欧亨利小说的修辞手法

欧亨利小说的修辞手法

The art characteristics of The Cop And Anthem

Abstract:

O. Henry (1862-1910)一pseudonym of William Sydney Porter, is one of most famous critical realistic novelists in America. He is known with Maupassant and as the three greatest short story masters in the world and is hailed as the“Father of Modern American Short Story”by some critics. His humorous depiction,surprising denouement, themes of human world have been studied by critics and literature fans at home and abroad from the perspective of critical realism or struchiralism.

Many short stories of O. Henry feature unimportant people who live at the bottom of the society mainly with the theme of people doing good deeds though the plots are different. It is not difficult to find out the archetypes of these characters under O. Henry's pen by

careful study. Jim in The Gift of the Magi who is young and a lot in his life embodies the passion of Jesus Christ. Raidler in the story hygeia at the Solito could represent the charity of Jesus. The old artist Behrman in the Last Leaf epitomes the sacrifice of Jesus. From the marshal's words and acts in Hearts and Hands, we find the archetype of scapegoat. In the story of Roads of Destiny, three different roads lead to the same destination, presents us two relevant biblical themes- death and paradise lost. James in The Marionettes is a doctor meanwhile a thief, the narrative structure of his experience from degeneration to repentance then to redemption, is the typical Biblical U-shaped narration. From the title of the short story The Cop and the Anthem, we can find the element of the Bible,and 0. Henry's appreciation of Christianity and his wishes that religion may save people could also be traced between the lines.

The Cop and the Anthem s is the

representative novel which created by the twentieth century famous short story writer O. Henry’s , and this novel is the important of its overall style. In this short story, the author uses humor and irony of the comedy technique loss reveals the absurdity of human society to the people’s powder god of pain from the tragic theme.

There have been many studies about The Cop and the Anthem s. The research chooses one of O. Henry’s novels The Cop and the Anthem as an example. The major findings are as follows:

The stylistics characteristics in selected novel are metaphor of verbs, tense and aspect, and rhetoric devices, which make O. Henry’s expressions more vivid and be easier to understand. From the aspect of interpersonal function, there are two properties in the selected novel, including mood and modality, which can put an emphasis on the objective facts Soapy has experienced.Further more ,stylistics properties

in The Cop and the Anthem are thematic structure and rhetorical devices as cohesive means. The devices can not realize the cohesion of the whole novel but also improve the musical rhythm of the only text.

摘要：

欧·亨利，原名威廉·西德尼·波特(William Sydney Porter, 1862-1910)是美国著名的批判现实主义作家，与莫泊桑、契诃夫并称为世界三大短篇小说家，更被评论界誉为美国现代短篇小说之父。对于其作品幽默风趣的语言，出人意表的结局，透视人间百态的主题等，国内外的评论家

及文学爱好者们从批判现实主义、结构主义等角度都做了比较全面的分析。

欧。亨利的短篇小说多以生活在社会底层的小人物为主角，虽然故事迥异，但大都表现了人物的“人心向善”。细细推敲一下，我们不难发现这些人物背后都有其原型。《麦琪的礼物》中身负家庭重担的吉姆就是受难中的耶稣基督的化身;《索利托牧场的卫生学》中的雷德勒可称之为仁爱耶稣的代表;《最后的常青藤》中的老画家贝尔曼集中体现了耶稣的牺牲精神。而从《心与手》当中警官的言行，我们可以挖掘出替罪羊的原型;《命运之路》中三条不同的道路殊途同归，则向我们讲述了“死亡”和“失乐园”这两个永恒的圣经文学主题;《提线木偶》中既是医生又是小偷的詹姆斯，从堕落到悔悟到救赅，其故事叙述结构的原型恰是圣经的U型叙事结构。《警察与赞美诗》更是从题目本身就有圣经的痕迹。从小说的字里行间我们可以看出欧·亨利对于基督教的赞美和希望宗教拯救世人的美好愿望

《警察与赞美诗》是美国二十世纪著名短

篇小说家欧·享利的代表性作品，是其总体创作风格的重要体现。在这部短篇小说中，作者以其幽默、讽刺的喜剧性创作手法揭示出丧失人性的荒诞社会给人民带来的粉神痛苦这一悲剧性主题。

历代学者对《警察与赞美诗》研究探讨举不胜举。本文选取了美国著名小说家欧·亨利的一部经典代表作《警察与赞美诗》作为材料进行研究。通过分析，本论文得出以下结论:

文中所选小说《警察与赞美诗》的文体特征主要有动词隐喻，时态和修辞方面的特征，这些特征使该欧·亨利的语一言表达生动活泼，便于读者理解;而且，受语境中语旨的影响，文中所选小说突出的文体特征有语气和语态，用来强调客观事实;在《警察与赞美诗》中主要文体特征有标志性主位和修辞手段的衔接方式，如排比，词语重复，层进，对比。这些手段不仅有衔接文中所选小说内容连贯的功能而且能增加该小说音律美。

Key words:O. Henry; The Cop and the Anthem s; Art characteristics; Humor.

