Contents:
Introduction
Chapter 1. The
studies in individual style
1.1.
Individual style and it’s compounds
1.2. The
characteristics of the creative prose
1.3. The
lexical expressive means and stylistic devices
Conclusion to
Chapter One
Chapter 2. Lexical devices as
essential part of individual style of Oscar
Wilde's works
2.1. The
characteristics of Oscar Wilde's creativity
2.2. Stylistic
peculiarities of Oscar Wilde works
2.3. Lexical
stylistic devices in Oscar Wilde’s works
Conclusion to
Chapter Two
Conclusion
Bibliography
The list of
examples
Introduction
Actuality
of research. Our intention in this degree Paper is to provide some explanation for
the stylistic potential of lexical devices. The emphasis will be on the
definitions given by different scholars, on the origin, structure and stylistic
functions of them.
In this Paper
we will base ourselves upon the definitions given by different scholars, and as
a conclusion we will give our own definition of lexical devices used by Oscar
Wilde in his creativity.
Oscar Fingal
O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish playwright, poet and author of numerous short stories and one novel. Known for
his biting wit, he became one of the most successful playwrights of the late
Victorian era in London, and one of the greatest celebrities of his day.
Oscar Wilde's
power to arouse fantasies in others - and to fulfill them - is seemingly inexhaustible.
Everyone has an opinion about Oscar Wilde: his life, style and literature – and
all these opinions are very different and contradictory. It is also true that
opinions about no other author have been so ill-informed.
From the
beginning, there appeared to be about Oscar Wilde something slightly slant.
Earlier in the century the fantasies perhaps might have been dispelled. At the
end of the XX century and now the same fantasies continued to circulate. So it
really impossible to say exactly when Oscar Wilde became a very important
public figure as he is still it: «his influence on modern art, literature, philosophy,
stylistics and our life in the whole is still very important, essential and
many-valued»[1].
It seems
rather difficult to go into details with regards to lots of expressive means
and stylistic devices in Oscar Wilde’s plays as they are too many, forming his
inimitable individual style. As it is known stylistics treats with special
means of the language that help us to have vivid and interesting speech and «Oscar
Wilde’s plays considered to be a real treasure for stylistic research»[2].
These facts
underline urgency and the importance of the topic of our scientific
paper: «Stylistic potential of lexical
devices in Oscar Wilde's creativity».
The purpose
of research is the stylistic analysis of the lexical devices used in Oscar
Wilde’s works.
The work
provides an overview of some expressive lexical means in Oscar Wilde’s works
which help to underline the author’s individual style. In connection with this the Research Tusks of this scientific paper
are:
1. To clarify the term «fictional style», its components and
peculiarities;
2. To characterize the maintenance of the notion «stylistic potential»;
3. To determine the types of the lexical devices and give them characteristics;
4. To explore aestheticism and philosophy of Oscar Wilde as a basis for
his individual literary style and to describe the capacity of his writings;
5. To find out individual stylistic features of
Oscar Wilde’s with the help of lexical analysis of Oscar Wilde’s texts.
6. To describe the essentials of individual
style of Oscar Wilde works on the base of his creativity;
7. To demonstrate the examples of applying of the stylistic potential of lexical
devices in Oscar Wilde’s creativity.
The main subject of research is the stylistic potential of lexical
devices in Oscar Wilde’s creativity.
Objects of research are Oscar Wilde’s works (See the list of References).
Theoretical base of research. Individual stylistic features of
Oscar Wilde’s creativity has become one of the central variables in scientific
research during the last years and also last centuries in many countries of the
world and has been the subject of various articles and books that have shown a
complex variety of opinions and aspects.
In this
connection it is very important to mention the names of such Russian and
foreign researchers as P.Akroyd, A.A.Anikst, B.Bashford, K.Beckson, J.Bristow, R.Elman,
A.Gide, R.J.Green, M.J.Guy, F.Harris, V.Igoe, R.Jackson, S.V.Kazantsev,
V.A.Lukov, S.King, L.Marcus, N.P.Mikhalskaya, R.Merle, R.K. Miller, H.Montgomery, P.Nicholls, A.Randsome,
E.Richard, R.Ross, N.Sammells, G.B.Shaw, S.F.Siegel, I.Small, H.T.Smith,
N.V.Solomatina, V.B.Sosnovskaya, F.Tufescu, J.Wood, W.Yates, etc.
Besides it the
underpinnings of this scientific paper also rest on various theoretical
research and scientific articles concerning stylistics and various stylistic aspects
(I.V.Arnold, N.E.Enkvist, I.R.Galperin, R.R.Gelgart, I.V.Gubbenet,
O.K.Denisova, K.A.Dolinin, L.I.Donetskih, E.G.Kovalevskaya,V.A.Kukharenko,
L.Y.Maksimov, V.I.Prokhorova, T.A.Sebeok, E.G.Soshalskaya, V.V.Vinogradov,
A.Warner, etc.).
The
methodological base of research was composed with the works of foreign and domestic
scientists on problems of the fictional style (Kalmykova 1979; Балли
1961; Brown 1955; Vinogradov 1972; Bahtin 1986). Studying
this problem as genre definition of the fictional style, we used the
general-theoretical philological researches: the theory of speech genres of
M.M. Bakhtin; V.V. Vinogradova's basic ideas.
Methods of
research.
In the given degree work the stylistic analysis is applied with the help of
structural-semantic and stylistic methods of the linguistic analysis.
The theoretical importance of the given work will consist in
the further scientific development of stylistic problematics:
1. Typology of the lexical devices;
2. Target lexical structure of fictional discourse;
3. Phenomenon of stylistic potential of lexical devices.
The practical importance of work consists of: description and
explanation of the lexical devices as essentials of individual style of
creativity of Oscar Wilde.
Scientific originality of research composed with:
1. The typology of lexical devices in Oscar Wilde’s creativity.
2. The most preferable lexical devices and their stylistic potential in
Oscar Wilde’s creativity.
Structure of the degree work. The given work consists of
the introduction, two chapters, and also the conclusion. The volume of the
given degree work makes 76 pages. The lists of the used literature sources and
examples are applied.
Chapter 1. The studies
in individual style
1.1. Individual style and its compounds
Before
to begin the topic research it is necessary to highlight and clarify the term
“style” and its peculiarities. It is important to mention that the word “style”
has a very broad meaning.
There
are many versions of the notion of style according to the different purposes of
stylistic analysis. «The style of any period is the result of a variety of complex
and shifting pressures and influences. Books reflect our experience, but our experience
is also shaped by the books»[3].
That is why there is the constant interaction between life and literature, life
and literary style of any writer as we could see from our analysis in the
previous part of our paper.
Individual
style study is determined as the style of the author. «It looks for correlations
between the creative concepts of the author and the language of his work»[4]. It’s also a subject of
literary stylistics research, a branch of the theory of literature, which
studies linguistic features of literary trends, genres and individual style.
So
we could underline three main influences that pressure on the individual
writer’s style:
1)
Writer’s personality, his philosophy and own way of thinking and feeling that
determines his mode of expression;
2)
The occasion on which he is writing, the particular purpose;
3)
The influence of the age in which he lives.
In
other words, a writer’s style is «his individual and creative choice of the resources
of the language»[5].
So there are many definitions of style.
According
to R.Chapman, «a good style of writing has three qualities, which may be described
as accuracy, ease and grace»[6].
According to G.L.Buffon, «in reality the style is the man himself»[7].
That
is why the essence of style is multi-topic and its peculiarities and components
are carefully explored by the separate scientific branch – stylistics.
Stylistics, sometimes called linguostylistics, is a branch of general linguistics.
It deals mainly with two interdependent tasks:
1)
The investigation of the inventory of special language media which by their
ontological features secure the desirable effect of the utterance;
2)
Сertain types of texts
(discourse) which due to the choice and arrangement of language means are
distinguished by the pragmatic aspect of the communication [8].
The
two objectives of stylistics are clearly discernible as two separate fields of
investigation. The types of texts can be analyzed if their linguistic
components are presented in their interaction, thus, revealing the unbreakable
unity and transparency of constructions of a given type. The types of texts
that are distinguished by the pragmatic aspect of the communication are called
functional styles of language (FS). The special media of language which secure
the desirable effect of the utterance are called stylistic devices (SD) and
expressive means (EM).
The
first field of investigation – SDs and EMs, necessarily touches upon such general
language problems as the aesthetic function of language, synonymous ways of
rendering one and the same idea, emotional colouring in language, the interrelation
between language and thought, the individual manner of an author in making use
of language and a number of other issues.
The
second field – functional styles, touches upon such most general linguistic
issues as oral and written varieties of language, the notion of literary
language, and the constituents of texts larger than the sentence, the
generative aspect of literary texts and some others.
In
linguistics there are different terms to denote particular means by which utterances
are foregrounded. Most linguists distinguish «ordinary semantic and stylistic
differences in meaning and three main levels of expressive means and stylistic
devices: phonetic, lexical and syntactical»[9].
The
brief outline of the most characteristic features of the individual style and
its components shows that there are a great number of features which could be clearly
stylistically explored on the base of fiction.
1.2. The characteristics of the creative prose
Creative
prose or fiction (lat. fictum,
"created") is a branch of literature which deals, in part or in
whole, with temporally contra factual events (events that are not true at the
time of writing). In contrast to this is non-fiction, which deals exclusively
in factual events (e.g.: biographies, histories)[10]. So as the most important
feature of prose fiction is its style, it is necessary to highlight and clarify
the term “style” and its peculiarities.
Style is depth, deviations, choice, context style restricted
linguistic variation, and style is the man himself. According to Galperin the
term ‘style’ refers to the following spheres:
1) The aesthetic function of language. It may be seen in works of
art-poetry, imaginative prose, fiction, but works of science, technical
instruction or business correspondence have no aesthetic value.
2) Synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea. The
possibility of choice of using different words in similar situations is
connected with the question of style as if the form changes, the contents
changes too and the style may be different.
3) Expressive means in language. They are employed mainly in the
following spheres – poetry, fiction, colloquial speech, speeches but not in
scientific articles, business letters and others.
4) Emotional coloring in language. Very many types of texts are
highly emotional – declaration of love, funeral oration, poems (verses), but a
great number of texts is unemotional or non-emphatic (rules in textbooks).
5) A system of special devices called stylistic devices. The style
is formed with the help of characteristic features peculiar to it.
Many texts demonstrate various stylistic features: She wears
‘fashion’ = what she wears is fashionable or is just the fashion methonimy.
6) The individual manner of an author in making use the individual
style of speaking, writing must be investigated with the help of common rules
and generalization[11].
Galperin distinguishes five styles in present-day English:
I. Belles Lettres.
1. Poetry.
2. Emotive prose.
3. The Drama.
II. Publicistic Style.
1. Oratory and Speeches.
2. The Essay.
3. Articles.
III. Newspapers.
1. brief News Items.
2. Headlines.
3. Advertisements and Announcements.
4. The Editorial.
IV. Scientific Prose.
V. Official Documents[12].
He didn’t single out a colloquial style so as it’s created by the
work of the author –the result of creative activity.
