It's fruitcake weather! Fetch our buggy. Help me find my hat."

The hat is found, a straw cartwheel corsaged with velvet roses out-of-doors has faded: it once belonged to a more fashionable relative. Together, we guide our buggy, a dilapidated baby carriage, out to the garden and into a grove of pecan trees. The buggy is mine; that is, it was bought for me when I was born. It is made of wicker, rather unraveled, and the wheels wobble like a drunkard's legs. But it is a faithful object; springtimes, we take it to the woods and fill it with flowers, herbs, wild fern for our porch pots; in the summer, we pile it with picnic paraphernalia and sugar-cane fishing poles and roll it down to the edge of a creek; it has its winter uses, too: as a truck for hauling firewood from the yard to the kitchen, as a warm bed for Queenie, our tough little orange and white rat terrier who has survived distemper and two rattlesnake bites. Queenie is trotting beside it now.

Three hours later we are back in the kitchen hulling a heaping buggyload of windfall pecans. Our backs hurt from gathering them: how hard they were to find (the main crop having been shaken off the trees and sold by the orchard's owners, who are not us) among the concealing leaves, the frosted, deceiving grass. Caarackle! A cheery crunch, scraps of miniature thunder sound as the shells collapse and the golden mound of sweet oily ivory meat mounts in the milk-glass bowl. Queenie begs to taste, and now and again my friend sneaks her a mite, though insisting we deprive ourselves. "We mustn't, Buddy. If we start, we won't stop. And there's scarcely enough as there is. For thirty cakes." The kitchen is growing dark. Dusk turns the window into a mirror: our reflections mingle with the rising moon as we work by the fireside in the firelight. At last, when the moon is quite high, we toss the final hull into the fire and, with joined sighs, watch it catch flame. The buggy is empty, the bowl is brimful.

From THE AMERICAN TRAGEDY

By Theodore DREISER

Dusk–of a summer night.

And the tall walls of the commercial heart of an American city of perhaps 400,000 inhabitants–such walls as in time may linger as a mere fable.

And up the broad street, now comparatively hushed, a little band of six,–a man of about fifty, short, stout, with bushy hair protruding from under a round black felt hat, a most unimportant-looking person, who carried a small portable organ such as is customarily used by street preachers and singers. And with him a woman perhaps five years his junior, taller, not so broad, but solid of frame and vigorous, very plain in face and dress, and yet not homely, leading with one hand a small boy of seven and in the other carrying a Bible and several hymn books. With these three, but walking independently behind, was a girl of fifteen, a boy of twelve and another girl of nine, all following obediently, but not too enthusiastically, in the wake of the others.

It was hot, yet with a sweet languor about it all.

Crossing at right angles the great thoroughfare on which they walked, was a second canyon-like way, threaded by throngs and vehicles and various lines of cars which clanged their bells and made such progress as they might amid swiftly moving streams of traffic. Yet the little group seemed unconscious of anything save a set purpose to make its way between the contending lines of traffic and pedestrians which flowed by them.

Having reached an intersection this side of the second principal thoroughfare –really just an alley between two tall structures–now quite bare of life of any kind, the man put down the organ, which the woman immediately opened, setting up a music rack upon which she placed a wide flat hymn book. Then handing the Bible to the man, she fell back in line with him, while the twelve-year-old boy put down a small camp-stool in front of the organ. The man – the father, as he chanced to be – looked about him with seeming wide-eyed assurance, and announced, without appearing to care whether he had any auditors or not:

“We will first sing a hymn of praise, so that any who may wish to acknowledge the Lord may join us. Will you oblige, Hester?”

At this the eldest girl, who until now had attempted to appear as unconscious and unaffected as possible, bestowed her rather slim and as yet undeveloped figure upon the camp chair and turned the leaves of the hymn book, pumping the organ while her mother observed:

“I should think it might be nice to sing twenty-seven tonight – ‘How Sweet the Balm of Jesus’ Love.’”

By this time various homeward-bound individuals of diverse grades and walks of life, noticing the small group disposing itself in this fashion, hesitated for a moment to eye them askance or paused to ascertain the character of their work. This hesitancy, construed by the man apparently to constitute attention, however mobile, was seized upon by him and he began addressing them as though they were specifically here to hear him.

“Let us all sing twenty-seven, then – ‘How Sweet the Balm of Jesus’ Love.’”

At this the young girl began to interpret the melody upon the organ, emitting a thin though correct strain, at the same time joining her rather high soprano with that of her mother, together with the rather dubious baritone of the father. The other children piped weakly along, the boy and girl having taken hymn books from the small pile stacked upon the organ. As they sang, this nondescript and indifferent street audience gazed, held by the peculiarity of such an unimportant-looking family publicly raising its collective voice against the vast skepticism and apathy of life. Some were interested or moved sympathetically by the rather tame and inadequate figure of the girl at the organ, others by the impractical and materially inefficient texture of the father, whose weak blue eyes and rather flabby but poorly-clothed figure bespoke more of failure than anything else. Of the group the mother alone stood out as having that force and determination which, however blind or erroneous, makes for self-preservation, if not success in life. She, more than any of the others, stood up with an ignorant, yet somehow respectable air of conviction. If you had watched her, her hymn book dropped to her side, her glance directed straight before her into space, you would have said: “Well, here is one who, whatever her defects, probably does what she believes as nearly as possible.” A kind of hard, fighting faith in the wisdom and mercy of that definite overruling and watchful power which she proclaimed, was written in her every feature and gesture.

MR KNOW-ALL

By W.S. Maugham

I was prepared to dislike Max Kelada even before I knew him. The war had just finished and the passenger traffic in the oceangoing liners was heavy. Accommodation was very hard to get and you had to put up with whatever the agents chose to offer you. You could not hope for a cabin to yourself and I was thankful to be given one in which there were only two berths. But when I was told the name of my companion my heart sank. It suggested closed portholes and the night air rigidly excluded. It was bad enough to share a cabin for fourteen days with anyone (I was going from San Francisco to Yokohama), but I should have looked upon it with less dismay if my fellow passenger's name had been Smith or Brown.

When I went on board I found Mr Kelada's luggage already below. I did not like the look of it; there were too many labels on the suit-cases, and the wardrobe trunk was too big. He had unpacked his toilet things, and I observed that he was a patron of the excellent Monsieur Goty; for I saw on the washing-stand his scent, his hair-wash and his brilliantine. Mr Kelada's brushes, ebony with his monogram in gold, would have been all the better for a scrub. I did not at all like Mr Kelada. I made my way into the smoking-room. I called for a pack of cards and began to play patience. I had scarcely started before a man came up to me and asked me if he was right in thinking my name was so and so.

"I am Mr Kelada," he added, with a smile that showed a row of flashing teeth, and sat down.

"Oh, yes, we're sharing a cabin, I think."

"Bit of luck, I call it. You never know who you're going to be put in with. I was jolly glad when I heard you were English. I'm all for us English sticking together when we're abroad, if you understand what I mean."

I blinked.

"Are you English?" I asked, perhaps tactlessly.

"Rather. You don't think I look like an American, do you? British to the backbone, that's what I am."

To prove it, Mr Kelada took out of his pocket a passport and airily waved it under my nose.

King George has many strange subjects. Mr Kelada was short and of a sturdy build, clean-shaven and dark-skinned, with a fleshy hooked nose and very large, lustrous and liquid eyes. His long black hair was sleek and curly. He spoke with a fluency in which there was nothing English and his gestures were exuberant. I felt pretty sure that a closer inspection of that British passport would have betrayed the fact that Mr Kelada was born under a bluer sky than is generally seen in England.

