Dancing Words: A Lexical Analysis of Wuthering Heights and The God of Small Things (original) (raw)
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Stylistic Analysis of Wuthering Heights
Few debut novels have aroused as much controversy as Wuthering Heights based on themes, style or on techniques. Although, Wuthering Heights scandalized and nauseated the Victorians, modern critics, nevertheless, speak highly of the strength of the novel's structure and on Emily Brontë's dynamic and disciplined handling of language. A novel comes into existence through the creativity of the writer. And the readers come in contact with the fictional world of the novels through its language. Hence, for comprehending fictional texts, a close study and analysis of language is a necessary prerequisite. Stylistic analysis is used as an analytical tool to see textual patterns and its significance. It is based on statistical data that validate how language, vocabulary and syntax are used to bring about interpretation of the text. Wuthering Heights presents a variety of styles. Stylistically, much ahead of her time, Brontë culled a form best suited to articulate her subject and ideas effectively. This paper is, therefore, an attempt to discover what is striking about Brontë's narrative style.
Playing Safe: the Writer behind the Text of Wuthering Heights
Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 2014
In Wuthering Heights, Brontë provides us with the opportunity to meet two writing subjects; Emily Brontë herself and her character Catherine Earnshaw. Both these writers resist and challenge the authority of the patriarchal. Their different methods of interaction, though, cause one to fail and the other one to succeed. The objective of this paper is to have a look at the strategies that culminate in such a result from a Kristevan viewpoint. Findings indicate how Brontë can, unlike Catherine, play successfully with ideas in the text, sublimate her desires through her metaphors and finally achieve a sense of jouissance by playing at the borders without being entrapped in the forbidden realm of the abject. In addition, it is discussed that through metaphors, Brontë simultaneously establishes and demolishes the codes of an apparently accepted patriarchal world in the symbolic territory, destabilizes the text and deconstructs the fake reform of the ending of the story while constantly remaining on the safe side.
2018
Language, Style and Literature is a new series of books in literary stylistics. The series offers rigorous and informative treatments of particular writers, genres and literary periods and provides in-depth examination of their key stylistic tropes. Every volume in the series is intended to serve as a key reference point for undergraduate and postgraduate students and as an investigative resource for more experienced researchers. The last twenty years have witnessed a huge transformation in the analytic tools and methods of modern stylistics. By harnessing the talent of a growing body of researchers in the field, this series of books seeks both to capture these developments and transformations and to establish and elaborate new analytic models and paradigms.
Literature Review Survey of Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte and Windward Heights by Maryse Conde
Intertextuality is the meaning of a text with reference to other texts. Julia Kristeva's theory of intertextuality was in response to Saussure's theory of semiotics, and how he states that text derives meaning through the structure it is placed in. She also developed on theory of Mikhail Bakhtin's 'Dialogism' which stated that a word only has meaning when it enters into dialogue with another word. Julia's theory is more evolutionary in nature and very source and reference critical at times. An analogy that comes to mind to understand it better is how a barrier reef is created by layers and layers of coral on top of each other; similarly our ideas, texts and references are all pre-existing. We add onto this repository and literature and ideas progress.
Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights Narratology and narrative Structure
Incisive Insights Vol 1 Issue 1 (pg 75 - 104), 2013
The uniqueness of the narrative of Wuthering Heights has been the centre of argument for literary critics, for over a century and it enables one to study it from different angles. This assignment argues that the narrative structure of Wuthering Heights is ‘layered’ rather than ‘linear’ because the story reaches the readers after a rigorous session of editing and rephrasing, by several narrators. This renders it a ‘folkloric’ attribute because there is no authentic authorial voice to make the readers think in a particular way. The main narrators of the story are two peripheral characters – Nelly and Lockwood. Lockwood becomes the ‘frame’ narrator and Nelly becomes the ‘interpolated’ narrator who could also be considered as ‘fallible’ or ‘unreliable’ (thus rendering Lockwood’s version also unreliable). Lockwood’s intellectual and pedantic perception and Nelly’s sentimental and ‘Victorian’ perception of the events and situations in Wuthering Heights render them virtually unstable or incapacitated to fathom the psychological depth and character of the protagonists. By transferring a given narrative from teller to teller the novel creates a disjunction of voices which results in the ‘dispossession’ of the narrative. This leads to the loss of the source of the story thereby inscribing the absence of a narrative centre. But, such a ‘blurring’ between the speaker and the listener is the starting point of interpretation and analysis. Through her style, Bronte challenges the norms of narratology that existed during her time.
