Реферат: Stylistic phonetics based on the examples of the works by P.B. Shelley
The first paradox arises in lines seven and eight:
«Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain you sweat-nay, drink your blood!»
In these lines the author refers to the lords of workers as «ungrateful drones». A drone is defined as a male bee that neither works nor does any harm, because it is stingless. So, this part undermines the power of the workers’ lords, insults them and makes a mockery at them. However, the idea of lords being harmless and lazy is immediately followed by a very disturbing statement «drink your blood», which changes the tone of the message completely. Not only do the lords have power to drain the sweat out of workers, but they drink their blood! The lords are compared to vampires, immortal bloodsuckers who render their victims powerless and dead.
The same paradoxical idea appears throughout the poem. The author treats the lords as tyrants in lines four and twenty-one, indicating their powers as absolute. At the same time he calls them «stingless drones» in lines eleven and idle in line twenty-three, rendering them powerless and ridiculous.
So, what are the lords? How does the poet want the reader to see them? Are they powerless, lazy drones or tyrannical, immortal vampires, sucking the blood and life out of their victims?
Solving another mystery of the poem can answer these questions. In the last two stanzas the poem takes a dramatic turn. The poet shifts from commanding the workers to work for themselves and overthrow their tyrants to hide in their cellars, holes and cells (line twenty-five) and to build their graves. But the last stanza seems to insult the workers and to surrender hope for them. It ends the poem in a dreary note, telling the workers to «Trace your grave and build your tomb, And weave your winding-sheet till fair, England be your sepulcher.» (lines thirty to thirty-two). Now, it seems as if the author has been insulting the workers all along. He tells them that they allow themselves to be bullied by lazy, harmless men so that they may as well just build their own graves. His language shifts from romantic and sensitive in the beginning of the poem, to harsh, dark monosyllabic words, like «with plough and spade and hoe and loom, Trace your grave and build your tomb» in the last stanza. Thus, the author delivers the hammering effect. As a result, the last stanza creates a sense of urgency and anger, making its message stand out from the rest of the poem.
So, has the poem been trying to empower workers all along or has it been contemptuously criticizing them? The answer is actually both. Though the last stanza serves to offset the rest of the poem, it doesn’t overpower the initial message of the empowerment. Instead, it actually emphasizes the message. Throughout the beginning of the poem, the author is really pointing out the way things are. He recognizes the absurdity and unfairness of things. Then, in the middle he tells the workers how it should be:
«Sow seed-but let not tyrant reap;
Find wealth, – let no imposter heap;
Weave robes, – let not the idle wear;
Forge arms, – in your defence to bear.» (lines twenty-one to twenty-four).
And finally, the last stanzas come. The last two stanzas again tell the workers of how things are:
«Ye see The steel ye tempered glance on ye». (lines twenty-seven to twenty-eight).
Basically, he tells the workers that they are digging their own graves by giving power to their initially harmless lords. Here, commanding them to dig their graves is different from the commands he gave them in lines twenty-one to twenty-four. By telling them to dig their graves, he is simply telling them what is going to happen if they continue to live with how things are.
What is actually happening is a juxtaposition of two ideas: of how things are, how things should be, and how things are again. In this way, the poet successfully delivers an image, a message. He successfully shows the contrast between the two ideas by sandwiching one inside the repetitions of the other. The middle idea, lines twenty-one to twenty-four, which is that of empowerment, then becomes like a bright, red flower sticking out amidst a dark, dreary landscape of reality. Furthermore, the last stanzas delivering the final repetition of the initial imagery are so dark and urgent with a hint of insult that it stirs the emotion of the reader. A worker reading the poem would have been angered by the last stanza and be stirred to follow true message of the poem in order to prevent the ending from becoming a reality.
2.3 The analysis of the song «To The Men of England» from the point of view of stylistic phonetics
The stylistic analysis of the Shelley’s song «To the Men of England» will be better understood with the help of the following table:
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Example |
Commentary |
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«Men of England, wherefore plough For the lords who lay ye low ?» |
Here is the imperfect rhyme in the first stanza. These first two lines are meant to be an appeal, expressed through a syntactical stylistic device of rhetorical question . |
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«W herefore w eave w ith toil and care, The r ich r obes your tyrants wear ?» |
Here is the incomplete compound rhyme, which can only be perceived in reading aloud, since the pronunciation of «care» and «wear» are quite similar: [keə] and [weə]. There is also a case of alliteration – werefore, weave, with; rich robes. Here it aims at imparting a melodical effect to the stanza, thus making it sound agitative. |
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