Курсовая работа: Stylistic Classification of the English Vocabulary
Poor thing: How frequently, by me and others, it heath been stirred up till its smoke quite smothers! (Don Juan)
The satirical function of poetic words and conventional poetic devices is well revealed in this stanza. The tired metaphor and the often used volcano are typical of Byron’s estimate of het value of conventional metaphors and stereotyped poetical expressions.
The striving for the unusual the characteristic feature of some kinds of poetry is a kin to the sensational and is therefore to be found not only in poetry, but in many other styles.
A modern English literary critic has remarked that in journalese a policeman never goes to an appointed spot; he proceeds to it. The picturesque reporter seldom talks of a horse, it is a steed or a charger. The sky is the welkin; the valey is the vale; fire is the devouring elements…
Poetical words and word-combinations can be likened to terms in that they do not easily yield to polisemy.
They are said to evoke emotive meanings. They color the utterance with a certain air of loftiness, but generally fail to produce a genuine feeling of delight; Hoy are too hackeyed for the purpose, too stale. And that is the reason that the excessive use of poeticisms at present calls forth protest and derision towards those who favor this conventional device.
Such protests have had a long history. As far back as the 16th century Shakespeare in a number of lines voiced his attitude toward poeticisms, considering them as means to embellish poetry. Here is one of the sonnets in which he condemns the use of such words.
Su is it not with me as with that Muse.
Stirr’d by a painted beauty to his verse,
Who heaven itself for ornament doth use
And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,
Making a complement of proud compare,
With sun and moon, with earth and sea’s rich gems,
With April’s first-born flowers, and all things rare.
That heaven’s air in this huge rondure hems.
O, let me, true in love, but truly write,
And then believe me, my love is as fair
As any mother’s child, though not so bright
As those gold candles fix’d in heaven’s air;
Let then say more that like of hearsay well;
I will not praise that purpose not to sell
(Sonnet XXI)
It is remarkable how Shakespeare though avoiding poetic words proper uses highly elevated vocabulary in the first part of the sonnet (the octave), such as ‘heaven’s air’, ‘rehearse’, ‘complement’, ‘compare’ (noun), ‘rondure’, ‘hems’, in contrast to the very common vocabulary of the second part (the sestette).
The very secret of a truly poetic quality of a word does not lie in conventionality of usage. On the contrary, a poeticism through constant repetition gradually becomes hackeyed. Like anything that lacks freshness it fails to evoke a genuinely aesthetic effect and eventually call forth protest on the part of those who are sensitive to real beauty.
As far back as in 1800 Word worth raised the question of the conventional use of words and phrases, which to his mind should be avoided. There was (and still persists) a notion called «poetic diction» which still means the collection of epithet, periphrases archaisms, etc., which were common property to most poets of the 18th century.
However, the term has now acquired a broader meaning.
Thus Owen Barfield says:
«When words are selected and arranged in such a way that their meaning either arouses or is obviously intended to arouse aesthetic imagination, the result may be described as poetic diction.[5]
Poetic diction in the former meaning has had a long lineage. Aristotle in his «Poetics» writes the following: