狄兰托马斯诗歌文体学分析

On Stylistic Features of“The Force that Through the GreenFuse Drives the Flower”姓名：沙鑫课程：文体概论AbstractDylan Thomas created numbers of brilliant and profound poems in his short but glorious life, after which analyzing articles are as many as the poems. People tend to analyze purposes, backgrounds and emotions of his poems because of the multi-depth, but stylistic analysis provides a new way to understand this genius and his works in which the way his poems composed in the sense of phonology, lexicology and semantics. Because of his obsession of the theme life and death, The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower is a great example that shows his deep thoughts to find out what the essential force is to drive life and death. This article aims to give this poems a well inspection through stylistic analysis which is rarely done by others, hoping a better understanding can be cognized to this magnificent poet.Keywords:Dylan Thomas; stylistic analysis; poemI. IntroductionYoung genius, Wales born, died on a vigorous age, Dylan Thomas created a number of glorious modern poems that makes him one of the greatest poets in English literature history. Unlike peer poets, he focuses on the theme that contains real life as well as the eternal proposition of life and death. As Wang ZuoLiang(2013) concluded: “life and death are never insipid but filled with mysteries and dramatic factors, so death is like falling into a unpredictable night while life is like raising the curt ain and making your appearance.”(p. 873) Besides life and death, his poems are often full of images like blood, instinct, lust, subconsciousness and even dream. But he succeed the custom of intoning from his minstrel ancestors, which makes his poems phonologically pleasant and even sound like incantations. Interesting enough, with the overwhelmingly popular of the film Interstellar (2014), in which his famous poem Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night was quoted, he came back to people’s sights again. To review his works in a different perspective, a stylistic analysis is necessary.II. DefinitionStylistic features are situationally bound features that based on variety of language and linguistic features. They can be found at the three distinct levels of language: phonological, lexicogrammatical and semantic. Stylistic analysis starts with linguistic facts and the linguistic choices the writers have made usually contains two parts: Deviation and Repetition which make the feature stand out and is called Foregrounding. As a result, this paper is going to analyze Dylan Thomas’s famous poems: The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower.III.TextThe force that through the green fuse drives the flowerDrives my green age；that blasts the roots of treesIs my destroyer.And I am dumb to tell the crooked roseMy youth is bent by the same wintry fever.The force that drives the water through the rocksDrives my red blood；that dries the mouthing streamsTurns mine to wax.And I am dumb to mouth unto my veinsHow at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.The hand that whirls the water in the poolStirs the quicksand；that ropes the blowing windHauls my shroud sail.And I am dumb to tell the hanging manHow of my clay is made the hangman's lime.The lips of time leech to the fountain head；Love drips and gathers，but the fallen bloodShall calm her sores.And I am dumb to tell a weather's windHow time has ticked a heaven round the stars.And I am dumb to tell the lover's tombHow at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.IV. Phonological featuresAs a descendant of minstrel, Dylan Thomas’s poems are phonologically pleasant by adopting many phonological features.1.AssonanceTake The Force that Through t he Green Fuse Drives the Flower as an example, Dylan didn’t follow the strict rule of rhyme—repetition of the vowel with the same end consonant, instead he used assonance to arouse the addressee’s sensitivity to the sound quality of his poem.①e.g.…is my destroyer.…My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.Here destroyer [dɪ'strɒɪə] and fever ['fiːvə] are two assonances.In the second stanza of this poem, the combination of consonant [k] and [s] is frequently used.I think Sound Symbolism is adopted here. [k] and [s] suggest a harsh feeling to readers and may stand for the coarseness of life and death.②e.g.[ks]: rocks, wax, sucks.2.AlliterationAlliteration is repetition of the previous initial consonant which is also widely employed in this poem.③e.g.The Force that Through the Fuse Drives the Flower.In the three words Force, Fuse and Flower, [f] is the repeated initial consonant. What’s more, in the other two words The and That, [ð] is repeated here. These two alliterations suggest a feeling of violence which shows the unknown force that control life and death is powerful.More examples:W hirls the W ater… the li ps of time lee ch… w eather’s w ind…3.Graphological features—Loss of titleTitle is an important part of the poem，playing the role of pointing out the theme of it. However，poets sometimes deliberately omit the title so as to leave the poem open to readers’ interpretation. In this poem, the first line of first stanza: The force that through the green fuse drives the flower is taken as the title of this poem like his other poems, which not only gives the readers a impression of direct expressing of poet’s emotion but also leave the readers an ample space to think the theme of this poem.V. Lexical and Grammatical features1.Repetition of wordsWords like “the force”, “drives”, “blood”, “mouth” and “dumb” are repeated several times inthis poem. They emphasize the unknown force that drives the cycle of life and death that confuses the poet and makes him “dumb” to tell why the cycle goes on and on. Though the poet changed the “force” into words like “hand” and “time” in the third and fourth stanza, they still represent the “force” that drives the cycle only in the more visible and specific way.2.Repetition of linesIn every stanza of this poem, “And I am dumb to tell…” is repeated after different descriptions of the cycle of life and death. They all contribute to the establishment of poet’s image: a regular man( maybe a gentle lover according to “And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb”) who is confused with the cycle of life and death and can’t do anything to stop or change it.3.Conversion and PunsDistinctive types of word formation are used in this poem. Conversion means the changing of part of speech, for ins tance, in the line “I am dumb to mouth unto my veins”, “mouth” is used as a verb which shows the poet can’t explain why the mountain spring mouth can suck water. Similarly, in the line “the hand…that ropes the blowing wind”, “rope” is used as verb too whic h can mean the hand that drives life and death tie up the breath of life(blowing wind). Puns