2. EMOTIVE PROSE
The substyle of emotive prose has the same common features as have been pointed out for the belles-lettres style in general; but all these features are correlated differently in emotive prose. The imagery is not so rich as it is in poetry; the percentage of words with contextual meaning is not so high as in poetry; the idiosyncrasy of the author is not so clearly discernible. Apart from metre and rhyfne, what most of all distinguishes emotive prose from the poetic style is the combination of the literary variant or the language, both in words and syntax, with the colloquial, variant. It would perhaps be more exact to define this as a combination of the spoken and written varieties of the language, inasmuch as there are always two forms of communication present—monologue (the writer's speech) and dialogue (the speech of the characters).
The language of the writer conforms or is expected to conform to the literary norms of the given period in
the development of the English literary language. The language"of the hero of a novel, or of a story will in the main be chosen in order to characterize the man himself. True, this language is also subjected to some kind of reshaping. This is an indispensable requirement of any literary work. Those writers who neglect this requirement may unduly contaminate the literary language by flooding the speech of their characters with non-literary elements, thus overdoing the otherwise very advantageous device of depicting a hero through his speech.
It follows then that the colloquial language in the belles-lettres style is not a pure and simple reproduction of what might be the natural speech of living people. It has undergone'changes introduced by the writer. The colloquial speech has been made "literature-like." This means that only the most striking elements of what might have been a conversation in life are made use of, and even these have undergone some kind of transformation.
Emotive prose allows the use of elements from other styles as well. Thus we find elements of the newspaper style (see, for example, Sinclair Lewis's "It Can't Happen Here"); the official style (see, for example, the
business letters exchanged between two characters in Galsworthy's novel "The Man of Property"); the style of scientific prose (see excerpts from Cronin's "The Citadel" where medical language is used).
But all these styles under the influence of emotive prose undergo Ikind of transformation. A style of language that is made use of in prose I diluted by the general features of the belles-lettres style which subjects I to its own purposes. Passages written in other styles may be viewed only interpolations and not as constituents of the style. ЕтоШе prose as a separate form of imaginative literature, |at is fiction, came into being rather late in the history of the English Дегагу language. It is well known that in early Anglo-Saxon literature There was no emotive prose. Anglo-Saxon literature was mainly poetry, songs of a religious, military and festive character. .The first emotive prose which appeared was translations from Latin of stories from the Bible and the Lives of the Saints.
Middle English prose literature was also educational, represented mostly by translations of religious works from Latin. In the llth and 12th centuries as a result of the Norman conquest, Anglo-Saxon literature fell into a decline. Almost all that was v/ritten was in French or in Latin.. In the 12th and 13th centuries, however, there appeared the "Tales of King Arthur and his Round Table", some of which were written in verse and others in prose. They were imitations of French models. In the 14th century there was an event which played an important role not only in the development of general standard English, but in the development of the peculiarities of emotive prose. This was the translation of the Bible made by Wyclif and his disciples.
Emotive prose actually began to assume a life of its own in the second half of the 15th century when romances and chronicles describing the life and adventures of semi-legendary kings and knights began to appear. One of the most notable of these romances was Malory V'Morte Darthur", printed byCaxton in 1471. It winds up a long series of poems and tales of chivalry begun in the 12th century. It was retold in prose from the French. "The Death of Arthur" is a work of. great historical, literary and stylistic interest. Attempts were made to introduce dialogue into the texture of the author's narrative before this, but here dialogue becomes an organic part of the work. Dialogue within the author's narrative is a stylistic constituent of the substyle of emotive prose. True, Malory's diabgues were far from even resembling the natural features of living colloquial speech. The speech of the heroes lacks elliptical sentences, breaks in the narrative and other typical features oj the spoken variety of English. Emotional colouring is shown not in the syntactical design of the sentences but in the author's remarks and descriptions. But nevertheless "Morte Darthur" must be counted as a historical landmark in establishing the principles of emotive prose. The introduction of dialogue means that the road to the more or less free use of colloquial language was already marked out. Further on, colloquial elements began to infiltrate into poetic diction as well.
With the coming of the s i x te e n t h century, which incidentally heralded a great advance in all spheres of English social life,
English emotive prose progressed rapidly. Numerous translations from Latin and Greek played a great role in helping to work out stylistic norms for the emotive prose of that period. Translations from modern languages, of Italian and French romances in particular, also began to influence the stylistic norms of emotive prose. The necessity to find adequate language means to convey the ideas and the stylistic peculiarities of the text in the source-language made the translators extend the scope of language resources already used in literature, thus enlarging the potentialities of stylistic4 devices and language media.
Sixteenth century professional literary men like Philip Sidney, Johi Lyly, Robert Greene and others known as the "University Wits," along side their interests in poetry and the dramatic art, did not neglect emotive prose. A special stylistic trend arose named after a literary work by Lyly entitled "Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit." The whole book is written in a high-flown, over-refined manner. There is a fine subtlety of expression combined with an unrestrained use of periphrasis. One can find allusions, parallel constructions, antithesis, similes and many other stylistic devices in such abundance that they pile up on one another or form long monotonous chains, the links of which are instances of a given stylistic device.
