Below is a list of stylistic
devices that writers can use for various purposes. It can impress people if you
can recognise and identify some of these and such recognition can alert you to
what a writer is trying to achieve:
Repetition: as the name
suggests, using the same word, phrase or structure repeatedly for emphatic
effect, often but not only in poetry:
What rubbish
you talk, what drivel, what brainless garbage!
Irony: the main
meaning of irony in writing is where the writer means the opposite of what
he/she actually says (verbal irony):
Isn’t the
Scottish education system wonderful?
Situational
irony might be defined as where a very bad situation overlaps with a
more pleasant situation, but one which fails to compensate for the bad
situation. The doctor tells you you are not dying and you are so pleased that
you run out into the road and get killed by a bus.
Dramatic irony is where the
audience at a play/ readers of a text know more than the characters.
Alliteration: where a group
of words all begin with the same sound, to generally emphatic ends:
You muddling,
malingering malefactors!
Oxymoron: the
juxtaposition of two apparently paradoxical words, with the effect of drawing
the reader’s attention and making them realise the truth contained therein:
Parting is
such sweet sorrow.
Rhetorical
question: a question which either requires no answer
Are you
completely mad?
or which has the purpose of
allowing the writer to provide the answer
So what are we
to do about this? Let me tell you...
Bathos: deliberate
anticlimax, usually, but not always, for humorous effect:
He returned
from the war with medals, glory and a strong desire for a cold beer.
Antithesis: the placing
of conflicting ideas alongside each other to sharpen meaning:
A fool trusts
everyone; a wise person trusts herself alone.
Cliche: overused and
hackneyed expression and as such to be avoided- at the end of the day, it was a
game of two halves- although the sophisticated can have some fun playing with
cliches. Films such as Naked Gun mock the cliches of the police
thriller, for example.
Emotive
language: language designed to stir the emotions rather than the brain.
Politicians are expert in the use of this- listen to Tony Blair- but there is
nothing wrong with it as such. Language which is matter of fact is called referential
language.
The scumbag
has sold the jerseys and his name will live for ever in the lists of infamy.
The player has
committed an error and the fans are somewhat annoyed.
Euphemism: a “nice” way
of putting something unpalatable.
The company is
downsizing (we’re giving you the bullet)
While going to
powder her nose she popped her clogs.
Idiom: an expression
in a language which is not to be taken literally and therefore which often
confuses foreigners. Often a cliche also. Almost always a metaphor.
The headmaster
was caught with his hand in the till. (What teel ees zees?)
Invective: very emotive
language, always with the purpose of expressing utter fury about some issue.
The Reverend Ian Paisley is a rich mine of invective:
To allow the
murdering scum of Sinn Feinn/IRA to sit round the democratic conference
table...(all in a very loud voice).
Metaphor: which you all
know...but just in case, an implicit comparison between two things:
Anyone caught
with fireworks will get a rocket.
If it’s not metaphorical, it’s literal:
He went to the
shop and got a rocket.
Onomatopoeia: which you all
know... but just in case, where the sound of a word or group of words mimics
the meaning:
The fair
breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow
followed free...
Paradox: normally, two
ideas which cannot be held together. In writing, often a turn of phrase which
suggests two irreconcileable ideas which on closer inspection prove to go
together. A kind of extended oxymoron:
She was
concentrating very hard on being relaxed.
Personification: giving the
inanimate some human qualities, such as calling ships “she”. In narrative, it
is often used to create an expressionist effect, where the reader sees
everything through the eyes of a character, not necessarily the narrator:
The windows of
the house stared menacingly towards their party...
Tone: very
important, this one. The way in which a text conveys the mood of the writer,
the counterpart of tone-of-voice in speech. The two main divisions are between
formal and informal tone, but it can be friendly, hostile, humorous or
whatever. The question is- how do you know, from the writer’s language, what
the tone is.
Synecdoche: the use of
the part for the whole:
We need more hands in the
kitchen...
Techniques in Poetry
Techniques in Poetry
Although many of the techniques detailed below also apply to other
forms of literature (esp. plays, some of which are written in verse anyway), it
is the case that poetry is a particularly condensed form of communication in
which not only the meaning of language, but also its power of suggestion, its
sound and even its visual appearance on the page can come into play.
Most poems do not tell a story as such but describe a person or a
scene or an incident, and attempt to relate that to some general principle or
moral.
First step
The first thing to do when you are confronted with a poem is to
try and get the general drift. If the poem is worthwhile, you will not
understand everything (or even very much) at first reading. You must then ask yourself
certain questions:
Is the poem about a person or a place or an incident, or a
combination, or none of these?
What can you understand of what is being said?
Who is the narrator? (first/third person)
Read the poem aloud to yourself: how does it sound?
What is the mood (tone ) of the poem- serious, humorous,
tragic ? does it change? how can you tell?
Now it is time to look more closely at the language of the poem
Imagery
Imagery is any attempt to create a mental picture in words. “He
was tall with fair hair” is an image because it gives you a (crude) mental
image of someone’s appearance.
In poetry, however, imagery is usually an attempt to compare the
thing being described with something else to make the description more vivid.
If the comparison is straightforward, using like or as, it is
known as a simile. Coleridge describes a becalmed ship thus:
As idle as a
painted ship
Upon a painted
ocean.
This is a straightforward comparison: the ship is so still it is
like a painting, although the repetition of “painted” lends emphasis to the
image.
Often, though, the comparison is more implicit- you have to look
harder for it. An implicit comparison is known as a metaphor: Any
expression which should not be taken literally is metaphorical.
The following extract by Wilfred Owen describes soldiers returning from the
trenches in World War 1:
Bent double,
like old beggars under sacks
Knock-kneed,
coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the
haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards
our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched
asleep; many had lost their boots,
But limped on,
blood-shod; all went lame,all blind,
Drunk with
fatigue, deaf even to the hoots,
Of gas-shells
dropping softly behind.
Here, Owen begins with a simile- like old beggars- but the
imagery is continued throughout in words such as coughing, cursed, limped,
lame, blind, drunk, deaf, to create, in a sustained metaphor, the
image of young fit men as old decrepit down-and-outs, to show what their time
in the trenches has done to them.
Word choice
When you read a line of poetry, you should keep in mind the notion
of paradigmatic choice: Simply, this means that every time a poet uses a
word, he has chosen it from the whole supply of words which would have done in
that place: in the extract above, for example, Owen uses “trudge” when walk,
shamble, stagger or several other words would have done. Your job is to say
“Why that word?” Was it just so that he could make a rhyme, or was there
another reason?
There are a number of possible reasons for choosing particular
words:
Denotation and Connotation
As poets are trying to say a lot in a small space, they often
choose words or expressions which carry ideas or associations along with them.
The denotation of a word is the “dictionary” definition it has, its
meaning. The connotations of a word are its associated ideas, the things
that come to mind when you hear the word. For example:
“Rolls-Royce” denotes a large car, but its connotations are things
like luxury, film stars, royalty, money, bad taste and so on.
“Massage parlour” denotes a place where you can get a massage; its
connotations are of prostitution, sleaze, middle-aged men etc.
Ask yourself-what connotations does that word have?
Ambiguity
If a word is ambiguous it has more than one meaning or its meaning
is unclear. Normally, we try to avoid this and say what we mean. However, poets
often use it on purpose because they mean to say more than one thing at once.
For example, Philip Larkin entitled one of his poems Church Going. On
one level, the poem is about someone visiting a church, so the title fits;
however, on a deeper level, the poem is about how the Church is disappearing or
losing its meaning- the word Going
means both visiting and disappearing.
Look at the phrase blood-shod in the Owen extract: it literally means
“shoed with blood” because the soldiers had no boots and their feet were cut,
but see how it also resembles the words bloodshed, which indicates what
the men have just been through, and bloodshot, to suggest their
appearance.
Suggestion/ Inference
To take things a step further, often the message or theme or gist
of a poem is not stated at all, but merely suggested or implied. It is up to
the reader to work out what the poem is saying above and beyond what is
explicitly stated. We call this process of working out inference, or
inferring. To see how it works, look at the poem A Study of Reading Habits.
Inference is an extreme form of what we do whenever we read- we
bring our own skill, judgement and experience to the text and combine it with
that of the writer.
Sound Effects
Poems are meant to be read aloud. Not only the intellectual
meaning, but also the sound of the work is important, therefore poets make use
of several techniques to do with the sounds of words. One of the most common of
these is
Repetition
You will often find repeated words or phrases in a poem. Sometimes
this is just for emphasis. In the Snack Bar by Edwin Morgan describes the narrator taking
a blind and handicapped man downstairs to the toilet:
And slowly we
go down, and slowly we go down.
Here Morgan is merely underlining how difficult it is for the man
to descend the stairs. But repetition can do more. The fuller version of
Coleridge’s verse about the becalmed ship reads:
Day after day,
day after day,
We sat, nor
rest nor motion,
As idle as a
painted ship,
Upon a painted
ocean
Here the repetition of “day after day” gives a sense of weariness
as felt by the crew of the ship. Similarly, Macbeth’s “Tomorrow and tomorrow
and tomorrow” creates a feeling of futility and pointlessness.
Long and Short vowels
The vowels a e i o u can each be said two ways.
The Short pronunciation is: The
Long pronunciation is:
a as in hat a
as in hate
e as in fed e
as in here
i as in bin i
as in fine
o as in pot o
as in pole
u as in fun u
as in duty
There are variations on this: aw and ow are long sounds, for
example.
Generally, long sounds are used to create a slow feeling, a lack
of urgency, relaxation. Short sounds are used to create a feeling of speed,
urgency, action. So “day after day, day after day” seems very slow and calm, as
it would have done to those on the ship. Similarly “And slowly we go down...”
Onomatopoeia
A big word for a simple concept. Some words in English sound like
their meaning-thud, bang, crash, tinkle, splash etc. Poets can take this a step further by
deliberately using groups of sounds to imitate the sound of what they are
describing. Coleridge again, same poem, same voyage, different weather:
The fair
breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow
followed free.
We were the
first that ever burst,
Into that
silent sea.
Here, all the f and s sounds actually create the sound of the sea
foaming as the ship crashes through the waves. Similarly, the last two lines of
the extract from Owen:
...deaf even
to the hoots
Of gas-sh ells
dropping s oftly behind.
The s sounds here
mimic the hissing of the poison gas.
Rhyme
As you know, rhyme is when words at the end of a line of poetry
finish with similar or identical sounds. In previous centuries, nearly all
poetry rhymed according to certain patterns. In the twentieth century, rhyme is
less, but still, common.
The use of rhyme has historical origins which we need not go into
here. However, knowing how to spot a “rhyme scheme” and also to detect any
variations in it can alert you to what the poet is trying to do.
Exercise
Look at “Long Distance” by Tony Harrison.
How does the rhyme scheme draw your attention to the poet’s
purpose?
How to annotate a rhyme scheme.
Give the first line of the poem the letter A.
Any later line which rhymes with line 1 should also be given
letter A.
Give the second line the letter B (unless it rhymes with line 1).
Any later line which rhymes with line 2 should be given the letter
B.
Examples.
Tam O’Shanter
When chapman billies leave the street A
And drouthy neibours neibours meet A
As market days are wearing late B
And folk begin to tak the gate B
Miss Gee
Let me tell you a little story A
About Miss Edith Gee B
She lived in Clevedon Terrace C
At number 83 B
The Walrus and the Carpenter
The sun was shining on the sea A
Shining with all his might B
He did his very best to make C
The billows smooth and bright B
And this was odd because it was D
The middle of the night B
Half- rhyme (or pararhyme).
Half rhyme is where there is some sound resemblance between words,
but not a full rhyme. In full rhyme, the vowel sound and final consonant sound
(if there is one) are normally the same, but the initial consonants are different. For
example: mask and task are full rhymes.
With half rhymes, the consonants are often nearly the same, but
the vowel sounds are different: mask and musk are half-rhymes.
For some reason, half-rhymes are almost always used to denote
depression, disillusionment, despair. They are particularly effective when the
rest of the poem has full rhyme or none at all. Look at the following poem from
World War I by Wilfred Owen: sketch out the rhyme scheme and comment on the
tone.
Futility
Move him into
the sun,-
Gently its
touch awoke him once,
At home,
whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke
him, even in France,
Until this
morning and this snow.