Arnold classification consists of four styles:
1. Poetic style.
2. Scientific style.
3. Newspaper style.
4. Colloquial style[13].
Nowadays poetic style’s included in Belles – Lettres style.
The subdivision of the texts into official and non-official discourse is
based on the pragmatic principles. The person has two different systems of
thinking:
1. Logical.
2. Figurative one.
All the scientific, documentary and other non-poetic style texts are
based on system of logic scheme of thinking; meanwhile the fiction texts apply
to figurative thinking, to the person’s ability to see the world figuratively.
The majority of modern linguists allocate the texts into the following groups
according to their applicability and purpose of functioning:
1) Fatic (contact-establishing);
2) Cognitive;
3) Emotive (expressive);
4) Aesthetic (poetic, prosy);
5) Regulative (rendering of influence)[14].
«It is an important cognitive task for a speaker or writer to represent
relations and to express them again in the linear ordering of words, phrases,
and sentences, whereas the hearer or reader has the task of establishing these
relations»[15].
Creative prose texts differ from logic ones not only on the base of the
purpose of creation, but also on the way of transference of information, so as
the fictional discourse maintains the different types of information. These
are:
1. Intellectual.
2. Emotional.
3. Aesthetical.
It is quite natural, that the special ways of transfer of the figurative information
is required. All these kinds of the information are transferred through non-rational,
emotional and aesthetic influence.
Such influence achieved with the help of the following linguistic means:
1. The rhythmic organization of the text,
2. Phonosemantics,
3. Lexical semantics,
4. Grammatic semantics and many other means[16].
The information of the fiction discourse contradicts to the text logic.
The emotional impact can be exercised implicationally with the use of lexical
stylistic devices - metaphors, allegories, symbols, allusions, etc. [17]
We can conclude that creative prose style is characterized with the
features of lexico-semantic typical designs which are entered into a work of
writer and cooperate with special stylistic effect. Therefore, lexical
expressive means (LEM) and stylistic devices (SD) are the distinctive feature
of fiction.
1.3. The lexical expressive means and lexical stylistic
devices
Considering the issue of the
lexical expressive means (LEM) it’s necessary to enlighten the
characteristics of explication stylistic potential of the creative prose lexicon.
The word-stock of any given language can
be roughly divided into three uneven groups, differing from each other by the
sphere of its possible use. «The biggest division is made up of neutral words,
possessing no stylistic connotation and suitable for any communicative,
situation, two smaller ones are literary and colloquial strata respectively»[18].
Literacy words serve to satisfy
communicative demands of official, scientific, poetic messages, while the
colloquial ones are employed in non-official everyday communication. «Though
there is no immediate correlation between the written and the oral forms of
speech on the one hand, and the literary and colloquial words, on the other,
yet, for the most part, the first ones are mainly observed in the written form,
as most literary messages appear in writing. And vice versa: though there are
many examples of colloquialisms in writing (informal letters, diaries, certain
passages of memoirs, etc.), their usage is associated with the oral form of communication»
[19].
Consequently, taking for analysis
printed materials we shall find literary words in authorial speech,
descriptions, considerations, while colloquialisms will be observed in the
types of discourse, simulating (copying) everyday oral communication-i.e., in
the dialogue (or interior monologue) of a prose work.
When we classify some speech (text)
fragment as literary or colloquial it does not mean that all the words
constituting it have a corresponding stylistic meaning. More than that: words with
a pronounced stylistic connotation are few in any type of discourse, the
overwhelming majority of its lexis being neutral.
As our famous philologist L.V. Shcherba
once said: «A stylistically coloured word is like a drop of paint added to a
glass of pure water and colouring the whole of it»[20]. Each of the two named
groups of words, possessing a stylistic meaning, is not homogeneous as to the
quality of the meaning, frequency of use, sphere of application, or the number
and character of potential users.
This is why each one is further divided
into the general, i. e. known to and used by most native speakers in
generalized literary (formal) or colloquial (informal) communication, and
special bulks.
The latter ones, in their turn, are
subdivided into subgroups, each one serving a rather narrow, specified
communicative purpose. So, there are at least two major subgroups essential for
creative prose among special literary words.
They are:
1. Archaisms, i. e. words,
-
a) denoting historical phenomena which are
no more in use
(such as "yeoman", "vassal",
falconet"). These are historical words.
-
b) used in poetry in the XVII-XIX cc. (such as
"steed" for "horse"; "quoth" for
"said"; "woe" for "sorrow"). These are poetic words.
-
c) in the course of language history ousted by newer syn
onymic words (such as "whereof = of which; "to deem" = to
think; "repast" - meal; "nay"
= no) or forms
("maketh" = makes; "thou wilt" = you
will; "brethren" = brothers). These are called archaic words (archaic forms) proper [21].
Literary words are used in official
papers and documents, in scientific communication, in high poetry, in authorial
speech of creative prose.
2. Colloquial words,
on the contrary, mark the message as informal, non-official, conversational.
Apart from general colloquial words such special subgroups may be mentioned:
-
a) Slang forms the
biggest one. «Slang
words are highly emotive and expressive -'and as such, lose their originality
rather fast and are replaced by newer formations. This tendency to synonymic
expansion results in long chains of synonyms of various degrees of
expressiveness, denoting one and the same concept»[22].
So, the idea of a "pretty girl" is worded
by more than one hundred ways in slang.
-
B) Jargonisms stand close to slang, «also being substandard,
expressive and emotive, but, unlike slang they are used by limited groups of people,
united either professionally (in this case we deal with professional
jargonisrns, or professionalisms, or socially (here we deal with jargonisms
proper)» [23].
Their major function thus was to be cryptic, secretive. So it seems appropriate
to use the indicated terms as synonyms. These lexical groups give the text
strong expressiveness.
-
С) Vulgarisms are
coarse words with a strong emotive
meaning, mostly derogatory, normally avoided in polite conversation. «One of
the best-known American editors and critics Maxwell Perkins, working witn tne
serialized 1929 magazine edition of Hemingway's novel A. Farewell to Arms found
that the publishers deleted close to a dozen words which they considered vulgar
for their publication. Preparing the hardcover edition Perkins allowed half of
them back ("son of a bitch", "whore",
"whorehound," etc.)»[24].
Consequently, in contemporary West European and American prose all words,
formerly considered vulgar for public use (including the four-letter words), and
are even approved by the existing moral and ethical standards of society and
censorship.
Thus,
the denotation meaning is the major semantic and stylistic characteristic of
the word. The words in context may acquire additional lexical meanings not
fixed in dictionaries. «What is known in linguistics as “transferred meaning”
is particularly the interrelation between two types of lexical meaning:
dictionary and contextual»[25].
The
mechanism is simple: «When the deviation from the acknowledged meaning is
carried to a degree that it causes an unexpected turn in the recognised logical
meanings, we register a stylistic device»[26].
The
following lexical stylistic devices (LSD)
can be pointed out:
1.
Epigram and paradox. Epigrams and paradoxes as stylistic devices are used for
creating generalised images. «Paradox is based on contrast, being a statement
contradictory to what is accepted as a self-evident or proverbial truth.
Paradox can be considered a figure of speech with certain reservations, since
the aesthetic principle, that underlies it, i.e. contrast has divers linguistic
manifestations» [27].
Epigram
is «a stylistic device akin to a proverb, the only difference being that
epigrams are coined by individuals whose names we know, while proverbs are the
coinage of the people. In other words, we are always aware of the parentage of
an epigram and therefore, when using one, we usually make a reference to its
author»[28].
Epigrams
and paradoxes as stylistic devices are usually used in the Present Indefinite
Tense which makes them abstract.
One
of the most characteristic and essential features of epigrams and paradoxes is
their shortness and conciseness. They are achieved by the syntactical pattern
of an epigram or paradox. The syntax of these stylistic devices is laconic and
clear – cut.
2-3.
Irony and pun. «Irony is a stylistic device in which the contextual evaluative meaning of
a word is directly opposite to its dictionary meaning»[29]. Like many other
stylistic devices, irony does not exist outside the context.
«Pun
(paronomasia, a play on words) is a figure of speech emerging as an effect
created by words similar or identical in their sound form and contrastive or incompatible
in meaning»[30].
Pun
is based on the effect of deceived expectation, because unpredictability in it
is expressed either in the appearance of the elements of the text unusual for
the reader or in the unexpected reaction of the addressee of the dialogue.
4. Simile
is the intensification of someone feature of the concept in question is
realized in a device. «To use a simile is to characterize one object by
bringing it into contact with another object belonging to an entirely different
class of things»[31].
There
are several types of formation of comparison:
1. Direct comparison when two things are compared
directly by using 'like' (A is like B.);
2.
Indirect one:
- A is (not) like B;
- A is more/less than B;
- A is as … as B;
- A is similar to B;
- A is …, so is B;
- A does …, so does B [32].
The
literary similes make the text more expressive and more interesting.
5.
Epithet
is «a device based on the interplay of emotive and logical meaning in an
attributive word, phrase or even sentence, used to characterize an object and
pointing out to the reader and frequently imposing on him. It is, as a rule,
simple in form. In the majority of cases it consists of one word: adjective or
adverb, modifying respectively nouns or verbs»[33].
Epithet
on the whole shows purely individual emotional attitude of the speaker towards
the object spoken of, it describes the object as it appears to the speaker. Its
basic features are its emotiveness and subjectivity: the characteristic attached
to the object to qualify it is always chosen by the speaker himself.
Epithet
has remained over the centuries the most widely used stylistic device, it
offers the ample opportunities of qualifying every object from the author’s
partial and subjective viewpoint, which is indispensable in creative prose.
6.
Hyperbole.
V.V. Vinogradov said: «Genuine art enjoys the right to exaggerate”, stating
that hyperbole is the law of art which brings the existing phenomena of life,
diffused as they are, to the point of maximum clarity and conciseness» [34].
In
hyperbole there is always transference of meaning as there is discrepancy with
objective reality. The words are no used in their direct sense.
They
make their way not on the direct meaning, but on the great emotional influence.
But literary hyperbole is not the simple speech figure. They may be also called
the means of artistic characterization. It is one of the most important means
of building up the plot of the text, the imagery and expressiveness. It is the
transmission of the author’s thought.
7.
Metaphor
is one of the most frequently used stylistic devices in fiction literature. It
means transference of some quality from one object to another. «A metaphor
becomes a stylistic device when two different phenomena (things, events, ideas,
actions) are simultaneously brought to mind by the imposition of some or all of
the inherent properties of one object on the other which by nature is deprived
of these properties»[35].
The
metaphors reveal the attitude of the writer to the object, action or concept
and express his views. They may also reflect the literary school which he belongs
and the epoch in which he lives.
A
metaphor can exist only within a context. A separate word isolated from the
context has its general meaning. Metaphor plays an important role in the development
of language. Words acquire new meanings by transference.
Metaphors
can be classified according to their degree of unexpectedness. Thus, metaphors
which are absolutely unexpected, that is are quite unpredictable, are called
genuine metaphors.
8.
Metonymy.