Inasmuch as this literary work has had rather a notable effect on the subsequent development of emotive prose (Lyly is called the pioneer of the English novel), it will not come amiss to give a sample of the prose of "Euphues":
"The merchant that travaileth for gain, the husbandman that toileth for increase, the lawyer that pleadeth for gold, the craftsman that seeketh to live by his labour, all these, .after they have fatted themselves with sufficient, either take their ease or less pain than they were accustomed. Hippomenes ceased to run when he had gotten the goal, Hercules to labour when he had obtained the victory,Mercury to pipe when he had cast Argus in a slumber. Every action hath his end; and then we leave to sweat when we have found the sweet. The ant, though she toil in summer, yet in winter she leaveth to travail. The bee, though she delight to suck the fair flower, yet is she at last cloyed with honey. The spider that weaveth the finest thread ceaseth at the last, when she hath finished her web.
But in the action and the study of the mind, gentlemen, it is far otherwise, for he that tasteth the sweet of his learning en-, dureth all the sour of labour. He that seeketh the depth of knowledge is as it were in a labyrinth.,."
This passage shows the prolixity of what came to be called the e u
phuistic style1 with its illustrations built on semantic parallelism and the much-favoured device of mythological allusions; with its carefully chosen vocabulary, its refinement artd grace.
1 The word 'style' is used here not in the terminological sense employed in this book, but in a more general, looser application.
Lyly's aim was to write in a style that was distinct from colloquial speech and yet not poetry. He actually says that Englishmen wished "to hear a finer speech than the language will allow." Euphuism was orientated upon the language of the court and the nobility and marred all kinds of lively colloquial words and expressions. In general III 'is characterized by artificiality of manner.
Euphuism bred a liking for excessive embellishment, and this in Is turn, called forth an unrestrained use of rhetorical devices unmo-fvated by the content and unjustified by the purport of the communica-ton.
But not all 16th century emotive prose was of this character. Walter Raleigh's writing was much simpler, both in vocabulary and syntax; it was less embellished and often colloquial. Roger Ascham, though an excellent classical scholar, chose to write "English matter in the English speech for English men." He writes in a plain, straightforward, clear -manner with no attempt at elegance. Philip Sidney wrote prose that could be as clear as Ascham's. Even when his sentences are long, they do not lose their clarity. In contrast to Ascham he did npt scorn ornament, but, unlike Lyly, he used it in moderation. The prose of Richard Hooker, who wrote on contraversial religious themes, is restrained and has power I and balance. Hooker also had considerable influence on the development I of English emotive prose.
I Euphuism, however, had merits in its time. It made msn-oMetters I look for finer, more elegant forms of expression and this search inevitably made them more form-conscious — they learned to polish their language and, to some extent, developed a feeling for prose rhythm. But at later periods euphuism became reactionary, inasmuch as it barred all kinds of lively colloquial words and expressions and hindered the process of liberating the belles-lettres style from rigid poetical restrictions. The "democratization" of the means of expression was incompatible with the aristocratic artificiality and prettiness of euphuism.
A great influence on the further development of the characteristic features of the belles-lettres style was exercised by Shakespeare. Although he never wrote prose, except for a few insertions in some of his plays, he declared his poetical credo and his attitude towards all kinds of embellishments in language in some of his works.1 Also in hi$ "Love's Labour Lost" Shakespeare condemns the embellishing tendencies of some of the poets. Here is a well-known quotation which has long been used to characterize the pompous, showy manner of expression.
"Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise, * Three-pil'd' hyperboles, spruce affectation: Figures pedant ical; these summer flies Have blown me full of maggot ostentation: I do forswear them..."
On the whole the emotive prose of the 16th century had not yet shaped itself as a separate style. Verse and drama predominate among
works of belles-lettres. The small amount of prose written, in particular emotive prose, can be ascribed to the general strong tendency to regard the spoken variety of the English language as inferior and therefore unworthy to be represented in belles-lettres. And without speech of characters there can be no true emotive prose. This perhaps explains the fact that most of the prose works of the period were histories, biographies, accounts of travels, essays on different philosophical and aesthetic problems. There were, of course, exceptions like Robert Greene's "Life and Death of Ned Browne" and Thomas N ash's "The Unfortunate Traveller, or The Life of Jack Wilton," tfie former being a story of crime and the latter an adventure story. These are precursors of the modern novel.
The seventeen i h century saw a considerable development in emotive prose. It was an epoch of great political and religious strife, and much that was written had a publicistic aim. The decline in drama due to the closing of the theatres by the Puritans in 1648 may also have had its effect in stimulating the development of emotive prose.
