狄兰托马斯诗歌文体学分析

On Stylistic Features of“The Force that Through the Green

Fuse Drives the Flower”

姓名：沙鑫

课程：文体概论

Abstract

Dylan 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; poem

I. Introduction

Young 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. Definition

Stylistic 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.Text

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

Drives my green age；that blasts the roots of trees

Is my destroyer.

And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose

My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks