He was not very big.

b) the repetition of the general scheme of a sentence, by means of the pronominal subject and an auxiliary or modal verb, representing the predicate of the main sentence, e.g. She knows a lot about religion, Sally does (D. Lodge). This type of syntactic tautology is met in the speech of uncultivated people, or it may be a sign of emotional colloquial speech.

It is used:

· to make the noun subject of the sentence more prominent;

· to reproduce the peculiarities of colloquial speech or the speech of uneducated people.

Symbolism. A word functions as a symbol when it is used to indicate not only its usual referent, but also something quite different. Some symbols have traditional associations. For example, the word flag refers not only to a cloth banner, but it also symbolises the country that flies it. Other conventional symbols include a circle – perfection; the sun – power or reason; greenery – youth; winter – old age; and a road – the path of life. For example, when Walt Whitman used the symbol of the “ship of state” in his poem O Captain! My Captain! readers knew that the poem was actually referring to the ship of the United States and its lost captain, Abraham Lincoln. Writers can also create their own associations between unlike things, establishing personal symbols.

Synesthesia is adescription of a sensory experience as if it were perceived through another sense. For example, describing a painter’s colours – a visual experience – in auditory terms – as clashing or loud. The following lines from William Blake’s poem, London, use synesthesia to describe an auditory phenomenon – a soldier’s sigh – in visual terms: “And the hapless soldier’s sigh / Runs in blood down palace walls.”

Zeugma consists in combining unequal semantically heterogeneous or even incompatible words or phrases.

e.g. He lost his hat and his temper.

She dropped a tear and her pocket handkerchief.

One part of speech (most often the main verb, but sometimes a noun) governs two or more other parts of a sentence.The basic word of such combination stands in the same grammatical but different semantic relations to a couple of adjacent words.

e.g. Only the rector, white-haired, wiped his long grey moustache with his serviette and jokes (D.H. Lawrence).

Zeugma may also be based on a free combination of words plus an idiomatic set-phrase. It is particularly favoured in English emotive prose.

It is used:

· to produce humorous effect;

· to make the two meanings more conspicuous.

 

 

II. STRATEGIES FOR CONDUCTING LITERARY TEXT ANALYSIS AND WRITING AN ESSAY

1. Plan your literary analysis essay. Your outline can help you organize your thoughts, but keep yourself open to new ideas and interpretations that occur to you as you draft. To start your draft, you might begin with a thesis statement.

2. Organize your draft. Keep in mind the following points for making your analysis effective:

· In the introduction to your literary analysis, identify the title and author of the work you are analyzing, and briefly state your main point.

· Provide enough of a summary of the work, so that your essay can be clear to those unfamiliar with the work. Avoid giving a detailed plot summary.

· Cover all the points suggested in this Guide (genre, social and cultural context, thematic structure, the author’s tone and intent, composition, view-point, type of narration, methods of characterisation, setting, language and style, imagery, etc).

· Use quotations from the text to show that your statements are valid. Explain how the quotations support your ideas about the text. Avoid long quotations. Remember to place quotation marks at the beginning and end of the passages quoted. Place the page reference in parentheses after the quotation.

· Don’t misrepresent your understanding of a literary work for the sake of convenient interpretation. In case the work of literature reflects two opposing value systems or suggests two contradictory views of human nature, let your interpretation reflect such complexities.