The two contrary tendencies in the use of language means, so striking in the 16th century, assume new forms in the 17th. There was first of all the continuation of the classical tradition, and secondly there was the less scholarly, but more English prose that had been employed by the forty-seven translators of the "Authorized Version" of the Bible. As is known, during the 16th century the English literary language had received large additions from classical Greek and Latin and also from modern French and Italian. Some writers considered it good style to introduce not only lexical but also syntactical innovations: sentences were often built according to'classical patterns. Burton, Browne and others constructed long passages following Latin models. One of the 17th . century writers states:
"Many think 4hat they can never speak elegantly, nor write significantly, except* they do it in a language of their own devising; as if they were ashamed of their mother tongue, and thought it not sufficiently curious to express their fancies. By means whereof, more French and Latin words have gained ground upon us since - the middle of Queen Elisabeth's reign than were admitted by our ancestors..."1 „
The two tendencies' were combined in the prose works of Milton who, being a Puritan, recognized the Bible as the highest authority in all matters, but who had a deep knowledge of the ancient classics as well. -
The influence of the Bible on English emotive prose is particularly striking in the works of John Bunyan. "The Pilgrim's Progress" represents a new trend in the development of emotive prose. Here is an excerpt from the work:
"Now Giant Despair had a wife, and her name was Diffidence; so when he was gone to bed, he told his wife what he had done,
to wit, that he had taken a couple of prisoners and cast them into his dungeon, for trespassing on his grounds. Then he asked her also what he had best to do further to them. So she asked what they were, whence they came, and whither they were bound, and he told her. Then she counselled him, that when he arose in the morning he should beat them without mercy. ...The next night she talked with her husband about them further, and understanding that they were yet alive, did advise him to counsel them to make away with themselves. So when morning was come, he goes to them in a surly manner, as before, and perceiving them to be very sore with the stripes that he had given them the day before, he told them that since they were never like to come out of that place, their only way would be forthwith to make an end of themselves, either with knife, halter, or poison: for why, said he, should you choose life, seeing it is attended with so much bitterness? But they desired him to let them go. ... Then did the prisoners consult between themselves, whether it was best to take his counsel or no; and thus they began to discourse: —
Chr. Brother, said Christian, what shall we do? The life that we now live is miserable. For my part, I know not whether it is best to live thus, or die out of hand. My soul chooseth strangling rather than life, and the grave is more easy for me than this dungeon! Shall we be ruled by the giant? Hope. Indeed our present condition is dreadful, ...
Well, towards the evening the giant goes down into the dungeon again, to s'ee if his prisoners had taken his counsel; ,.."
In this excerpt the main peculiarities of the style of emotive prose of the puritan trend stand out clearly. Simplicity in choice of words and in syntax is the predominant feature of the language of this type of emotive prose. The speech of the characters is mainly shaped in the form of indirect discourse/When direct speech appears, it is arranged as in a play, that is, the speaker is indicated by giving his full name or its contracted form at the beginning of a line. The name is „not syntactically connected with the character's utterance. It is interesting to note in passing that the yet unestablished norms of emotive prose are reflected in a combination of the syntactical arrangement of a play and that of emotive prose, as, for example, in this passage where the name of the speaker precedes the utterance as in plays, and the same name is mentioned within the direct speech as if it were introduced by the writer.
So there is a kind of mixture of two substyles, emotive prose and drama. However, when incursions of direct speech are short, they are given within the author's narrative, for example,
"...their only way would be forthwith to make an end of themselves, either with knife, halter, or poison: for why, said he, should you choose life, seeing it is attended with so much bitterness? But they desired him to let them go .
Another peculiarity of the prose of this period is a rather poorly developed system of connectives, The connectives and, so that,-then
are used abundantly and often in a way that does not comply with their generally accepted functions.
Bunyan's works have played a considerable role in establishing the most characteristic features of emotive prose.
Imagery, so characteristic of the belles-lettres language style in general, begins to colour emotive prose differently from the way it is used in poetry and plays of the non-puritan trend. The imagery in the "Pilgrim's Progress" is based on allegory. Allegory is akin to metaphor, but it differs from the latter by having a definite symbolic meaning. Allegory in its most common form is a variety of antonomasia. Words denoting abstract notions are used as proper names. So, in the passage quoted above the name of the giant is 'Despair', his wife's name — 'Diffidence', the name of the Castle is 'Doubting Castle', the names of the pilgrims are 'Christian' and 'Hopeful.'
This type of imagery has considerable tenacity in emotive prose and particularly in plays.
• The puritan influence on the language of emotive prose at this time displays what may be called an anti-renaissance spirit. This is shown in the -disparagement of mythological imagery and any embellishment of language whatever. Bunyan's abstract way of treating ordinary everyday-life events and conflicts led to an abstract manner in depicting his characters. They are, as a rule, devoid of individuality. There is no typification of a character's speech, and therefore there is practically no difference between the language of the author and that of the heroes. A tendency to simplify the literary language, resulting from the derogatory attitude of the puritans to classical learning, is apparent in seventeenth century emotive prose, at least among some writers.
However, the language of emotive prose at this period, as at preceding and subsequent periods, did not progress along one line. The clas-. sical tradition and the over-use of embellishments were also alive, and can be seen at any period i“ the development of the English literary language, and tff emotive prose ^particular, in a greater or lesser degree right until the beginning of the 20th century.
The struggle between the two opposing tendencies in rendering ideas in the style of emotive prose reflects the political and religious strife between the Puritans and the Cavaliers, the name given to those who were on the side of Charles I against the Puritan Party during the Civil War of 1642—1652.X ч
Among representatives of "the "Cavalier" trend in literature we shall mention Jeremy Taylor, whose works, mainly sermons, are illustrative of this ornamental manner.
"... he strongly resembles Spenser in his prolific fancy and diction, in a certain musical arrangement and sweetness of ex-. pression, in prolonged description, and in delicious musings and reveries, suggested by some favourite image or metaphor, on which he dwells with the fondness and enthusiasm of a young poet. In these passages he is also apt to run into excess; epithet is heaped upon epithet, and figure upon figure; all the quaint
conceits of his fancy, and the curious stores of his learning are dragged in, till both precision and propriety are sometimes lost." l
There was also a third trend in emotive prose which began to develop in the 17th century and which became more apparent in subsequent periods. Representative of this trend are Thomas Sprat and in particular John Dryden. This trend is responsible for the introduction into writing of common words and phrases known as colloquialisms. True, in 17th century emotive prose these elements were yet few. But this third trend, as it were, broke the ice and a trickle of colloquial words began to flow into emotive prose.
Thomas Sprat raised his voice against luxury and redundance of speech. He beheld "with indignation how many mists and uncertainties these specious tropes and figures have brought on our knowledge." He was all for a "close, naked, natural way of speaking, positive expressions, clear senses, a native easiness". He preferred "the language of artisans, countrymen and merchants before that of wits, and scholars."2
The models of prose writing at Dryden's disposal were the colloquial manner "of Bunyan and similar writers, on the one hand, and, on the other, the elaborate manner of Lyly, Sidney, Browne,- Jeremy Taylor and others. Dryden retained the simple diction, and disciplined the loose everyday expressions of the former, he cut off the awkward Latinisms and long-winded elegance of the latter. The features of Dryden's prose are clarity, simplicity of sentence structure, lack of ornament, fluency and rhythm. The influence of Dryden on both emotive prose and pub-licistic prose, which began to develop rapidly in*the 18th century, was felt throughout the century. Dryden has been called the father of English literary criticism.
After the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660 a new trend arose in literature which was also reflected in prose. The critical spirit was more and more taking the place of the imaginative. Emotive prose was becoming a weapon of satire and not simply a means of describing and interpreting the life of the day. This trend, materialized mainly in essays, was outstanding in the prose works of Dryden (his "Essay on Dramatic Poesy" in particular) and continued into the 18th century, where it became conspicuous.
Eighteenth century emotive prose when compared to that of the seventeenth is, in its most essential, leading features, characterized by the predominance of the third trend. This third trend, which may justly be called realistic, is not the further development of the puritan tendencies described above, although, doubtless, these tendencies bore some relevance to its typical features. The motto of this trend may be expressed by the phrase "call a spade a spade." By this phrase the adherents of the realistic trend in literature, and in emotive prose in particular, expressed the idea that all things should be called by their right names, that the writers should use plain, blunt wot*ds. This was a kind
of protest against the complicated and elaborate periphrases by which the most common concepts were often described.
The history of English literature gives their due to such prominent men-of-letters as Defoe, Swift and Fielding who were ardent apologists of this direction in prose writing, and who created fascinating novels, most of which ^re still reckoned among the masterpieces of English literature. The aim of this new school of writers was to make the language clear, precise, well-balanced, and moderate. They developed a manner of writing which by its strength, simplicity and directness was admirably adapted to ordinary every-day needs. But still the general philosophical and aesthetic views dominating at this period greatly influenced the manner of writing.
The writers of the 18th century did much to establish emotive prose as an independent form of literary art.
They considered that, being educated representatives of their society, it was their dity to safeguard the purity of the English language. However, tfie principles they followed were obscure and even contradictory. On the one hand, some of them, like Johnson, were against the introduction into literary English of any colloqual elements, regarding the latter as being inferior to the polished language of educated people. On the other hand, many others felt an urgent necessity to bridge the gap between literary and colloquial modes of expression in order to achieve a greater vividness and flexibility of utterance. Therefore, though using the general language of this period, at the same time they sought to subject it to conventional stylistic norms. *
These stylistic norms were very rigid. So much so, that the individual peculiarities of the authors were frequently over-weighed by the general requirement of the stylistic norms.
These norms are revealed in the levelling-off of the differences between the literary language and the spoken language of the time. The author's speech and that of the heroes resemble each other, so there is no speech characterization; А1ГШе characters speak alike and almost in the same way as the author himself does.