usually refers to the use of two meanings of the same word which is often used in this poem. For example, in the line “And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose; My youth is bent by the same winter fever”, “bent” means not only the damage to the rose but also the young death.4.Connotative meaningConnotative meaning refers to all kinds of associations words may evoke, particularly in certain emotional, situational contexts, over and above the basic or central referential meaning of words. Though words may evoke different connotations to people of different language background, the emotion or cognition to death is generally universal for humans. As a result, in this poem, many words contain connotative meaning of life and death. For example, in the line “How of my clay is made the hangman’s lime”, “clay” means mud, but according to the Bible, God created human with mud, so “clay” can also refers to life here. “lime” means to strew lime onto the dead body of criminals in order to accelerate the decomposing which in the poem can be a symbol of death. So in this line, life(clay) and death(lime) is unified and a cycle is being made. What’s more, the word “crooked rose” in the first stanza has a denotative meaning of “damagedflower”, but in this poem it can refer to perishing life or love.Another example is the line “The hand that whirls the water in the pool; Stirs the quicksand”. “Quicksand” is a pit filled with loose wet sand into which objects are sucked down and here in the poem it stands for death. On the other hand, “the hand” refers to the healing hand of angle in Bible, therefore, “the hand” becomes the force that can drives both life and death.VI. Semantic FeaturesTraditional figures of speech are divided into two parts: schemes and tropes. Schemes comprise those figures which arrange words into patterns of foregrounded regularity of form(such as alliteration, parallelism); Tropes refers to those figures which twist words away from their usual meanings or collocations to produce deviations(such as metaphor, oxymoron and irony). Since schemes have been discussed in the phonological features, I will focus on the tropes here.1.Figurative meaningFigurative meaning is a very common type of extension of meaning for a word or an expression through sense association. It is often used to make statements more concrete and lively.1.1 MetaphorMetaphor is the use of words that indicate something different from their literal meaning. For example, in the line “The force …that dries the mouthing streams turns mine to wax.”, it means the red blood of poet has been turned into dry wax, indicating the coming of death. In the line “The lips of time leech to the fountain head”, time is presented as a leech that sucks life from the beginning(fountain head), and time has been personified here because commonly lips are for human in literal works.1.2 SynecdocheSynecdoche is a trope by which one part of one thing is applied to signify the whole or vice versa. For example, in the line “The hand…that ropes the blowing wind hauls my shroud sail”, here “shroud” is a rope leading to the ship masthead to give lateral support to the masts, which I think can refer to the whole ship of life and “the hand” has controlled it just like the unknown force that controls life.2.AbsurdityAbsurdity refers to a combination of two expressions which are semantically incompatible, orstatement which is apparently self-contradictory. The former is oxymoron, and the latter is paradox. They often shock the reader into a fresh awareness of something that is otherwise received as commonplace.2.1 OxymoronOxymoron is a figure of speech in which markedly contradictory terms appear in conjunction so as to emphasize the statement. The most outstanding oxymoron in this poem is in the last line of first stanza “My youth is bent by the same wintery fever.” Here “wintery fever” is a ingenious combination of two contradictive words: winter and fever. As we all know, winter usually can be very cold and fever is when somebody get a rising temperature, but no matter which situation it is, it will do harm to the vitality of living things, which indicates the destructive power of “the force”.2.2 ParadoxA paradox is a statement of conclusion that seems self-contradictory or absurd but is really true. It is a kind of extended oxymoron. For example, in the line “The hand that whirls the water in the pool Stirs the quicksand”, “the hand” is supposed to be a kind and h ealing figure according to the Bible, but in the poem it turns into a sort of force that accelerates the death by stirring the quicksand. This paradox enhances the power of the unknown force that drives the cycle of life and death.3.Honest DeceptionHonest deception refers to the deliberately use of overstatement, understatement or words which are clearly opposite to what one really means.3.1 HyperboleHyperbole is a figure of speech in which exceptional exaggeration is deliberately used for emphasis rather than deception. For example, in the line “How time has ticked a heaven round the stars”, poet seems to indicate that time controls the motion of celestial bodies, which is obviously disobeying the scientific law and exaggerating. On the other hand, it is this exaggeration that enhances the power of the unknown force.3.2 IronyIrony is often used for wit and humor, sometimes for ridicule and sarcasm. In this poem, irony is used in the every last two lines of each stanza—“And I am dumb to…” . in fact, the poetis not dumb, because he noticed so many phenomenon in the nature that contain life and death and frankly the mystery of life and death is the most difficult one for people to solve. Here the poet said “I am dumb” is only a way to show how confusing it can be when it comes to life and death. VII. ConclusionStylistic analysis from three distinct levels of this poem shows us that it is not enough for someone who just has talent but lack of basic knowledge of linguistics to be a great poet or to write a masterpiece. Dylan Thomas combines his talent with the appropriate adoption of linguistic regularities and impresses the reader with his deep thoughts of life and death. Like his other poems, repetition of certain words and lines emphasizes the both the theme and the emotion of the poet, and well-chosen collocation of words make his poem not only catchy but also easy to understand. Widely used figurative devices contribute to the abundant images of this poem and also help to evoke the readers to think deeply about the real connotation. To sum up, stylistic analysis helps reader to appreciate this poem in a different perspective and further to other English poems.References廖云飞,(2014). Stylistic Analysis of “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”,《语文学刊·外语教育教学》[J]，vol(4), 36-39.王佐良&金立群，(2013).《英国诗歌选集（下）》[M]，上海: 上海译文出版社.徐有志，(2005).《英语文体学教程》[M]，北京：高等教育出版社.。