英语文体学Chapter 6 Syntactic Overregularity

Chapter 6 Syntactic Overregularity Syntactic overregularity in literature is revealed mainly in the repetition ofcertain linguistic units of a text and in parallelism, where some features varywhile others are kept constant. Let us examine each of these phenomena. 6.1 Repetition All the overregular features in literature are, in some sense, repetitious.The term repetition, therefore, is restricted to mean the case of exact copyingof a certain previous unit in a text, such as a word, phrase or even a sentence(Leech, 1969). 6.1.1 Immediate Repetition Repetition may be immediate, i. e. the repeated unit immediately followsthe initial unit. Take this stanza in a Dylan Thomas' poem for example. (1) Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day, Rage, rage against the dying of light. (Do not Go Gentle into that Good Night) The lexical item rage in the last line of the stanza is repeated immediately.If we read the whole poem through, we may actually find that the last line ofthis stanza is the second refrain of the poem, and rage appears eight times inthis poem. This fact shows that great emphasis is laid on the item, and also onthe whole line which expresses the central theme of the poem: one shouldstruggle violently against death. It should also be noted that the vowel sound/ei/ is in assonance with the /ei/ sound in the preceding line. Hence, therepetition serves to combine the lines together and to give unity to the ideaexpressed. Another example of immediate repetition is found in a beautifully writtenpoem partly quoted below. (2) Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Bright and yellow, hard and cold, Molten, graven, hammer'd and roll'd, Heavy to get and light to hold. (Thomas Hood) What is most striking about these lines is that the word Gold is repeatedfour times. Reinforced by the capitalization of the first letter of the word andthe exclamation mark "!", the word attracts much attention to itself. Instead ofbeing monotonous and redundant, the repetition here shows the poet's greatintensity of feeling when talking about gold. Now let us consider a poem where a whole line is immediately repeated. (3) The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. (R. Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening) The repetition of the line makes the reader think hard about what itactually means. When he does so, he may realize that the line is probablymetaphorical in nature. One possible interpretation he might arrive at is that'there is a long way to go before I die'. The repetition also shows that thespeaker is rather weary of the journey he takes. 6.1.2 Intermittent Repetition Another type of repetition is intermittent repetition, known as ploce intraditional rhetoric. The following is a good example of this kind. (4) O, how that name befits my composition, Old Gaunt indeed, and gaunt in being old. (Shakespeare, Richard Ⅱ) What is interesting about this case is that the second occurrence of thelexical item gaunt is used ambiguously. Here the speaker, John of Gaunt, ispunning on his own name. The repetition here vividly captures the emotionalstate of the speaker: his utter despair at his old age and at his healthcondition. Now, let us consider another example of intermittent repetition. (5) Not many lives, but only one have we; One, only one. (Anonymous, Only One Life) The word one is repeated intermittently three times and the word onlytwice. This greatly emphasizes the fact that there is only one life for a personand suggests that one should really treasure it.

6.2 Parallelism Parallelism means exact repetition in equivalent positions. It differs fromsimple repetition in that the identity does not extend to absolute duplication.It "requires some variable feature of the pattern - some contrasting elementswhich are 'parallel' with respect to their position in the pattern" (Leech, 1969:66). Various cases of parallelism have been traditionally classified according tothe position of the identical elements. For example, the type of parallelismwhose identical part is in the initial position has been given the label'anaphora'. However, we will not include this classification here for webelieve that it is not very helpful for interpreting literary works. What we willdo instead is classify parallelism into two major types according to its size -large-scale parallelism and small-scale parallelism - and discuss the rhetoricalfunctions of each of the types. 6.2.1 Large-scale Parallelism By large-scale parallelism we mean the kind which consists of more thantwo juxtaposed units. Look at the example in the following poem byWordsworth. (6) My Heart Leaps Up My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky, So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety. In this poem, the poet has successfully expressed his great reverence fornature which goes beyond the bounds of the past, present and future. Thetheme is brought out chiefly by the parallelism which exists in lines 3, 4 and5. Firstly, the sameness of structure implies the sameness in meaning. Thisshows that the speaker hopes that his response to seeing a rainbow remainsthe same throughout his life. Secondly and more importantly, the emotionalfeeling expressed gets stronger after each juxtaposed unit, reaching its climaxin the final parallel unit. Reinforced by the imperative mood and the meaningof the line following it, line 5 most effectively expresses the speaker's strongdetermination for continuing to hold a deep love and respect for nature. A point needs to be made at this juncture. That is, the climax is usuallymarked by a slight change in the pattern. This point can be furtherdemonstrated by an example from Shakespeare. (7) If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?