Another stylistic feature of the emotive prose of the 18th century is a peculiar manner of conveying the impression that the event narrated actually occurred, that the narrative possessed authenticity. This manner of writing imparts.some of the features of official documents to emotive prose. Some of the works of emotive prose therefore, with their wealth of detail and what seems to be genuine fact,-resemble chronicles. When the narrative is written in the first person singular, as it very often is, it reads almost like a diary. The narrative itself is generally impassionate, devoid of any emotional elements, with strict observance of syntactical rules governing the structure of the sentences. In such works there are very few epithets, there is almost no imagery. Such are most of the novels by Defoe, Swift, Fielding and others,
Illustrative in this respect are the works of Defoe. He really deserves the title of the originator of the "authenticated" manner in emotive prose. His novel "Robinson Crusoe" is written in a language which by its lexical and syntactical peculiarities has very much in common with the style of an official report.
Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, whose essays were written for the journals "The Tatler" and "The Spectator" also followed the general stylistic principles of this period. The most striking feature, of course, is the inadequate representation of direct speech. The most lively conversations (dialogues) are generally rendered in indirect speech and only fragments of lively direct intercourse can be found in long passages of the narrative. These are mostly exclamatory sentences, like "Sir Clou-desley Shovel! A very gallant man!" or "Dr. Busby! A great man! He whipped my grandfather; a very great man!"
The 18th century is justly regarded as the century which formed: emotive prose as a self-sufficient branch of the belles-lettres style. But still, the manner in which emotive prose used language means and stylistic devices in some cases still resembled the manner of poetic style. At this time also it was difficult to tell a piece of emotive prose from an essay or even from scientific prose. This was mainly due to the fact that the most essential and characteristic features of these styles were not yet fully shaped.
It was only by the end of the 18th century that the most typical features of the emotive prose style became really prominent. Laurence Sterne with his "Tristram Shandy" contributed greatly to this process. Sterne thought that the main task of emotive prose was"... to depict the inner world of man, his ever-changing moods. Therefore at the foundation of his novel lies the emotional and not the logical principle."1
With Sterne, emotive prose began to use a number of stylistic devices which practically determined many" of its characteristic features. In "Tristram Shandy" there appear rudimentary forms of represented speech; the speech of the characters approaches the norms of lively colloquial language; the narrative itself begins to reflect the individuality of the author, not only in his world outlook but, which is very important for linguistic analysis, in his manner of using the language means of his time. He attempts to give speech characteristics to his characters, uses the different stylistic strata of the English vocabulary widely both in the individual speech of his characters and in the language of the author himself.
The role of Sterne in the shaping of the typical features of emotive prose of the following centuries is under-estimated. He was the first to make an attempt to overcome the traditional form of the then fashionable narrative in depicting characters, events, social life and human conflicts. It was necessary to enliven the dialogue and it was Laurence Sterne who was able to do so. The great realistic writers of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries to some extent followed in his footsteps.
Nineteenth century emotive prose can already be regarded as a substyle of the belles-lettres language style complete in its most fundamental properties as they are described at the beginning of this chapter.
The general tendency in English literature to depict the life of all strata of English society called forth changes in regard to the language used for this purpose. Standard English begins to actively absorb elements of the English vocabulary which were banned in earlier periods from the language of emotive prose, that is, jargonisms, professional words, slang, dialectal words and even vulgarisms, though the latter were used sparingly and euphemistically—damn was printed d—, bloody, b—and the like. l Illiterate speech finds its expression in emotive prose through the distortion of the spelling of words, and the use of cockney and dialectal words; there appears a clear difference between the speech of the writer and that-of his characters. A new feature begins to establish itself as a property of emotive prose alone, namely, what may be called multiplicity of stytes. Language means typical of other styles of the literary language are drawn into the system of expressive means and stylistic devices of this particular substyle. It has already been pointed out that these insertions do not remain in their typical form, they are recast to comply writh the essential principles of emotive prose.
Here is an example of a newspaper brief found in Thackeray's "Vanity Fair":
"Governorship of Coventry Island.—H. M. S. Yellowjack, Commander Jaunders, has brought letters and papers from Coventry Island. H. E. Sir Thomas Liverseege had fallen a victim to the prevailing fever at Swampton. His loss is deeply felt in the flourishing colony. We hear that the governorship has been offered to Colonel Rawdon Crawley, С. В., a distinguished Waterloo officer. We need not only men of acknowledged bravery, but men of administrative talefits to superintend the affairs of our colonies; and we have no doubt that the gentleman selected by the Colonial Office to fill the lamented vacancy which has occurred at Coventry Island is admirably calculated for the post which he is about to occupy".
By the end of the nineteenth century and particularly at the beginning of the twentieth, certain stylistic devices had been refined and continue to be further developed and perfected. Among these must be mentioned represented speech, both uttered and unuttered (inner), and also various ways of using detached construction, which is particularly favoured by present-day men-of-letters. Syntax, too, has undergone modifications in the emotive prose of the last century and a half.
Present-day emotive prose is to a large extent characterized by the breaking-up of traditional syntactical designs of the preceding
periods. Not only detached construction, but also fragmentation of syntactical models, peculiar, unexpected ways of combining sentences, especially the gap-sentence link and other modern syntactical patterns, are freely introduced into present-day emotive prose. Its advance is so rapid that it is only possible to view it in the gross.
Many interesting investigations have been made of the characteristic features of the language of different writers where wfiat is typical and what is-idiosyncratic are subjected to analysis. But so far no deductions have been made as to the general trends of emotive prose of the nineteenth century, to say nothing of the twentieth. This work awaits investigators who may be able to draw up some general principles distinguishing modern emotive prose from the emotive prose of the preceding periods.
3. LANGUAGE OF THE DRAMA
The third subdivision of the belles-lettres style is the language of plays. The first thing to be said about the parameters of this variety of belles-lettres is that, unlike poetry, which, except for ballads, in essence excludes direct speech and therefore dialogue, and unlike emotive prose, which is a combination of monologue (the author's speech) and dialogue (the speech of the characters), the language of plays is entirely dialogue. The author's speech is almost entirely excluded ex-,cept for the playwright's remarks and stage directions, significant though they may be.
But the language of the characters is in no way the exact reproduction of the norms of colloquial language, although the playwright seeks to reproduce actual conversation as far as the norms of the written language will allow. Any variety of the belles-lettres style will use the norms of the literary language of the given period. True, in every variety there will be found, as we have already shown, departures from the established literary norms. But in genuinely artistic work these departures will never go beyond the boundaries of the permissible fluctuations of the norms, lest the aesthetic aspect of the work should be lost.
It follows then that^the language of plays is always stylized, that is, it strives to retain the modus of literary English, unless the playwright has a particular aim which requires the use of non-literary forms and expressions. However, even in this case a good playwright will use such forms sparingly. Thus in Bernard Shaw's play "Fanny's First Play," Dora, a street-girl, whose language reveals her upbringing, her lack of education, her way of living, her tastes and aspirations, nevertheless uses comparatively few non-literary words. A bunk, a squiffer are examples! Even these are explained with the help of some literary device. This is due to the stylization of the language.
The stylization of coHoquial language is one of the features of plays 'which at different stages in the history of English drama has manifested itself in different ways revealing, on the one hand, the general trends of the literary language and, on the other hand, the personal idiosyncrasies of the writer.
In the 16th century the stylization of colloquial language was scarcely maintained due to several facts: plays were written in haste for the companies of actors eagerly waiting for them, and they were written for a wide audience, mostly the common people. As is known, plays were staged in public squares on a raised platform almost without stage properties.
The colloquial language of the 16th century, therefore, enjoyed an almost unrestrained freedom and this partly found its expression in the lively dialogue of plays. The general trends in the developing literary language were also reflected in the wide use of biblical and mythological allusions, evocative of Renaissance traditions, as well as in the abundant use of compound epithets, which can also be ascribed to the influence of the great Greek and Latin epics.
Generally speaking, the influence of Renaissance traditions can also be seen in a fairly rich injection of oaths, curses, swear-words and other vulgarisms into the language texture of the English drama of this period. In order to check the unlimited use of oaths and curses in plays, an act of Parliament was passed in 1603 which forbade the profane and jesting use of the names of God, Christ, the Holy Ghost and the Trinity in any. stage play or performance. x
The 16th century plays are mostly written in iambic pentameter, rhymed or unrhymed. The plays of this period therefore were justly called dramatic poetry. The staged performance, the dialogue character of the discourse and the then obvious tendency to keep close to the norms of colloquial language affected the verse and resulted in breaking the regular rhythm of the metre.
This breaking of the regularity and strictness of the rhythmical design became one of the characteristic features of the language of dramatic poetry, and the language of plays of the earlier writers, who employed a strict rhythmic pattern without run-on lines (enjambment) or other rhythmical modifications, Is considered tedious and monotonous. Thus one of the most notable plays of this period "The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe" by George Peele, in spite of its smooth musical versification, is regarded as lacking variety. True, "...the art of varying the pauses and modulating the verse without the aid of rhyme had not yet been generally adopted."2
But the great playwrights of this period, forced by the situation in which the communicative process takes place — on a stage facing an audience—, realized the necessity of modulating the rhythmical pattern of blank verse. Marlowe, Gr.eene, Nash, Shakespeare and Ben Jonson modulated their verse to a greater or lesser degree. Marlowe, for instance, found blank verse consisting of lines each ending with a stressed monosyllable and each line standing by itself rather monotonous. He modified the pauses, changed the stresses and made the metre suit the sense instead of making the sense fit the metre as his predecessors
had done. He even went further and introduced passages of prose into the texture of his plays, thus aiming at an elevation of the utterance. His "Life and Death of Dr. Faustus" abounds in passages which can hardly be classed as verse. Compare, for example, the following two passages from this play:
I FAUST: Oh, if my soul must suffer for my sin, ; Impose some end to my incessant pain. !'.. Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years, A hundred thousand, and at the last be saved: No end is limited to damned souls.
