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Introduction
In this paper, various viewpoints of the nature of poetic language will be highlighted by utilizing a stylistic analysis of a poem, „ Sonnet 55 ‟, composed by William Shakespeare (see Appendix for full poem). In the stylistic analysis, making use of noise and rhythm to communicate complement significance by Shakespeare will be in focus here.
Poetic function in poem
Poetic language is a kind of language that typically found in poetry1. According to Jakobson (1960 ), formalists believe poetic function of language is closely connected to literariness2. There are 3 viewpoints to look at the literariness of poem including inherency, cognitive and sociocultural.
In inherency perspective, poetic function can be discovered within the poem intrinsically.
It concentrates on author ‟ s ability in manipulating the noises, words, expressions and total linguistic kind of the poem3. This constantly makes the poem foregrounded in the mind of the reader which is achieved by deviation and parallelism3. This point of view will be utilized in this paper.
In cognitive perspective, it concentrates on the engagement of readers consisting of how the readers comprehend the poems and relate to their previous knowledge and experience.
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In sociocultural point of view, social and ideological factors are used to comprehend the role of poem in society as many of work of the literature takes particular social and historical reasons into account3. As a result, poetic can be changed over time.
Poem
Not marble, nor the gilded monoliths
Of princes, will outlive this effective rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmear 'd with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war's fast fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
' Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you rate forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself emerge,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers ‟ eyes.
In line 10, the word „pace‟ means a calm stability that contrasts with the violence of war in the previous lines while also creating alliteration „pace and praise‟ and assonance „pace and praise‟ with the word „praise‟.
Poetic orthography
The use of diacritic marks and spellings in poetry are known as poetic orthography10. The apostrophe is used to indicate that a potential syllable must be suppressed in performance10. The vowel „e‟ is deleted in „besmear'd‟ in line 4. Since the deleted vowel is a tense marker, information is recoverable from the context easily9. This is also applicable to the deletion of the vowel „a‟ in “ 'Gainst” in line 9, but is it a preposition.
Thus, we can get the correct number of syllables in every line.
Silent Stress
Semi-colon in line 10 acts as a silent stress. This can avoid the heavily metrical reading which would otherwise place an ictus on the word „your ‟10. Also, this can bring out that the line has 2 clauses which express different but closely related. Foot, line and grammar
The metrical line and grammatical structure are closely related. Normally, the line-end coincides with a major syntactic boundary or a tone-group boundary10. In line 1, it is obvious that there is still more information coming after the words „gilded monuments‟ as we only have the subject. Hence, the line-end interrupts the grammar flow10. This arresting of enjambment results in foregrounding and it appears in the poem for a few times.
Others
There are four important words in the poem which are phonetically parallel and matches with the theme, including „outlive‟ in line 2, „living‟ in line 8, „all-oblivious‟ in line 9 and „live‟ in line 1411. By using the word „live‟ throughout the poem, Shakespeare emphasizes his authorial intentions11 that the youth is still living in his poem and the lovers‟ eyes.
Bibliography
Fineman, Kelly (2009) „Sonnet 55 by William Shakespeare‟, Blogspot. Available from
http://kellyrfineman.blogspot.hk/2009/09/sonnet-54-by-william-shakespeare.html (Accessed on 26 October 2012).
Jakobson, R. (1960) „Closing statement, linguistics and poetics‟, in T. SEBEOK (ed.) Style in Language, Cambridge MA, MIT Press, pp. 356.
Maybin, J. and Pearce, M. (2006) „Chapter 1: Literature and creativity in English‟ in Goodman, S. and O‟Halloran, K. The art of English: Literary creativity, Palgrave Macmillan in association with The Open University.
Mabillard, A. (2000) „An Analysis of Shakespeare‟s Sonnet 55‟, Shakespeare Online. Available from http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/55detail.html (Accessed on 26 October 2012).
Miller, A (2008) „Intro to Lit: Not Marble, Nor the Gilded Monuments‟, Blogspot. Available from
http://amandasreaction.blogspot.hk/2008/07/not-marble-nor-gilded-monuments.html (Accessed on 26 October 2012).
Poetry for Students (1999) „Sonnet 55‟, Encyclopedia.com. Available from http://www.encyclopedia.com/article-1G2-2691300028/sonnet-55.html (Accessed on 26 October 2012).
Shapiro, M. (1998) „Sound and Meaning in Shakespeare‟s Sonnets‟, Language, Vol 74, No. 1 (Mar., 1998), Linguistic Society of America, pp.81-103. Available from
http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.lib.ouhk.edu.hk/stable/pdfplus/417566.pdf?acceptT C=true (Accessed on 26 October 2012).
Short, M (1996) „Chapter 2: More on foregrounding, deviation and parallelism‟, EXPLORING THE LANGUAGE OF POEMS, PLAYS AND PROSE, Longman, pp. 36-79.
Short, M (1996) „Chapter 4: Sound, meaning and effect‟, EXPLORING THE LANGUAGE OF POEMS, PLAYS AND PROSE, Longman, pp. 106-124.
Short, M (1996) „Chapter 5: Rhythm and metre in the reading of poetry‟,
EXPLORING THE LANGUAGE OF POEMS, PLAYS AND PROSE, Longman, pp. 125-167.
Thornborrow, J. (2006) „Chapter 2: Poetic language‟ in Goodman, S. and O‟Halloran, K. The art of English: Literary creativity, Palgrave Macmillan in association with The Open University.
Wikipedia (2012) „Stylistics (literature)‟, Wikipedia. Available from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stylistics_(linguistics) (Accessed on 26 October 2012). Wikipedia (2012) „Sonnet 55‟, Wikipedia. Available from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet_55 (Accessed on 26 October 2012).
Sonnet 55 by William Shakespeare. (2016, Jun 09). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/sonnet-55-by-william-shakespeare-essay
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