Metonymy is based «on a different type of relation between the dictionary and
contextual meanings, a relation based not on identification, but on some kind
of association connecting the two concepts which these meanings represent»[36]. So metonymy is a
transference of meaning based on a logical or physical connection between
things. It is one of the means of forming the new meanings of words in the
language.
9.
Repetition
which is «recurrence of the same word, word combination or a phase for two and
more times»[37].
It is used when the speaker is under the stress of strong emotion and shows the
state of mind of the speaker. So repetition is a powerful means of emphasis, it
adds rhythm and balance to the utterance.
10.
Antithesis is based on relative opposition and arises out of the context through the
expansion of objectively contrasting pairs. Here we can see the semantic
contrast, which is formed with the help of objectively contrasting pair “plain
– beautiful”, “always – never”[38].
11.
Allusion
is indirect reference to a person, event or piece
of literature. Allusion is used to explain or clarify a complex
problem. Note that allusion works best if you keep it short and refer to
something the reader / audience is familiar with, e.g.:
- famous people;
- history;
- (Greek /Antic) mythology;
- Literature;
- the bible[39].
If
the audience is familiar with the event or person, they will also know
background and context. Thus, just a few words are enough to create a certain
picture (or scene) in the readers’ minds. The advantages are as
follows:
- We don’t need lengthy explanations
to clarify the problem.
- The reader becomes active by
reflecting on the analogy.
- The message will stick in the
reader's mind [40].
Many allusions on historic
events, mythology or the bible have become famous idioms.
These expressive means (EM)
help the author to create his individual elegant, humorous and challenging
style.
Conclusions: As for prose style, two
types of style can be determined:
1)
One is individual or authorial style, i.e. style related to meaning in a general
way. When people talk of style they usually mean authorial style, in other
words a way of writing that recognizably belongs to a particular writer.
This
way of writing distinguishes one author's writing from that of others, depending
on different periods of history, different worldviews of authors.
2)
The other notion of style is text style, i.e. style intrinsically related to
meaning. Just as authors can be said to have style, so can texts. When we
examine text style, we need to examine linguistic choices which are
intrinsically connected with meaning and effect on the reader.
The
stylistic effect’s achieved in two directions:
1.
Explication semantic aspect (denotative aspect of LM).
2.
Implication semantic aspect (LSD).
The
above effort to make clear the notion of style of prose fiction is very helpful
in exploring the nature of the lexical stylistic devices (SD).
The second
part of our scientific work will enlighten lexical expressive means (LEM) and
lexical stylistic devices (LSD) with the help of Oscar Wilde’s brilliant works.
Chapter 2. Lexical devices as essential part
of individual style of Oscar Wilde's works
2.1. The characteristics of Oscar Wilde's creativity
Oscar Wilde
was particularly well known for his role in the aesthetic and decadent
movements although his thoughts in this sphere which played a great role in
forming his individual style and literary views came under attack by many
critics, who wrote that Wilde's «effeminacy and strange points of view on art,
devotion to beauty in his books would influence negatively the behavior of men
and women, that his plays "eclipses real art and generally accepted
ideals» [41].
They also scrutinized the links between Oscar Wilde's writing, personal image
and views and portraits of his heroes, calling his literary style even "immoral»[42].
It is
important to note, that Oscar Wilde was deeply impressed by the English writers
John Ruskin and Walter Pater, who argued for the central importance of art in
life. Oscar Wilde later commented ironically on Pater's suppressed emotions: on
being informed of the man's death, he replied, "Was he ever alive?"
Reflecting on Pater's view of art, he wrote in The Picture of Dorian Gray: «All
art is quite useless»[43].
The statement
was meant to be read literally, as it was in keeping with the doctrine of Art
for art's sake, coined by the philosopher Victor Cousin, promoted by Theophile
Gautier and brought into prominence by James McNeill Whistler. In this manner Oscar
Wilde give lectures on aestheticism in London[44].
The aesthetic
movement, represented by the school of William Morris and Dante Gabriel
Rossetti, had a permanent influence on English decorative art and Oscar Wilde
itself, his literary views. As the leading aesthete in Britain, Oscar Wilde became one of the most prominent personalities of his day. «Though he was sometimes
ridiculed for them, his paradoxes and witty sayings were quoted on all sides» [45]. And we should mention
that they are still true-life.
Producer
Richard D'Oyly Carte invited Oscar Wilde for a lecture tour of North America (1881) considered him to be one of the aesthetic movement's charming personalities.
Coming to America Wilde reputedly told a customs officer that "I have
nothing to declare except my genius", continuing practice his challenging
behavior .
During his
tour of the United States and Canada, «Oscar Wilde was torn apart by the great
number of critics ridiculing him even by cartoons for his aesthetic views, but
he was also surprisingly well received in such rough-and-tumble settings as the
mining town of Leadville, Colorado»[46].
On his return to the United Kingdom Oscar Wilde was absolutely sure that his
mission was «to make this artistic movement the basis for a new
civilization". Besides it he wrote that he was “struck with this recognition
of the fact that bad art merits the penalty of death»[47].
Oscar Wilde
sometimes pretended that art was more important than morality, but that was
mere play-acting. Morality or immorality was more important than art to him and
everyone else. But the very cloud of tragedy that rested on his career makes it
easier to treat him as a mere artist now. His was a complete life, in that
awful sense in which our life is incomplete; since we have not yet paid for our
sins. In that sense one might call it a perfect life. «On the one hand we have
the healthy horror of the evil from his books; on the other the healthy horror
of the punishment. The hope and fault are always near in his plays» [48].
In one of his
masterpieces he said:
«Those who
find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This
is a fault.
Those who
find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there
is hope»[49].
Speaking about
Oscar Wilde some calling him a great artist and others a mere charlatan. But
this controversy misses the really extraordinary thing about Wilde: the thing
that appears in his plays. «He was
a great artist. He also was really a charlatan. We mean by a charlatan one
sufficiently dignified to despise the tricks that he employs. He may be lying
in every word, but he is sincere in his style. Style (as Wilde might have said)
is only another name for spirit»[50].
Oscar Wilde
professed to stand as a solitary artistic soul apart from the public. He
professed to scorn the middle class, and declared that the artist must not work
for the bourgeois. But the truth is that no artist so really great ever worked
so much for the bourgeois as Oscar Wilde. «No man, so capable of thinking about
truth and beauty, ever thought so constantly about his own effect on the middle
classes. He studied them with exquisite attention, and knew exactly how to
shock and how to please them. He disgusts them with new truths; he knew how to
say the precise thing which, whether true or false, is irresistible»[51]. As, for example, «I can
resist everything but temptation»[52].
It is
important to underline the fact that Oscar Wilde was a man of great originality
and power of mind. Oscar Wilde confirmed that art was existing independent of
the life and was developing according to its own laws. «He quickly became a
prominent personality in literary and social circles, but the period of his
true achievement did not begin until he published “The Happy Prince and other
tales” in 1888. In these fairy tales and fables, Wilde found a literary form
well suited to his talents. These stories review and uneasy blend of the moral
and the fantastic»[53].
Wilde’s only
novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (1890), attracted much attention, and his
sayings past from mouth to mouth as those of one of the professed wits of the
age. This novel covers the whole range of human experience and imagination.
The career of
Oscar Wilde was brief, but, from its beginnings, success smiled on him and he
quickly achieved a triumph. Some of his works, his verse, his essays – “Intentions”,
his fairy tales, his poems in prose “The House of Pomegranates”, “The
Picture of Dorian Gray”, had affirmed that he was a pure artist and a great
writer, for certain of his pages are as beautiful as the most beautiful in
English prose. But these works were only amusements for him, and versatile
mind, so brilliant, so delicately ironic, so paradoxical, found a medium of
expression, which perfectly suited his uncommon gifts; it was the theatre.
The theatre
played the very important role in Wilde’s life. English drama was reborn near
the end of the Victorian age. Many critics said that «Oscar Wilde was perhaps
less then a mature poet, but a good critic, and a splendid playwright»[54].
So as Oscar
Wilde was the center of a group glorifying beauty for itself alone, he was famously
satirized (with other exponents of "art for art's sake"). But nevertheless
his first published work, Poems (1881), was well received. The next year
he lectured to great acclaim in the United States, where his drama Vera
(1883) was produced.
«After 1884 he
began writing for and editing periodicals, but his active literary career began
with the publication of Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories (1891) and
two collections of fairy tales, The Happy Prince (1888) and The House of
Pomegranates (1892). In 1891 his novel Picture of Dorian Gray appeared. A tale
of horror, it depicts the corruption of a beautiful young man pursuing an ideal
of sensual indulgence and moral indifference; although he himself remains young
and handsome, his portrait becomes ugly, reflecting his degeneration»[55].
In 1895 Wilde
was at the peak of his career and had three hit plays running at the same time.
At the same year he found himself under the trial. As a result Oscar Wilde
became involved in a hopeless legal dispute and was sentenced to two years in
prison at hard labor. After his release in 1897, Wilde published “The Ballad
of Reading Gaol”, a poem of considerable but unequal power. This poem gave
the impression that he was again going to produce works worthy of his talents.
But it was his last word to the world.
For the last
three years he had lived abroad. Ruined in health, finances and creative
energy, but with his characteristic wit, he died in France in 1990. But the
voices of Wilde’s brilliant plays continue to be heard. And it is not the
exaggeration to call his plays one of the wittiest comedies of the nineteenth
century and our days.
Arrows,
commenting on Wilde's behavior and challenging manner of expression, suggested
that «Wilde's conduct was more of a bid for notoriety rather than the author
devotion to beauty and the aesthetic in his books. …Wilde’s challenging life,
being full of scandals, influenced on his manner of writing making it a real
challenge to society as all his writings»[56]
and understanding of it offers a clue to the profound exploration of his
individual literary style and various expressive lexical means and stylistic
devices in Oscar Wilde’s works.
2.2. Stylistic peculiarities of Oscar Wilde works
Characterizing
the individual style of Oscar Wilde’s creativity we should formulate his
general conception. The stylistic peculiarities were
chosen on the general principle: «no artist desires to prove anything,
….the artist must create and reveal the truth»[57]and
that is why he is most famous for his sophisticated, brilliantly witty works,
which were the first since the comedies of R. Sheridan and O. Goldsmith to have
both dramatic and literary merit.
The new realism
as the main method. As Oscar Wilde was one of the Victorian aesthetes he tried
to make the writings that should be beautiful in its color and cadence. His
extraordinary personality and wit have so dominated the imaginations of most biographers
and critics that their estimates of his work have too often consisted of
sympathetic tributes to a writer whose literary production was little more than
a faint reflection of his brilliant talk or the manifestation of “lawlessness”.
Indeed, «Wilde’s remark that he had put his genius into his life and only his
talent into his art has provided support to those who regard his life as the
primary object of interest»[58].
The basis of
the moral conflict and aesthetic values which was very close to Oscar Wilde and
his heroes still influences on our present and future. The author’s speech was
full of paradoxical judgments which are well known in our days:
«Conscience
and cowardice are really the same things. Conscience is the trade name of the
firm. That is all»;
«Being natural
is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose»;
«Life is far
too important a thing to talk seriously about it» and many others[59].
