Stylistic Analysis of a Text

1. Academic hour)

1.Approaches to the analysis of text

We may study and analyse the text in two different ways.

1) We consider the text as the evidence of the writer’s intention that is what he means by the text, its message; it takes into account the biography of the writer, his world outlook, literary views, conditions of time, the historical background;

2) We should study only the effect of the text upon the reader, the author’s intentions are not so significant.

1. Basic notions of stylistics.

Any literary work of irrespective of its genre (poem, short story, novel, etc.), or its literary trend (realistic, naturalistic, romantic, etc.) is a unique and complete world, created by the author in precisely the way his imagination has urged him to create. Though it is a product of the author's imagination, it is always based upon objective reality. A literary work is thus a fragment of objective reality arranged in accordance with the vision of the author and permeated by his idea of the world.

The Theme of a literary work may be understood to be an interaction of human characters under certain circumstances, such as some social or psychological conflict (war and peace, clash of ideologies and the like).

Within a single work the basic theme may alternate with rival themes and their relationship may be very complex.

Thus, for example, the basic theme of «The Forsyte Saga» may be defined as the life of the English middle class at the end of and after Victorian epoch. The by-themes in saga are numerous: the Boer and the 1^st World War, the first Labour Government, the postwar generation, the arts and artists, etc.

The idea of a literary work can be defined as the underlying thought and emotional attitude transmitted to the reader by the whole poetic structure of the literary text.

Plot is a sequence of events in which the characters are involved, the theme and idea revealed. Each event that represents a conflict (the gist of the plot) has a beginning, a development and an end.

The plot accordingly consists of exposition, story, climax and denouement.

In the exposition the time, the place and the subject of the action are laid out. Some light may be shed on the circumstances that will influence the development of the action.

Story is that part of the plot which represents the beginning of the collision and the collision itself.

Climax is the highest point of the action.

Denouement is the event or events that bring the action to an end.

There is no uniformity as far as the above mentioned components of the plot and their sequence in the text are concerned. Some short stories may begin straight with the conflict without any exposition, while others have no denouement in the conventional sense of the word (E. Hemingway’s stories).

A work of narrative prose that has all the components mentioned above (exposition, story, climax and denouement) is said to have a closed plot structure.

A literary work in which the action is represented without an obvious culmination, which does not contain all the above mentioned components, is said to have an open plot structure.

Literary image is one of the fundamental notions both in literary and linguostylistics. It may refer a) to the way of reflecting the objective reality (text serves as the image of reality); b) to characters; c) to any meaningful unit (word, phrase, detail).

We should distinguish: 1) macroimage - the literary work itself understood as an image of life, visioned and depicted by the author; 2) character image; 3) event image; 4) landscape; 5) microimages - words within the poetic structure - which serve to build images of a higher level.

Literature is a medium for transmitting aesthetic information. To be operative, it must, like any other kind of communication, involve not only the addresser (the author) but also the addressee (the reader). Indeed, a literary work is always written for an audience. Whether the author admits it or not, he is urged on by a desire to impart his vision of the world, his attitude towards it, to someone, i.e. to an addressee. His attitude may be quite obviously expressed, or, on the contrary, be presented in a non-committal, impersonal way. Thus, the literary work is an act of communication of the author with the reader.

Language is the medium of literature, it is capable of transmitting practically any kind of information. It has names for all things, phenomena and relations of objective reality. It is so close to life that an illusion of their almost complete identity is created, for man lives, works and thinks in the medium of language; his behaviour finds an important means of expression primarily in language.

Language is closely connected with nationality. And even when a person speaks a language foreign to him, his own nationality can be clearly identified. Language is constantly changing. Changes in language are brought about by external, i.e. social causes (for language develops simultaneously with the culture of the people that speaks it) as well as by internal causes. The results of all these changes remain in the language.

2. The problem of narrator’s relationship to the story.

There is a standard structure of fictional narrative communication:

• the level of non-fictional communication (author and reader) – extratextual level

• the level of fictional mediation and discourse (narrator and addressee(s)) – intertextual level

• the level of action (characters) – intertextual level

Narrator types

An “Overt” narrator is one who refers to him/her in the first person (I, we), one who directly or indirectly addressees the narrator, one who offers readers friendly exposition whenever it is needed, one who exhibits a discoursal stand towards characters and events, especially in his/her use of rhetorical figures, imagery.

