Aug 8, 2012
Structural Stylistic Devices
Structural Stylistic Devices
1. State the type of inversion:
What the action of the play would have been like if Laertes had not had the occasion to revenge the death of his father, we cannot tell. (Literary criticism)
Had this happened before supper, George would have expressed wishes and desires concerning Harris's fate in this world and the next that would have made a thoughtful man shudder. (Jerome)
Calm and quiet below me in the sun and shade lay the old house. (Dickens)
2. What structural device is used below?
A poor boy... No father, no mother, no any one. (Dickens)
3. Comment on the kind of repetition used:
One may see by their footprints that they have not walked arm in arm; that they have not walked in a straight track, and that they have walked in a moody humour. (Dickens)
/ looked at the gun, and the gun looked at me. (R. Chandler)
4. Point out the devices of climax and anticlimax:
Of course it's important. Incredibly, urgently, desperately important. (D. Cusack)
// was a mistake ...a blunder... lunacy ... (W. Deeping)
He was numbed. He wanted to weep, to vomit, to die, to sink away. (A. Bennet)
They were absolutely quiet; eating no apples, cutting no names, inflicting no pinches, and making no grimaces, for full two minutes afterwards. (Dickens)
5. Explain the meaning of the periphrasis
She was still fat; the destroyer of her figure sat at the head of the table. (A. Bennet)
The hospital was crowded with the surgically interesting products of the fighting in Africa. (I. Shaw)
6. What device is created by the use of the marked words?
Don't use big words. They mean so little. (Wilde)
7. What device is represented by the marked part of the sentence
and what is the implication here?
"But, John, you know I 'm not going to a doctor. I 've told you. " "You are going — or else... "(P. Qucntin)
8. What device is used in the marked parts?
His nervousness about it irritated him: she had no business to make him feel like that. (Galsworthy)
Angela looked at him with swimming eyes. He was really different from anything she had ever known, young, artistic, imaginative, ambitious... What a wonderful thing! (Dickens)
9. What ways of connection are used in the extracts below?
And they wore their best and more colourful clothes. Red shirts and green shirts and yellow shirts and pink shirts. (P. Abrahams)
The pulsating motion at Malay Camp at night was everywhere. People sang. People cried. People fought. People loved. People hated. (P. Abrahams)
10. Name the device used below
"The day on which I had to take the happiest and best step of my life — the day on which I shall be a man more exulting and more enviable than any other man in the world — the day on which I give Bleak House its little mistress — shall be next month, then ", said my guardian. (Dickens)
VI. Comment on the Phonetic Devices Used Below
'Sh-sh', shesaid. 'But I'm whispering!' This continual shushing annoyed him. (A. Huxley)
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees. (Tennison)