If anything
might rouse him now
The kind old
sun will know.
Think how it
wakes the seeds,-
Woke, once,
the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so
dear achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved, -
still warm, - too hard to stir?
- O what made
fatuous sunbeams toil
To break
earth’s sleep at all?
This next poem, also from World War 1, needs a knowledge of the
story from the Bible of Abraham and Isaac. Your teacher will tell you it (?).
Comment on the rhyme scheme here.
The Parable of
the Old Man and the Young.
So Abram rose,
and clave the wood, and went
And took the
fire with him and a knife.
And as they
sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the
first born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the
preparations, fire and iron,
But where the
lamb for this burnt offering?
Then Abram
bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded
parapets and trenches there,
And stretched
forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an
angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, lay
not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do
anything to him. Behold,
A ram caught
in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram
of Pride instead of him.
But the old
man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the
seed of Europe, one by one.
Rhythm and Metre
Rhythm is present in all spoken language: if we did not speak with
rhythm, we would sound like “interactive” computers. To revise this, look at
the page on Syllables, Stress, Rhythm.
As well as polysyllabic words having stressed and unstressed
syllables, sentences have stresses also, in order to point up meaning. What is
the difference between the following:
I am going
to London.
I am going
to London.
I am going to London.
Rhythm in poetry refers to the sound of the lines: quick or slow,
smooth or jerky. The rhythm can be achieved by various means:
1. Punctuation
A lot of punctuation, especially in the middle of lines, slows
things down, makes the lines sound jerky.
Less or no punctuation speeds up the sound of lines.
Remember Dulce et Decorum est again:
Bent double,
like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed,
coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge...
In the following stanza, there is a gas attack, and panic ensues:
Fitting the
clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone
still was yelling out and stumbling
And
floundering like a man in fire or lime...
The lack of punctuation in the second segment speeds up the whole
sound, just as the soldiers speeded up.
2. Word choice
Short vowelled words (see back) sound quick; long vowelled words
sound slow.
Two syllable words, for some reason, sound much sharper than three
syllable words.
Macbeth’s “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” sounds infinitely
wearying and despairing. If he had said “Tonight and tonight and tonight” it
wouldn’t have been the same at all.
3. Enjambment
This is defined as “the running on of a sentence from one line of
verse to another” but it’s actually more than that. Sentences run from one line
to another all the time. Enjambment is more when a closely related segment of a
sentence runs into another line. Look at this example from Larkin’s “Next
Please”:
Flagged and
the figurehead with golden tits
Arching our
way, it never anchors, it’s
No sooner
present than it turns to past.
Right to the
last,
The it’s at the end of line 2 definitely belongs with line
3: the enjambment creates an unnatural pause meant to mimic the sense of
anticipation we have at the approach of a big event.
What, then, does the rhythm of line 3 suggest, and how?
Metre
Metre is a poetic term meaning that rhythm has been used in a
regular way, according to some pattern.
There are a wide variety of metres. Here is “A Study of Reading
Habits” again.
When getting
my nose in a book- 3 stresses
Cured most
things short of school- 3 stresses
It was worth
ruining my eyes- 3 stresses
To know
I could still keep cool- 3 stresses
The pattern here is quite loose: the stresses are not regular on
syllables. However, the number of stresses or beats to the line is 3 on each
occasion.
An iamb is a pair of syllables, the first one unstresses, the
second stressed. It is a very common means of constructing poetry, giving a
regular beat to verse. Here is one example:
If seven
maids with seven mops - 4 stresses
Swept it
for half a year - 3 stresses
Do you
suppose, the walrus said - 4 stresses
That they
could get it clear? - 3 stresses
Lines 1 and 3 are called iambic tetrameter (tetra- means
four).
Lines 2 and 4 are called iambic trimeter (tri- means
three).
Shakespeare usually writes in iambic pentameter (penta-
means five).
Shall I
compare thee to a summer’s day
Thou art more
lovely and more temperate
Rough winds do
shake the darling buds of May...
Iambic pentameter is said to be popular because it imitates the
sound of the human heartbeat.If Shakespeare wants to draw your attention to
something important, his verse will skip a beat.