A “Covert” narrator – he/she is one who neither refers to him or herself nor addressees any narrates, one who has a more/less “neutral” (non-distinctive) voice and style, one who is sexually indeterminate, one who does not provide exposition even when it is urgently needed. One who doesn’t interfere, one who lets the story events unfold in their natural sequence and tempo, one whose discourse fulfils no obvious phatic, appellative or expressive functions.

Lanser’s rule

In the absence of any text-internal clues as to the narrator’s sex, use the pronoun appropriate to the author’s sex; i.e. assume that the narrator is male if the author is male, and that the narrator is female if the author is female respectively.

Stanzel’s (proto-) typical narrative situations

1. A first-person narrative is told by a narrator who is present as a character in his/her story; it is a story of events she/he has experienced him/herself, a story of personal experience,

The individual who acts as a narrator (narrating I) is also a character (experiencing I) on the level of action.

2. An authorial narrative (heterodiegetic overt) is fold by a narrator who is absent from the story, i.e. does not appear as a character in the story. The authorial narrator tells a story involving other people. An authorial narrator sees the story from an outsider’s position, iften a position of absolute authority that allows her/him to know everything about the story’s world and its characters.

3.Types of narration.

The author’s narrative: unfolded plot, personages of given characteristic, the time and place of action. The authorial narrative supplies the reader with direct information about author preferences and objections believes and contradictions. A) entrusted narrative is used in an afford to make the text more plausible, to impress the reader with the facts of authenticity of the described events. The write entrust some fictions character with the task of dealing story. The writer himself that hides behind the figure of the narrator. Dialogue: personage express their mind in the utter speech. In their exchange of remarks the participants of the dialogue, other people and their action expose them self to. One of the significant forms of the personage self-characterization-dialogue, which allows the author to show him in the process. Interior speech of personage- its allows the author and the readers to peep into inner world of the character, to observe his idea and view: a) interior monologue- a rather lengthy peace of text dealing with the main topic of the character thinking, offering past, future actions; b) short in-sets- presents immediate mental and emotional reactions of the personage to the remark or event by characters; c) stream of consciousness technic- especially popular with their representative of modernism in contenting literature. The author tries to portray the purely associated character. Represented speech (reported speech)-serves to show either the mental production of the character thinking: a) represented uttered speech; b) represented inner speech. The main narrative compositional forms. If its semantic of the text that its taken as foundation of classification 3 narrative forms traditionally analyzed in poetics and stylistics: narrative proper (the unfolding of the plot is concentrating, dynamic form of the text), description (supplies the details of appearance of people and things of the place and time of action - static), argumentation (offers causes and effects of the personages behavior, his considerations about moral, ethical, ideological or other issues). Its rather seldom that any of their compositional forms is used in a pure uninterrupted way.

4.Scene and summary as narrative modes. Description and commentary as narrative modes

Narrative Modes

• Showing. In a showing mode of presentation, there is little or no narratorial mediation, overtness (очевидность) or presence. The reader is basically cast in the role of a witness to the events.

• Telling. In a telling mode of presentation, the narrator is in overt control (especially durational control) of action presentation, characterization and point-of-view arrangement.

• Scene/scenic presentation. A showing mode which presents a continuous stream of detailed action events. Durational aspect: isochrony (story time and discourse time are mapping (отображать)).

• Summary. A telling mode in which the narrator condenses a sequence of action events into a thematically focused and orderly account. Durational aspect: speed-up.

Supportive Narrative Modes

• Description. A telling mode in which the narrator introduces a character or describes the setting. Durational aspect: pause.

• Comment/commentary. A telling mode in which the narrator comments on characters, the development of the action, the circumstances of the act of narrating, etc. Durational aspect: pause.

Тургинбаева Л.В.

Курс лекций по дисциплине «Стилистика» для студентов специальности 5В011900-Иностранный язык: Два иностранных языка.

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