With the
perfect sense of the theatre, Oscar Wilde took his characters from high
society; he set his elegant marionettes in motion with such mastery that his
comedies can be regarded as the wittiest that have been written in a very long
time.
Drama
tragedies and critical essays. Wilde's stories and essays were well received, but
his creative genius found its highest expression in his plays – Lady Windermere's
Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895), and
his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), which were all
extremely filled with pithy epigrams and paradoxes. Oscar Wilde explained away
their lack of depth by saying that he put his genius into his life and only his
talent into his books. He also wrote two historical tragedies, The Duchess
of Padua (1892) and Salomé (1893).
Wilde’s first
dramatic works - early tragedies “Vera; or the Nihilists” (1880) and “The Duchess
of Padua” (1883), imitative and artistically weak, had no stable success on the
stage. Then there were published his brilliant novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray”
and the critical essays “The Intentions”. In these books there were reflected
the basic principles of Wilde’s aesthetics.
Oscar Wilde
has contributed his most important works to the theatre: “Lady Windermere’s
Fan”, “A Woman of No Importance”, “An Ideal Husband”, “The Importance of Being
Earnest” and “Salome”. Of the first four which had a success without
precedent, were constructed with extraordinary skill; they are interesting for
their settings, pathetic without evoking tears, witty to the point of excess,
and written in a pure literary language. «In these plays, Wilde brings together
the social intrigues and the witticism. “Salome”, which was not
presented in London, was especially a marvelous poem, which had nothing in
common with the modern pieces of the author»[60].
Satirical
features. Oscar
Wilde’s plays were written in a light satirical vein, cultured and refined, and
in good taste. His characters served as the mouths to enunciate the author’s exquisitely
funny remarks on society.
The reputation
of Oscar Wilde as a writer and a critic was doubtful for many critics, but almost
all of them considered him to be a brilliant dramatist of his time. Wilde’s
fame rests chiefly on his comedies of fashionable life: “Lady Windermere’s
Fan”, “An Ideal Husband”, “A Woman of No Importance” and “The Importance
of Being Earnest”.
The sparkling
wit and vivacity, characteristic of these plays, helped them to keep the stage
for more than half a century. In spite of their superficial drawing-room
treatment of human problems, they are still attractive to numerous theatergoers
because of their brilliancy of dialogue and entertaining plot.
Style of
gothic horror fiction was developed in The Portrait of Dorian Gray (with a strong Faustian theme). The
novel tells of a young man named Dorian Gray, the subject of a painting by
artist Basil Hallward. Basil is impressed by Dorian's beauty and becomes
infatuated with him, believing his beauty is responsible for a new mode in his
art. Talking in Basil's garden, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, a friend of
Basil's, and becomes enthralled by Lord Henry's world view.
«Espousing a new hedonism,
Lord Henry suggests the only things worth pursuing in life are beauty and fulfillment
of the senses. Realizing that one day his beauty will fade, Dorian cries out,
expressing his desire to sell his soul to ensure the portrait Basil has painted
would age rather than himself. Dorian's wish is fulfilled, plunging him into
debauched acts. The portrait serves as a reminder of the effect each act has
upon his soul, with each sin displayed as a disfigurement of his form, or
through a sign of aging»[61].
The main
characters are
the bright personification of different psychological types and human
evils:
-
Dorian
Gray – a
handsome young man who becomes enthralled with Lord Henry's idea of a new hedonism.
He begins to indulge in every kind of pleasure, moral and immoral.
-
Basil
Hallward –
an artist who becomes infatuated with Dorian's beauty. Dorian helps Basil to realize
his artistic potential, as Basil's portrait of Dorian proves to be his
finest work.
-
Lord
Henry "Harry" Wotton – a nobleman who is a friend to Basil initially, but later
becomes more intrigued with Dorian's beauty and naiveté. Extremely
witty, Lord Henry is seen as a critique of Victorian culture at the end of the
century, espousing a view of indulgent hedonism. He conveys to Dorian his world
view, and Dorian becomes corrupted as he attempts to emulate him.
- Sibyl Vane – An
exceptionally talented and beautiful (though extremely poor) actress with whom
Dorian falls in love. Her love for Dorian destroys her acting ability, as she
no longer finds pleasure in portraying fictional love when she is
experiencing love in reality.
-
James
Vane –
Sibyl's brother who is to become a sailor and leave for Australia. He is extremely protective of his sister, especially as his mother is useless and
concerned only with Dorian's money. He is hesitant to leave his sister,
believing Dorian will harm her and promises to be vengeful if any harm
should come to her.
-
Alan
Campbell – a
chemist and once a good friend of Dorian; he ended their friendship when
Dorian's reputation began to come into question.
-
Lord
Fermor –
Lord Henry's uncle. He informs Lord Henry about Dorian's lineage.
-
Victoria,
Lady Henry Wotton – Lord Henry's wife, who only appears once in the novel while Dorian
waits for Lord Henry; she later divorces Lord Henry in exchange for a pianist.
In a letter,
Wilde said the main characters were reflections of himself: «Basil Hallward is what I think I am:
Lord Henry is what the world thinks me: Dorian is what I would like to be - in other ages, perhaps»[62].
The
Picture of Dorian Gray with its supernatural elements (eternal youth
and a changing portrait) belongs to the genre of the fantastic and is
influenced by the tradition of the Gothic novel. (Charles Robert Maturin,
who wrote the Gothic classic Melmoth the Wanderer, was Wilde's
great-uncle. This may explain Wilde's interest in the Gothic novel) Wilde's
deconstruction of nineteenth century traditional realism may illustrate his
strategy of subversion.
In
The Decay of Lying, Wilde undermines the credibility of realism by reversing
the relationship between life and art. In The Decay of Lying, he
declares that life imitates art far more than art imitates life. The
remarkable increase in London fog during the last ten years was, according to
Wilde, entirely due to impressionist paintings. Since art offers new ways of
perception, it can disclose new aspects of reality. As Wilde elaborates in
The Decay of Lying:
«For what is
Nature? Nature is no great mother who has borne us. She is our creation. It
is in our brain that she quickens to life. Things are because we see them, and
what we see, and how we see it, depend on the Arts that have influenced us. To
look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything
until one sees beauty. Then, and then only, does it come into existence. At
present people see fogs, not because there are fogs, but because poets and painters
have taught them the mysterious loveliness of such effects. There may have
been fogs for centuries in London. I dare say there were. But no one saw
them, and so we do not know anything about them. They did not exist till Art
had invented them»[63].
Once
Wilde has pointed out that the relationship between art and life is not the
hierarchical order of 'life above art' as postulated by realism, the authority
of realism loses the stability of meaning upon which it is based. Wilde's
aestheticism clashed with this mimetic and moralistic view of literature. In
his individual style conceptionally dominate realism and
morals.
2.3. Lexical stylistic devices in Oscar Wilde’s works
After
theoretical understanding the concept of style we could logically start
analyzing some lexical expressive means and stylistic devices used by Oscar
Wilde in his plays.
So
as Wilde's aestheticism clashed with the mimetic and moralistic view of literature,
the majority of
critics of the nineteenth century noted that Oscar Wilde’s been the most
paradoxical writer of his time. Epigrams and paradoxes as stylistic devices are
usually used in the Present Indefinite Tense which makes them abstract.
e.g.
«Women are pictures, Men are problems»[64].
In
Wilde’s paradoxes and epigrams the verb “to be” is widely used. This
verb intensifies the genetic function and makes aphorisms and paradoxes
humorous. It makes also the ironical definition of phenomena of life.
«The Picture of Dorian
Gray»:
Epigrams on morality general
issues are the following:
-
Children
begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes
they forgive them.
-
I
adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.
-
Nowadays
most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too
late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.
-
One
can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.
-
Perhaps,
after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had
merely been detected.
-
The
advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray, and the advantage of science
is that it is not emotional.
-
The
only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-
Resist
it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.
-
The
basis of optimism is sheer terror.
-
The
only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense
inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.
- It is absurd to divide people
into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
- A little sincerity is a
dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
-
A man
can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.
-
Always
forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
-
Anyone
who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
-
At
twilight, nature is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to
illustrate quotations from the poets.
- Consistency is the last
refuge of the unimaginative.
-
Every
portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the
sitter.
- Genius is born not paid.
-
Illusion
is the first of all pleasures.
-
Man is
least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will
tell you the truth.
-
Morality,
like art, means drawing a line someplace.
-
Most
people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their
lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
-
One
can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except
a good reputation.
-
One
should always play fairly when one has the winning cards [65].
The epigrams
of the novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray” enlighten all the cardinal notions of
life. For instance there are a lot of statements on temptation and selfishness:
-
The
reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves.
-
Selfishness
is not living as one wishes to live; it is asking others to live as one wishes
to live.
-
Seriousness
is the only refuge of the shallow.
-
The
aim of life is self-development.
-
To
realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.
On dreams:
-
The
only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.
-
The
only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
-
The
true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
On religion
and wisdom:
-
There
are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely
everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
-
To
disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first
requisites of sanity.
-
We
live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.
-
We
teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.
-
Whenever
people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
-
Wisdom
comes with winters.
-
One
should absorb the color of life, but one should never remember its details.
Details are always vulgar[66].
His plays contain epigrams on morality
general issues and on phenomenons of life:
-
Experience
is the name everyone gives to their mistakes[67].
-
Scandal
is gossip made tedious by morality[68].
-
We are
all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
-
What
is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
-
Only
the shallow know themselves.
There are a
lot of epigrammatic proverbs on profession of writer in «The Canterville Ghost»:
-
To
give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the
proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of
parts and culture[69].
One
of the most characteristic and essential features of epigrams and paradoxes is
their shortness and conciseness. They are achieved by the syntactical pattern
of an epigram or paradox. The syntax of these stylistic devices is laconic and
clear – cut.
e.g.
«Do not use bid words. They mean so little»[70].
In
these examples we can see the parallel constructions widely used by Oscar Wilde,
which emphasize the semantic essence of lexical expression. They serve a
perfect means of creating the clear-cut syntax of epigrams and paradoxes.
It’s marked
out a special group of epigrammatic proverbs which are composed in the old Latin
form - rhetoric question.
-
Why
was I born with such contemporaries?
-
But
what is the difference between literature and journalism?[71]
The
author raises a question, but doesn't answer it directly as obvious. Rhetorical
questions are used to provoke, emphasize or argue.
The majority of epigrams contain
many allusions to mythology: the contrast with the sobriety and practical sense
of Roman proverbs seems to give it force and meaning.
To
conclude, I shall give examples of aphorisms in The Picture of Dorian Gray
which correspond with Dollimore's pairs of inverted oppositions:
Surface
or beauty/depth or morality: «I admit that I think that it is better to be
beautiful than to be good. But on the other hand no one is more ready than I
am to acknowledge that is better to be good than to be ugly»[72].
Persona
or role/ essential self: «Being natural is simply a pose, and the most
irritating pose I know»[73]
and
«I love
acting. It is so much more real than life»[74].
Insincerity/sincerity: «Now, the value
of an idea has nothing to do whatsoever with the sincerity of the man who
expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man
is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not
be coloured by his wants, his desires or his prejudices»[75].
