Contents
Introduction
1. Preconditions for Oscar Wilde’s
literary style forming and capacity of his plays
1.1. Aestheticism and philosophy of O.Wilde as a basis
for his individual literary style
1.2. O.Wilde’s creative genius and his writings
2. Stylistic Features of Oscar Wilde’s Plays
2.1. Definition of style and its peculiarities
2.2. Lexical EM and SD analysis of O.Wilde’s texts
2.3. Syntactical EM and SD analysis of O.Wilde’s plays
Conclusion
Bibliography
INTRODUCTION
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.
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 O.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 O.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.
[Siegel 1996: 32]
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 O.Wilde’s plays
considered to be a real treasure for stylistic research [Kazantsev 2006: 4]. These
facts underline urgency and the importance of the topic of
our scientific paper: “Individual Stylistic Features of Oscar Wilde’s Plays”.
Existing
researches review. Individual stylistic features of Oscar Wilde’s plays have 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.).
As the object
of the work we considered Oscar Wilde’s plays.
The subject
of the paper – The individual stylistic features of Oscar Wilde’s plays.
The purpose
of work. The
work provides an overview of some expressive means and stylistic devices in
Oscar Wilde’s plays which helps to underline the author’s individual style. In connection with this
the main tasks of this scientific paper are:
to explore aestheticism and philosophy of O.Wilde as a basis for his
individual literary style and to describe the capacity of his writings;
to clarify the term “style”, its components and peculiarities;
to find out
individual stylistic
features of Oscar Wilde’s plays with the help of lexical and syntactical EM and SD analysis of O.Wilde’s texts.
The scientific
paper consists of introduction, two parts, conclusion and bibliography.
1.1. Aestheticism and
philosophy of O.Wilde as a basis for his individual literary style
O.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" [Sammells
2003: 14]. 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". [Sammells 2003: 15]
It is
important to note, that O.Wilde was deeply impressed by the English writers
John Ruskin and Walter Pater, who argued for the central importance of art in
life. O.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". 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 O.Wilde give lectures
on aestheticism in London. [Harris 2007: 22]
The aesthetic
movement, represented by the school of William Morris and Dante Gabriel
Rossetti, had a permanent influence on English decorative art and O.Wilde
itself, his literary views. As the leading aesthete in Britain, O.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.
[Ross 2008: 4] And we should mention that they are still true-life.
Producer
Richard D'Oyly Carte invited O.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, O.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 [King 2009: 31]. On his return to the United
Kingdom O.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”. [Harris 2007: 23]
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 [Daily News
1909].
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[1].
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. [Bashford
2007: 8]
O.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 [Harris
2007: 13]. As, for example, “I can resist everything but temptation”[2].
R.Ross,
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 [Ross 2008: 5] and understanding of it offers a
clue to the profound exploration of his individual literary style and various expressive
means and stylistic devices in Oscar Wilde’s plays.
1.2. O.Wilde’s creative genius
and his writings
Oscar Wilde
was sure that “no artist desires to prove anything, ….the artist must create
and reveal the truth”[3]
and that is why he is most famous for his sophisticated, brilliantly witty
plays, which were the first since the comedies of R.Sheridan and O.Goldsmith to
have both dramatic and literary merit.
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. [Miller 1984: 41]
As we could
see from the previous section of our work O.Wilde was the center of a group
glorifying beauty for itself alone, and 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. [Harris 2007: 45]
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 clever and filled with pithy
epigrams and paradoxes. O.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).
It is
important to underline the fact that O.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. [Harris 2007: 24]
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 O.Wilde was perhaps less
then a mature poet, but a good critic, and a splendid playwright [Ross 2008:
5].
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.
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. [Sammells 2003: 51]
O.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.
The basis of
the moral conflict and aesthetic values which was very close to O.Wilde and his
heroes still influences on our present and future. The authors 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.
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 O.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 most wittiest comedies of the
nineteenth century and our days.
Part 2. Stylistic Features
of Oscar Wilde’s Plays
2.1. Definition of style
and its peculiarities
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. The style of any period is the result of a variety of
complex and shifting pressures and influences. [Arnold 1975: 12] Books reflect
our experience, but our experience is also shaped by the books. 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.
So we could underline three main influences that pressure
on the individual writer’s style: 1) his 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 [Gelgardt 1979: 4]. 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
[Warner 2003: 142]. According to G.-L.Buffon, in reality the style is the man
himself [ibid: 141]. 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. and
deals mainly with two interdependent tasks: the investigation of the inventory
of special language media which by their ontological features secure the
desirable effect of the utterance; certain types of texts (discourse) which due
to the choice and arrangement of language means are distinguished by the
pragmatic aspect of the communication. [Vinogradov 1991: 17]
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, 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. [Denisova 1980: 24]
In
our scientific work we are going to explore lexical and syntactical EM and SD, considering them the most bright and vivid units of the language especially in
O.Wilde’s texts. Lexical expressive means and stylistic devices. The
main function of the word is to denote. Thus, the denotational meaning is the
major semantic 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. 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. Syntactical expressive means and stylistic devices. Stylistic
study of the syntax begins with the study of the length and the structure of
the sentence. Stylistic syntactical patterns may be viewed as variants of the
general syntactical models of the language and are the more obvious and
conspicuous if presented not as isolated elements or accidental usage, but as
group easily observable and lending themselves to generalisation. [Vinogradov
1991: 37]
The
brief outline of the most characteristic features of the language style and its
components shows that there are a great number of features which could be explored.
