All the marvel and wonder of language is revealed through the study of real texts. In the course of linguistic research, supported by additional information from peripheral fields of knowledge, real philology achieves its main goal, viz. the excellent understanding of texts. Neither abstract reasoning nor profound philosophizing on the nature of texts or language at large brings any such pleasure of understanding as the study of real words and collocations used by the author.

Oddly enough many modern scholars forget about this simple and obvious truth. Sadly we observe how our subject is often treated with poker-faced pedantry, turning it into a mighty hoax, killing its real essence and beauty.

This new publication of the English Department – Master Class – excludes any theorizing and abstract disquisitions on the nature and value of philology – but offers philology itself: our teachers and researchers allow the students of the English language to peep inside their workshops, where true understanding of texts is achieved.

Each Master Class conducted by a scholar takes one or two real examples and subjects them to a profound and exhaustive philological analysis. Students of English can use each “Master Class” as an example of the analysis they would be expected to present during their exams.

Teachers spend a lot of time lecturing and correcting the students’ mistakes at the seminars, explaining how the analysis along this or that direction or aspect of philology should be made. However, when the time of exams comes – it appears that quite a lot of students are unable to put different parts of information, received in the course of the semester, together. What they require is synthesis revealed by the teacher himself – the holistic view of the material presented, as it were, from the horse’s mouth.

Here comes the first set of Master Classes.

So, welcome, learn and enjoy!

Editor-In-Chief

Marklen Konurbayev

Table of Contents

· Editor’s lead-in.. 4

· Prosodic Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Sonnet by Mikhail Davydov. 6

· Contrastive Study of Variants in Punctuating An Intellective Text by Ludmila BARANOVA.. 15

· A Linguopoetic and a Timbrological Analysis of a Poem by Christina Rossetti by Marklen E. Konurbaev and Andrej A. Lipgart 23

· Speech Timbre Analysis of an Extract from William shakespeare’s “hamlet by Marklen Konurbayev. 32

· Comparative-Contrastive Analysis of Oscar Wilde’s Poem “Impressions Du Matin” and its Russian Translation by Velta Zadornova. 44

· A Sample of Analysis of Expressive Polyphony in Translation by Marklen Konurbayev. 47

· Grammar and style in V.Woolf’s essays by Ekaterina Dolgina 56

· Understanding a Text Drawn from a Particular Area of Subject Study by Lilia V. Boldyreva. 60

· Is it time to revise my literary views? by Irina Giubbenet 71

· Sketches of the English Literary History (from Bede to Tyndale) by Andrej A. Lipgart 84

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Phonetics & Orthography MC

Prosodic Analysis of
William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30

by Mikhail DAVYDOV

From the recent publication “Prosodic Images” (MSU,1999) by the author of this article and Yelena Vladimirovna Yakovleva any of our students can learn the necessary information about the basic principles of phonetics and one of its most important ingredients – prosody or intonation. We shall presume, therefore, that this part of the required knowledge for reading our present article is already known. It is also presumed that each student has already mastered the bases of R.P. and knows how to read the marks of punctuation in full accordance with the recommendations of the English Department of the Philological Faculty.

Taking into consideration what has just been said we are going to analyse prosodically Sonnet 30 by William Shakespeare and, first, a few words about the structure of this genre of poetry. It seems to be presented at best (as Prof. A.A.Lipgart points out in his latest publication “The Bases of Liguopoetics”, MSU,1999) in the book “Shakespeare’s works” by A.A.Anixt (А.А.Аникст “Творчество Шекспира”, М., 1963):

“First English poets closely followed the Italian form of the sonnet and only later on they developed their own composition of it. The English form consists of three quatrains followed by a couplet which represents the denouement of the poem, the order of rhymes being: abab-cdcd-efef-gg. It was a simpler form than the one used by Petrarca. Since Shakespeare used it extensively it was named in his honour.

Every poem, as well as in the classical Italian sonnet, is devoted to one theme only. As a rule, Shakespeare follows the traditional scheme: the first quatrain gives the exposition of the theme, the second one develops it, the third one brings the reader to the denouement and the final part – a couplet – in a laconic form summarises the whole theme. Sometimes it is a kind of conclusion; sometimes, in opposition to what has been said before, an unexpected contrast; and, finally, some additional lines are merely added which are less expressive the rest of the poem: the thought calms down, the sounds die away.”(1)

Let us now take Sonnet 30 and try and help to understand the teacher’s aim. The task is clear: he wants his students to be able to read this sonnet with expression: but how to set about it?

It is presumed, of course, that the students have read the whole of the sonnet and understood everything in so far as the meanings of the words are concerned, the role of globality being particularly important for small forms of poetry (2).

It should be clearly stated to the students (repetitio est mater studiorum) that the content of only one line at the end of a poem may change its understanding completely. If we read English poetry for the first time, an example or two would not be out of place but the examples must be to the point and by no means ambiguous.

Our choice has not been arbitrary. The sonnet in point, judging by its content, is very much like “Воспоминание” А. С. Пушкина (3), though far less tragic and, in our opinion, less talented (though we would not even dare to compare the poetic gifts of the two writers on the whole, in this case it seems to be a fairly reasonable statement).

SONNET 30

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,

For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,

And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe,

And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight:

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restored and sorrows end.

If even greatest creations of human mind can be rendered into simple words (as numerous adaptations of classics seem to prove) I think I can take the responsibility upon myself of rendering very briefly the content of the sonnet in the following way:

When night comes and it becomes silent all around, the poet sometimes begins to remember his past, and lives through his life again. He remembers his failures, the friends whom he had lost and all the remembrances are so vivid that he even begins to cry. What worries him most is that he must suffer as acutely as before.

In the last two lines he finds comfort again in the fact that he still has a loving friend and his sadness disappears.

Despite the last two lines where the lyrical timbre might be used (because after all it is clearly an optimistic thought), the rest of the sonnet is elegiac from the very beginning.

This brings us to the conclusion that even the first two lines, although at first sight, they are merely informative, should be read in fact not neutrally but slightly sadly. What it means prosodically we already know (as has been mentioned above, from our previous experiments). At the same time we should not forget that the segmental structure is not neutral in the poem either – surely, the repetative friction ([s], [(S)]) of the first two lines should probably come to the fore and make the lines rhythmically organized in the same smooth manner. In this case it is some kind of monotony which forms the basis (rhythmical background) for other types of rhythm.

But saying merely that is not enough: which is better – level monotony, ascending or, perhaps, descending monotony? In general terms the answer is simple: the one which works best of all, i.e. unambiguously interpreted by the listener and an experiment would not be out of place. So far, however, we can only discuss the pros and cons.

Now let us analyse these kinds of monotony one by one. The first one is justified by the emotive aspect, the second – by the syntactical structure of the subordinate sentence: it leads us to the prominence of the third line (we cannot exclude this possibility if we think of the opposition “I sigh – I sought”); the third – descending monotony – may also be constructive if we want to intensify the image of going mentally into the past.

By having discussed the rhythmicality we have already answered the question of what kind of pitch-contour could be chosen. It should be pointed out that the first choice would be the most traditional one because what we understand by level tones in the elegiac Timbre II tend to be more rising than precisely level. Besides the quality of plaintiveness is due to the specific development of their intensity – a sharp decrease beginning in the middle of each tone.

If the device of enjambement appears to be quite appropriate (the meaningful absence of the comma in the poem where almost each line ends with it), a pause, nevertheless, appears after the first word “when”. First, it is a good rhetorical device to draw the listener’s attention to what follows and, secondly, it can be very expressive, if the quality of the word “when” shows the attitude of the author to what comes to him occasionally: he may even express his apprehension or fear and this will certainly intrigue the listener. For that reason we might call it a rhetorical pause (it is not a hesitation pause).

Thus the prosody of the first two lines is the following: slow tempo, diminished loudness, level tones with a slight plaintiveness. Nobody can prevent, of course, the perfomer from preferring another, for instance, more tragic way of reading the same two lines but we think it would be unwise to do so: the whole sonnet is already tragic enough as it is; why should we then sacrifice the principle of variety, which is so important in rhetoric. Besides (or, perhaps, it may be the main reason), the word “sweet” does not comply with tragedy. In this connection it would be interesting to find out what and why is actually “sweet”: “silence” or “thought”? It is not very likely that “thought” is “sweet”, then its meaning is enantiosemic. “Silence” can really be sometimes pleasant, “sweet”. Anyway, there is something a little enigmatic about these two lines.

The third line (the main clause) actually completes the idea presented in the first two lines and from the prosodic point of view can be analysed separately.

We have already pointed out the importance of the sound [s] and its appearance in the third line seems to be very significant for arranging its prosody. First, it is connected with the image of a “sigh”, which in this case can be rendered with help of a high fall and breathiness, both aimed at imitating a genuine sigh. In principle it could have been a rise, or a level tone, but the imagery would have been poorer: a fall is associated so much better with a downcast position. Besides, two falls make a better symmetrical construction: a high fall at the beginning of the line and a low fall at the end of it. The word “sought” can also be pronounced with a fall, a logical one, because it comes at the end of the line and makes the whole sentence complete.

The fourth line (although very expressive) is in actual fact merely an apposition to the main sentence: if we run through the whole poem we shall fail to find any mentioning of any “new” grievance, only “foregone ones”. On the whole, the same prosody can be preserved: the slowed down tempo (there may be a slight acceleration after “a sigh”) and diminished loudness. As for the contour after the word “sigh”, the word “lack” is lower than “many” and the rise on “many” together with the following “a thing” (they form a poetic expression) intensifies their meaning. In terms of stresses we have two emphatic stresses in one line.

As has already been mentioned, the apposition is a kind of “filler-in”, which being expressive prosodically, semantically is not so important for the poem: not a word about some “new” losses is clearly said (love’s woe – cancelled long since, grievances – foregone, moan – fore-bemoaned). The novelty lies only in experiencing those unpleasant feelings again as acutely as before.

The melodic contour of the fourth line depends on the opposition of “old woes” and “new ones”. To realise this opposition prosodically the low pitch rises on the word “old” and then continues to rise on the attributed word “woes”. It is a clear case of “logical” contrastive stress. The word “new” is pronounced with a high fall. The opposition of the rise and the high fall prosodically support the semantic contrast. A pause, however small, may be introduced to intensify this opposition.

The remaining part of the line “wail my dear time’s waste” is rather enigmatic. There is no problem in so far as the prosody is concerned: after the high fall there comes a series of low level tones (not an unusual affair in English speech). But the content looks more mysterious: in what sense is “time” “dear” and why “new woes” should “wail” it? Here, of course, we can cannot avoid (after all it is Shakespeare) discussing the problems of etymology. What was the primary meaning of “dear” and can we regard this word as a case of polyphony? If the answer is in the affirmative, then “new woes” are to great extent made equal to “a loss of a friend”. It is likely that the first meaning of the word “wail” was not simply to “cry” but to “bewail”, to “mourn”.

The first four lines are thus an introduction (see above) to the central part of the poem where the poet is more unreserved and is “grieving at grievences foregone” without restraint.

Let us analyse the fifth and the sixth lines which are most closely connected semantically and, therefore, lend themselves to a separate analysis.

The word “then” is best pronounced with a high fall and a slight pause, forming thus a rhetorical subgroup with the initial pronoun “when” with which it rhymes so miraculously well. If “when” was pronounced with a rise, the fall on “then” signals a change in the style of performing the lines: the style becomes more dramatic.

Among other things this dramatism reveals itself in increasing the number of falls. Timbre II of the performance, on the whole, does not change. The interval of the fall on the word “drown” is larger than on the word “then”. By comparison with “then” the image of “drown” – falling into the sea of tears – becomes particularly expressive.The word “an eye” continues the fall started on “drown” (a enlarged high fall + a low one), the unit being semantically an indivisible whole.

“Unused to flow” can be pronounced with a rising contour (being more matter-of-fact, but still preserving a slight degree of plaintiveness) so that the insertion would not intefere with the close connection of “drown an eye for precious friends”. The group of the indirect object ought to be pronounced with an unmistakable “elegiac” colour: the word-combination “precious friends” is pronounced slowly, and the melodic contour – “a level tone + a high fall” in a higher register than usual, the aspiration (pr) is intensified, for “friends” tremolo might be a helpful device. After that the voice goes on falling, thus creating a direct image of a sound being carried away which intensifies the idea of remoteness. Frankly speaking, the device is good for intensification of any of the lexical meanings of the group: “hid”, “death”, “dateless”, “night”. Besides, the sequence of the stressed vowels themselves (from top to bottom) [i,e,ei,ai] is very suggestive in this respect.

To use the same contour for the second line would, in our opinion, be a mistake, because not only would it create an unnecessary and unjustified monotony, but it would not do justice to the emotionally expressive word “love” – the key-word of this line. More than that, a pause before this word does not seem to be out of place. “Weep” then is on a high note, “afresh” on a still higher note (an accidental rise) and “love” is pronounced with a high fall and a possible retention of the initial consonant.

The word “love” is rhematic and thus logically prominent. It starts a descending scale, but of a different character than in the preceding line – it is much higher in its register. The accumulation of sonorants ([l], [l], [n], [n], [l], [w]) suggests a tremolo which is so well realised on these sounds.

Even now we can already come to the conclusion that the more dramatic character of the central part of the poem is constituted by shifting logical stresses, variations of the descending scale, acceleration and deceleration of tempo.

The eighth line begins like the preceding (the seventh) one but this time it is the word “many” which is prominent and which begins a new descending scale. In order to introduce an element of prosodic imagery we might pronounce the word “vanish” either with a fall or prolong the word to such an extent that the process of ‘disappearance’ stands out quite clearly, when the loudness of the word is gradually diminished.

The word “then” appears for the second time and it would be unwise to arrange it prosodically in the same way as before. If in the fifth line it could be pronounced in a categoric tone we pronouce it here in a more-of-fact way, and though with a fall again but with a small interval. This line together with the three following ones forms a kind of conclusion where the author is trying to generalise on what has been said before and expressing his negative, almost angry attitude (which I new pay as if not paid before). The line with “then” summarises, as it were, the “resurrection of the past” and the final melodic scale has a low fall on the word “before”. The tempo is almost neutral,with a tendency to become fast.