Facetious/serious: «Humanity takes
itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the caveman had
known how to laugh, history would have been different»[76].
Although
Wilde's paradoxes seem arbitrary at first sight, they all disrupt the
importance of depth in favour of surface: he reverses the hierarchy between the
superior (content = depth) and inferior term (form = surface).
I
have borrowed the following scheme of paradoxes contradictions from Dollimore[77] and have added a number
of oppositions to it:
|
FORM
|
CONTENT
|
|
surface/beauty
|
depth/moral values
|
|
lying
|
Truth
|
|
change
|
Stasis
|
|
difference
|
Essence
|
|
persona/role
|
essential self
|
|
abnormal
|
Normal
|
|
insincerity
|
Sincerity
|
|
style/artifice
|
Authenticity
|
|
facetious
|
Serious
|
|
narcissism
|
Maturity
|
|
outward respectability
|
inner morality
|
|
culture
|
Nature
|
In
Wilde's paradoxes, the left term turns up as the superior term, while an essentialist
approach to life prefers the right notions.
Irony, in which the contextual
evaluative meaning of a word is directly opposite to its dictionary meaning, does
not exist outside the context.
e.g.
«My father told me to go to bed an hour ago. I don’t see why I shouldn’t give
you the same advice. I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do
with it. It is never of any use to oneself» [78].
The
word “advice” is suggested for acceptance if it is good and for rejection if it
is not good, but not for passing on it. In fact, Lord Goring, the speaker of
this phrase, is a serious person, who knows that a good advice may be very
useful.
e.g.
«A man who moralizes is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralizes is
invariably plain»[79].
Pun
(paronomasia, a play on words) is the next stylistic device used by Oscar Wilde in
his plays. We can find pun even in the titles of Oscar Wilde’s plays, e.g. «The
Importance of Being Earnest». But to understand this pun we must read the whole
play, because the name of the hero and the adjective meaning «seriously-minded»
both exist in our mind.
Pun
is based on the effect of deceived expectation, because unpredictability in it
is expressed either in the appearance of the elements of the text unusual for
the reader or in the unexpected reaction of the addressee of the dialogue.
For
Oscar Wilde pun is one of the most effective means used for creating wit,
brilliancy and colourfulness of his dialogues for criticism of bourgeois morality.
At the same time the puns serve for showing the author’s ideas and thoughts.
e.g.
«Lord Darlington: Ah, nowadays we are all of us so hard up, that the only
pleasant things to pay are compliments. They are the only things we can pay»[80] .
These
examples show that the play on words has a great influence on the reader. The
speech of the hero becomes more vivid and interesting.
Most
of Wilde’s puns are based on polysemy.
e.g.
«Lady H.: she lets her clever tongue run away with her.
Lady
C.: is that the only Mrs. Allonby allows to run away with her?»
In
this example the pun is realized in the remark of the second person. The first
meaning of the expression “to run away with” – is “not to be aware of what you
are speaking”, and the second meaning is “to make off taking something with
you”. The first meaning is figurative and the second is direct.
As
a rule, when two meanings of the word are played upon, one of them is direct;
the other is figurative, which can be illustrated by some of the above
mentioned examples. So, we can see that irony and pun also play the very
important role in Wilde’s plays. The effect of these stylistic devices is based
on the author’s attitude to the English bourgeois society.
Thus
irony and pun help Oscar Wilde to show that majority of his heroes are the
typical representatives of the bourgeois society: thoughtless, frivolous,
greedy, envious, mercenary people. A play upon contrasts and contradictions
lies at the basis of author’s sarcastic method in portraying his characters.
The dynamic quality of Wilde’s plays is increased by the frequent ironical
sentences and puns. These stylistic devices convey the vivid sense of reality
in the picture of the 19-th century English upper-class society.
Simile is one more stylistic
device very often used by Wilde in his plays. It is the intensification of
someone feature of the concept in question is realized in a device.
e.g.
«But she is really like a Tanagra statuette, and would be rather annoyed if she
were told so»[81].
“She”
and “statuette” belong to heterogeneous classes of objects and Wilde has found
that the beauty of Mabel Chiltern may be compared with the beauty of the
ancient Tanagra statuette. Of the two concepts brought together in the Simile –
one characterized (Mabel Chiltern), and the other characterizing (Statuette) –
the feature intensified will be more inherent in the latter than in the former.
Moreover, the object characterized, is seen in quite a new and unexpected
light, because the author as it were, imposes this feature on it.
e.g.
«Twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin; but twenty years
of marriage make her something like a public building» [82].
So, simile is another stylistic device frequently used by Oscar Wilde in his
plays. It shows the individual viewpoint of the author on different objects,
actions, and phenomena. The literary similes in his plays gain especially
wonderful character as they make the text more expressive and more interesting.
«Upon
my word, Basil, I didn’t know you were so vain; and I really can’t see any resemblance
between you, with your rugged strong face and your coal-black hair, and this young
Adonis, who looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-leaves.
Why, my dear Basil, he is a Narcissus, and you - well, of course you have
an intellectual expression and all that»[83].
«There
were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids and as subtle in colour.
The life of the senses was described in the terms of mystical philosophy» [84].
The
properties of an object may be viewed from different angles. Accordingly,
similes may be based on the effective lexical means - adjective-attributes,
adverbs-modifiers, verb-predicates, superlative degree etc.
e.g.
«Bring me the two most precious things in the
city»[85].
e.g.
«And certainly, whenever the wind blew, the Reed made the most graceful
curtseys»[86].
«The
style in which it was written was that curious jeweled style, vivid and obscure
at once, full of argot and of archaisms, of technical expressions and of
elaborate paraphrases, that characterizes the work of some of the finest
artists of the French school of Symbolists»[87].
Epithet is also a frequently used
stylistic device by Oscar Wilde. Epithet on the whole shows purely individual
emotional attitude of the speaker towards the object spoken of, it describes
the object as it appears to the speaker. Its basic features are its emotiveness
and subjectivity: the characteristic attached to the object to qualify it is
always chosen by the speaker himself.
e.g.
«But I tell you that the only bitter words that ever came from those sweet
lips of hers were on your account, and I hate to see you next her»[88].
Epithet
has remained over the centuries the most widely used stylistic device, it
offers the ample opportunities of qualifying every object from the author’s
partial and subjective viewpoint, which is indispensable in creative prose. In
his plays Oscar Wilde used very colorful epithets, which sometimes help him to
show the difference between pretence and reality.
Wilde’s
epithets give a brilliant colour and wonderful witticism to his works. With the
help of epithets Wilde’s heroes are more interesting, their speech is more emotive;
they involve the reader in their reality, in their life.
His
epithets are based on different sources, such as nature, art, history, literature,
mythology, everyday life, man, etc. They reflect Wilde’s opinions and viewpoints
about different things. They give emphasis and rhythm to the text.
e.g.
«Those straw-colored women have dreadful tempers»[89].
e.g.
«There were moments, indeed, at night, when, lying sleepless in his own
delicately scented chamber, or in the sordid room of the little ill-famed
tavern near the docks which, under an assumed name and in disguise, it was his
habit to frequent, he would think of the ruin he had brought upon his soul
with a pity that was all the more poignant because it was purely selfish»[90].
e.g.
«Actual life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in
the imagination. It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet
of sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen
brood. In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the
good rewarded»[91].
e.g. «The Prince and
Princess sat at the top of the Great Hall and drank out of a cup of clear
crystal. Only true lovers could drink out of this cup, for if false lips
touched it, it grew grey and dull and cloudy. - It's quite clear that they
love each other, - said the little Page, - as clear as crystal! - and
the King doubled his salary a second time»[92].
The
examples above shows that Oscar Wilde may be really called a master of colorful
and vivid epithets.
In
Oscar Wilde’s creativity we can also find such stylistic device as hyperbole
(overstatement) which is used for intensifying one certain property of the
object.
e.g.
«I have never loved anyone in the world but you»[93].
In
order to depict the degree of the love of his character Wilde resorts to the
use of these hyperboles. So one of the most important function of hyperbole is
the emotional expressiveness.
In
other hyperboles Oscar Wilde uses the exaggeration of the quantitative aspect.
e.g. «I have met hundreds of good women» [94].
They
make their way not on the direct meaning, but on the great emotional influence.
But literary hyperbole is not the simple speech figure.
They
may be also called the means of artistic characterization. It is one of the
most important means of building up the plot of the text, the imagery and
expressiveness.
e.g.
«I am glad there is some one in the world who is quite happy, - muttered
a disappointed man as he gazed at the wonderful statue»[95].
«You said that you would dance with me if
I brought you a red rose, - cried the Student. - Here is the reddest rose
in all the world. You will wear it to-night next your heart, and as we
dance together it will tell you how I love you»[96].
It
is the transmission of the author’s thought. In order to create his hyperboles Oscar
Wilde uses such words as “some one in the world”, “hundreds”, “thousands”,
“all the time”, “nothing in the world”, etc. Wilde’s hyperboles bring the
brightness, expressiveness and the emotional color of the language.
Metaphor
is one of
the most frequently used stylistic devices by Oscar Wilde. The metaphors
reveal the attitude of the writer to the object, action or concept and express
his views. They may also reflect the literary school which he belongs and the
epoch in which he lives. Oscar Wilde’s fine metaphors play an important role in
portraying his heroes, their feelings and thoughts.
e.g.
«Ideals are dangerous things. Realities are better. They wound, but they are
better»[97].
A
metaphor can exist only within a context.
e.g.
«Lord Illingworth: That silly Puritan girl making a scene merely because I
wanted to kiss her. What harm is there in a kiss?
Mrs.
Arbuthnot: A kiss may ruin a human life. I know that too well».
The
metaphorical effect of this sentence is based on the personal feelings of Mrs. Arbuthnot.
Her sad experience of life sounds in this phrase. When she was young, she had a
great love. But her passion had left her and “her life was ruined.” That is why
this metaphor has a true effective power when it is pronounced by Mrs. Arbuthnot.
Wilde’s
genuine metaphors develop the reader’s imagination. At the same time the author
reflects his own point of view.
e.g.
«Divorces are made in Heaven».
e.g.
«Youth is the Lord of Life».
e.g.
«There is no Mystery so great as Misery»[98].
The
charm of Oscar Wilde’s style is due to the mixture of poetic metaphors and real
images.
e.g.
«Like the painting of a sorrow, A face without a heart»[99] .
e.g.
«If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his heart, - he answered, sinking
into an arm-chair».
The
author does not convince the reader to make the resulting points, but he makes
him indirectly judge the heroes and clear the situation.
The
meanings of Oscar Wilde’s metaphors are understandable for any reader, of any
age and any interests. They produce a dynamic character of the plot and show
that Wilde is a man of genius of vivid fantastic images.
e.g.
«She (the Reed) has no conversation, - he (the Swallow) said, - and I am afraid
that she is a coquette, for she is always flirting with the wind»[100].
e.g. «Once a beautiful
flower put its head out from the grass, but when it saw the
notice-board it was so sorry for the children that it slipped back into the
ground again, and went off to sleep»[101].
e.g. «So the Hail came.