Mood and Tone
These two terms are now just about interchangeable. They mean the
emotional state of a piece of poetry, what the poet was feeling, what we are
meant to feel when we read the poem.
Here are two contrasting lines:
Joy it was on
that morn to be alive!
and
Dark, dark,
dark, we all go into the dark.
Contrasting emotions, easy to spot. Two more difficult ones from
WW1 again.
In Flanders
Fields
In Flanders
fields the poppies blow
Between the
crosses row on row
That mark our
place; and in the sky
The larks,
still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard
amid the guns below.
We are the
dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt
dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were
loved, and now we lie
In Flanders
fields.
Take up our
quarrel with the foe:
To you from
failing hands we throw
The torch...
Does it
matter?
Does it
matter?- losing your legs...
For people
will always be kind,
And you need
not show that you mind
When the
others come in after hunting
To gobble
their muffins and eggs.
Does it
matter? - losing your sight?...
There’s such
splendid work for the blind;
And people
will always be kind,
As you sit on
the terrace remembering
And turning
your face to the light.
Do they
matter?- those dreams from the pit?...
You can drink
and forget and be glad,
And people
won’t say that you’re mad;
For they’ll
know you’ve fought for your country
And no-one
will worry a bit.
Same subject matter- casualties of war- very different attitude.
What?
How is tone and mood achieved: here; in general? See on for
examples!
SYLLABLES,
STRESS AND RHYTHM
A syllable is one
separate sound of speech. Cat is a one-syllable word because it is only one
sound.
Begin is a two-syllable word:
be-gin
Acrobat is a three-syllable
word: ac-ro-bat
Electrical is a four-syllable
word: e-lec-tric-al...and so on.
Exercise 1
a. How many syllables do the
following words have:
1. thorough 2. apache 3.
kangaroo 4. rhinoceros 5. rhythmical
6. disciplinarian 7. gardener
8. nevertheless 9. borough 10. mathematician
11. polyphiloprogenitive.
b. Make your own list of
1,2,3,4,5 syllable words.
STRESS
If you have ever heard a voice
synthesizer, you will know what people would sound like if they did not use
stress- their voices would be flat and monotonous.
All people when talking stress
syllables and words- that is, they say some louder than others. Take for
example
EVENTUAL
If you say this to yourself,
you will realize that the syllable -VEN- is said louder than the other
syllables. It is the stressed syllable in the word. To show this, you could
write the word as
EVENTUAL
Exercise 2
Write these words out, marking
the stressed syllable
1. gardener 2. beautician 3.
continent 4. continental 5. desert 6. dessert 7. television 8. crocodile 9.
library 10. librarian 11. avoid 12. upset (noun) 13. upset (verb)
Techniques in prose
Techniques in prose
Many of the
techniques that you need to know for the Textual Analysis of Poetry are also
necessary for Prose. These are:
imagery
metaphor
simile
word choice
mood and tone
denotation and
connotation
ambiguity
inference
Other poetic
techniques, such as rhythm and onomatopoeia, are less often, but
still occasionally, encountered in prose.
However, you
must still be aware of one or two terms which are peculiar to, or more common
in, prose.
Characterisation
You should be
aware from your work on Imaginative Writing of how characters can be created:
through description and statements
through action
(what the character does and how he does it)
through speech
(what is said and how it is said)
through imagery
(comparing or relating the character to something)
As most of the
prose passages you will be asked to criticise will contain characters, you
should commit the above to memory.
Sentence
Structure
Also from your
work on Imaginative Writing, you should be aware of the different effects which
can be achieved by using a particular sentence structure. For example:
long sentences
with a lot of punctuation are slow and relaxed
long sentences
with little punctuation are rushed
short
sentences can be used to build tension or heighten emotion
listing
sentences can suggest simultaneous activity
repetitive
sentences can stress a particular aspect of something.
Most of the
passages you will encounter will have been written by skilled professional
writers so sentence structure will be subtle.
Also, look out for symbolism!
Textual Analysis powerpoint from lessons can be found here:
http://msbellamyenglish.wordpress.com
Textual Analysis powerpoint from lessons can be found here:
http://msbellamyenglish.wordpress.com
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