The next two lines should form one run-on line because of the close connection between the verb “to tell o’er” and the folllowing direct object “the sad account”. The descending scale contour is thus spread on the two lines with a low fall at the end. The word “heavily” seems to suggest a slow tempo, perhaps, very slow. The image of “slow speech” about the former woes is self-evident.

In the next line the word “new” should be prosodically prominent because it is opposed to the word “before”. The simplest way of making it prominent would naturally be to use a high fall on the word “new”. Not to emphasise it too much and keep it within the same elegiac style, the word “pay” ought to be pronounced either as the continuation of the fall on “new” (which in actual fact functions as an adverb – “anew”) or on a level low note. In both cases nothing prevents the word “new” to be the pivotal word in the line, nothing detracts from its tragic prominence. The words that follow it form a descending scale, whose range is even lower and the tempo is very slow (possibly with pauses after each simple rhythmical group), each of them is a dull (harsh) plaintive note.

The last two lines are clearly different from what has been said before. Timbre II becomes lyrical and this time the smile (delabialisation) and breathiness come to the fore, the loudness is reduced. The range appears to be higher, the descendind scale has a smooth rise on the word “thee”. “Dear friend” enables the reader to introduce various innuendoes: the words could be pronounced with two smooth falls or with a long retention of the sound [d] (intensifying thus the expression of gratitude), or almost neutrally.

It should be specially pointed out that the prosodic arrangement of these words is particularly difficult because they must be pronounced with the utmost sincerity and it is for the reader (performer) to decide which of the above-mentioned prosodies will be the easiest for him (or her) to produce from this point of view. The last line is split into two parts with falling contours (the line contains two predications). The range of Timbre II may vary here from lyrical to jubilant and by introducing pauses the performer may intensify the expressiveness of either of them ( minimally, before “are”, “and” and “end”).

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Notes:

1. Ibid. P.313-314

2. The principle of globality should not be overestimated. In some cases we really cannot say anything about the proper Timbre II when we merely start reading a piece of verbal art, we must first look through it to the end, but such cases are, fortunately, rare.

3. The poem in question was subjected both to the perceptual and acoustical analysis in detail by M.V.Davydov and Y. V. Yakovleva in the book “ The Elements of Philological Reading” (see: М. В. Давыдов, Е.В. Яковлева "Основы филологического чтения". М.,1997, стр.105-127).

Contrastive Study of Variants in Punctuating
An Intellective Text

by Ludmila BARANOVA

It is a well-known fact that punctuation is not only the system of graphical signs used to represent in writing the declamational-psychological segmentation of speech, but also a certain set of rules governing the use of stops[1]. English punctuation, in particular, albeit with reservations, is rule-governed in spite of the fact that ‘negative’ recommendations (when not to use this or that stop) outnumber positive ones[2].

These rules, as academician L.V. Scerba pointed out, had been established gradually and vary in different languages. He singled out two basic types of punctuation: French (English and Italian also belong here) and German (including Czech, Polish and Russian). In the first type, the dash is used more rarely, commas are introduced sparingly and are mainly employed to help the author express semantic-stylistic nuances in writing. The second type, on the contrary, makes abundant use of the dash and commas, introducing them according to more or less formal principles[3].

Outstanding British philologists have more than once observed that for the English language taste and common sense are much more important than any rules: the author introduces punctuation marks in order to help the reader understand him, and not “to please the grammarians”[4]. However, what should we understand by “taste” or “common sense”? In our opinion, Professor O.V. Alexandrova has conclusively shown that it is the expressive (rhetorical) function of stops, and its realisation in a text is viewed as complete freedom and absence of any regulation in punctuation[5].

The most sensible piece of practical advice as to punctuating an English text was given by H.W. Fowler and F.G. Fowler in “The King’s English”. They suggested that in order to introduce stops in an English text correctly, one should first write it down without any punctuation marks. Then one should read the text, introducing stops only in those cases when they help to reflect the author’s intention. If the resulting punctuation is not in keeping with the author's aim, the text (and its punctuation) should be changed. This idea is the cornerstone of the main principle of English punctuation which is usually described as “semantic-stylistic”, or “declamational-psychological”.

Let us now see how this principle works in practice. For our analysis we have borrowed a short text from the book “You Have a Point There” by Eric Partridge[6]. We shall take four variants of punctuating one and the same text and conduct a contrastive study of them. It should be specially mentioned here that Eric Partridge confines himself only to giving very concise characteristics of each variant, without commenting on them. However, from our point of view a detailed commentary is called for here, if what we are after is understanding the basic principle of English punctuation which allows several variants of punctuating the same text to exist.

First comes variant (A), without any punctuation marks:

short sentences have many advantages over long ones they are simple clear and easily understood at the same time too they offer few opportunities for wordy and irrelevant digression for example prudence is the virtue of the senses it is the science of appearances it is the outmost action of the inward life no sentence is to be condemned for mere length a really skilful writer can fill a page with one and not tire his reader though a succession of long sentences without the relief of short ones interspersed is almost sure to be forbidding but the tyro and even the good writer who is not prepared to take the trouble of reading aloud what he has written should confine himself to the easily manageable the tendency is to allow some part of a sentence to develop unnatural proportions or a half parenthetic insertion to separate too widely the essential parts the cure indispensable for everyone who aims at a passable style and infallible for anyone who has a good ear is reading aloud after writing of the principles of essay writing you already know sufficient anything further you may wish or be obliged to learn you will be wise to assimilate rather than to swot your teacher and if you go to a university your tutor will instruct you indirectly by criticizing your essays also you will learn as you go from the mere act of writing essays

Next comes variant (B) which is characterized by Eric Partridge as “semi-literate, or careless” punctuation:

Short sentences have many advantages over long ones, they are simple, clear and easily understood. At the same time too they offer few opportunities for wordy and irrelevant digression, for example: Prudence is the virtue of the senses, it is the science of appearances. It is the outmost action of the inward life.

No sentence is to be condemned for mere length – a really skilful writer can fill a page with one, and not tire his reader though a succession of long sentences without the relief of short ones interspersed, is almost sure to be forbidding, but the tyro and even the good writer who is not prepared to take the trouble of reading aloud what he has written, should confine himself to the easily manageable. The tendency is to allow some part of a sentence to develop unnatural proportions, or a half parenthetic insertion to separate too widely the essential parts; the cure indispensable for everyone who aims at a passable style and infallible for anyone who has a good ear, is reading aloud after writing.

Of the principles of essay writing you already know sufficient, anything further you may wish or be obliged to learn you will be wise to assimilate rather than to swot. Your teacher and (if you go to a university) your tutor will instruct you indirectly by criticizing your essays; also you will learn as you go from the mere act of writing essays.

Variant (C) is viewed as a merely competent case of introducing stops:

Short sentences have many advantages over long ones. They are simple, clear, and easily understood; at the same time too they offer few opportunities for wordy and irrelevant digression. For example: – Prudence is the virtue of the senses. It is the science of appearances. It is the outmost action of the inward life.

No sentence is to be condemned for mere length; a really skilful writer can fill a page with one and not tire his reader, though a succession of long sentences without the relief of short ones interspersed is almost sure to be forbidding. But the tyro, and even the good writer who is prepared to take the trouble of reading aloud what he has written, should confine himself to the easily manageable. The tendency is to allow some part of a sentence to develop unnatural proportions, or a half parenthetic insertion to separate too widely the essential parts. The cure, indispensable for everyone who aims at a passable style, and infallible for anyone who has a good ear, is reading aloud after writing.

Of the principles of essay writing, you already know sufficient; anything further you may wish or be obliged to learn, you will be wise to assimilate rather than to swot. Your teacher and – if you go to a university – your tutor will instruct you indirectly by criticizing your essays; also you will learn as you go from the mere act of writing essays.

And, finally, comes variant (D) – punctuation as an Art:

Short sentences have many advantages over long ones: they are simple, clear, and easily understood; at the same time too, they offer few opportunities for wordy and irrelevant digression. For example: Prudence is the virtue of the senses; it is the science of appearances; it is the outmost action of the inward life.

No sentence is to be condemned for mere length. A really skilful writer can fill a page with one and not tire his reader, though a succession of long sentences without the relief of short ones interspersed is almost sure to be forbidding. But the tyro – and even the good writer who is prepared to take the trouble of reading aloud what he has written – should confine himself to the easily manageable. The tendency is to allow some part of a sentence to develop unnatural proportions, or a half-parenthetic insertion to separate too widely the essential parts. The cure, indispensable for everyone who aims at a passable style, and infallible for anyone with a good ear, is reading aloud after writing.

Of the principles of essay-writing you already know sufficient. Anything further you may wish or be obliged to learn, you will be wise to assimilate rather than to ‘swot’. Your teacher and, if you go to a university, your tutor will instruct you indirectly – by criticizing your essays. Also, you will ‘learn as you go’, from the mere act of writing essays.

It goes without saying that for obvious reasons we shall concentrate, first and foremost, on variants (B), (C) and (D) in our analysis.

From the very first lines of the opening paragraph of the text there is a marked difference in the three variants under discussion. Thus, in variant (B) after the word “ones” there is a comma; in variant (C) – a full stop; in (D) – a colon. Undoubtedly, in this case a stronger stop is more preferable, because the part of the text following the words “Short sentences have many advantages over long ones” is an explanation, a clarification of what came before. The full stop here is not quite justified: it separates the logically connected parts of the sentence, whereas the colon seems to be the most optimal variant.

It is also interesting to note the absence of a comma after the word “clear” in variant (B) and the fact that this stop is used in variants (C) and (D). Although there is no definite rule in the English language as to whether a comma should be introduced here or not, we believe it is quite indispensable in this particular case: first, because it helps to mark off the phrase “And easily understood”, and also because it is called for by the prosody of the utterance itself which we cannot but reproduce in our inner speech when reading the given extract. Compare, for example, the two variants of reading:

a)…they are ¤simple,½ `clear and `easily under\stood…

b)…they are /simple,½ /clear, ½ and `easily under\stood…

Further, the comma after “too” in variant (D) seems to be quite appropriate, as it makes the reading of the text considerably easier, in contrast with variants (B) and (C). However, it would be even more suitable to mark off the word “too” by means of double commas, as a simple parenthetical insertion. This would not only signal pitch-movement, but would also make the syntactic structure of the utterance more transparent.

As far as the choice between the full stop and the semi-colon after the word “understood” is concerned, we should note that the semi-colon is more preferable here, as the two parts of the sentence – “they are simple, clear, and easily understood” and “at the same time too, they offer few opportunities for wordy and irrelevant digression” – are not sufficiently independent to be separated by a full stop. The analogous case may be observed at the end of the first paragraph: the semi-colon after the words “senses” and “appearances” corresponds to the purport of the utterance and to its overall rhythmical organization much better than a full stop, which would unwillingly give it a “jerky” and abrupt prosodic realization in one’s inner speech.

The second paragraph, too, presents considerable interest from the point of view of punctuation used in the three variants. It should be pointed out from the very outset that variants (C) and (D) are almost identical, with the exception of the following two cases in the use of stops: 1) a semi-colon after the word “length” in variant (C) and a full stop in variant (D); and 2) double commas in variant (C) and double dash in variant (D), marking off the parenthesis “and even the good writer who is prepared to take the trouble of reading aloud what he has written”.

As far as the first case is concerned, a full stop seems to be much more preferable than a semi-colon, in spite of the fact that the two sentences are semantically connected. The fact is that the use of the full stop here is rhythmically and prosodically justified: the reader makes a longer pause and can effortlessly deal with the second sentence, which has a considerably more complex syntactic structure. We believe that in this particular sentence variant (D) should have also borrowed a comma after the word “interspersed” in variant (B), as it is quite appropriate not only prosodically, but also syntactically, helping to mark off a predicative pause.

In the second case under consideration, in the sentence beginning with the words “But the tyro…”, double dash enables the author to bring out more emphatically the parenthetical insertion “and even the good writer who is not prepared to take the trouble of reading aloud what he has written”, and to effectively contrast it with the words “But the tyro…”, which perfectly corresponds to the purport of the utterance (“tyro” meaning “beginner, person with little experience”).

If we now turn to variant (B), we can note that its punctuation in the majority of cases does not contribute to reflecting it in the reader’s inner speech and is not conducive to getting across what the whole text is about. Thus, commas prevail in the first, rather lengthy sentence (consisting of three separate sentences in variant (D), but there are no stops whatsoever before “though” and “and even the good writer”, which are absolutely necessary here for a more optimal reflection of the utterance in the reader’s inner speech and for comprehending the text as a whole.

The second sentence in variant (B) (consisting of two separate sentences in variants (C) and (D) is equally difficult for reading and understanding. Here a semi-colon after the word “parts” seems to signal that there is a certain connection between the two parts of the sentence. However, in actual fact, they are two independent, self-contained sentences.

Let us now turn to the last paragraph of the text under consideration. After the word “sufficient” there is a comma in variant (B), a semi-colon – in variant (C), and a full stop – in variant (D). It is fairly obvious that each successive variant tends to use a stronger punctuation mark in this particular case. Evidently, a comma is not enough here, but it could be argued which stop is more preferable – a semi-colon, uniting two sentences into a global whole, or a full stop, separating them. We also consider variant (C) to be more acceptable in marking off by commas the indirect object “Of the principles of essay writing” and a more extensive part “anything further you may wish or be obliged to learn”, because this is convenient not only for reading the text, but also for emphasizing the parallel syntactic and rhythmical organization of the two sentences.

As far as bringing out “swot” and “learn as you go” by means of italics or scare quotes is concerned, it should be noted that scare quotes seem to be more appropriate here, as italics are usually employed in English either for singling out foreign words and phrases (in statu nascendi, au fond, etc.), or for bringing out emotionally coloured words and word-combinations[7]. In the case under discussion the word “swot” is just a ‘borrowing’ from a different, informal register of English speech, and the use of scare quotes perfectly corresponds to the semiotics of this punctuation mark. The fact is that scare quotes are used in English to mark off a word or a phrase that is either not generally recognized, accepted, or belongs to a different functional style. Scare quotes are a kind of red light, danger signal, showing that we are dealing with a word (or a word-combination, a term) which different people may use in different meanings. In this particular case scare quotes put the reader on his guard, helping him to understand that the word is extrapolated from a different register of speech.

The word-combination “learn as you go” is a functional (or complex) word-equivalent, and, as the latest research in the field shows, should not only be pronounced with “unsaturated” timbre, but should also be marked off by means of scare quotes[8].

Another point worth considering in the third paragraph is punctuating the parenthesis “if you go to a university”. As it can be seen from the adduced material, a whole range of possible stops is used in the three variants – double commas, brackets and double dash. Again, in our opinion, here we should preferably use a stop associated with a more neutral prosody, i.e. double commas. Unsaturated prosody (brackets) and very emphatic prosody (double dash) are both completely out of place, and do not correspond to the purport of the utterance. This is especially true in the case of the double dash.

It should be pointed out that in the overwhelming majority of cases in the material under discussion stronger punctuation marks are used as we go from variant (B) – semi-literate, or careless punctuation – to variant (D) – punctuation as an Art. In variants (B) and (C) punctuation is largely confined to the use of full stops, commas and (quite rarely) an occasional semi-colon, whereas in the creative approach to punctuation (variant (D) we can hear the complete ‘orchestra’ of stops: double dash, brackets, double and scare quotes, italics.

It goes without saying that good punctuation should reflect the author’s thinking process and correspond to the purport of the utterance. Moreover, as we have tried to show in our contrastive study of different variants of punctuating one and the same text, good punctuation inevitably takes into account the indissoluble unity of speech and writing. Only in this way can we clearly understand the real functioning of stops in English and teach our students how to use them.

Phonetics & Stylistics MC

A Linguopoetic and a Timbrological Analysis
of a Poem by Christina Rossetti

by Marklen E. KONURBAEV and Andrej A. LIPGART

One of the most significant problems of modern philology is the relationship between Timbre and Linguopoetics, the way the aesthetic artistic qualities of a literary text should be rendered when reading this text aloud, and this is precisely the subject we are going to discuss here.

Generally speaking, Timbre is not something connected with imaginative writing exclusively. It is a feature of any text. However, it is not easy at all to provide its unambiguous definition which would satisfy everybody. There exist various approaches to Timbre even within our philological school, and the matter is complicated still further by the fact that Timbre is also an object of study in acoustics, psychology (psycholinguistics), experimental phonetics and so on. Being well aware of all these difficulties and having no opportunity to discuss them at length here, in this paper we still cannot do without some definition of Timbre. Our understanding of it can be formulated in the following way:

Timbre is a minimum of prosodic parameters inherently present in any text, which are indispensable for its adequate understanding and are necessarily reproduced during its oral performance.

Among these parameters most important are:

4. the place of logical and emphatic stresses;

5. the type of the resonator used (its place, its shape, and the degree of its tension).

Logical and emphatic stresses are included in the ultimate list of parameters because it is through them that one sees (and hears) the main ideas of a text, which would otherwise be buried in the monotony of the descending scale.

The role of the resonators is slightly different. They make the already logically and emphatically marked text still more colourful and expressive; in the traditional understanding of the term, they endow the text with qualities of Timbre 2, but in actual fact they are responsible for rendering the specific “overall modality” of a text: the head resonator corresponds to contemplation, the chest resonator – to volition, and the mixed head-chest resonator – to narration.

As it has been said in the definition, Timbre is an inherent property of any text, and not only of imaginative writing. Studying the Timbre of scientific prose, legal documents, colloquial speech or any other functional style presents a considerable problem, but the most intricate aspect of timbrological research is connected with studying the acoustic side of texts of verbal art. All timbrological investigations are based on the functional-stylistic description of texts, and in connection with imaginative writing one cannot say anything about Timbre without an extensive preliminary research which is usually done in the course of the linguopoetic analysis of a literary text.

Hence the natural question to ask: what is the relationship between the two, between Timbre and Linguopoetics?

As we have begun with clarifying the concepts under discussion and as the working definition of Timbre has already been adduced, now it is time to give a definition of Linguopoetics. Although within our linguistic school there exist various ideas concerning the basic theoretical points we would not enter on prolonged discussions at present and suggest the following understanding of Linguopoetics:

Linguopoetics is a branch of philology studying the relative value and the functions of stylistically marked linguistic elements in rendering the artistic content and in creating the aesthetic effect a text of verbal art produces.

We insist that it is only the stylistically marked linguistic elements (in the broadest understanding of the term) that can contribute to creating the aesthetic effect, while others fulfil only the communicative function and remain on the level of the “packing material”, “упаковочный материал”, to use Academician Scerba's terminology.

The discrimination between the two, the aesthetically relevant elements and the packing material, is carried out in the course of the linguostylistic analysis, but at this point Linguostylistics stops. As it has been shown in a number of publications, in literary texts the stylistically marked linguistic elements display their aesthetic potential unevenly: sometimes they just add expressivity to the narration, sometimes they make the reader really contemplate over the corresponding utterance, while in still other cases the metasemiotic potential of these elements is foregrounded, and consequently some additional metaphorical associative planes appear. These finer and more subtle discriminations cannot be done by Linguostylistics which simply has no categories for that; assessing the relative value and the function of the stylistically marked elements of a text belongs entirely to Linguopoetics.

At the same time Linguopoetics has enough of its own trouble as it were: being primarily a linguistic discipline it should not venture at an exhaustive analysis of all the aesthetic qualities of a text. The aesthetic effect a text of verbal art produces is not confined to language, and here both the content and the structure, the composition of a text matter greatly. Discussing these subjects within what is essentially a linguistic investigation is methodologically admissible, but here a philologist, a linguopoetician should be very careful; otherwise he might slip inadvertently into a discussion which is outside his competence and province.

Now that the essential concepts are defined it is time for us to turn to the main problem and to try and show how these two disciplines, Timbrology and Linguopoetics, may be applied to the study of concrete texts. In our case it will be the following poem by Christina Rossetti:

from Songs for Strangers and Pilgrims

If love is not worth loving, then life is not worth living,

Nor aught is worth remembering but well forgot;

For store is not worth storing and gifts are not worth giving,

If love is not;

And idly cold is death-cold, and life-heat idly hot,

And vain is any offering and vainer our receiving,

And vanity of vanities is all our lot.

Better than life's heaving heart is death's heart unheaving,

Better than the opening leaves are the leaves that rot,

For there is nothing left worth achieving or retrieving,

If love is not.

With different people the oral interpretation of this text would be different, but are there any objective indications in the text that it should sound in some particular way and that some particular timbre which is appropriate to such kind of poetry should be used? These are the questions to be regarded here, and they have got little to do with an individual interpretation of a text.

Of course, in reciting poetic texts – like in singing pieces from operas, for example – there is always room for individual subjective perception: great artists recite Hamlet’s monologue differently, and great divas also suggest their interpretations of some musical pieces.

All this is true, but here we would like to make it absolutely clear: at the moment we are not concerned with the individual. On the contrary, we seek the general and the unifying in the hope that after a sufficient amount of knocking it will eventually open us.

As far as this poem is concerned, it is possible to think of at least two variants of reading it: the first would have more stresses and pauses and consequently greater expressivity, while the second one would be more levelled out as regards both the stresses and the pauses. If we were to explain these discrepancies using the descriptive timbrological approach we would say that the latter would correspond to the lyrical-elegiac timbre, while the former keeps on the dramatic side. But this explanation in fact elucidates little, if anything at all, because then we should discuss the genre properties of this text and start using literary critical terminology which is in general far from being perfect, and which is simply a mess when it comes to genres.

If the traditional timbrological explanations seem to be of little help, why not try the linguopoetic interpretation? It could be done on the basis of the generally respected three-level analysis, beginning with the semantic level, then rising to the metasemiotic one and then turning to the metametacontent of the text. But in our case we may cut the long story short and work in accordance with the principle of 'inverse directionality' which consists in a scholar first formulating the main idea of the text and then seeing how it is revealed on the linguistic level, thus arriving at a better understanding of the interplay of the content and the form. In a sense it resembles the philological circle of Leo Spitzer, but the latter proceeded from the main stylistic feature, while with us it is the content that comes first. So, what is this text about and what are the stylistically marked and aesthetically significant, linguopoetically relevant elements raising the text above the merely communicative piece of writing?

On the semantic level this text presents no difficulties – maybe, with the exception of the rather unusual adjectives 'heaving' – 'unheaving'. To be more exact, these are adjectivized participles I of the verb 'to heave' which has the meanings "lift or drag something with great effort" and "rise and fall regularly". A more sophisticated reader influenced by the line 'And vanity of vanities is all our lot' would probably remember in this connection that in the Books of the Old Testament one sometimes comes across phrases like 'for an heave offering of the Lord' (Numbers, 31:29, "в возношение Господу" in Russian) and 'the heave shoulder and the wave breast' (Leviticus, 10:15, "плечо возношения и грудь потрясания"). All this gives a definitely biblical colouring to the poem, but its main idea, in our opinion, is obvious: nothing under the sun is of any value if love is not.

Now the question is, how is this idea expressed? It is a poem written in iambic hexameter with the regular alteration of the rhymed lines with feminine and masculine clausulae in the first and the third stanzas, where the semantically meaningful fourth lines ('If love is not') violate the basic metrical pattern and contain only two stressed syllables. The violation of the basic pattern is also seen in the second stanza which lacks the fourth (or rather, the first) line and in which we observe two masculine clausulae and one feminine. There is a caesura in the lines with the feminine clausulae which either emphasizes the contrast between the parts it separates from each other ('If love is not worth loving, then life is not worth living'), or marks a pause between the semantically similar parts ('For store is not worth storing and gifts are not worth giving'), or – still another variant – prepares the reader to the gradual growth of the dramatic tension, as it were, like in 'And vain is any offering and vainer our receiving'.

That is what can be said about the poem in terms of the theory of versification.

As for the other levels of the linguostylistic organization of the text, we have little more to say, for the main peculiarities have already been mentioned in connection with the metrical patterns. Lexical contrasts in the text arise from bringing together either pairs like 'store is not worth storing' within the repeated morphological pattern 'a noun versus gerund', or the attributive word combinations of a "possessive case of a noun plus adjective plus noun" type ('life's heaving heart' and 'death's heart unheaving') or the attributive word combination 'the opening leaves' versus the noun plus an attributive phrase 'the leaves that rot'; the amount of lexical similarities (though sometimes there lurks a slight contrast even there) is less considerable, they are to be found only in the lines with 'vain', 'vainer', vanity'.

All this makes the poem rather expressive and metasemiotically marked and helps the author to present the main idea in this highly original form. And now that the three-level analysis has been completed we might pass on to the question of timbre.

This problem appears not as a separate question but as something connected with the further detailing, the further amplification of the linguopoetic analysis which in our case was not entirely in keeping with the principle of inverse directionality.

It is well known that theory of versification had existed since time immemorial and that through centuries it has developed a tongue-twisting terminology which when used aimlessly confounds the ignorant, appals the free and with great efficiency makes mad everybody else. The same applies to the subtle morphosyntactic and lexical descriptions and to drawing parallels between texts in connection with the possible allusions. To make all this priceless material work we should think of handling it more carefully and analysing it in closer connection with the main idea of the text the way we see it. Then perhaps this question of timbre would really become clearer to us.

True, in the first stanza we observe the semantic contrasts and morpho-syntactic parallelisms marked off by the above mentioned caesurae and clausulae. Variation in the way we stress the words of the same root involved in these patterns (love – loving, gifts – giving and so on) is understandable, and it is unnecessary to overdo the thing imitating a teacher in the classroom explaining something obvious to a group of not terribly bright students.

If the same patterns were retained in the coming two stanzas the emphatic rendering of them would be simply ridiculous, and monotony and dispassionate alienation would be the only correct way of reading the text; whatever the amount of illustrations to the main idea, semantically and metasemiotically they would have been the same, and hence there would have been identity on the level of the linguopoetic function and the linguopoetic value of these elements.

But it is not the case. These patterns are not retained in what comes next. Instead of 'And death-cold is idly cold, and life-heat is idly hot, / And any offering is vain and our receiving is vainer' or something of this kind (we deliberately destroy the rhythm to give the reader an idea of what the pattern should have been), there are inversions here throughout. The absence of the first (or the fourth) line and the use of the 'vanity of vanities' quotation altogether breaks the pattern which has been just being formed in the previous stanza. As a result in these three lines the use of the stylistically marked linguistic elements changes as compared to the first stanza. Their linguopoetic value is different because here they display their aesthetic potential to the utmost, the global foregrounding takes place; as for the linguopoetic function, here an obvious gnomic dimension appears. Hence the increase of logical stresses, the greater articulateness and the greater dynamism of enunciation. All these would be misplaced in the first stanza, where one cannot speak seriously of a global foregrounding and where the linguistic function is confined to mere expressivity.

The same applies to the third stanza. Although its structure is much closer to that of the first one, still the dramatic tension here does not decrease. Its opening line – 'Better than life's heaving heart is death's heart unheaving' – is literally overloaded with semantic contrasts (life's – death's, 'heaving' – 'unheaving'), and for this reason one cannot be lulled by the restoration of the previously violated pattern.

In the next line ('Better than the opening leaves are the leaves that rot') the basic lexical contrast finds no morphological parallelism which again leads to the breaking of the pattern. In the last but one line ('for there is nothing left worth achieving or retrieving') the masculine, instead of the usual feminine, caesura is used, which also contributes to the same. Thus, in the last stanza the stylistically marked lexical, morphological, syntactic and rhythmical elements display their aesthetic potential to the full extent, and against this background the possible understanding of this text as a dispassionate leisurely contemplation over the nature of things in general begins to look a bit inadequate.

While studying artistic texts a scholar sometimes comes across such cases when the "immanent" approach to literature (interpreting the text as such) does not lead him anywhere, and no tangible results are achieved unless he turns to the facts of the sociohistorical character. In connection with this particular poem we could also turn to the facts of Christina Rossetti's biography, to the letters she had written to various people and show that dispassionate alienation is completely out of keeping with her views on life and her active attitude to it. But this, we believe, would carry us too far in the maze of the historical information, and at the moment we shall confine ourselves to a more strict linguostylistically based analysis. In this case we should simply say that the linguopoetic investigation we have conducted does not justify the dispassionate alienated manner of reading, and for this reason the actual oral representation, the Timbre with which the text is read becomes closer to that of an ode or a hymn, a passionate glorification of Love.