关键词:欧·亨利; 警察与赞美诗; 艺术特点; 幽默。

Contents

The art characteristics of The Cop And Anthem __________________________ 2

Abstract _________________________ 2

摘要____________________________ 5

Contents ________________________ 9

Chapter1: Introduction ____________ 11

1.1 O. Henry’s life and work ____ 11

1.2literature review _____________ 14

1.3 the reason why i chose this

novel _______________________ 19

Chapter2:The art characteristics of The Cop And Anthem ________________ 21

2.1 the story of The Cop and the

Anthems ____________________ 21

2.2 Humor figures of speech ___ 23

2.3 Metaphor figures of speech _ 28

2.4 irony figures of speech _____ 31

2.5Functional Stylistics Analysis 34 Chapter3: Conclusion ____________ 36

3.1 The significance of this work ______ 36 3.2 Views on The Cop and the Anthem__ 37

3.2.1Functional stylistics ______ 37

3.2.2 Archetype criticism ______ 39

3.3 summary ________________ 40 Bibliography ____________________ 41

Chapter1: Introduction

1.1 O. Henry’s life and work

American writer in the history of American literature at the turn of the 19th century and 20th century. He shows great sympathy to people at the bottom of society, which is tightly related to the author’s own life experiences. Born in September, 1862, he was brought up by his aunt in America. His aunt ran a small private school and supervised his education, which gave him a wide range of reading on classical literature and had great influence on his interest in the English language all his life.

Fortunately he had the chance to read lots of ancient Greek, Roman and British literature works under his aunt’s influence. Since 1884, he began to work as bookkeeper, pharmacists, scribe, and bank-teller and so on. These life

experiences from society provide rich materials for his later creation in writing. In 1896, the bank he worked encountered a cash shortage, then the poor O. Henry was arrested and jailed in 1898. He was charged unfairly with embezzlement. Though in prison, he began to write and published short stories in order to support his daughter. On his release from prison, he landed in New York, where he wrote distinctive short fictions which have made his name synonymous with the sunrise-ending story. During eleven years before he died, he published almost over three hundred articles.

O. Henry moved to New York City in 1902. And from December 1903 to January 1906, he wrote a story a week for first the New York World and and was also published in other magazines. Henry’s first collection, “Cabbages Kings” appeared in 1904. Then “The Four Million” wa s published two years later, which included his well-known stories The Gift of the Magi and The Furnished Room. In 1907 he

created The Trimmed Lamp, which explored the lives of New York’s and ‘The Last Leaf’.[1]

O. Henry’s literature achievements are mainly resulted from his short stories. According to the themes of short novels, they can be divided into three categories: the first kind is about common people living in big cities. These people are usually ordinary poor people who fight with hardships and death but are really kind-hearted and had the genuine love and friendship. For example, ‘A Service of Love’, ‘The Cop and the Anthem’, and ‘The Gift of Maggie’ and so on. The second category is about people on the broad west. During the several years in the west, He had showed a preference to the west. He believes that it is more suitable and much happier for people to live in the west due to its fresh air and harmonious human relations. The last one is about robbers and cheats. Most robbers in O. Henry’s sho rt stories are kind and friendly beyond our expectations. We can find this kind of stories in collection of Great Crafter

and Roads of Destiny.

O. Henry became alcoholic in his old years, which made his health deteriorated gradually. In 1907 he got married again, but was divorced because of disharmony. He’s not in a good economic situation, so he had to write novels in exchange for money in order to ease the pressure. This also led to his works of uneven quality. 1910 O. Henry died and then the O. Henry Award was set up for praising someone who created outstanding short stories once a year since 1919.

1.2 literature review

o.Henry’s literature achievements arouse critics interests at home and abroad．

This short story was published in “Four Hundred Million”in 1906. The novel describes a tramp Soapy, who has a homeless life in New York. It reflects some aspects of social life at that time, and criticizes the society in the dark. In order to escape from the cold winter, he decided

to make every effort to be put in prison.

The Cop and the Anthem is one of the representative works written by O. Henry. There are a large number of papers analyzing the story in China. In CNKI many papers named with The Cop and the Anthem, and more papers comprehensive study on the analysis of the story.