FAUST: But Faustus's offence can ne'er be pardoned. The serpent that tempted Eve may be saved, but not Faustus. Oh, gentlemen, hear me with patience, and tremble not at my speeches. Though my heart pant and quiver to remember that I have been a student here these thirty years, Oh, would I had ne'er seen Wirtemberg, never read book! And what wonders have I done, all Germany can witness, yes, all the world: for which Faustus hath lost both Germany and the world; ...
It is unnecessary to point out the rhythmical difference between these two passages. The iambic pentameter of the first and the arhythmi-cal prose of the second are quite apparent.
Shakespeare also used prose as a stylistic device. The prose passages in Shakespeare's plays are well known to any student of Elizabethan drama.
Shakespeare used prose in passages of repartee between minor characters, particularly in his comedies; in "The Taming of the Shrew" and "Twelfth Night", for instance, and also in the historical plays "Henry IV" (Part I, Part Л I) and "Henry V." In some places there are prose monologues bearing the characteristic features of rhythmical prose with its parallel constructions, repetitions, etc. As an example we may take Falstaff's monologue addressed to the young Prince Henry in "Hen- / ry IV" (Part I, Act II, Sc. 4).
On the other hand, prose conversation between tragic characters retains much of the syllabic quality of blank verse, e.g. the conversation between Polonius and Hamlet ("Hamlet." Act II, Sc. 2).
A popular form of entertainment at the courts of Elizabeth and the Stuarts was the masque. The origin of the court masque must have been thЈ performances presented at court on celebrated occasions, as a coronation, a peer's-marriage, the birth of a prince and similar events. These performances were short sketches with allusions to Greek and , Latin mythology, allegoric in nature, frequently accompanied by song and music and performed by the nobility. These masques are believed to be the earliest forms of what is now known as "spoken drama." The reference to the events of the day and allegoric representation of the members of the nobility called forth the use of words and phrases alien to poetic diction, and passages of prose began to flood into the text of the plays.
But the drama of the seventeenth century still holds fast to poetic
283
diction and up to the decline of the theatre, which was caused by the Puritan Government Act of 1642, a spoken drama as we know it to-day had not seen the stage.
The revival of drama began only in the second half of the 18th century. But the ultimate shaping of the play as an independent form of literary work with its own laws of functioning, with its own characteristic language features was actually completed only at the end of the 19th century.
The natural conventionality of any literary work is most obvious in plays. People are made to talk to each other in front of an audience, and yet as if there were no audience. Dialogue, which, as has been pointed out, is by its very nature ephemeral, spontaneous, fleeting, is made lasting. It is intended to be reproduced many times by different actors with different interpretations. The dialogue loses its colloquial essence and remains simply conversation in form. The individualization of each character's speech then becomes of paramount importance because it is the idiosyncrasy of expression which to some extent reveals the inner, psychological and intellectual traits of the characters. The playwright seeks to approximate a natural form of dialogue, a form as close to natural living dialogue as the literary norms will allow. But at the same time he is bound by the aesthetico-cognitive function of the belles-lettres style and has to mould the conversation to suit the general aims of this style.
Thus the language of plays is a stylized type of the spoken variety of language. What then is this process of stylization that the language of plays undergoes? In what language peculiarities is the stylization
revealed?
The analysis of the language texture of plays has shown that the most characteristic feature here is, to use the term of the theory of information, redundancy of information caused by the necessity to amplify the utterance. This is done for the sake of the audience. It has already been pointed out that the spoken language tends to curtail utterances, sometime^ simplify ing the syntax to fragments of sentences without even showing the character of their interrelation. •
In plays the curtailment of utterances is not so extensive'as it is in natural dialogue. Besides, in lively conversation, even when a prolonged utterance, a monologue, takes place, it is interspersed with the interlocutor's "signals of attention", as they may be called, for example: yes, yeah, oh, That's right,,so, I see;good, yes I know, oh-oh,fine, Oh, my goodness, oh dear, well, well^wgll, Well, I never!, and the like.
In plays these "signals of attention" are irrelevant and therefore done away with. The monologue in plays is never interrupted by any such exclamatory words on the part.of the person to whom the speech is addressed. Further, in plays the characters' utterances are generally much longer than in ordinary conversation.
Here is a short example of a dialogue between two characters from Bernard Shaw's play "Heartbreak House":
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER: Nurse, who is this misguided and unfortunate young lady?