Mr Kelada was chatty. He talked of New York and of San Francisco. He discussed plays, pictures, and politics. He was patriotic. The Union Jack is an impressive piece of drapery, but when it is flourished by a gentleman from Alexandria or Beirut, I cannot but feel that it loses somewhat in dignity. Mr Kelada was familiar. I do not wish to put on airs, but I cannot help feeling that it is seemly in a total stranger to put "mister" before my name when he addresses me. Mr Kelada, doubtless to set me at my ease, used no such formality. I did not like Mr Kelada. I had put aside the cards when he sat down, but now, thinking that for this first occasion our conversation had lasted long enough, I went on with my game.

"The three on the four," said Mr Kelada.

There is nothing more exasperating when you are playing patience than to be told where to put the card you have turned up before you have had a chance to look for yourself.

"It's coming out, it's coming out," he cried. "The ten on the knave."

With rage and hatred in my heart I finished.

Then he seized the pack.

"Do you like card tricks? "

"No, I hate card tricks," I answered.

"Well, I'll just show you this one."

He showed me three. Then I said I would go down to the dining-room and get my seat at table.

"Oh, that's all right," he said. "I've already taken a seat for you. I thought that as we were in the same state-room we might just as well sit at the same table."

I did not like Mr Kelada.

I not only shared a cabin with him and ate three meals a day at the same table, but I could not walk round the deck without his joining me. It was impossible to snub him. It never occurred to him that he was not wanted. He was certain that you were as glad to see him as he was to see you. In your own house you might have kicked him downstairs and slammed the door in his face without the suspicion dawning on him that he was not a welcome visitor. He was a good mixer, and in three days knew everyone onboard. He ran everything. He managed the sweeps, conducted the auctions, collected money for prizes at the sports, got up quoit and golf matches, organized the concert and arranged the fancy-dress ball. He was everywhere and always. He was certainly the best hated man in the ship. We called him Mr Know-All, even to his face. He took it as a compliment. But it was at mealtimes that he was most intolerable. For the better part of an hour then he had us at his mercy. He was hearty, jovial, loquacious and argumentative. He knew everything better than anybody else, and it was an affront to his overweening vanity that you should disagree with him. He would not drop a subject, however unimportant, till he had brought you round to his way of thinking. The possibility that he could be mistaken never occurred to him. He was the chap who knew.

THE DIAMOND AS BIG AS THE RITZ

by F.S. Fitzgerald

The Montana sunset lay between two mountains like a gigantic bruise from which dark arteries spread themselves over a poisoned sky. An immense distance under the sky crouched the village of Fish, minute, dismal, and forgotten. There were twelve men, so it was said, in the village of Fish, twelve sombre and inexplicable souls who sucked a lean milk from the almost literally bare rock upon which a mysterious populatory force had begotten them. They had become a race apart, these twelve men of Fish, like some species developed by an early whim of nature, which on second thought had abandoned them to struggle and extermination.

Out of the blue-black bruise in the distance crept a long line of moving lights upon the desolation of the land, and the twelve men of Fish gathered like ghosts at the shanty depot to watch the passing of the seven o’clock train, the Transcontinental Express from Chicago. Six times or so a year the Transcontinental Express, through some inconceivable jurisdiction, stopped at the village of Fish, and when this occurred a figure or so would disembark, mount into a buggy that always appeared from out of the dusk, and drive off toward the bruised sunset. The observation of this pointless and preposterous phenomenon had become a sort of cult among the men of Fish. To observe, that was all; there remained in them none of the vital quality of illusion which would make them wonder or speculate, else a religion might have grown up around these mysterious visitations. But the men of Fish were beyond all religion—the barest and most savage tenets of even Christianity could gain no foothold on that barren rock—so there was no altar, no priest, no sacrifice; only each night at seven the silent concourse by the shanty depot, a congregation who lifted up a prayer of dim, anaemic wonder.

On this June night, the Great Brakeman, whom, had they deified any one, they might well have chosen as their celestial protagonist, had ordained that the seven o’clock train should leave its human (or inhuman) deposit at Fish. At two minutes after seven Percy Washington and John T. Unger disembarked, hurried past the spellbound, the agape, the fearsome eyes of the twelve men of Fish, mounted into a buggy which had obviously appeared from nowhere, and drove away.

