Assignments for stylistic analysis. 1. Define the basic theme and the idea disclosed in the extract

1. Define the basic theme and the idea disclosed in the extract. What contextual effect is produced by the introductory words "He was a remark­able man"!

2. Say whether the extract contains description or narration. Who is perceived as the author of the piece and what is his role in presenting the conversation?

3. Analyse the tone of the passage, the stylistic function of exclamations. Is the modality of speech of both the interlocutors the same?

4. What kind of climax -emotional, qualitative, quantitative- is observed in the extract? How is it expressed?

5. Analyse the sentence structure and functional peculiarities of: a) de­tachment; b) asyndeton; c) enumeration; d) tautology.

6. What is the significance of break-in-the-narrative in the text?

7. Explain the contextual stylistic function of the concluding metaphor "The darkness deepened.";

Item 2

To write of someone loved, of someone loving, above all of oneself being Ifived - how can these things be done with propriety? How can they be done ^at all? I have treated of love in my published work; I have used it - with avarice, envy, revenge - as one of the compelling motives of conduct. I have ^written it up as something prolonged and passionate and tragic; I have written

 

it down as a modest but sufficient annuity with which to reward the just; т have spoken of it continually as a game of profit and loss. How does any ₀f this avail for the simple task of describing, so that others may see her. the woman one loves? How can others see her except through one's own eyes and how, so seeing her, can they turn the pages and close the book and lj_Ve on as they have lived before, without becoming themselves the author and themselves the lover? The catalogues of excellencies of the Renaissa nce poets, those competitive advertisements, each man outdoing the nejc tjn metaphor, that great blurt - like a publisher's list in the Sunday newsp nrier - the Song of Solomon, how do these accord with the voice of love - love that delights in weakness, seeks out and fills the empty places and com­pletes itself in its work of completion; how can one transcribe those ac­cents? Love, which has its own life, its hours of sleep and waking, its health and sickness, growth, death and immortality, its ignorance and knowledg p ^ experiment and mastery - how can one relate this hooded stranger to the men and women with whom he keeps pace? It is a problem beyond the proper scope of letters.

From Evelyn Waugh's Work Suspended