Every day for three hours he rattled on the roof of the castle till he broke
most of the slates, and then he ran round and round the garden as fast as he
could go. He was dressed in grey, and his breath was like ice»[102].
e.g. «I hate people who cry over spilt milk»[103].
e.g. «The Prince
and Princess were leading the dance. They danced so beautifully that the tall
white lilies peeped in at the window and watched them, and the great red
poppies nodded their heads and beat time»[104].
e.g. «She said that
she would dance with me if I brought her red roses... But there is no red rose
in my garden, so I shall sit lonely, and she will pass me by. She will have no
heed of me, and my heart will break»[105].
e.g. «She sang
first of the birth of love in the heart of a boy and a girl»[106].
e.g. «...She (the
Nightingale) sang of the Love that is perfected by Death, of the Love that dies
not in the tomb»[107].
Sometimes the metaphors express the
pnenomenon of human spiritual life:
e.g. «My own garden is my
own garden,- said the Giant, - Any one can understand that, and I will allow
nobody to play in it but myself. So he built a high wall all round it, and put
up a notice-board: «TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED». He was a very selfish
Giant. The poor children had now nowhere to play»[108].
This is a spread metaphoric image of human loneliness in the world.
Oscar Wilde does not pay much attention to metonymy. But his
metonymies have a great stylistic potential. They reach the emotional
reliability, which creates the effect of reader’s presence in the literary
world.
e.g.
«She was stern to me, but she taught me what the world is forgetting, the
difference that there is between what is right and what is wrong»[109].
e.g.
«Do you think seriously that women who have committed what the world calls a
fault should never be forgiven?»
In
these examples we can see the same metonymy that is used by the same word
“world”. Here the author means the people who love in the world. Here we also
can see that container is used instead of the thing contained: “world” instead
of “people”.
Among
lexical expressive means Oscar Wilde very often used lexical repetition
when the speaker is under the stress of strong emotion and shows the state of
mind of the speaker:
e.g.
«I love you – love you as I have never loved any living
thing. From the moment I met you I loved you, loved you blindly, adoringly,
madly!».
So
lexical repetition is a powerful means of emphasis, it adds rhythm and balance
to the utterance. Oscar Wilde’s repetitions help us to be closer to the hero,
to understand his feelings.
e.g.
«All the married men live like bachelors, and all the
bachelors like married men».
e.g.
«Dear little Swallow, - said the Prince, - you tell
me of marvelous things, but more marvelous than anything is the
suffering of men and of women»[110].
They
also can be considered as a powerful mean of emphasis and coloring of
individual author’s style as they add rhythm and balance to the text.
Antithesis is always
sense-motivated; and it depends on the context. Reading Oscar Wilde’s plays we
can see that the author doesn’t pay much attention to inversion, but
nevertheless there are some examples of it:
e.g.
« How hard good women are! How weak bad men are!»[111]
e.g.
«Curious thing, plain women are always jealous of their husbands, beautiful
women never are!»
e.g.
«In the daytime I played with my companions in the
garden, and in the evening I led the dance in the Great Hall... So I lived,
and so I died»[112].
Here
we can see the semantic contrast, which is formed with the help of objectively
contrasting pairs “hard – weak”, “good – bad”, “women – men”, “plain – beautiful”,
“always – never”, “lived – died”.
Allusions. Allusion
usually creates the certain connotations in the reader’s mind, animating the
text with vivid familiar images.
e.g.
«Bring me the two most precious things in the city, - said God to one of
His Angels; and the Angel brought Him the leaden heart and the dead
bird. - You have rightly chosen, - said God, - for in my garden of Paradise
this little bird shall sing for evermore, and in my city of gold the Happy
Prince shall praise me»[113].
The
Bible images, the conceptions of Christianity are presented in several
allusions[114].
But there are also other famous allusions of civilization significance in
Wilde’s works:
-
The Republic.
Glaucon and Adeimantus present the myth of Gyges'
ring, by which Gyges made himself invisible. They ask Socrates, if one came
into possession of such a ring, why should he act justly? Socrates replies that
even if no one can see one's physical appearance, the soul is disfigured by the
evils one commits. This disfigured (the antithesis of beautiful) and corrupt
soul is imbalanced and disordered, and in itself undesirable regardless of
other advantages of acting unjustly. Dorian Gray's portrait is the means by
which other individuals, such as Dorian's friend Basil, may see Dorian's
distorted soul.
-
Tannhäuser.
At one point, Dorian Gray attends a performance of
Richard Wagner's opera, Tannhäuser, and is explicitly said to
personally identify with the work. Indeed, the opera bears some striking
resemblances with the novel, and, in short, tells the story of a medieval (and
historically real) singer, whose art is so beautiful that he causes Venus, the
goddess of love herself, to fall in love with him, and to offer him eternal
life with her in the Venusberg. Tannhäuser becomes dissatisfied with his
life there, however, and elects to return to the harsh world of reality, where,
after taking part in a song-contest, he is sternly censured for his sensuality,
and eventually dies in his search for repentance and the love of a good woman.
-
Faust.
Wilde is reputed to have stated that «in every
first novel the hero is the author as Christ or Faust»[115]. As in
Faust, a temptation is placed before the lead character Dorian, the potential
for ageless beauty; Dorian indulges in this temptation. In both stories, the
lead character entices a beautiful woman to love them and kills not only her,
but also that woman's brother, who seeks revenge.
Wilde went on to say that the notion behind The
Picture of Dorian Gray is «old in the history of literature» but was
something to which he had «given a new form»[116] .
Unlike Faust, there is no point at which Dorian makes a deal with the
devil. However, Lord Henry's cynical outlook on life and hedonistic nature
seems to be in keeping with the idea of the devil's role, that of the
temptation of the pure and innocent, qualities which Dorian exemplifies at the
beginning of the book. Although Lord Henry takes an interest in Dorian, it does
not seem that he is aware of the effect of his actions. However, Lord Henry
advises Dorian that «the only way to get rid of a temptation is
to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing»;
in this sense, Lord Henry can be seen to represent the Devil, «leading
Dorian into an unholy pact by manipulating his innocence and insecurity»[117].
-
Shakespeare.
In his preface, Wilde writes about Caliban, a
character from Shakespeare's play The Tempest. When Dorian is telling
Lord Henry Wotton about his new 'love', Sibyl Vane, «he refers
to all of the Shakespearean plays she has been in, referring to her as the
heroine of each play. At a later time, he speaks of his life by quoting Hamlet,
who has similarly driven his girlfriend to suicide and her brother to swear
revenge»[118].
-
Joris-Karl Huysmans.
Dorian Gray's "poisonous French novel" that
leads to his downfall is believed to be Joris-Karl Huysmans' novel À
rebours. Literary critic Richard Ellmann writes: «Wilde does
not name the book but at his trial he conceded that it was, or almost,
Huysmans's A Rebours...To a correspondent he wrote that he had played a
'fantastic variation' upon A Rebours and some day must write it down.
The references in Dorian Gray to specific chapters are deliberately
inaccurate»[119].
Some allusions are
created with poetisms and poetic quotation. To
characterize the lexical component of the texts of Oscar Wilde it’s been fixed
the distinctive features of author’s texts – the numerous archaisms.
1. Historical words: Latinisms - the
face of Antinoi, the Athenaeum, velarium, the
mortuary cloth and etc.
e.g. «I am due
at the Athenaeum»[120].
e.g. «Where
the huge velarium that Nero had stretched across the Colosseum at Rome that Titan sail of purple on which was represented the starry sky, and Apollo driving
a chariot drawn by white, gilt-reined steeds? He longed to see the curious table-napkins
wrought for the Priest of the Sun, on which were displayed all the dainties and
viands that could be wanted for a feast; the mortuary cloth of King
Chilperic, with its three hundred golden bees».
2. Poetic
words: Words used
in poetry in the XVII-XIX cc.
e.g. «There
was something fascinating in this son of Love and Death».
e.g. «She
showed no sign of joy when her eyes rested on Romeo. The few words she had to
speak:
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which
mannerly devotion shows in this;
For
saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
And
palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss –».
3.
Archaic words (archaic forms) proper: Thou, Too like, a beauteous flower
and etc.
e.g. «The
duchess sighed and exercised her privilege of interruption.
These are called».
e.g. «She
over-emphasised everything that she had to say. The beautiful passage –
Thou
knowest the mask of night is on my face,
Else
would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek
For
that which thou hast heard me speak to-night –».
e.g. «When
she leaned over the balcony and came to those wonderful lines -
Although I joy in thee,
I
have no joy of this contract to-night:
It
is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
Too
like the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere
one can say, ‘It lightens.’ Sweet, good-night!
This
bud of love by summer’s ripening breath
May
prove a beauteous flower when next we meet –
was declaimed
with the painful precision of a schoolgirl who has been taught to recite by
some second-rate professor of elocution».
Literary words,
an essential of creative prose, are used predominantly in Oscar Wilde’s works.
All the examples above
show that LEM and SD played a very important role in Oscar Wilde’s style. They are
presented in the following proportion (See diagram 1).
With the help
of them Oscar Wilde, who was a talented writer, can make us feel the way he wants.
We can find metaphors, repetition, chiasmus, antithesis and many others. These
expressive means help the author to create his individual elegant, humorous and
challenging style realizing Wilde's mimetic and moralistic view of literature.
Diagram 1. SD in Oscar Wilde’s creativity
Making
a conclusion to practical part of the Paper, the following characteristics of
individual style of Oscar Wilde’s creativity can be stated (see diagram
2).
Diagram 2. Essentials of individual style
of Oscar Wilde’s creativity
Conclusions. Having analyzed works of
Oscar Wilde, we came to a conclusion that Oscar Wilde style is was formed with
the help of a great variety of LEM and LSD.
Among
them we can see the absolute majority epigrams and paradoxes which
played one of the most important roles in Wilde’s plays. With the help of these
stylistic devices Wilde reflects his own viewpoints on the society of his time,
his opinions about life, love and friendship, men and women. Paradoxes and epigrams
create the individuality of Oscar Wilde and made him worldwide famous for many
brilliant and the wittiest of them.
The
specific, cynical quality of Wilde’s irony is manifested in his manner
of writing. This device allowed Wilde to reveal incongruity of the world around
him and to show the viciousness of the upper-class society.
Pun was another effective
mean used for creating wit, brilliancy and colourfulness of O. Wilde’s
dialogues, serving for his criticism of bourgeois morality, showing the
author’s ideas and thoughts.
The
dynamic quality of Wilde’s plays is increased by the frequent ironical sentences
and puns. These stylistic devices convey the vivid sense of reality in the picture
of the 19-th century English upper-class society.
Wilde’s
realism with its wonderful epigrams and paradoxes, brilliant irony and amusing
puns initiates the beginning of a new era in the development of the English
play.
Wilde’s
epithets also give a brilliant color and wonderful witticism to his
plays a and his literary style. With the help of epithets Wilde’s heroes are
more interesting, their speech is more emotive; they involve the reader in
their reality, in their life. Wilde uses a great amount of epithets in his
plays. They are based on different sources, such as nature, art, history,
literature, mythology, everyday life, man, etc. Wilde may be also called a
master of colorful and vivid epithets.
The
charm of O. Wilde’s plays and his style can be also seen due to the mixture of
poetic metaphors and real images. The author does not convince the
reader to make the resulting points, but he makes him indirectly judge the
heroes and clear the situation. The meanings of Oscar Wilde’s metaphors are
understandable for any reader, of any age and any interests. They produce a
dynamic character of the plot and show that Wilde is a man of genius.
Simile is another interesting
stylistic device used by Oscar Wilde in his plays. It shows the individual
viewpoint of the author on different objects, actions, and phenomena.
Hyperbole is also frequently used
by Oscar Wilde. In order to create his hyperboles Oscar Wilde uses such words
as “hundreds”, “thousands”, “all the time”, “nothing in the world”, etc.
Wilde’s hyperboles bring the brightness, expressiveness and the emotional color
of his style. Hyperbole is like a magnifying glass; it helps to observe in
details his plays and style.
As
a brief conclusion we can say that Oscar Wilde resorts to the use of a great
number of stylistic devices in his works.
Speaking
about syntactical expressive means and stylistic devices in Oscar Wilde’s play
we can also see plenty of them, forming his individual style.
For
example Wilde’s repetitions help us to be closer to the hero, to understand
his feelings. They also can be considered as a powerful mean of emphasis and
coloring of individual author’s style as they add rhythm and balance to the
text.
We
came to the conclusion that for Oscar Wilde language was the most important way
for expression of his thoughts and feelings. According to the examples mentioned
in our scientific paper, we can see that Wilde’s language is very expressive
and vivid, and at the same time it is plain and understandable to any reader
and this language like a brush paints really ingenious, vivid, individual style
of author.
Antithesis’s
applied
in the majority of Wilde’s
epigrams realized in pairs of inverted contradictions (antithesis of the general
moral notions and conceptions).
Allusion usually creates the
certain connotations in the reader’s mind, animating the text with vivid
familiar images of civilization significance in Wilde’s works.
To characterize in general the lexical component of
the texts of Oscar Wilde the numerous archaisms (predominantly poetisms) have
been fixed as the essentials of author’s texts.
All the
examples above show that LEM and SD played a very important emphasizing role in
Oscar Wilde’s style. They are presented in the following proportion
(See diagram 1).
These
expressive means help the author to create his individual elegant, humorous and
challenging style realizing Wilde's mimetic and moralistic view of literature.
CONCLUSION
The
theoretical part of the Paper’s shown the following.
There
are two types of style can be determined in studies on stylistics:
1)
One is individual or authorial style, i.e. style related to meaning in a general
way. When people talk of style they usually mean authorial style, in other
words a way of writing that recognizably belongs to a particular writer.
This
way of writing distinguishes one author's writing from that of others, depending
on different periods of history, different worldviews of authors.
2)
The other notion of style is text style, i.e. style intrinsically related to
meaning. Just as authors can be said to have style, so can texts. When we
examine text style, we need to examine linguistic choices which are
intrinsically connected with meaning and effect on the reader.
The
stylistic effect’s achieved in two directions:
1.
Explication semantic aspect (denotative aspect of LM).
2.
Implication semantic aspect (LSD).
The
above effort to make clear the notion of style of prose fiction is very helpful
in exploring the nature of the lexical stylistic devices (SD).
Therefore the
second part of our scientific work enlightened lexical expressive means (LEM)
and lexical stylistic devices (LSD) with the help of Oscar Wilde’s brilliant
works. The total quantity of the given examples - 126.
Making a
conclusion to analyzing stylistic peculiarities of Oscar Wilde’s creativity,
the following lexical expressive lexical means can be called:
1.
Paradoxes and epigrams. One of the most characteristic and essential features of epigrams
and paradoxes is their shortness and conciseness, which emphasize the semantic
essence of lexical expression.
Some of them
are composed in the old Latin form - rhetoric question.
In
Wilde’s paradoxes and epigrams were distincted the following types of the
ironical definitions:
- Epigrams on morality
general issues.
- Statements on temptation
and selfishness.
- Statements on dreams.
- Statements on religion and
wisdom.
- Statements on profession
of writer.
2.
Irony, in
which the contextual evaluative meaning of a word is directly opposite to its
dictionary meaning, does not exist outside the context.
3.
Pun (paronomasia, a play on words). Most of Wilde’s puns are based on
polysemy.
4.
Simile as the intensification of someone feature of the concept in
question may be based on the effective lexical means - adjective-attributes,
adverbs-modifiers, verb-predicates, superlative degree etc.
5.
Epithet.
With the help of epithets Wilde’s heroes are more interesting, their speech is
more emotive; they involve the reader in their reality, in their life. They are
based on different sources, such as nature, art, history, literature,
mythology, everyday life, man, etc.
6.
Hyperbole (overstatement)
is used for intensifying one certain property of the object.
7.
Metaphor is also one of the most frequently used stylistic devices by
Oscar Wilde. The charm of Oscar Wilde’s style is due to the mixture of poetic
metaphors and real images.
8.
Metonymy.
Although, Oscar Wilde does not pay much attention to this device.
9.
Antithesis. The majority
of Wilde’s epigrams realize pairs of inverted contradictions (antithesis of
the general conceptions):
|
surface/beauty
|
depth/moral values
|
|
lying
|
truth
|
|
change
|
stasis
|
|
difference
|
essence
|
|
persona/role
|
essential self
|
|
abnormal
|
normal
|
|
insincerity
|
sincerity
|
|
style/artifice
|
authenticity
|
|
facetious
|
serious
|
|
narcissism
|
maturity
|
|
outward respectability
|
inner morality
|
|
culture
|
nature
|
10.
Lexical repetition is emphatic device and it shows the state of mind of the
speaker. It adds rhythm and balance to the utterance. Oscar Wilde’s repetitions
help us to be closer to the hero, to understand his feelings.
11.
Allusion. Allusion
usually creates the certain connotations in the reader’s mind, animating the
text with vivid familiar images of civilization significance in Wilde’s works:
- The Bible personages, the conceptions of
Christianity are presented in several allusions.
- The
Republic. Dorian Gray's portrait is the means
by which other individuals, such as Dorian's friend Basil, may see Dorian's
distorted soul.
- Tannhäuser.
-
Faust. Lord Henry can be seen to represent
the Devil, leading Dorian into an unholy pact by manipulating his innocence and
insecurity.
- Shakespeare.
In
his preface, Wilde writes about Caliban, a character from Shakespeare's play The
Tempest.
- Joris-Karl
Huysmans. Dorian Gray's "poisonous French novel" that leads to his
downfall is believed to be Joris-Karl Huysmans' novel À rebours.
Some allusions are
created with poetic quotation.
To characterize in general the lexical
component of the texts of Oscar Wilde the numerous archaisms (predominantly
poetisms) have been fixed the essentials of author’s texts.
All the
examples above show that LEM and SD played a very important emphasizing role in
Oscar Wilde’s style. These means help the author to express in his
creativity his idealist ideas in an aesthetic or symbolist style, gorgeous and
poetic, full of allusions and reminiscence and jewelled words (the purple
patch, as it is so aptly called).
These
expressive means help the author to create his individual elegant, humorous and
challenging style realizing Wilde's mimetic and moralistic view of literature.
Diagram 1
demonstrates the proportion of SD in Oscar Wilde’s creativity. The absolute majority
of SD volume paradoxes and epigrams. While the stylistic potential of Wilde’s
epigrams and paradoxes is predominant his individual style can be conditionally
denoted as paradoxical style with poetic component.
Diagram
2 demonstrates the following essentials of individual style of Oscar Wilde’s
creativity: symbolic (traditionally eternal symbol of “art” and
changing human prototype “reality”, poetic (SD), moralistic one (aesthetics
of Oscar Wilde new conception of literature).
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Appendix
The list of examples
Paradoxes and epigrams
The Picture
of Dorian Gray:
1.
Those
who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming.
This is a fault.
2.
Those
who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these
there is hope.
3.
Being
natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose.
4.
Life
is far too important a thing to talk seriously about it.
5.
A man
who moralizes is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralises is invariably
plain.
6.
Children
begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes
they forgive them.
7.
I
adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.
8.
Nowadays
most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too
late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.
9.
One
can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.
10. Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
11. The advantage of the
emotions is that they lead us astray, and the advantage of science is that it
is not emotional.
12. The only way to get rid of
a temptation is to yield to it.
13. Resist it, and your soul
grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.
14. The basis of optimism is
sheer terror.
15. The only thing that
sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of
everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.
16. It is absurd to divide people
into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
17. A little sincerity is a
dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
18.
A man
can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.
19.
Always
forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
20.
Anyone
who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
21.
At
twilight, nature is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to
illustrate quotations from the poets.
22. Consistency is the last
refuge of the unimaginative.
23.
Every
portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the
sitter.
24. Genius is born not paid.
25.
Illusion
is the first of all pleasures.
26.
Man is
least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will
tell you the truth.
27.
Morality,
like art, means drawing a line someplace.
28.
Most
people are other people. Their thoughts are someone elses opinions, their lives
a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
29.
One
can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except
a good reputation.
30.
One
should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.
31.
The
reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for
ourselves.
32. Selfishness is not living
as one wishes to live; it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
33. Seriousness is the only
refuge of the shallow.
34. The aim of life is
self-development.
35. To realize one's nature
perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.
36. The only thing to do with
good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.
37. The only thing worse than
being talked about is not being talked about.
38. The true mystery of the
world is the visible, not the invisible.
39. There are only two kinds
of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything,
and people who know absolutely nothing.
40. To disagree with
three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.
41. We live in an age when
unnecessary things are our only necessities.
42. We teach people how to
remember, we never teach them how to grow.
43. Whenever people agree with
me I always feel I must be wrong.
44. Wisdom comes with winters.
45. One should absorb the
color of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always
vulgar.
Lady
Windermere's Fan:
46. Experience is the name
everyone gives to their mistakes.
47. Scandal is gossip made
tedious by morality.
48. We are all in the gutter,
but some of us are looking at the stars.
49. What is a cynic? A man who
knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
50. Only the shallow know
themselves.
The Centerville Ghost:
51. To give an accurate
description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of
the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.
52. Do not use bid words.
They mean so little.
53. I admit that I
think that it is better to be beautiful than to be good. But on the other hand
no one is more ready than I am to acknowledge that is better to be good than to
be ugly.
54. Being natural
is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know.
55. I love
acting. It is so much more real than life.
56. Now, the value
of an idea has nothing to do whatsoever with the sincerity of the man who
expresses it.
57. Indeed, the
probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual
will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants,
his desires or his prejudices.
58. Humanity takes
itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the caveman had
known how to laugh, history would have been different.
Rhetoric question
59. Why was I born with such
contemporaries?
60. But what is the difference
between literature and journalism?
Irony
Lady
Windermere's Fan:
61. My father told me to go to
bed an hour ago. I don’t see why I shouldn’t give you the same advice. I always
pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use
to oneself.
62. A man who moralizes is
usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralizes is invariably plain.