After half an hour, when the twilight had coagulated into dark, the silent negro who was driving the buggy hailed an opaque body somewhere ahead of them in the gloom. In response to his cry, it turned upon them a luminous disc which regarded them like a malignant eye out of the unfathomable night. As they came closer, John saw that it was the tail-light of an immense automobile, larger and more magnificent than any he had ever seen. Its body was of gleaming metal richer than nickel and lighter than silver, and the hubs of the wheels were studded with iridescent geometric figures of green and yellow—John did not dare to guess whether they were glass or jewel.

References

1. Учебно-методическая разработка по стилистическому анализу текста (для 3 курса ДО), сост. Г.Н. Цветкова. – Тверь, 2000.

2. Анализируем художественный текст (учебно-методическая разработка для 4 курса ДО). – Тверь, 2004

3. Практикум по аналитическому чтению по английскому языку// Авторы-составители Л.М. Середа, Л.П. Соколова. – Гродно: ГрГУ, 2002

4. Кухаренко В.А. Практикум з стилістики англійської мови: Підручник. – Вінниця. «Нова книга», 2000

5. Кухаренко В.А. «Практикум по интерпретации текста». – М., 1987

6. V.A. Kukharenko “A book of practice in stylistics”. – M., 1986

7. V.A. Kukharenko “Seminars in style”. – M., 1971

8. Пелевина Н.Ф. «Стилистический анализ художественного текста». – Л., 1980

9. Шелестюк Е.В. Интерпретация художественной литературы (Аналитическое чтение). Interpretation of imaginative literature (analytical reading): Учебное пособие / Урал. гос. пед. ун-т. – Екатеринбург, 2001

10. N. Frye, Sh. Baker, and G. Perkins “The Harper Handbook to Literature”. – Harper & Row Publishers, 1985

11. D.U. Seyler “Read, Reason, Write”. – McGraw Hills, Inc., 1985

12. H.P.Taylor “Reading for Meaning”. – Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1975

13. What is the English we read. – М., 2003

Table of contents

Main Notions…………………………………………………………… .3

Mode Of Presentation…………………………………………………… 8

Character and Character Drawing………………………………............. .8

Point Of View………………………………………………………….. 11

Review Questions………………………………………………………. 13

Supplement 1: Plan for retelling……………………………………….. 18

Supplement 2: Introduction and suggested plan for text analysis… …… 19

Supplement 3: Interpretation of a text (a short plan)…………………… 21

Supplement 4: Suggested clichés for text analysis………………........... 23

Supplement 5: Patterns for interpretation diction………………………. 26

Supplement 6: The essentials of stylistics……………………………… 28

Revision Exercises……………………………………………………….44

Supplement 7: Samples of text interpretation……………………………45

Supplement 8: Texts for guided analysis………………………….……..50

THE LIGHT THAT FAILED R. Kipling.………………………….50

DANDELION WINE R. Bradbury ………………………………..56

Texts for independent analysis…………………………………………...61

CHRISTMAS CAROLS L. Lee……………………………………61

MY FAMILY AND OTHER ANIMALS G. Durrel……………….63

A CHRISTMAS MEMORY T. Capote…………………………….64

THE AMERICAN TRAGEDY Th. Dreiser………………………..66

MR KNOW-ALL W.S. Maugham…………………………………69

THE DIAMOND AS BIG AS THE RITZ F.S. Fitzgerald………...72

References………………………………………………………………..76

Contents…………………………………………………………………..77

Автор-составитель

Оборина Марина Владимировна

Основы аналитического чтения и интерпретации текста с элементами стилистики

Учебно-методическое пособие по интерпретации художественного текста

Для студентов III – V курсов дневной и заочной формы обучения английского отделения факультета ИЯ и МК

Ответственный за выпуск О.В. Ханский

Редактор д.филол.наук., проф. Н.Ф. Крюкова

Корректор Д.А. Моторкина

Цифровая печать О.И. Ханская

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