For instance, Chi Xiuxiang (2011:23-24) analyzes the black humor in “The Cop and the Anthem”and “the gifts of Magy”; Tan Xianghua (2008: 95-96) explores the philosophy from The Cop and the Anthem; Gu Xianfeng studies the art of humorin The Cop and the Anthem(2009:126);Wang Wenyuan uses lots of humorous languages, unexpected plots and ironies to depict the homeless Soapy, which illustrates the tragedy fate in that society in his article Themes and the Arts The Cop and the Anthem (2009: 233-234). Yang Jianzheng ( 2002: 56-59 ) has analyzed from the point of

Corpus Linguistics; Xu Lijuan (2001:61-62) analyzes it from theperspective of Semantic Linguistics. Wang Xia gives a tentative approach to understanding The Cop and the Anthem from linguistic perspective, and presents an analysis from three aspects including context, experiential meaning and interpersonal meaning, patterning and deviation to approach the theme of The Cop and the Anthem i n his article “Functional Linguistic Analysis of The Cop and the Anthem”(2005:109-112).Wang Qiaoshan and Wang Feng make a preliminary study of the patterns of the lexis in The Cop and the Anthem according to Halliday’s theory of lexical patterns, and analyzes the significance of the lexical patterns in revealing the theme of the discourse and the personalities of the characters of it in their article“Pattern of Lexis in The Cop and the Anthem ”(2006: 192-196).

As we can see from the above, there are many papers focusing on the novel, but few are from

the perspective of functional stylistics. The thesis tries to do a further discussion on functional stylistics. So it is worthwhile to probe into novel from the perspective of functional stylistics.

American writer and literature Henry James Forman thinks O．Henry has the writing skill like Maupassant meanwhile with a humor Maupassant has never exceeded．In Forman’s eyes，0．Henry is Gifted as he is with a flashing wit ,abundant humor, and quick observation，no subject has terrors for him．If it be too much to say, in the old phrase，that nothing human is alien to him, at least the larger part of humanity is his domain．

There are many Chinese scholars who have translated his works. However, the scholars who have studied the translations among different versions are far too enough. In CNKI there are only several papers named with “translations of O.Henry’s works”. For instance, Liang Qi thinks that the highlights and essence of literary

works lies in exotic language, which is best illustrated in O. Henry’s works noted for its unique style of humor and an end typified in European literature, and he endeavors to discuss the defamiliarization strategy employed in the short story translation with a view to representing the defamiliarization techniques in literary translation practice in his article On Defamiliarization Technique Adopted in Some Translation Versions of The Cop and the Anthem (2011:202-203). Fen Yan has analyzed Zhang Jinhao’s translation strateg ies of O. Henrys short novels from the perspective of Skopos Theory. Liu Hui and Li Yuying(2011:130-131)thinks that the translation study has started to shift from traditional author-oriented view to translator’s subjectivity, and analyzes the selective translation of O. Henry’s stories from the perspective of translator’s subjectivity, which proves the significant importance of giving a full play to translator’s subjectivity. Li

Jinyuan (2013:17-18) has studied and discussed the translation skill to O. Henry’s works, and compared the translation between translator Li Wenjun and an English learner in her article. Chang Xiali (2010:171一172) has studied the translations of zeugma and syllepsis on O.Henry’s works through comparing Wang Yongnian’s and Li Wenjun’s translations of The Cop and the Anthem.

It is obvious that papers dealing with translations of O. Henry’s novels are not enough from the perspective of functional stylistics. And it is still a weak point in terms of the translation analysis from the perspective of functional stylistics. Thus, it is necessary that the paper will be analyzed mainly according to Halliday’s three metafunctions.

1.3 the reason why i chose this novel

The short novel The Cop and the Anthem is one of the masterpieces of American critical realist writer O. Henry, one of the three most

celebrated short story writers. He excels in describing American society, especially the life of New Yorkers with humorous language, which made his works eminent as the humorous encyclopedia of American life. Also, his workers are well-known for novel conceptions and twist ending which makes readers feel out of expectation but within understanding. Accordingly, people credit him as “the father of American short s tories”.

The application of presupposition theory in literature一O.Henry’s famous short story The Cop and the Anthem. The combination of presupposition and the short story The Cop and the Anthem gives readers a better understanding of foreign literature. O.Henry’s language is artistic. The generation of O.Henry’s language humor is related to presupposition theory from the perspective of pragmatics. With presupposition theory, readers know how the humor emerges through language. This is also beneficial to their own writing skill.