NURSE: She says Miss Hessy invited her, sir.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER: And had she no friend, no parents to warn her against my daughter's invitations? This is a pretty sort of house, by heavens! A young and attractive lady is invited here. Her luggage is left on these steps, for hours; and she herself is deposited in the poop and abandoned, tired and starving..."
This passage is typical in many ways. First of all, the matter-of-fact dialogue between the captain and the nurse gradually flows into a monologue in which elements of the spoken language and of emotive prose are merged. The monologue begins with the conjunction 'and' which serves to link the preceding question to the monologue. The question after 'and' is more of a "question-in-the-narrative" than a real question: the captain does not expect an answer and proceeds with his monologue. Then after an exclamatory 'This is a pretty sort of house, by heavens!', which is actual, common colloquial, there again comes an utterance intended to inform the audience of the Captain's attitude towards the House and the household. Mark also the professionalism 'poop' used to characterize the language of Shotover, a retired ship's captain. In fact, there is no dialogue, or, as Prof. Jakubinsky has it, a "false dialogue", or "monological dialogue", the nurse's remark being a kind of linking sentence between the two parts of the captain's monologue. These linking remarks serve to enliven the monologue, thus making it easier to grasp the meaning of the utterance.
The monological character of the dialogue in plays becomes apparent also by the fact that two or more questions may be asked one after another, as in the following excerpts:
1. "LADY BRITOMART: Do you suppose this wicked and immoral tradition can be kept up for ever? Do you pretend that Stephen could not carry on the foundry just as well as all the other sons of big business houses?"
2. "BARBARA: Dolly: were you really in earnest about it? Would you have joined if you had never seen me?" (Shaw)
Needless to say, in ordinary conversation we never use a succession of questions. Generally only one, perhaps two, questions are asked at a time, and if more are asked—then we already have a kind of emotional narrative; not a dialogue in the exact meaning of the word.
In ordinary conversation we generally find "sequence sentences" connected by "sequence signals". l These signals help^to establish the logical reference to what was said before, thus linking all sequential series of sentences into one whole.
These sequence signals are mostly pronouns, adverbs, conjunctions, as in:
"The boy has just brought the evening paper. It is at the door," or: "Up to 1945 L. was with Johnson. Since he has worked with us." It must be remarked in passing that almost any lively dialogue will hold a sequence of sentences for only a short span, the nature of lively
These also are terms suggested by Charles Fries.
dialogue allowing digressions from the starting point. How often do we hear the phrase: "What was I going to say?" or "What was I driving at?" "How did we come to talk about this?"—to ascertain the initial topic of conversation which has been forgotten.
This is not the case in plays. The sequence of sentences reflecting the sequence of thought, being directed by the purport of the writer, will not allow any digressions from the course taken, unless this was the deliberate intention of the playwright. Therefore, unlike .the real, natural spoken variety of language, the language of plays is already purposeful. The sequence signals, which are not so apparent in lively conversation, become conspicuous in the language of plays. Here is an illustrative example of a span of thought expressed in a number of sentences all linked by the pronoun he and all referring to the first word of the utterance 'Dunn' which, in its turn, hooks the utterance to the preceding sentence:
"THE CAPTAIN: Dunn!. I had a boatswain whose name was Dunn, He was originally a pirate in China, He set up as a ship's chandler with stores which I have every reason to believe he stole from me. No doubt he became rich. Are you his daughter?"
The degree to which the norms of ordinary colloquial language are converted into those of the language of plays, that is, the degree to which "the spoken language is made literary" varies at different periods in the development of drama and depends also on the idiosyncrasies of the playwright himself. Here are two illustrations, one taken from Oliver Goldsmith's play "The Good-Natured Man", an 18th century play, and the other from H. Pinter's play "The Birthday Party", a play of our time.
"MR. CROAKER:.. But can anything be more absurd, than to double*our distresses by our apprehensions, and put it in the power of every low fellow that can scrawl ten words of wretched spelling, to torment us?"
Compare this utterance with the following:
"GOLDBERG: What's your name now? *
STANLEY: Joe Soarp.
GOLDBERG: Is the number 846 possible or necessary? STANLEY: Neither.
GOLDBERG: Wrong! Is the number 846 possible or necessary? STANLEY: Both."
- Almost the whole play is composed of such short questions and answers tending to reproduce an actual communicative process where the sense is.vague to the outsider. Considerable effort on the part of- the audience is sometimes necessary in order to follow the trend of the conversation and decode the playwright's purport. '
It may be remarked in passing that there is an analogous tendency in modern emotive prose where dialogue occupies considerable space.
In some of the novels it takes up three or four pages running, thus resembling a play.
In summing up, it will not come amiss to state that any presentation of a play is an aesthetic procedure and the language of plays is of the type which is meant to be reproduced. Therefore, even when the language of a play approximates that of a real dialogue, it will none the less be "stylized". The ways and means this stylization is carried out are difficult to observe without careful consideration. But they are there, and specification of these means will be a valuable contribution to linguistic science.
|
Скачать 1.13 Mb.