In our scientific work we’ll investigate some of them with the help of
O’Wilde’s brilliant plays.
2.2. Lexical EM and SD analysis of O.Wilde’s texts
After
understanding the concept of style we could logically start analyzing some
lexical expressive means and stylistic devices used by Oscar Wilde in his plays.
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. [Sosnovskaya
2004: 65]
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. [Galperin 2002: 184]
Epigrams
and paradoxes as stylistic devices are usually used in the Present Indefinite
Tense which makes them abstract.
The
majority critics of the nineteenth century noted that O.Wilde was the most
paradoxical writer of his time.
e.g.
“Women are pictures, Men are problems.” (p.132)[4]
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.
e.g.
“A man who moralises is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralises is
invariably plain.” (p.67).
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” (p.253).
In
these examples we can see the parallel constructions widely used by Oscar
Wilde. They serve a perfect means of creating the clear-cut syntax of epigrams
and paradoxes.
Irony
and pun. Irony
is a stylistic device in which the contextual evaluative meaning of a word is
directly opposite to its dictionary meaning. [Kukharenko 1986: 46]
Like
many other stylistic devices, irony 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.” (p.189)
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.
Pun
(paronomasia, a play on words) is the next stylistic device used by Oscar Wilde
in his plays. Pun 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. [Sosnovskaya 2004: 55]
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” are both
existing 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.”(p.26)
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?” (p.100)
In
this example the pun is realised 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 O.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. 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. [Galperin 2002: 167]
e.g.
“But she is really like a Tanagra statuette, and would be rather annoyed if she
were told so”. (p.175),
“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.
The
properties of an object may be viewed from different angles. Accordingly,
similes may be based on adjective-attributes, adverbs-modifiers,
verb-predicates, etc.
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.” (p.110)
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.
Epithet is also a frequently used
stylistic device by Oscar Wilde. As a device it is based on the interplay of
emotive and logical meaning in an attributive word, phrase or even sentence,
used to characterise 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. [Galperin 2002: 158]
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”. (p.83)
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 O.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 plays. 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.”(p.50)
The
examples above shows that Oscar Wilde may be really called a master of colorful
and vivid epithets.
In
O.Wilde’s plays we can also find such stylistic device as hyperbole (overstatement)
which is used for intensifying one certain property of the object. [Galperin
2002: 167]
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. [Vinogradov, 79: 32]
In
hyperbole there is always a transference of meaning as there is discrepancy
with objective reality. The words are no used in their direct sense.
e.g.
“I have never loved anyone in the world but you”. (p.36)
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 O.Wilde uses the exaggeration of the quantitative aspect.
e.g.
“I have met hundreds of good women”. (p.73)
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. In order to create his hyperboles O.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 the language.
Metaphor is one of the most
frequently used stylistic devices by O.Wilde. 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 [Galperin
2002: 139]
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.”(p.87)
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.
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.”(p.166).
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.
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. Wilde’s 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”. (p. 285)
“Youth
is the Lord of Life”. (p.137)
The
charm of O.Wilde’s plays is 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 O.Wildes 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.
In
O.Wilde’s plays we can also find some metonymies. They are 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. [Galperin 2002:
144]
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.
Oscar
Wilde does not pay much attention to metonymy. But his metonymies have a great
potential power. 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”. (p. 28)
“Do
you think seriously that women who have committed what the world calls a fault
should never be forgiven?” (p.30)
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”.
Making
a conclusion to analyzing stylistic devices we can say that Oscar Wilde used really
a great number of them in his plays. And they all helped him really ingeniously
express his thoughts and feelings, making his individual style expressive and
vivid, and his texts plain, close and understandable to everybody.
2.2.
Syntactical EM and SD analysis of O.Wilde’s plays
The
examination of syntactical level provides a deeper insight into the stylistic
aspect of the utterance and plays an important role in the evaluating of
language expressive means. [Kovalevskaya 1976: 22]
Unlike
the syntactical expressive means of the language, which are naturally used in
discourse in a straight-forward natural manner, syntactical stylistic devices
are perceived as elaborate designees aimed at having a definite impact on the
reader. [Galperin 2002: 145]
Among
syntactical expressive means O.Wilde very often used repetition which is
recurrence of the same word, word combination or a phase for two and more
times. [ibid: 144] It is used 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!” (p.54)
So
repetition is a powerful means of emphasis, it adds rhythm and balance to the
utterance. O.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.
Among
other syntactical expressive means used by Oscar Wilde we can see inversion
which is very often used as an independent stylistic device in which the direct
word order is changed either completely so that the predicate (predicative)
precedes the subject, or partially, so that the object precedes the subject –
predicate pair. The aim of it is to attach logical stress or additional
emotional coloring to the surface meaning of the utterance. [Galperin 2002:
156]
It
is very important to say that inversion 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.
“Except amongst the middle classes I have been told”. (p.119)
In
the meantime O.Wilde rather often used in his plays parallel constructions
– a device which may be encountered not so much in the sentence as in the
macro-structures dealt with earlier, with the syntactical whole and the
paragraph. The necessary condition in parallel construction is identical, or
similar, syntactical structure in two or more sentences or parts of a
sentence”. [Galperin 2002: 159] Parallel constructions could be called a
perfect mean of creating the clean-cut syntax of O.Wilde plays. They deal with
logical, rhythmic, emotive and expressive aspects of the utterance and create
rhythmical shape of the sentence, making it more emotional, vivid and even
musical, adding wonderful sound and expressiveness.
e.g.
“How hard good women are! How weak bad men are!” (p.79)
Another
syntactical stylistic device used by O.Wilde in his plays is enumeration
by which separate things, objects, properties or actions are named one by one
so that they produce a chain, the links of which, being syntactically in the
same position (homogeneous parts of speech), are forced to display some kind of
semantic homogeneity, remote though it may seem. [Galperin 2002: 216]
e.g.
“I have also in my possession, you will be pleased to hear certificates of Ms.
Cardew’s birth, baptism, whooping cough, registration, vaccination, confirmation,
and the measles”. (p.342)
Analyzing
this sentence we can see the musical chain of enumeration. It gives more
objective value of the character’s speech, shows the variety of thoughts and
feelings.
One
of the most typical syntactical stylistic device for Wilde’s plays is ellipsis
– an intentional omission from an utterance of one or more words. [Sosnovskaya
2004: 68] The meaning of omitted words is easy to understand by the context.
e.g.
“Quite sure of.” (p.150)
Ellipsis
gives the picture of real life, real people, their feelings and emotions in
O.Wilde’s plays. It adds a certain charm to the conversation.
In
O.Wilde’s plays we can also find lexico-syntactical stylistic devices, for example
chiasmus which is based on the repetition of a syntactical pattern but
it has a cross order of words and phrases. [Galperin 2002: 221]
e.g.
“All the married men live like bachelors, and all the bachelors like married
men.” (p.116)
The
effect of a cross order of words in this example produces an ironic character.
Like parallel construction, chiasmus contributes to the rhythmical quality of
the utterance in O.Wilde’s texts.
One
more stylistic device used in O.Wilde’s plays is antithesis which is
based on relative opposition which arises out of the context through the
expansion of objectively contrasting pairs. Syntactically antithesis is just
another case of parallel constructions. But unlike parallelism the two parts of
an antithesis must be semantically opposite to each other [Galperin 2002: 222]
e.g.
“Curious thing, plain women are always jealous of their husbands, beautiful
women never are!” (p.110)
Here
we can see the semantic contrast, which is formed with the help of objectively
contrasting pair “plain – beautiful”, “always – never”.
All
the examples above show that syntactical expressive means and stylistic devices
played a very important role in Oscar Wilde’s style. With the help of them
Oscar Wilde, who was a talented writer, can make us feel the way he wants. We
can find different syntactical expressive means and stylistic devices in Oscar Wilde’s
plays such as parallel constructions, repetition, chiasmus, antithesis and many
others. These expressive means help the author to create his individual elegant,
humorous and challenging style.
CONCLUSION
Having
analyzed the four plays of Oscar Wilde: “Lady Windermere’s Fan”, ”A Woman of No
Importance”, “An Ideal Husband”, “The Importance of Being Earnest”, we came to
a conclusion that O.Wilde skilful, playing, understandable to everybody and
challenging to the society with its truth individual style was formed with the
help of a great variety of lexical and syntactical stylistic devices and
expressive means.
Among
the lexical ones we can see 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 colourful 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 O.Wildes 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 O.Wilde. In order to create his hyperboles O.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 plays.
Speaking
about syntactical expressive means and stylistic devices in O.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.
Among
other syntactical expressive means used by Oscar Wilde we can see inversion,
but Oscar Wilde doesn’t pay much attention to it.
Besides
it we can see parallel constructions that could be called a perfect
mean of creating the clean-cut syntax of O.Wilde plays. They deal with logical,
rhythmic, emotive and expressive aspects of the utterance and create rhythmical
shape of the sentence, making it more emotional, vivid and even musical.
One
of the most typical syntactical stylistic device for Wilde’s plays is ellipsis
which gives the picture of real life, real people, their feelings and emotions
in O.Wilde’s plays. It adds a certain charm to the conversation.
In
O.Wilde’s plays we can also find lexico-syntactical stylistic devices,
for example chiasmus. Like parallel construction, chiasmus contributes
to the rhythmical quality of the utterance in O.Wilde’s texts.
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.
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