If we were to look at the above descriptive opposition 'leisurely contemplation' vs 'passionate glorification' against the background of Aristotle's well-known trichotomy 'inherent' / 'possibly inherent' / 'necessarily inherent' which when put in plainer metalanguage in connection with types of text modality sounds as 'narration' / 'contemplation' / 'volition' we would see that the non-emphatic reading of the poem corresponds to 'possibly inherent' (contemplation), while the emphatic variant is an example of 'necessarily inherent' (volition). To render this overall modality of the text in the first case the head resonator is to be used, while in the second case it would definitely be chest resonator.

Now let us try to sum up what we have said about Timbre and Linguopoetics. Our discussion has shown that Linguopoetics comes first and predetermines the Timbre, because it is only through analysing the text and its thematic-imaginative content that one comes to an understanding of what it should sound like. This opposition of content and form should not be confounded with another one – that of the oral and written speech. When we say that the oral form of language comes first we mean that it had appeared before the written one. But this has got nothing to do with understanding texts – it does not matter whether they are written or oral, because here the content, the ideas come first, and only then we begin to think of the corresponding oral form.

Speech Timbre Analysis of an Extract from William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”

by Marklen KONURBAYEV

Material

Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death

The memory be green, and that it us befitted

To bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom

To be contracted in one brow of woe,

Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature

That we with wisest sorrow think on him,

Together with remembrance of ourselves.

Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,

The imperial jointress to this warlike state,

Have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy,

With an auspicious and a dropping eye,

With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,

In equal scale weighing delight and dole,

Taken to wife: nor have we herein barr'd

Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone

With this affair along. For all, our thanks.

Content plane and overall emotional expressive effect

This is a monologue produced by King Claudius soon after the death of King Hamlet and the new King’s marriage with the Dowager Queen which shortly followed the funeral. This hasty marriage greatly disappointed Hamlet – the Prince of Denmark and he openly expressed his disappointment with his mother’s decision to agree to the more than doubtful marriage. King Claudius speaks to his court trying to justify his steps. Badly concealed hypocrisy and cynicism of King Claudius is easily revealed through the analysis of words and turns of phrase used by the speaker.

The speech is a curious blend of pomposity and deceit aiming at winning support and approval of the courtiers. The first four lines are pronounced as it were in tune with the general sorrow and distress of the court about the untimely death of the King. The only small element which prepares the change of intonation is the conjunction “though”, which introduces an adverbial clause of concession and prepares the change of the overall emotional shade and the angle from which the whole situation is to be perceived.

The choice of words in the introductory lines – their somewhat elevated stylistic colouring and abstract meaning – is quite traditional for this type of situations and serves well for the creation of the required sad and sumptuous emotional shade. The nouns are brother (not exactly in the meaning of a family relative, but as a dear member of the community), death, memory, heart, grief, kingdom, woe. The collocations these nouns form are also emotionally and stylistically charged, although some of them are quite recurrent. They could be called emotional-expressive or poetic clichés: dear brother, green memory, to bear one’s heart in grief, brow of woe. In this abstract Shakespeare alludes to the clichéd forms of expression as a means of speech portrayal of King Claudius, who uses poetically banal, commonplace phrases being incapable of any sincere emotions under the circumstances.

The subsequent three lines contain a very subtle expression of hypocrisy through logical and lexical-semantic contrasts. In fact the tone of this part of the monologue has been prepared syntactically. As I have mentioned, the monologue begins with an adverbial clause of concession, which introduces a condition, which is superseded by a particular circumstance, mentioned in the main part of the sentence. King Claudius does not say (as would be only natural here) that he is sad – he uses the verb to befit – which implies that he should be sad, but is not, and continues to explain why. It is not easy, and he resorts to dubious, evasive phrases, trying as hard as he can to conceal his real feeling – joy because of his brother’s death. As a result we may find here such lexical pairs as discretion vs. nature, wisdom vs. sorrow. The latter semantic pair is realised in the most unusual and controversial attributive word combination wise sorrow, which is made even more absurd by the use of the superlative form of the adjective.

The point is that the feeling of sorrow nestles in the heart and is not controlled by mind, while wisdom lies within the province of rational thinking. It appears therefore that the combination of the two is hardly if ever possible. Another significant detail of these three lines is the opposition introduced by pronouns him and ourselves. Everything that is connected with him – the late King Hamlet – causes natural grief and sorrow. But Claudius is not a man of natural compassion. His more natural disposition is the remembrance of oneself and his sorrow is always wise.

The next six and a half lines is the logical (from the point of view of King Claudius) conclusion of his preceding argumentation. A long, syntactically complicated sentence with the “double” apposition and a longish parenthesis introducing a controversial emotional “leitmotif”, developing the idea of wise sorrow – is a formal declaration of the royal decision to marry the Dowager Queen Gertrude. It appears that the wisdom of King Claudius consists in marrying Gertrude and rejoicing about it. Again, King Claudius makes use of the same lexical-stylistic figure as in the beginning, i.e. the combination of the incompatible, antonymic lexical units, known in stylistics as an oxymoron: defeated joy, mirth in funeral, dirge in marriage, one auspicious and a dropping eye, delight and dole.

The most curious notional and syntactic feature of this part of the monologue is the suspense – the increase of tension by relegating the final, most important part of the statement to the very end of the sentence. A simple verbal predicate in the form of the Present Perfect of the verb to take is divided into two parts – the auxiliary verb stands in the beginning of the sentence, while the notional verb – at the very end of it. In spite of a longish lyrical parenthesis, this extremely complex syntactic shape of the sentence makes it sound on the whole very formal and official. Emotionality of the parenthesis and the overall formality of the sentence do not in fact contradict each other since the words used by the speaker to express his emotions are stylistically elevated.

Polyphony

Another notable semantic feature in this monologue is the polyphony, which surreptitiously introduces the motive of the opposition between King Claudius and Gertrude, on the one hand, and Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, on the other. The motive in question is expressed in the phrase The’ imperial jointress to this warlike state. At the time of the dramatic action Denmark was in a state of war with Norway and the word combination warlike state on the surface could certainly refer to this war between two countries. The word jointress in its first meaning – “a widow who holds a jointure; a dowager” (OED) – goes well with the described surface meaning of the attributive word combination warlike state, for she lawfully takes after everything bad and good which remained after the death of her former husband, including the war with Norway.

However we could also make here another observation of semantic nature – according to the definition of the Oxford English Dictionary the word jointress was formed from the obsolete jointer (a joint possessor; one who holds a jointure). The morphological structure of both words is rather transparent which allows to play with their common root join and use the word in such a way that its broader meaning is realised in the context[9]. The word state that is used in the same line in association with the word jointer – on the surface means the country, the State of Denmark which at that time was in a state of war with Norway. However in this context it could certainly also mean a particular “condition (of mind or feeling); the mental or emotional condition in which a person finds himself at a particular time” (OED). In this sense the adjective warlike, meaning martial, bellicose, unpacific, contentious could in fact be equally applied to both meanings of the word state. After marrying Gertrude Claudius was constantly opposed by Hamlet who did not fail to pester his uncle with all sorts of venomous remarks. This certainly troubled the new king a lot, however he could not openly oppose him but secretly cherished the idea of doing away with his nephew and occasionally added to his utterances the implication of being in the state of secret war with Hamlet (see also later in the same speech: “...by our late dear brother’s death our state to be disjoint and out of frame...”).

Another case of polyphony is at the very end of the extract: nor have we herein barr'd // Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone // With this affair along. The referential indicator this affair does not necessarily imply the marriage between King Claudius and Gertrude but could also mean in this context the murder of the lawful King of Denmark.

With polyphony however the expression of the shades of meaning is never explicit and can be debated. And yet in the broader context minor semantic peculiarities of the type described above are certainly of importance, for they help to create the unity of the action.

Speech timbre

Timbre characteristics of the text are defined by:

· the text’s modality characteristics,

· the overall stylistic colouring of the text, its parts and the constituent lexical units,

· the syntactic arrangement of the sentences and of the whole extract,

· its logical organization,

· the nature of the constituent emotional-expressive elements.

It should be borne in mind that on the level of speech timbre analysis all these parameters should be viewed as it were integrally – where one element adds to the whole undivided perceptual effect.

The analysis may begin on the broadest level of perception, i.e. from the point of view of the text’s content plane and its overall emotional-expressive colouring.

From this viewpoint the king’s monologue, which is addressed to the court, naturally sounds quite formal and official. This formality finds expression in the choice of formal and poetically elevated words and clichés (dear brother’s death, green memory, to befit smb., to bear our hearts in grief, to be contracted in one brow of woe, discretion, imperial jointress, warlike state, defeated joy, auspicious eye, mirth, dirge, delight and dole, to bar, wisdom) and the monologue’s morphosyntactic organization – with complex sentences burdened by lengthy parenthetical insertions, passive forms, stylistically marked forms of Subjunctive, multiple homogeneous parts.

Note that at this level it is the overall formal stylistic colouring of a linguistic unit that is of importance and not its semantic potential which can be variously realised in the context of the monologue and be enhanced by its implicit stylistic hue.

The second emotional-expressive shade which underlies the whole of the King’s speech is doubt, caution and hypocrisy. Judging by the way the King expresses his desire to put an end to the general grief and switch from lamentations to rejoicing connected with his marriage, he is not at all confident in the support of the courtiers and he carefully combines the royal volition, rational reasoning and contemplation with emotional advances to those who may disapprove of the King’s hasty marriage and continue to grieve over the late King Hamlet. Thus, in terms of modality, the monologue presents the interplay of volition and contemplation. Every time King Claudius tries to emphasise his right to make whatever decisions he thinks are adequate under the circumstances, he exploits the plural form of the 1^st person pronoun when referring to himself, – thereby raising the style of his declarations and stressing the indisputability of his decisions. It is peculiar how pronouns we and our sound polyphonically in the monologue – now referring to all people of the kingdom Denmark, now to the King himself, emphasising the importance of his statements.

That we with wisest sorrow think on him,

Together with remembrance of ourselves.

Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,

The imperial jointress to this warlike state,

Have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy,

With an auspicious and a dropping eye,

With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,

In equal scale weighing delight and dole,

Taken to wife: nor have we herein barr'd

Your better wisdoms,

It appears therefore, that a somewhat raised and narrowed overall pitch range of the voice to convey contemplation in combination with reduced loudness that would be typical of the expression of sorrow shall contrast with the relatively loud and resonant “chest” enunciation of the volitional parts of the monologue. Although the speaker in this second case makes use of the lower section of the diapason, the overall voice range remains wide enough, reserving the possibility of increasing general audibility when speaking to the court and of additionally emphasizing the stylistically marked expressive lexical elements. The latter introduce the element of doubt and uncertainty and can be pronounced in a less resonant way. Slight tremolo or creak enhanced by this prosodic feature would add to the whole enunciation the shade of plaintiveness.

As far as the syntactic stresses are concerned, their main role in this monologue is to function as a garb for the syntactic contrast between longish contemplational anticipatory chunks of the King’s speech and the volitional final parts of his statements. The typical for the syntactically non-final parts of the sentences up-rising and level tones are followed by the falls of the pitch on the final parts, which are made more audible by the accompanying resonance of the voice in the final parts and the widened pitch range. It appears therefore that the syntactic structure of the monologue and its and emotional expressive organization are in complete harmony.

The logical stresses are not used separately from syntactic and expressive ones. As a rule the logically opposed words either stand in the syntactically strong positions:

That we with wisest sorrow think on him,

Together with remembrance of ourselves.

***

nor have we herein barr'd

Your better wisdoms …

or appear to be semantically and emotionally significant:

With an auspicious and a dropping eye,

With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,

In equal scale weighing delight and dole,

Taken to wife …

Prosodically, the logical emphasis in these cases appears to be superseded by the syntactic and expressive stresses.

Some words should be said about various decorative means Shakespeare is using to draw the reader’s attention to the most significant details of the monologue. Generally speaking there are two main stylistic devices that appear to be powerful enough to enhance and additionally outline strong enough semantic and emotional-expressive shades realized through the use of lexical and syntactic means. They are: the repetition of sounds and caesuras at the end of poetic line and in the middle of some lines which contain enjambment (or run-on-line).

Thus the first four lines contain mainly the words beginning with the voiced plosives b, d, g. This decorative means additionally emphasizes the King’s attempt to sound the way that would remind the listeners of sobs or sudden emotional stops in the situations when a speaker is overwhelmed with sorrow and as if swallowing tears. Sobs often end with wailings. Shakespeare masterfully creates this effect as well, by finishing this part of the monologue with glottal fricative, sonorant and bilabial sounds

Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death

The memory be green, and that it us befitted

To bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom

To be contracted in one brow of woe …

In the middle of the second and of the third lines alliterative plosives in the middle of the lines additionally outline internal rhyme green – grief. Both of these words stand at the end of the run-on-lines.

In the next three lines the situation with decorative means drastically changes: although some grief still remains, but the speaker is as it were uncertain about the suitability of this emotion. This feeling is enhanced by the use of the words containing the sonorant sounds, where the speaker can prolong them slightly – discretion / nature, as both of them stand in the logically prominent position and are opposed to each other, and by the use of the bilabial sounds in the second line. The drastic change of emotion is decorated by serpentic hissing realised in the profusion of sibilants:

Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature

That we with wisest sorrow think on him,

Together with remembrance of ourselves.

A similar use of sound repetitions can be found in the other parts of the monologue.

Another powerful expressive decorative device in this extract is the enjambment and the poetic caesuras in the middle and at the end of the lines, which allow the speaker to give additional prominence to semantically and emotionally significant lexical elements.

Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death

The memory be green, and that it us befitted

To bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom

To be contracted in one brow of woe,

Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature

That we with wisest sorrow think on him,

Together with remembrance of ourselves.

Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,

The imperial jointress to this warlike state,

Have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy,

With an auspicious and a dropping eye,

With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,

In equal scale weighing delight and dole,

Taken to wife: nor have we herein barr'd

Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone

With this affair along. For all, our thanks.