Lyricism, Naturalism and Mysticism in Wuthering Heights
Academia Letters, 2021
Lyricism refers to "an artist's expression of emotions in an imaginative and beautiful way; lyrical expression" (Oxford Dictionary, 2008), whereas naturalism, according to Holman (1991), is a term that is used to describe any narrative with a pervading reference to and focus on nature. Mysticism, on the other hand, alludes to the theory that one can attain a knowledge of God or present reality via extrasensory perception or meta-intelligence that transcends ordinary human logical perception (Holman, 1991). It is a concept that has evolved out of realism, which presents that stark reality of life "without idealism or avoidance of the ugly" (Zhang, 2010, p. 195). Shaw, though, defines mysticism as (1) obscure thought or speculation; (2) the beliefs and ideas of persons who claim to have immediate intuition and insight into mysteries beyond normal understanding. Both lyricism and naturalism refer specifically to the structural style of writing, while mysticism as a style leans more towards characterization and setting. These three phenomena are found intertwined within the personalities, landscape and ethos of Wuthering Heights. Throughout Wuthering Heights,the lyrical style is used profusely. Santamaría (2016) posits that the lyrical quality in the novel reflects "the sensibility of a poet" (p. 14), while Lane (1990) submits that Brontë's descriptions exude a lyricism that is both intimate and homely, reflecting a personally lived memory of one who had been born in the north. Lane (1990) further states that Brontë's lyrical style is captured in her pervasive inclusion of descriptions that are simple, yet vibrant (Lane, 1990). Evidence of this use of lyricism is seen in the expressions, "the floor was of smooth, white stone; the chairs high-backed, primitive structures, painted green" (Brontë, 2015, p. 6,); "On that bleak hill-top the earth was hard with a black frost, and the air made me shiver through every limb" (Brontë, 2015, p. 11); and "rocking in a rustling green tree, with a west wind blowing" (Brontë, 2015, p. 313). Accord
2018
Though linguistics and literary studies have shown long established disparity, junctures between language and literature are concerns of both streams to end up with a satisfactory investigation of a literary text which enfolds different language varieties. By utilizing dialect in their literary creations, authors produce richer and more representative texts in terms of language and styles. British and American realist authors tended to blend the Standard English and its dialects to sharpen the distinction among their characters on different levels which enclose social class, cultural belonging and locality. The focus of this research is in the area of literary Courtship…...
Language and Verbal Art Revisited: linguistic approaches to the study of literature
2007
The book will appeal to the growing number of scholars working in, and students needing to investigate, the field of literary linguistics, or stylistics. Thus it is meant for both specialists and non-specialists. The intended readership more particularly includes: our students of English linguistic stylistics at the University of Bologna’s Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literature (in all 3 of our MA programs), for whom it would be required reading with strongly recommended purchase (approximate numbers yearly: 60). Many of the authors also assure me that the volume will be adopted in stylistics courses they periodically teach. The papers in the volume are on a wide variety of aspects of the language-literature connection, and approach it from a variety of perspectives. All include theoretical considerations and practical applications. Indeed, one of the book’s principle aims is to provide a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches to the linguistic study of literature, all of them firmly rooted in specific contexts of culture. This it does by hosting papers from scholars working within various grammatical and discursive frameworks, including SFL, pragmatics, corpus linguistics, ethnolinguistics, cultural and translation studies. It also aims at providing illustrative instances of the kind of work currently being done by researchers working in various parts of the academic world, (Europe, Australia, and Africa). Inclusion of a wide range of literary genres and world literatures is a further goal. To this end, the papers deal with, for example: Shakespeare’s plays; modern Austrian authors writing in German, such as Thomas Bernhard, Elfriede Jelinek, Marlene Streeruwitz; Perrault’s Histoires et contes du temps passé and their translations by Angela Carter; the Spanish poets of the Generación del ‘50; Malaysian-Singaporean poets in English; Anglo-American Modernist poets (Frost, Stevens, Pound and D.H. Lawrence) and novelists (Woolf and Conrad); contemporary short stories by Marina Warner and Turkish-German narrative by Feridun Zamoğlu; The Gospel of St. John and Harry Potter. The main message of the volume is that, as Hasan has so succinctly put it, […] in verbal art the role of language is central. Here language is not as clothing to the body; it IS the body.” (1985/1989: 91), and that, as a result, any true ‘appraisal’ of the meanings of the literature text must address that language, with reference to the text’s specific ‘context of creation’. A further message is that, though all the contributors to the volume acknowledge this basic premise, there are a variety of linguistic theories and practices at our disposal for probing the language of verbal art. Separate introductions to each of the contributions will seek to guide above all the non-specialist reader by describing, contrasting and comparing the diverse frameworks that the volume comprises. For a similar purpose, a general introduction diachronically traces key moments in the development of the study of the language of literature seen as socio-cultural practice.
Stylistics and Linguistic Analyses of Literary Works
2019
A linguistic analysis of literature has caused debates among linguists and between linguists and literary critics. The debate among linguists occurs because they have different opinions regarding the nature of literary language, while the debate between linguists and literary scholars arises as literary scholars question the authority of linguistics to study literary writings. Therefore, in this paper I argue that the language of literature is similar to that of non-literary texts, and I also believe that because the centrality of language in literary writings, linguistics, as the study of language, has the authority to study literature. One linguistic approach to literature is stylistics, which studies the forms, functions, and meanings of literary language in a detailed and systematic way.