Stylistic Features of Oscar Wilde`s Wrightings, Детальна інформація

It includes more bright and vivid units of the language.

2. Lexical expressive means and stylistic devices.

Each art has its own medium, i.e. its own material substance. Colours are the material substance of painting, sounds-the material substance of music. It is the language that is the material substance of literature. But language consists of colours and sounds due to the existence of expressive means and stylistic devices.

Language is capable of transmitting practically any kind of information. It has names for all things, phenomena and relations of objective reality. It is so close to life that an illusion of their almost complete identity is created, for man lives, works and thinks in the medium of language. His behaviour finds an important means of expression primarily in language. In the present chapter we shall try to analyse some lexical expressive means and stylistic devices used by Oscar Wilde in his plays.

EPIGRAM and PARADOX.

The majority critics of the nineteenth century agree that Wilde is the most paradoxical writer of his time.

According to professor Sosnovskaya V.B., paradox based on contrast, being a statement contradictory to what is accepted as a self-evident or proverbial truth.9

The appeal of paradox lies in the fact that, however contradictory it may seem to be to the accepted maxim, it contains nevertheless, a certain grain of truth, which makes it an excellent vehicle of satire. Indeed, it is a device much favoured by many English and American satirists. 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.

According to professor Galperin I.R., 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.10

Epigrams and paradoxes as stylistic devices are used for creating generalised images. Usually it is the Present Indefinite Tense. This form of the verb makes paradoxes and epigrams abstract.

e.g. “Men marry because they are tired,

women because they are curious.

Both are disappointed.” (p.138).11

“Nothing spoils a romance so much as

a sense of humour in the woman”. (p.108).

“Ideals are dangerous things,

realities are better. They wound,

but they are better.” (p.85).

“Women are pictures,

Men are problems.” (p.138).

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. “Curious thing, plain women are always jealous

of their husbands,

beautiful women never are.”(p.108).

“The men are all dowdies and the women

are all dandies.” (p.186).

“A man who moralises is usually a hypocrite,

and a woman who moralises is invariably

plain.” (p.69).

Another means which helps to create the generalisation is the choice of words. Wilde often resorts to the use of some abstract notions, concrete notions are rare.