Speech timbre analysis in Russian

В приведенном отрывке наблюдаем два “монолитных” синтаксических образования, в которых постановка ударений достаточно четко фиксирована синтаксически, и которые во многом определяют “тембральное лицо” отрывка. Первый “монолит” – придаточное уступки с тремя однородными членами. По роли в предложении ударная часть высказывания имеет атрибутивный характер, хотя строго синтаксически первая из них является составным именным сказуемым с прилагательным green в роли предикативного члена, а вторая и третья – обстоятельствами образа действия (in grief и in one brow of woe). Стиховая структура этого монолога построена таким образом, чтобы синтаксически ударные части стояли в наиболее выгодном положении в конце синтагмы, за которой не следует никакой слабоударной хвостовой части. Наблюдается внутристрочная рифма между словами green и grief, за которыми следует поэтическая цезура. Первый блок достаточно динамичен в силу того, что ударный слог произносится с восходящим контуром незавершенности. Ощущение ожидания усиливается благодаря текучей строке.

Важно отметить, что в словах green, grief, woe объединены синтаксическое, смысловое и поэтическое ударение. Эти три ударные части являются наиболее важными с точки зрения общего смысла. Восходящий контур является самым “ярким” интонационным элементом. Реализуясь в головном резонаторе и узком диапазоне он подчеркивает общий интраверсивный тон высказывания.

Полным контрастом первой части звучит главная часть предложения, в которой ведущая роль принадлежит не синтаксическому, а логическому ударению на словах discretion vs. nature и him vs. ourselves. Логическое ударение реализуется в нисходящем контуре на втором элементе указанного смыслового противопоставления. Скользящий тон приходится на конец поэтической строки. Благодаря ему в голосе говорящего более яркими становятся оттенки общего грудного резонаторного тона, хорошо передающие общую экстраверсивность этой части высказывания.

Второй синтаксический комплекс (в конце высказывания) также характеризуется высоким уровнем динамизма. В его основе лежат три “синтаксических фигуры”, каждая из которых характеризуется особой схемой постановки синтаксического ударения: инверсия, вводная конструкция, разбивающая аналитическую перфектную группу сказуемого и лексико-синтаксический контраст.

В результате инверсии под ударением оказывается прямое дополнение sometime sister (это ударение подчеркивается аллитерацией). Далее схема ударения (высокий ровный тон + средний нисходящий/высокий восходящий (варианты допускаются, поскольку оба сигнализируют синтаксическую незавершенность) повторяется на перечислении now our queen и приложении the imperial jointress to this warlike state.

Перфектная аналитическая инверсионная группа сказуемого have ... taken прерывается протяженной вводной конструкцией со множеством лексико-синтаксических противопоставлений. Такое построение требует большого внимания со стороны читающего. При устном воспроизведении связь между двумя частями предикативной группы должна быть четко обозначена – подлежащее we произносится со средним восходящим тоном.

Вводная конструкция отличается от главной части общим высотным показателем (в целом он несколько ниже на парентетическом внесении). Лексико-синтаксические контрасты an auspicious vs a dropping eye, mirth in funeral vs dirge in marriage, delight vs dole обозначаются контрастными тонами нефинального завершения (допускаются варианты: высокий ровный + низкий ровный; низкий восходящий + средний нисходящий, высокий ровный + средний нисходящий и др.). Нефинальный тон подлежащего разрешается сразу после вводной конструкции (высокий ровный + низкий нисходящий) – ^|taken to _\wife.

Обобщая сказанное, отметим, что Шекспир мастерски соединяет в одной фразе синтаксические и смысловые (логические) ударения. В результате текст читается легко и синтаксическая структура, составляющая основу нейтрального чтения сама ведет читателя от одного контекстуально значимого элемента к другому. Однако правильная расстановка синтаксических ударений еще не является залогом понимания общего смысла. Правильно определив место ударения (что было не очень сложно, учитывая хорошо продуманную и организованную синтаксическую структуру текста), читатель оказывается перед необходимостью более глубокого прочтения, с тем, чтобы он мог четко определить общий резонаторный тон и эмфатическую окраску ударений.

Translation MC

Comparative-Contrastive Analysis of
Oscar Wilde’s Poem “Impressions Du Matin”
and its Russian Translation

by Velta ZADORNOVA

Material

IMPRESSIONS DU MATIN

The Thames nocturne of blue and gold

Changed to a Harmony in grey:

A barge with ochre-coloured hay

Dropt from the wharf: and chill and cold.

The yellow fog came creeping down

The bridges, till the houses’ walls

Seemed changed to shadows and St.Paul’s

Loomed like a bubble o’er the town.

Then suddenly arose the clang

Of waking life; the streets were stirred

With country wagons: and a bird

Flew to the glistening roofs and sang.

But one pale woman all alone,

The daylight kissing her wan hair,

Loitered beneath the Gas lamps flare,

With lips of flame and heart of stone.

УТРО

Пер. В.Ю.Эльснера

Ноктюрн уснувшей Темзы сине-золотой

Аккорды пепельно-жемчужные сменили.

Тяжелый бот проплыл над сонною водой,

И тени дрогнули, – безвольно отступили.

Клубами мутными сползал в реку туман.

Домов неясные вставали очертанья.

Рассвет задул огни… но чудился обман,-

И медлил бледный день вернуться из изгнанья.

Хрипя завыл гудок, медлительно-протяжный,

По камням застучали ободы телег.

Блеснул соборный купол матовый и влажный,

Разросся, в улицах, толпы нестройный бег.

Ночная женщина стояла у панели.

На бледных волосах дрожал лучей поток.

Как угли жаркие – уста ее алели,

Но сердцу камнем быть велел бесстрастный рок.

Oscar Wilde’s poem describes the time of day (or rather morning) when light first appears in the sky, the sun gradually rises and the city wakes from sleep. It is described through a series of images: “the houses’ walls/ seemed changed to shadows”, “the streets were stirred with country wagons”, “a bird /flew to the glistening roofs and sang”.

It is noteworthy that each stanza (especially the second and the third one) ends up with a feature which drastically changes the picture and adds one more triumphant note to this morning symphony (in the first three stanzas the last clause begins with the conjunction “and”). The second stanza ends with the unusual comparison: “…and St.Paul’s/ loomed like a bubble o’er the town”. The dome of St.Paul’s used to be the highest in London and therefore it was the first to catch the light of the rising sun. Only then the roofs of other buildings started glistening. At the end of the third stanza a bird appears with its first song – a sure sign of the morning. Thus the picture drawn in the first three stanzas is far from gloomy. On the contrary, we are kept in pleasant suspense and are looking forward to an experience which we are subjected to regularly but which, nevertheless, always fills our hearts with delight: the beginning of a new beautiful day.

The Russian version of the poem, which is also a description of the city’s gradual waking from sleep, appears to be only a variation on the same theme. The accents are shifted; some images are lost, others acquire different colouring: cheerless, dismal, even depressing. There are a lot of negative words and word-combinations introduced by the translator: безвольно, клубы мутные, обман, изгнанье, хрипя, нестройный бег, etc., which do not have prototypes in the source-text. The only words that may be said to evoke negative associations in the original are “chill”, “cold” and “creep down”. New images are added to contribute to the same effect, for instance: "И медлил бледный день вернуться из изгнанья". "Блеснул соборный купол матовый и влажный", which is a successful translation of the corresponding line, is placed not in the final position, but in the middle of the stanza and, therefore, does not have the significance it has in the original.

Moving on to the rhythmical-syntactic level we can observe a change in the metre as well. The iambic tetrameter of the original has been turned into iambic hexameter in the translation. Thus, the light and airy rhythm of O.Wilde’s poem becomes more solemn, elevated and heavy in the translation. The use of polysyllabic compound words contributes to this effect. Some of the words consist of 7 syllables instead of 1 or 2-syllabic words of the original (the longest word is “ochre-coloured” – 4 syllables). It is true that Russian words on the average are longer than English ones (2,24 vs. 1,22 syllables). But the translator here seems to make a point of using long words, especially adjectives, and this fits in with the chosen metrical pattern.

One more peculiarity of the original which is ignored in the translation is run-on lines in the first three stanzas. This results in the first word of every run-on line acquiring greater prominence than is required by the iambic metre. Iambic feet become trochaic, and it breaks the smooth movement of the verse. The only exception is the last, fourth, stanza which stands out and appears as a kind of anticlimax: the readers fall short of their expectations. Instead of ending on a still more cheerful note the poet introduces a change of both the subject and tone. The contrast between the glorious picture of the morning and a woman of the night standing all alone under the gas lamps, quite indifferent to “the clang of waking life” is striking and powerful.

There is no break of any kind in the translation. The last stanza is arranged rhythmically in exactly the same way as the previous stanzas. The poem is smoothly moving towards the end, its metrical division coinciding with the syntactic one. In contrast to the original poem, the fourth stanza appears to be a kind of climax. There is no change of tone either: the translation begins and ends in the same cheerless tone, which, perhaps, becomes here unduly dramatic.

On the whole, due to these differences, we are put into two different moods by the two texts, although their subject-matter is very much the same.

A Sample of Analysis of Expressive Polyphony in Translation

by Marklen KONURBAYEV

Emotional connotations play the role of a sort of expressive enclosure in a work of fiction giving its principal contextual features additional force and prominence. To translate this “ephemeral emotional-expressive mist” is an arduous task, one of the main dangers of it is a “Scilla and Charybdis alternative” where the translator should avoid giving either too much or too little of what he finds in the original.

There is also another difficulty, which would require of a translator the application of all his creative potential. I mean those cases when the equivalent of the emotional-expressive devices used in the source language simply does not exist in the target language and to preserve the existing expressive background the translator needs either to provide a complex system of semiotic means that would create the required association with the necessary expressive context, on the one hand, (relying, as it were, on the erudition of the reader, hoping that he might have heard something about the uneducated speech of the Russian peasants, or the gypsies or the English soldiers in the docks or plenty of other similar contexts), or, on the other hand, create his own system of expressive means providing the necessary emotional-expressive-evaluative background enhancing the aesthetic centre of the translated work of fiction.

A similar approach should be exercised in reference to the translation of those elements of the text which have the greatest semantic potential and therefore create a peculiar polyphonic milieu around which appear invariable other micropictures and traits and features of imaginable reality created by the author in the context as he plays with shades of meaning and connotations. The point is that such elements have a very definite scope of polyphonic shades which should be very carefully preserved in the translation – not a “spec” can be added or removed from this picture lest it would change its emotional and aesthetic charge. Some words and word combinations can be interpreted more or less precisely because their polyphonic capabilities are relatively limited and one allegoric image used by the author stands exactly for some particular notion or object of reality. At the same time there are other linguistic units in the source text which could be interpreted this way or that way or in so many ways together and the translator is not in a position to break this kaleidoscopic image where so many shades of meaning and emotional tints are expressed simultaneously. And any attempt at precision in such cases would be a violation of the author’s original idea. In such cases the translator needs to estimate the semiotic potential of a translated linguistic unit and express it accordingly in the target language allowing the reader to enjoy “the rainbow effect” of concurrent shades of meanings and not the originality of the translator’s one-way interpretation of the author’s image.

Let us consider some examples from the famous works of fiction to see if this preconceived linguopoetic stance dictating what the translator should or should not do in respect to the author’s intentions is really observed by the translators in their work.

In our fist extract we are going to consider one of the most difficult cases for a translator when a word or a word combination polyphonically realizes several meanings or shades of meanings at a time. In Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet there is an episode when Hamlet learns from the ghost of his father who was his father’s real murderer. Hamlet becomes furious and vindictive and, overwhelmed with emotion, bursts into a soliloquy of extreme emotional tension variously commenting and reinterpreting the ghost’s last phrase:

GHOST ...

Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me.

Exit

HAMLET

O all you host of heaven! O earth! what else?

And shall I couple hell? O, fie! Hold, hold, my heart;

And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,

But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee!

Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat

In this distracted globe. Remember thee!

Yea, from the table of my memory

I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records,

All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,

That youth and observation copied there;

And thy commandment all alone shall live

Within the book and volume of my brain,

Unmix’d with baser matter: yes, by heaven!

O most pernicious woman!

O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!

My tables,--meet it is I set it down,

That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;

At least I’m sure it may be so in Denmark:

Writing

So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word;

It is ‘Adieu, adieu! remember me.’

I have sworn ’t.

MARCELLUS

[Within] My lord, my lord,--

HORATIO

MARCELLUS [Within]

Lord Hamlet,--

HORATIO [Within]

Heaven secure him!

HAMLET

So be it!

One may detect at least five elements in this extract which are as it were polyphonically loaded:

1. Remember thee (me)!

2. In this distracted globe.

3. And thy commandment all alone shall live

4. Heaven secure him!

5. So be it!

It does not seem to be very difficult to translate phrases 1,3,4,5. Purely lexically the first, the fourth and the fifth ones can be preserved as they are. The only thing which is required of a translator in this case is a delicate syntactic management of the phrases – for the commandment Remember me! is first addressed by the ghost to Hamlet, then it is reflectively pronounced by Hamlet himself and afterwards menacingly addressed by Hamlet to his uncle whom he distantly observes at the court festivities through a window or an opening in a wall or a roof. The same applies to the phrase Heaven secure him! pronounced by Horatio, and while addressed to Hamlet – in Hamlet’s ears acquires a different sounding – a sort of an echo to his threat, to which he murmurs So be it! which again could either be applied to the phrase Heaven secure him! addressed to Hamlet or to the same phrase addressed to Claudius.

The phrase thy commandment all alone shall live in this context is indirectly suggestive of the similar biblical phrase as in The Book of Proverbs 6:20 of the King James Version:

My son, keep thy father’s commandment

The greatest difficulty presents the translation of the second phrase – in this distracted globe where the word globe could be understood as either the earth, kingdom or the world, on the one hand or Hamlet’s own head, on the other. The descriptive adjective distracted can be equally applied to both. When used with the word globe as the kingdom it means “perplexed or confused by conflicting interests; torn or disordered by dissension or the like” (OED), while when it refers to Hamlet’s own head (or rather his distressed state of mind) it means “much confused or troubled in mind; having, or showing, great mental disturbance or perplexity” (OED). In Hamlet’s mouth this phrase actually realises both these meanings. Let us compare some of the more famous Russian translation of this episode to see if the described polyphony is preserved:

О небо! О земля! Кого в придачу?

Быть может ад? Стой сердце! Сердце стой!

Не подгибайтесь подо мною, ноги!

Держитесь прямо! Помнить о тебе?