Pun (paronomasia, a play on words)
The Importance of Being
Earnest
63. Seriously-minded.
64. Lord Darlington: Ah,
nowadays we are all of us so hard up, that the only pleasant things to pay are
compliments. They are the only things we can pay.
65. Lady H.: she lets her
clever tongue run away with her.
66. Lady C.: is that the only
Mrs. Allonby allows to run away with her?
Simile (I)
The Importance of Being
Earnest
67. But she is really like
a Tanagra statuette, and would be rather annoyed if she were told so.
68. Twenty years of romance
make a woman look like a ruin; but twenty years of marriage make her
something like a public building.
The Picture of Dorian Gray:
69. Upon my word, Basil, I
didn’t know you were so vain; and I really can’t see any resemblance between
you, with your rugged strong face and your coal-black hair, and this young
Adonis, who looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-leaves.
Why, my dear Basil, he is a Narcissus, and you - well, of course you have
an intellectual expression and all that.
70. There were in it metaphors
as monstrous as orchids and as subtle in colour.
Similes (II) based on adjective-attributes,
adverbs-modifiers,
verb-predicates, superlative degree
The Happy Prince
71.
Bring me the two most precious things in the city.
72. And certainly, whenever
the wind blew, the Reed made the most graceful curtseys.
The Picture of Dorian Gray:
73. The style in which it was
written was that curious jeweled style, vivid and obscure at once, full
of argot and of archaisms, of technical expressions and of elaborate
paraphrases, that characterizes the work of some of the finest artists of the
French school of Symbolists.
Epithet
The Picture of Dorian Gray:
74. But I tell you that the
only bitter words that ever came from those sweet lips of hers were on your
account, and I hate to see you next her.
75. Those straw-colored
women have dreadful tempers.
76. There were moments,
indeed, at night, when, lying sleepless in his own delicately scented chamber,
or in the sordid room of the little ill-famed tavern near the docks which,
under an assumed name and in disguise, it was his habit to frequent, he would
think of the ruin he had brought upon his soul with a pity that was all
the more poignant because it was purely selfish.
77.
Actual
life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the imagination. It
was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin. It was the
imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen brood. In the common world
of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded.
The Remarkable Rocket
78.
The Prince and Princess sat at the top of the Great Hall and drank
out of a cup of clear crystal. Only true lovers could drink out of this cup,
for if false lips touched it, it grew grey and dull and cloudy "It's quite
clear that they love each other, - said the little Page, - as clear as
crystal!" and the King doubled his salary a second time.
Hyperbole (overstatement)
The Importance of Being
Earnest
79. I have never loved anyone
in the world but you.
80. I have met hundreds of
good women.
The Happy Prince:
81. I am glad there is some
one in the world who is quite happy, - muttered a disappointed man as he
gazed at the wonderful statue.
The Nightingale and the
Rose
82. You said that you would
dance with me if I brought you a red rose, - cried the Student. - Here is the
reddest rose in all the world. You will wear it to-night next your
heart, and as we dance together it will tell you how I love you.
Metaphor
The Importance of Being
Earnest
83. Ideals are dangerous
things. Realities are better. They wound, but they are better.
84. Lord Illingworth: That
silly Puritan girl making a scene merely because I wanted to kiss her. What
harm is there in a kiss?
85. Mrs.Arbuthnot: A kiss may
ruin a human life. I know that too well.
86. Divorces are made in
Heaven.
87. Youth is the Lord of Life.
The Happy Prince:
88.
There is no Mystery so great as Misery.
89. She (the Reed) has no
conversation, - he (the Swallow) said, - and I am afraid that she is a
coquette, for she is always flirting with the wind.
The Picture of Dorian Gray:
90. Like the painting of a
sorrow, A face without a heart.
91. If a man treats life
artistically, his brain is his heart, - he answered, sinking into an arm-chair.
92. There was something fascinating
in this son of Love and Death.
The Selfish Giant
93.
Once a
beautiful flower put its head out from the grass, but when it saw
the notice-board it was so sorry for the children that it slipped back into the
ground again, and went off to sleep.
94. So the Hail
came. Every day for three hours he rattled on the roof of the castle till he
broke most of the slates, and then he ran round and round the garden as fast as
he could go. He was dressed in grey, and his breath was like ice.
95. My own garden
is my own garden, - said the Giant, - Any one can understand that, and I will
allow nobody to play in it but myself. So he built a high wall all round it,
and put up a notice-board: «TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED». He was a very
selfish Giant. The poor children had now nowhere to play.
The Remarkable Rocket:
96. I hate people who cry over
spilt milk.
97. The Prince and Princess
were leading the dance. They danced so beautifully that the tall white lilies
peeped in at the window and watched them, and the great red poppies nodded
their heads and beat time.
The Nightingale and the
Rose:
98. She said that she would
dance with me if I brought her red roses... But there is no red rose in my
garden, so I shall sit lonely, and she will pass me by. She will have no heed
of me, and my heart will break.
99. She sang first of the
birth of love in the heart of a boy and a girl.
100. ...She (the Nightingale) sang of the
Love that is perfected by Death, of the Love that dies not in the tomb.
Metonymy
The Importance of Being
Earnest
101. She was stern to me, but she taught
me what the world is forgetting, the difference that there is between what is
right and what is wrong.
102. Do you think seriously that women who
have committed what the world calls a fault should never be forgiven?
Lexical repetition
The Importance of Being
Earnest:
103. I love you – love you
as I have never loved any living thing. From the moment I met you I
loved you, loved you blindly, adoringly, madly!
104. All the married men live like
bachelors, and all the bachelors like married men.
The Happy Prince:
105. Dear little
Swallow, - said the Prince, - you tell me of marvelous things, but more
marvelous than anything is the suffering of men and of women.
Antithesis
The Importance of Being
Earnest:
106. How hard good women are! How weak
bad men are!
107. Curious thing, plain women are
always jealous of their husbands, beautiful women never are!
The Happy Prince:
108. In the daytime
I played with my companions in the garden, and in the evening I led the dance
in the Great Hall... So I lived, and so I died.
Allusions
The Happy Prince:
109. Bring me the two most precious things
in the city, - said God to one of His Angels; and the Angel
brought Him the leaden heart and the dead bird. - You have rightly chosen, -
said God, - for in my garden of Paradise this little bird shall sing for
evermore, and in my city of gold the Happy Prince shall praise me.
The Picture of Dorian Gray:
110. The
Republic. Glaucon and Adeimantus present the myth of Gyges' ring, by which Gyges
made himself invisible. They ask Socrates, if one came into possession of such
a ring, why should he act justly? Socrates replies that even if no one can see
one's physical appearance, the soul is disfigured by the evils one commits.
This disfigured (the antithesis of beautiful) and corrupt soul is imbalanced
and disordered, and in itself undesirable regardless of other advantages of
acting unjustly. Dorian Gray's portrait is the means by which other
individuals, such as Dorian's friend Basil, may see Dorian's distorted soul.
111. Tannhäuser. At one point, Dorian Gray attends a
performance of Richard Wagner's opera, Tannhäuser, and is
explicitly said to personally identify with the work. Indeed, the opera bears
some striking resemblances with the novel, and, in short, tells the story of a
medieval (and historically real) singer, whose art is so beautiful that he
causes Venus, the goddess of love herself, to fall in love with him, and to
offer him eternal life with her in the Venusberg. Tannhäuser becomes
dissatisfied with his life there, however, and elects to return to the harsh
world of reality, where, after taking part in a song-contest, he is sternly
censured for his sensuality, and eventually dies in his search for repentance
and the love of a good woman.
112. Faust. Wilde is reputed to have stated
that in every first novel the hero is the author as Christ or Faust. As in
Faust, a temptation is placed before the lead character Dorian, the potential
for ageless beauty; Dorian indulges in this temptation. In both stories, the
lead character entices a beautiful woman to love them and kills not only her,
but also that woman's brother, who seeks revenge. Wilde went on to
say that the notion behind The Picture of Dorian Gray is old in the
history of literature but was something to which he had «given a
new form». Unlike Faust, there is no point at which Dorian makes
a deal with the devil. However, Lord Henry's cynical outlook on life and
hedonistic nature seems to be in keeping with the idea of the devil's role,
that of the temptation of the pure and innocent, qualities which Dorian
exemplifies at the beginning of the book. Although Lord Henry takes an interest
in Dorian, it does not seem that he is aware of the effect of his actions.
However, Lord Henry advises Dorian that «the only
way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul
grows sick with longing»;
in this sense, Lord Henry can be seen to represent the Devil, leading
Dorian into an unholy pact by manipulating his innocence and insecurity.
113. Shakespeare. In his
preface, Wilde writes about Caliban, a character from Shakespeare's play The
Tempest. When Dorian is telling Lord Henry Wotton about his new 'love',
Sibyl Vane, he refers to all of the Shakespearean plays she has been in,
referring to her as the heroine of each play. At a later time, he speaks of his
life by quoting Hamlet, who has similarly driven his girlfriend to suicide and her
brother to swear revenge.
114. Joris-Karl Huysmans. Dorian Gray's "poisonous French
novel" that leads to his downfall is believed to be Joris-Karl Huysmans'
novel À rebours. Literary critic Richard Ellmann writes: Wilde does
not name the book but at his trial he conceded that it was, or almost,
Huysmans's A Rebours...To a correspondent he wrote that he had played a
'fantastic variation' upon A Rebours and some day must write it down.
The references in Dorian Gray to specific chapters are deliberately
inaccurate.
Archaisms
Historical words:
Latinisms - the
face of Antinoi, the Athenaeum, velarium, the
mortuary cloth and etc.
115. You don have the face of Antinoi.
116. I am due at the Athenaeum.
117-118. Where the huge velarium
that Nero had stretched across the Colosseum at Rome, that Titan sail of purple
on which was represented the starry sky, and Apollo driving a chariot drawn by
white, gilt-reined steeds? He longed to see the curious table-napkins wrought
for the Priest of the Sun, on which were displayed all the dainties and viands
that could be wanted for a feast; the mortuary cloth of King Chilperic, with
its three hundred golden bees.
Poetic
words: pilgrim, maiden and
etc.
119. Else would a maiden
blush bepaint my cheek.
120. She showed no sign of joy when her eyes rested on Romeo. The
few words she had to speak:
Good pilgrim,
you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly
devotion shows in this;
For saints
have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
And palm to
palm is holy palmers’ kiss – .
Archaic
words (archaic forms) proper: Thou, Ere, a beauteous flower, thee and etc.
121. The
duchess sighed and exercised her privilege of interruption.
122. She over-emphasized
everything that she had to say. The beautiful passage:
Thou knowest the mask of night
is on my face,
Else
would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek
For
that which thou hast heard me speak to-night – .
123-126. When she leaned
over the balcony and came to those wonderful lines:
Although
I joy in thee,
I
have no joy of this contract to-night:
It
is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
Too
like the
lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere
one can
say, ‘It lightens.’ Sweet, good-night!
This
bud of love by summer’s ripening breath
May
prove a beauteous flower when next we meet –
was declaimed
with the painful precision of a schoolgirl who has been taught to recite by
some second-rate professor of elocution.