Да, бедный дух, пока есть память в шаре

Разбитом этом. Помнить о тебе?

Я с памятной доски сотру все знаки

Чувствительности, все слова из книг,

Все образы, всех былей отпечатки,

Что с детства наблюденье занесло,

И лишь твоим единственным веленьем

Весь том, всю книгу мозга испишу,

Без низкой смеси. Да, как перед Богом!

О женщина-злодейка! О подлец!

О низость, низость с низкою улыбкой!

Где грифель мой? Я это запишу,

Что можно улыбаться, улыбаться

И быть мерзавцем. Если не везде,

То достоверно, в Дании.

(Пишет)

Готово, дядя. А теперь девиз мой:

“Прощай, прощай и помни обо мне”.

Я в том клянусь.

ГОРАЦИО И МАРЦЕЛЛ

(за сценой)

Принц! Принц!

МАРЦЕЛЛ

(за сценой)

Принц Гамлет!

ГОРАЦИО

(за сценой)

Небо

Да хранит его!

ГАМЛЕТ

Да будет так.

(Перевод Б.Пастернака)

Господь земли и неба! Что еще?

Не вызвать ли и ад? Нет, тише, тише,

Моя душа! О, не старейте нервы!

Держите персть возвышенно и прямо!

Мне помнить о тебе? Да, бедный дух,

Пока есть память в черепе моем.

Мне помнить? Да, с станиц воспоминанья

Все прошлые рассказы я сотру,

Все изреченья книг, все впечатленья,

Минувшего следы, плоды рассудка

И наблюдений юности моей.

Твои слова, родитель мой, одни

Пусть в книге сердца моего живут

Без примеси других, ничтожных слов.

Клянуся в том благими небесами !

О, женщина преступная! Злодей,

Злодей, смеющийся, проклятый изверг!

Где мой бумажник? Запишу, что можно

С улыбкой вечною злодеем быть,

По крайней мере в Дании возможно.

(Пишет)

Здесь, дядюшка. Теперь пароль и отзыв:

“Прощай, прощай и помни обо мне!”

Я поклялся.

ГОРАЦИО И МАРЦЕЛЛ

(за сценой)

Принц! Принц!

МАРЦЕЛЛО

(за сценой)

Принц Гамлет!

ГОРАЦИО

(за сценой)

Бог да защитит вас!

ГАМЛЕТ

Аминь!

(Перевод А.Кронберга)

О, вы, все силы неба! О, земля! Еще что?

Уж не призвать ли ад? Фу! Тише, тише, сердце!

А вы, не разом одряхлейте, мышцы,

Но силы мне придайте! Помнить о тебе?

Да, бедный дух, покуда в этой голове

Растерянной есть память. Помнить о тебе?

Да, с памяти страниц сотру я все заметы

Пустые, вздорные, все книжные реченья,

Все образы и все былые впечатленья,

Что наблюдательность и юность в ней вписали;

И лишь твое веление одно,

Без примеси понятий низких, будет

Жить в книге мозга моего; да как пред небом!

О, женщина порочная!

О, изверг, улыбающийся изверг,

Проклятый изверг! Книжка где? Заметить надо,

Что можно улыбаться, улыбаться

И все ж быть извергом; уж в Дании наверно

Оно возможно.

(Пишет)

Здесь ты, дядя. –

Лозунг мой

Теперь: “Прости, прости! И помни обо мне”.

Я поклялся.

ГОРАЦИО И МАРЦЕЛЛ

(за сценой)

Принц! Принц!

МАРЦЕЛЛ

(за сценой)

Принц Гамлет!

ГОРАЦИО

(за сценой)

Бог его храни.

ГАМЛЕТ

Да будет так!

(Перевод К.Р.)

Войска небесные! Земля! Еще что?

Позвать и ад? Тьфу! Тише, сердце, тише!

Мгновенно не дряхлейте мыщцы; вы

Меня несите твердо! Помнить? Помнить?

Да, бедный дух, пока сидит здесь память,

В безумном этом шаре. Помнить, помнить?

Да, я со списка памяти сотру

Пустые, вздорные заметки, все,

Что вычитал, увидел иль отметил,

Все то, что наблюдение и юность

Туда вписали. Лишь один приказ твой,

Без всяких низких примесей, теперь

Жить будет в книге мозга, я клянусь!

О гибельная женщина!

Подлец! Подлец с улыбкою! Проклятый!

Таблички где? Я должен записать,

Что можно улыбаться, улыбаться

И подлецом быть. Знаю твердо я,

Что в Дании наверно так бывает.

(Пишет)

Так, дядя, здесь вы. Ну теперь девиз мой:

“Прощай, прощай и помни обо мне!”

Поклялся я.

ГОРАЦИО И МАРЦЕЛЛ

(за сценой)

Милорд, милорд, милорд!

МАРЦЕЛЛ

(за сценой)

Лорд Гамлет!

ГОРАЦИО

(за сценой)

Небо сохрани его!

ГАМЛЕТ

Да будет так.

(Перевод А. Радловой)

Without going too deeply into the merits and faults of every translation let us briefly concentrate on the polyphonic lines and see if their “multi-layer” semantic structure was preserved.

In this distracted globe.

пока есть память в шаре // Разбитом этом. (Б.Пастернак)

Пока есть память в черепе моем. (А.Кронберг)

покуда в этой голове // Растерянной есть память. (К.Р.)

пока сидит здесь память, //

В безумном этом шаре.

(А.Радлова)

Out of the four variants of the translation only the last one made by A.Radlova seems to be the most faithful to the original: the Russian word безумный can be applied both to a man and to the world, while the word шар can be metaphorically used to mean the world and to the human head. The original polyphony therefore appears to be preserved in her translation:

And thy commandment all alone shall live

И лишь твоим единственным веленьем

Весь том, всю книгу мозга испишу (Пастернак)

Твои слова, родитель мой, одни

Пусть в книге сердца моего живут (Кронберг)

И лишь твое веление одно,

Без примеси понятий низких, будет

Жить в книге мозга моего; (К.Р.)

Лишь один приказ твой,

Без всяких низких примесей, теперь

Жить будет в книге мозга, я клянусь! (А.Радлова)

None of the translators alluded to the Russian biblical expression “заповедь отца” (Сын мой! Храни заповедь отца...) which can probably be accounted for by the strong religious implication of the Russian word заповедь, while in the English original this allusion is felt but scarcely. The word commandment, although having as strong inherent religious connotation as the Russian word заповедь, was probably used by Shakespeare in this context to increase solemnity in Hamlet’s tone of voice. The English word appears to be less abstract, less generalising than the corresponding Russian word. The latter can be used broadly enough to mean a particular philosophical position or a credo and reproducing it with this implication would mean bringing undesirable shades of meaning into the context. It appears therefore that a very subtle biblical implication that we observe in this context created mainly through the use of the phrase thy commandment could not be adequately reproduced in the Russian translation. But the linguopoetic significance of this implication being as small as it is in this context, the loss of it does not affect considerably the aesthetic qualities of the overall context.

Out of the four translations of this extract – Kronberg’s variant appears to be more successful than the others. Boris Pasternak’s твоим ... веленьем ... всю книгу мозга испишу is odd and outrageous. K.R.’s твое веление ... будет жить в книге мозга моего is better but a highly unconventional Russian word combination книга мозга creating undesirable physiological associations makes the whole phrase equally unacceptable. The Russian word сердце (heart) appears to be more conducive to the expression of the evaluative meaning which is required in this context, since the word brain used by Hamlet actually means memory and a strong desire to take revenge:

And thy commandment all alone shall live

Within the book and volume of my brain...

The third connotative element that we mentioned in the beginning is the call Heaven secure him! uttered by Horatio in reply to the mentioning of Hamlet’s name by Marcellus – and Hamlet’s response So be it! which logically and emotionally completes the monologue. In our opinion all the four translators coped with their task successfully enough, for in all of them, as in the original, the two phrases in equal measure apply to Hamlet and to his uncle after Hamlet gave a promise of revenge:

HORATIO [Within]

Heaven secure him!

HAMLET

So be it!

Небо//Да хранит его! ...

Да будет так. (Б.Пастернак)

Бог да защитит вас! ...

Аминь!

(А.Кронберг)

Бог его храни.

... Да будет так! (Перевод К.Р.)

Небо сохрани его!

... Да будет так.

(А. Радлова)

Grammar & Style MC

Grammar and style in V.Woolf’s essays

by Ekaterina Dolgina

Traditionally the main idea of practical English classes in the 4^th year has been to facilitate and coordinate the theoretical courses of linguostylistics and syntax, on the one hand, and simultaneous grammar revision, on the other. Consequently, the material, i.e. texts to read and appreciate, was to be appropriated both grammatically and stylistically. So it was V.Woolf’s essays famous for the most exquisite style and complexity of grammar that were deliberately chosen for the analysis.

The task the 4^th year students are set is to survey the stylistic functions grammar performs in the texts in question. In particular, they are instructed to focus their attention on those specific words and structures, namely modals and the Oblique Moods, which are conventional means of expressing modality, this functional-semantic category being one of the principal linguistic universals. The students should be mindful of the fact that being preferred to lexical means, the grammatical means in question are regularly used to express various modal meanings, that is to show the speaker’s attitude to an action or to the whole of the utterance as well as to specify the way an action or state correlates with reality.

Modals and the Oblique Moods turn out to be most helpful and even indispensable to the genre of essay at large, for in this short piece of literature a writer is to give his or her thoughts on a particular author or a particular book usually appreciatively, in a graceful and pleasing style. If the student of philology turns to V.Woolf’s essays, it won’t take him long to see how great her admiration, how profound her interest is for the personality of the author she is profiling. In particular the students’ attention should be focused on two essays – “Jane Austen” and “Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights”, in which the three English world-famous novelists and their works are investigated at length and in detail. V.Woolf’s method consists in bringing out the author’s personal qualities, the most prominent, noteworthy features and the biography which always gives her the clue to the understanding of the writer’s creative work. Thus, in the essay on Jane Austen V.Woolf’s observations about her novels are preceded by a detailed description of her character. V.Woolf refers to Jane Austen’s contemporaries – friends and close relations whose references appear to be very critical. They describe her as “an unbending case”, “who has stiffened into the most perpendicular, precise, taciturn piece of 'single blessedness', a poker of whom everybody is afraid…”. This enables V.Woolf to observe: “Of this too there are traces; she could be merciless enough; she is one of the most consistent satirists in the whole of literature.”

This is just one illustration of V.Woolf’s method in action, and her essay is always a series of the like observations, according to which writers’ personal characteristics turn out to be congruent with their own method and style.

What has been said above is an introduction or prelude to the main concern of both the teacher and the students, which is to analyse linguistically V.Woolf’s attitude to the authors she portrays. First of all the students are supposed to discuss the use of the Oblique Moods by comparing the two extracts from the essays “Jane Austen” and “Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights” respectively. Here are the texts:

1. ‘And what effect would all this have had upon the six novels that Jane Austen did not write? She would not have written of crime, of passion, or of adventure. She would not have been rushed by the importunity of publishers or the flattery of friends into slovenliness or insincerity. But she would have known more. Her sense of security would have been shaken. Her comedy would have suffered. She would have trusted less (this is already perceptible in Persuasion) to dialogue and more to reflection to give us a knowledge of her characters. Those marvellous little speeches which sum up, in a few minutes chatter, all that we need in order to know an Admiral Croft or a Mrs Musgrove for ever, that shorthand, hit-or-miss method which contains chapters of analysis and psychology, would have become too crude to hold all that she now perceived of the complexity of human nature. She would have devised a method, clear and composed as ever, but deeper and more suggestive, for conveying not only what people say, but what life is. She would have stood farther away from her characters, and seen them more as a group, less as individuals. Her satire , while it played less incessantly, would have been more stringent and severe. She would have been the forerunner of Henry James and of Proust – but enough. Vain are these speculations: the most perfect artist among women, the writer whose books are immortal, died ‘just as she was beginning to feel confidence in her own success.’ (“Jane Austen”)

2. ‘Of the hundred years that have passed since Charlotte Bronte was born, she, the centre now of so much legend, devotion , and literature, lived but thirty-nine. It is strange to reflect how different those legends might have been had her life reached the ordinary human span. She might have become, like some of her famous contemporaries, a figure familiarly met with in London and elsewhere, the subject of pictures and anecdotes innumerable, the writer of many novels, of memoirs possibly, removed from us well within the memory of the middle-aged in all the splendour of established fame. She might have been wealthy, she might have been prosperous. But it is not so. When we think of her we have to imagine someone who had no lot in our modern world; we have to cast our minds back to the fifties of the last century, to a remote paronage upon the wild Yorkshire moors. In that parsonage and on those moors, unhappy and lonely, in her poverty and her exaltation, she remains for ever.‘ (“Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights”)

As it follows from the contexts, one and the same idea is being developed. V.Woolf wonders how both Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte could have cultivated their talents if they had reached an ordinary life span. She resorts to supposition in both essays and finds it possible to deliberately use the same grammatical patterns of the Conditional Mood.

Taking into account how similar Jane Austen’s and Charlotte Bronte’s situation in life was, V.Woolf has every reason to approach them in the same way. Both were provincial parsons’ daughters. Both were outstandingly talented, but poor, lonely, unhappy and mortally ill that caused their premature death at nearly the same age.

As is well-known, the Conditional Mood is normally used to show slight supposition or possibility. However, in both contexts the structure is likely to have acquired a new shade of modality which differs from its original grammatical meaning. Let us concentrate on the first extract. It is the repetition and frequency of occurrence of the Conditional (which is used more than 10 times) that enable us to identify a much higher of degree of supposition, that is probability or even certainty and assurance. It is due to would which is polyfunctional in the language combining various auxiliary and modal functions. In this case would seems to acquire a modal meaning of probability within the grammatical structure of the Conditional Mood. While reading the text aloud, the reader cannot but emphasize it. Thus, the use of the Conditional and would as its part appears to be the only grammatical means of expressing the V.Woolf’s perfect confidence in her heroine’s power and success. The use of the Conditional Mood is conceptually determined: the modality of supposition is necessary for it helps the author to deeply appreciate Jane Austen’s talent as well as to express her personal genuine keen sorrow at the writer’s early death.

However grammatically similar the second extract devoted to Charlotte Bronte might look, its modality is different. It is achieved by the persistent use of might instead of would within the pattern of the Conditional Mood. Thus supposition takes the form of the slightest possibility. This implies the author’s uncertainty, reflection on the spur of the moment that is supported by syntactic parallelism and the use of synonyms characteristic of speech, not writing: “She might have been wealthy, she might have been prosperous”. Thus, the grammatical means prove to be stylistically significant by bringing the author closer to the reader and adding to the emotional colouring of the text.

Understanding a Text Drawn from a Particular Area of Subject Study

Lilia V. Boldyreva

As there exists a multitude of different approaches to the analysis of any text, from the very outset, i.e. at the stage of selecting the appropriate material, we must clearly understand for whom it is intended. The tasks set before a group of students should be realistic and challenging at the same time, texts offered for reading and analysis should not only correspond to the level students are likely to need in their studies, but also hold their interest and provide material for all sorts of activities involving exchange of ideas.

My experience of teaching groups of advanced level students at the department of theoretical and applied linguistics at the philological faculty of the University of Moscow proves that in our search for a suitable text we must be guided by the following principles:

1. The selected text should pertain to one of the carefully chosen areas of subject study. At the advanced level the study of the text should not apparently be regarded merely as a way of improving one's language in general, it should be a subject area-oriented. A set of practices and methods applied to the text should enable a foreign learner of English to acquire the necessary language skills to deal with a particular sphere of human experience, such as, for instance, law, politics, economy, science and technology, medicine, education, art, sports etc.

2. The text under analysis should contain a great deal of new vocabulary, including both single words and phrases. The text may admit of special words and terminology as long as their proportion is kept within bounds and does not hamper the understanding of a foreign learner who is not supposed to be a specialist in the field from which the text is drawn.

3. The selected text should encourage linguistic research on the part of learners and make any progress for them impossible without a thorough use of dictionaries and, not infrequently, many other sources of linguistic and extralinguistic information as well. Hence the text under analysis should contain a vast range of linguistic means which enable the author to create a particular artistic effect and add the aesthetic impact to the content plane. The learners are thus confronted with all kinds of stylistically coloured words, words from different functional styles, quotations and allusions, tropes and figures of speech etc.

4. The text must be informative enough to provide material for thought and reflections on the subject. The style must arouse and maintain the readers’ interest throughout by creating impact and presenting facts in a logical yet challenging way. The point is that a text of this kind is supposed to prompt group activities, such as discussion, simulation or role play which are undoubtedly very important means of develop fluency and teaching students to communicate accurately and effectively.

Why People Steal

Because they need the money, right? Not always, but that's usually the right answer. Security expert Norman Jaspan says employees' motivations for theft and fraud are not limited to greed. Others include:

An urge toward punishment. Employees may commit blatant, senseless acts as a way of ‘crying for help.’ They continue to steal when they're under suspicion, or take money or property when others are watching them. They may be in deep trouble in their private lives and need a crisis to break out of an unbearable situation.

Spite and sabotage. Employees who feel frustrated or cheated by large, seemingly faceless bureaucracies often will commit crimes against them. A disgruntled employee may have been passed over for promotion, given additional responsibilities with no pay increase, or denied adequate resources to do the job. Malcontents are not always obvious, they are often smiling, ‘loyal’ employees seeking revenge on the sly. These workers have called in bomb threats to their workplaces, tampered with computers, set fires, and even dropped sleeping pills in their supervisors' coffee.

Threatened status. If an employee's status as a successful worker and family provider is threatened, as in a recession or a salary freeze, he or she may resort to theft or fraud to maintain his or her income and lifestyle. Corporate cultures sometimes enforce fraudulent behaviour by emphasizing ‘winning’ and reaching unrealistic quotas and inventory figures over maintaining ethical behaviour.

The self-effacing egotist. That generous employee who always helps co-workers, raises money for charities, and so on is probably on the level. But some go too far, using company funds to help those they see as needy. One New York City plant manager felt such paternal responsibility for his immigrant factory workers, he padded the payroll and used unclaimed paychecks to help ‘his people.’ The company didn't appreciate his generosity and gave him the boot. Self-effacing egotists often go to great lengths to cover crimes, sure they're motivated by ‘higher causes.’

Love and sex. When employees have extramarital affairs, they usually need more money to finance their new flames. By breaking the taboo of cheating on a spouse, an employee may feel more willing to break other taboos. Affairs are especially dangerous when both lovers share an employer – one may act as the other's accomplice in theft, industrial espionage, or falsifying records. Security experts report that many criminal investigations expose these unhealthy relationships, often leading to disgrace, divorce, and sometimes suicide.

An equally dangerous spur to theft and fraud is an atmosphere of ‘acceptable deception’. If company policies are so complex and unwieldy that they prohibit people from doing their jobs if followed to the letter, they add to the feeling that ‘It's okay to bend the rules – just don't get caught’. If top management and supervisors wink at infractions of unreasonable regulations, the message is sent down the organizational chart that no one need be too concerned with playing by the rules. ‘People are basically honest when they come to work for you – all too often the workplace becomes the school for dishonesty’, according to Jaspan. He sees dishonesty in a company as a ‘barometer of the quality and integrity of supervision’, and credits lax attitudes and controls by management with encouraging dishonesty. In fact, he reports, supervisors and executives are the most dangerous class of employees: ‘Of the more than $100 million in business dishonesty uncovered by our firm last year, these trusted employees accounted for more than 60 per cent’. Other major causes of losses are kickbacks, conflicts of interest, falsification of labour vouchers, improper disposal of scrap, and damaged materials. (1)

We begin by outlining the subject area of the text, identifying its main points and overall aim. The article ‘Why People Steal’ deals with a very peculiar kind of crime – theft and fraud committed by white-collar criminals. In the dictionaries of Contemporary English we come across the following definition of ‘white-collar crime’: ‘crimes involving white-collar workers, for example when someone secretly steals money from the organization they work for’ [LDCE]. (2)

The idiom ‘white-collar criminal’ has a curious application. It refers more to the way the crime is committed and financial impact than to the job or social class of the criminal. White-collar crimes do not involve violence, they are committed by deceit or concealment and result in much greater amounts of money than any of the traditional crimes, such as, for instance, bank robbery. White-collar criminals are a rather miscellaneous set of people who, according to statistics, may come from middle-and upper-middle class backgrounds, have college or university educations, or may be professionals or clerks.

Now that we have got an idea of the topic under discussion, let us try to subject the text to the lexical-stylistic analysis, our ultimate aim being the fullest possible understanding of the given text. It must be important to mention that although the communicative function of the text drawn from a rather serious journal article may be said to take priority over the emphatic one, both the semantic and metasemiotic aspects of the analysis cannot be disregarded or dealt with in a superficial manner.

The first thing that immediately strikes the eye is the formal character of the language, which is undoubtedly determined by the subject area and topic of the article in question. Let us, then, scrutinise the text and write out those words and phrases which may be supposed to add to the formal colouring of the text. In the right-hand column let us adduce their less formal equivalents. It should be noted that in the majority of cases the selected words are not marked ‘formal’ in the dictionary. However, by comparing the given word with a variety of its contextual synonyms and examining the minutest peculiarities of its usage, its register-bound character and the context in which it occurs in the text we arrive at a certain conclusion about the degree of formality of the word in question. Here come some examples from the text arranged in a table:

Words and Phrases from the Text

Contextual Synonyms or Descriptive Phrases

motivations (n)

an urge (n)

commit (acts) (v)

acts (n)

blatant (adj)

unbearable (adj)

spite (n)

(feel) frustrated (adj)

disgruntled (adj)

adequate (adj)

malcontents (n) – (formal)

seek revenge (phr)

status (n)

resort to (theft) (phr. v.)

to maintain (v)

enforce fraudulent behavior (w. c.)

maintaining ethical behavior (w. c.)

raises (money) (v)

coworkers (n)

appreciate (v)

spouse (v)

feel (more) willing (phr)

expose (n) – (formal)

acceptable (deception) (adj)

(company) policies (n)

unwieldy (adj)

add to (the feeling) (phr. v.)

infractions (n) – (formal)

regulation (n)

integrity (n)

supervision (n)

credits (attitudes…) with (phr. v.)

lax (adj)

reason, cause

impulse, desire, wish

do, perform

deed, action

bad and easy to notice

unpleasant, painful

grudge, anger

upset, annoyed

annoyed, disappointed

enough; necessary

the dissatisfied

try/want to take/get revenge (on), try/want to punish

position; condition

use; turn to

support; keep

make people do or get sth by fraud

support honest/moral behavior

collect

people working together

like; understand

husband or wife

feel like, wish, want

show, reveal, uncover

socially good enough

principle; directions

too complicated; difficult to control

make sth more noticeable; make sth stronger

violation

official rule, order

honesty

control

ascribe; put sth down to

not strict; careless

As one can see from the table, there are only three words in fact, such as ‘malcontents’, ‘spouse’ and ‘infractions’ that are marked ‘formal’ in the dictionary. Nevertheless, we can argue that other words in the left-hand column are of more formal character than their right-hand column counterparts, they more often occur in business-related contexts and scientific literature and are largely responsible for the general formal, business-like character of the article under analysis.

It may also be pointed out that the overall formal character of the text manifests itself not only in the choice of words and their usage but also in grammar, particularly in the use of the category of modality. The author evidently tries to avoid very categorical statements; hence an extensive use of modal verbs with infinitives: ‘may commit’ (possibility), ‘may be in deep trouble’ (possibility), ‘will commit’ (assurance), ‘may have been passed over or denied’ (possibility), ‘may resort to’ (possibility) etc. We also come across an interesting example in the sentence ‘…no one need be too concerned with playing by the rules’. A case in point is the use in a negative context of a semi-defective verb ‘need’ in its affirmative modal form which mainly occurs in a formal style. It follows, that such lavish use of modal expression in the text provides us with more evidence to prove the predominance of formal element in the given text.

Another layer of the vocabulary of the text under analysis which attracts our attention and presents a certain difficulty for understanding, comprises terms and terminological word combinations. Words belonging to this layer denote various concepts which refer either to some particular domain of human experience or to the conceptual foundation of the world of business at large shared by almost all areas of business.

In spite of the fact that the given text is obviously concerned with law problems, the number of terms directly connected with this sphere of human activity is rather negligible and may be confined to the following words: theft, fraud, accomplice, fraudulent behaviour, security experts. Though these words can be easily identified as belonging to a particular area, it is quite clear that they have lost much of their specific character through extensive use especially in the language of newspapers and journals.

What really presents the greatest and most obvious difficulty is a number of words and terms drawn from General Business English vocabulary. They are as follows: a recession, a salary freeze, quotas, inventory figures, the payroll, corporate, industrial espionage, the organizational chart, labour vouchers, kickbacks, scrap. These words come from different business areas, such as accounting, commerce, economics, management, industry. An average learner of English can hardly be expected to have an idea of what at least some of them mean judging by the context in which they occur and relying on his own everyday experience.

Let us by way of illustrating the point dwell at some length upon those of the above mentioned lexical items which require most effort on the part of a learner. In the sentence: ‘Corporate cultures sometimes enforce fraudulent behaviour…’ we come across a word combination ‘corporate cultures’. In the Oxford Dictionary of Business English for Learners of English (3) we find that ‘corporate’ (adj) comes from the sphere of management and has a meaning of ‘relating to a company or group’; hence we may say: a corporate decision, plan, structure, policy etc. It is also possible to make use of such idioms as ‘corporate identity’, meaning ‘the qualities of a company that distinguish it from others...’; ‘corporate image’ which implies ‘the impression that a company tries to present to the public through advertising and publicity’; ‘corporate sector’ that denotes in economics ‘the part of a country's economy that is made up of public and privately owned companies, as opposed to government authorities’.

Now that we have learned what ‘corporate’ means in a variety of contexts, let us consider its use in combination with ‘culture’. From the text of the article it becomes clear that the meaning of ‘culture’ here is reduced to attitudes and beliefs shared by a particular group of people or organization, in our case a company or a firm. It follows, that by ‘corporate culture’ the author of the article means a system of common attitudes and values of those who work for a particular company, a certain social atmosphere maintained by top management and supervisors which encourages employees to achieve unrealistic goals at all costs and often makes them resort to fraudulent behaviour.

Another example which may also cause a learner of English some difficulty is the word combination ‘pad the payroll’ in the sentence about a New York City plant manager who, in his desire to help his immigrant factory workers, went as far as to ‘pad the payroll’ and finally was dismissed from his job. According to the ODBELE the term ‘payroll’ pertaining to the sphere of commerce, is used in the following meaning: ‘the total amount of money paid to the employees of a company’.

It is much more difficult, however, to explain the meaning of ‘pad’. As is well known, ‘pad’ as a verb is commonly used to denote either soft and quiet walking or filling or covering something with soft material in order to protect or shape it or increase its size (a padded envelope, a jacket with padded shoulders etc.).American English, however, adds a metaphorical extension to the meaning of the word, playing upon the idea of giving something a particular shape, increasing its size by adding some unnecessary material. Thus, in American English to ‘pad’ is ‘to dishonestly make bills more expensive than they really are’ [LDCE]. In our case, ‘he padded the payroll’ may be interpreted as follows: a New York City plant manager, an altruist by nature and the finest example of a ‘self-effacing egotist’ attempted to dishonestly increase the total amount of money paid to the employees of his company for a certain period of time by some intricate means (perhaps, by falsifying documents, figures, records etc.) and channelled the surplus in the unclaimed paychecks into charities to help his immigrant workers.

Some other interesting examples of the use of the words belonging to General Business English vocabulary occur in the last sentence of the article in question which describes the major causes of losses due to white-collar crimes: ‘...kickbacks, conflicts of interest, falsification of labour vouchers, improper disposal of scrap and damaged materials’. As far as ‘vouchers’ and ‘scrap’ are concerned a learner of English would hardly have any difficulty in finding out what these words mean even with only a dictionary of Contemporary English available. The word ‘kickback’, however, may be discussed in greater detail. The word has a transparent semantic structure, one of its uses being the situations when workers are forced to ‘kick back’ some of their wages to their employers. Interestingly enough, ‘kickback’ is marked either ‘informal’ or ‘slang’ in the dictionaries of Contemporary English, a neutral word being ‘bribe’. In the given formal context we are more inclined to treat it in its terminological sense as ‘money paid to someone (often illegally) to obtain a favour or to persuade them to join in a business activity’. [ODBELE]

In describing the first two layers of the vocabulary of the article in question we have persistently emphasized the formal character of its language. The overall picture, however, appears to be more complicated and intricate for we should be well aware of the peculiarities of the functional style or register to which the given text belongs. Being a fragment drawn from a journal article, the text though predominantly formal in style, admits of a certain number of colloquial words and phrases. These lexical units immediately strike the eye, relieve the monotony of the description, add emotional impact to the text, help the author to establish and maintain contact with his readers throughout the article.

In the text under discussion we come across a few informal idioms, such as: ‘on the sly’/inf. ‘ secretly, esp. when you are doing sth that you should not do’ [LDCE]/; ‘be on the level’/ inf. ‘to be honest’ [LDCE]/; ‘give smb the boot’/ inf. ‘to dismiss someone from their job’ [LDCE]/.

It should be noted, that the colloquial element in the text is not confined to phraseological units, we are also confronted with a number of phrasal verbs some of which undoubtedly contribute to the overall impact of the colloquial layer of the vocabulary of the article. The phrasal verbs which add to the colloquial colouring of the text occur in the following contexts and reveal the following meanings according to LDCE:

to break out (of an unbearable situation) – ‘to change the way you live or behave, esp. because you feel bored’;

to pass over (for promotion) – ‘if you pass someone over for a job, you choose someone else who is younger or lower in the organization than them’;

to call in (bomb threats) – ‘to telephone somewhere, esp. the place where you work,

to tell them where you are, what you are doing etc’;

to go to great lengths (to cover crimes) – ‘to take a lot of trouble to do sth.’

Thus, we can see that the text under consideration is characterised by a curious blend of formal and colloquial elements. This does not seem surprising for the functional style of a journal article itself makes the boundaries between styles less discernible for a variety of reasons. However, let us reiterate that the formal character and impact undoubtedly predominate and may be accounted for by the subject area, the topic and the overall aim of the article as well as by the seriousness of the tone set from the very start in a publication of this kind.

To conclude, out of a great variety of approaches to text study we have chosen the lexical-stylistic analysis as the most appropriate one for the selected text. The main aim of the analysis is to show how a foreign learner of English can gradually arrive at a more or less complete understanding of the text in question, what methods and procedures may help him to overcome step by step obstacles on his way to understand the author’s message and to appreciate the emotional-aesthetic impact of the text.

The lexical-stylistic analysis is aimed at revealing to the best advantage the peculiarities of a wide range of linguistic units functioning in the text, drawn from a serious journal article, it gives us an idea of the interaction of elements belonging to different functional styles and the general impact thus attained. It is important to point out that learners of English setting out to conduct the lexical-stylistic analysis of the given text are supposed not only to have a fairly good command of English but also possess a certain amount of background knowledge directly concerned with language functioning, linguistics as a science and the conceptual foundation of the world of business. Dictionaries are useful and cannot be treated carelessly but they are not always helpful and reliable, the only practical solution being to turn to as many dictionaries as possible.

Notes:

6. Willis, R., ‘White Collar Crime” Management Review, 1987

7. It may be interesting to note that within British-American tradition a person’s place of work and the kind of job he does are associated with the colour of his/her collar. Thus, white-collar workers from offices and banks are clearly opposed to blue-collar workers who fulfil hard and often dirty work with their hands, while pink-collar, especially in American English, is applied mainly to women working in offices and restaurants.

8. Oxford Dictionary of Business English for Learners of English. Ed. by Allene Tuck, Oxford University Press, 1994

Is it time to revise my literary views?

by Irina GUBBENETT

Material

Today’s students are asked to "empathise" with characters, but their judgments can be very harsh

By William Rees-Mogg

From: THE TIMES Monday February 13 1995.

Generations pass, but Eng. Lit. Exams go on forever. When I took the old School Certificate in 1943, we had to cover two texts, one a Shakespeare play (that year it was Romeo and Juliet) and the other one of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. This year, our youngest daughter, Annunziata, is taking her GCSE (O levels have come and gone in the meantime). She will be examined on three set texts – Shakespeare’s Othello, Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood.

The system remains substantially the same as it was 50 years ago, except that Chaucer has dropped out, and a 20^th-century author has been added. It may be none the better for that. Even in 1943, the examination system seemed a distraction from actually reading English Literature, or even a discouragement. Normally one reads for enjoyment, or to widen the understanding. Shakespeare analysed in the classrom is not likely to be particularly enjoyable; even now I lack the ability to visualise, witch would make reading a play a little more like seeing it performed.

Annunziata has enjoyed reading Northanger Abbey and has been introduced to Jane Austen, which could be a lifelong benefit. She has been to see Othello, perhaps not brilliantly perfomed, and did not greatly enjoy it; she enjoys the play still less on the page. She also has a problem with Under Milk Wood. She does not think it is very good, and rather resents having to give close attention to a text which she finds boring, sentimental and superficial.

I tend to agree with this view of Dylan Thomas, who seems to be one of those minor poets with an interesting life, a good ear but not too much to say; they belong more to the history of taste than to literature. Thomas Chatterton was a similar figure. An intelligent schoolgirl could reasonably find Under Milk Wood an irritating object of study, particularly at the stage.

It is her objection to Othello which is more disconcerting. Her difficulty is that she finds it impossible to sympathise deeply with any of the characters, with the possible exception of Emilia; even Emilia she considers to have been pretty thick not to have seen what her husband, Iago, was really like. Desdemona she regards as a vapid, wet young woman who is invented solely for the purpose of being murdered; Iago is obviously extremely unpleasant; Cassio is another lay figure, and one who has extremely bad luck; the Moor himself she sees as a very stupid man, if mildly interesting as an example of trans-ethnic jealousy, a sort of O.J. Othello. But with none of these characters can she establish any personal sympathy, and she does not therefore greatly mind what happens to them; she does not cry when Desdemona is killed, any more than she would if a dummy in a fashion shop had her head removed in order to be fitted with a new costume.

I’m so accustomed to the idea that Othello is one of the greatest of tragedies, that I was quite startled by this critique. Two questions seemed to arise from it. The first is whether one does ever really sympathise with Shakespeare’s character; the second is whether such sympathy is a necessary part of the appreciation of literature.

The answer to the first question is disturbing. The major characters in the tragedies are not very sympathetic, though some of the minor characters are. Just as Emilia is the most sympathetic character in Othello, so is Horatio in Hamlet, the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet and perhaps Banquo in Macbeth. Hamlet himself is a very real person, but not a likeable one, the personification of the irritating traits of indecision, self-absorption and intellectual conceit. We have all met far too many Hamlets in our lives. One’s heart does not warm to the major characters in the history plays either. Most of the kings were disagreeable: John was a murderous scoundrel, Richard II a sort of Hamlet in the making, and even more self-pitying; Henry V a young military hero of a relatively superficial kind; Richard III was unspeakable. They are very interesting as character studies but they are not at all sympathetic as people. Nor would one choose Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Brutus or Coriolanus as close personal friends.

It is in the comedies, if anywhere, that one finds sympathetic Shakespearean characters, though there are not all that many of them even there. One can just about sympathise with Falstaff, but he has to be on his deathbed for the sympathy to have any real warmth to it. To my taste, Much Ado About Nothing is the most sympathetic of Shakespeare’s plays: if sympathy is the test then Beatrice and Benedick are the most touching of Shakespeare’s couples. Like Annunziata on Othello, I have never cared much personally for Romeo or Juliet. Romeo was a dangerous young hooligan and Juliet a star-struck girl. Yet it is a most moving drama.

No doubt GCSE is calculated to bring out whatever is most negative about the authors who are studied. Perhaps some other authors did fall in love with their characters in a way that Shakespeare did not; in Shakespeare there is so great an understanding that it almost inhibits personal sentiment. Henry Fielding loved Tom Jones. Correspondingly, we sympathise with Tom Jones, as we do with Anthony Trollope’s Septimus Harding. I do not feel much sympathy for any of Dickens’s characters which is why I seldom read him.

The idea that this sort of sympathy is essential to the appreciation of literature may itself be a modern one. Empathy is a common word in modern teaching theory – Annunziata herself was recently set an essay on the Night of the Long Knives, to be written from Adolf Hitler’s point of view. “Wow am I glad that’s all over and Roehm is dead! We gave him the good old bullet in the head. Rat-a-tat-tat. My buddy Herman Goering did a grand job. You knew he had stiffed plenty of guys before; he did it in real style.” I was not sure that it was wise to invite 15-years-old girls to enter into the mind of the most evil tyrant of the 20^th century, but it does not seem to have done her any harm. In my day no one ever asked me to imagine what it would have been like to be the Emperor Caligula or even Robespierre. “Gee, I get a kick out of sending aristos to the guillotine.”

The concept of sympathy as the criterion of literature must come from the broad shift from the objective to the subjective which is part of the culture of the 20^th century. My father was at Charterhouse 40 years before me. The English Literature paper he may have taken in 1906, when he was 16, is in front of me. “Question One: Give the context and author of 14 of the following extracts. Question Two: Write out one of the poems whose opening lines are given below. Question Three: Point out and illustrate from other poems of the same authors the literary characteristics and moods of thought contained in the following passages. Question Four: Give some account of the following poems: Kubla Khan, Ruth, Ode to the West Wind, Yarrow Revisited, To a Skylark, Elegy on Thirza, The Maid of Neidpath, Lucy Gray. Question Five: Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the best and happiest minds. Discuss this statement.

Eng. Lit is not like that nowadays. Anyway, who was the Maid of Neidpath?

William Rees-Mogg is one of the prominent figures in the world of British journalism who in the course of his long life (b. 1928) made his way up from a Financial Times correspondent to a director of Times Newspapers Ltd, occupying a number of leading posts in the field of education and culture. Therefore his opinion on reading and understanding literature could hardly leave any philologist indifferent. This is one of the main reasons why this article is being offered for the students’ consideration. The other reason is that the language of the text is a very good example of modern literary English which makes it an eminently suitable material for a vocabulary analysis and a fitting example for imitation.

The work on the text should begin with careful reading, translation and understanding its context. It is natural that in the process of reading certain points made by the author can not fail to attract the attention of the reader. Some of them are undoubtedly arguable and are likely to give rise to a discussion where the students might feel like putting forward their own opinions, contesting or supporting the author’s views or commenting in any way on his assessments and evaluations. Among such points one could single out the following statements:

1. ‘Even in 1943 the examination system seemed a distraction from actually reading English literature or even a discouragement’.

2. ‘Normally one reads for enjoyment or to widen the understanding’.

3. ‘Shakespeare analysed in the classroom is not likely to be particularly enjoyable’.

4. ‘Two questions seemed to arise from it. The first whether one does really sympathise with Shakespeare’s character; the second is whether such sympathy is a necessary part of the appreciation of literature’.
It would also be of a considerable interest to include into the discussion and question the validity of the subsequent character studies of Shakesperean characters, e.g. Hamlet as an embodiment of 'indecision, self-absorbtion and intellectual conceit’.

5. ‘GCSE is calculated to bring out whatever is most negative about the authors who are studied’.

6. ‘In Shakespeare there is so great an understanding that it almost inhibits personal sentiment’.

7. ‘The concept of sympathy as the criterion of literature’.

8. ‘The broad shift from the objective to the subjective is part of the culture of the 20^th century’.

9. Is it wise to invite 15-year old girls to enter into the mind of the most evil tyrant of the 20^th century’? How far one’s identification with a historical character can help one understand history?

10. ‘Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the best and happiest minds’. Who do these words belong to?

Vocabulary analysis is at this stage aimed at increasing and enriching the students’ vocabulary not so much by adding new words to it as by expanding the sphere of application of those that have already been part of it for some time. This can be done in a variety of ways each of which should strike a new note, introduce a fresh approach to the study of a word.

With this end in view the work on the vocabulary analysis of the article should be based not on a traditional system of the exercises like filling in the blanks with suitable words or finding synonyms for the chosen words or on any similar lines. Each word should be hand-picked, carefully selected, studied in depth, played with until the student is able to use it easily, unhesitatingly, with confidence and assurance in a number of genuine lifelike contexts.

This process presupposes, naturally, an extensive use of the dictionary. In some cases it proves to be largely the matter of learning more about different types of situations in which the word regularly occurs. A preliminary examination shows that the two best-known word-combinations with a word like ‘attention’, for example, are usually ‘to pay one’s attention to smb/smth’ or draw one’s attention to smb/smth’. The students are mostly unaware of a large number of other contexts where this word may be used. They may even be unprepared to use it with any attributes like ‘give little/not much attention’, to say nothing of ‘full or undivided attention’.

A comparative study of the corresponding entries in the two popular dictionaries (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English and Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary) shows that the number of such contexts is very large indeed: to catch /attract/ get smb’s attention, hold/keep smb’s attention, come to smb’s attention, need attention, etc. There are a number of phrases that could be added to this list, like ‘may/could I have your attention?’ and’ Thank you for your attention’.

It is most important that all these uses should be illustrated with examples. It is very often the case that the students are ready to mention some of these constructions but when it comes to using them in sentences, they produce clumsy cumbersome concatenations having very little to do with good idiomatic English.

Another example of the same kind could be the word ‘exam/examinations’. Again, like in the previous case, our use of the words is confined to two situations: ‘fail/pass one’s exams’, while an ‘oral exam, an entrance exam, to take/sit an exam in, exam results’ remain beyond the scope of the learner’s attention.

The difference between the two above-mentioned cases is that when dealing with the word ‘attention’ we can concentrate on one meaning, putting the others on one side, at least, temporarily. But when we are discussing the use of the word ‘exam’, we are bound to take into account other meanings of the word ‘examination’ and of the corresponding verb. Apart from ‘a spoken or written test of knowledge’ it could be used to mean the process of looking at smth carefully in order to see what it is like or to learn smth about or from it. So at least two more word-combinations can be added to the list: 'be under examination' and 'on closer/further examination' with special attention to ‘medical examination’ and ‘cross-examination’.

Quite a few other words from the article could be subjected to the same treatment: mind, fit, taste, enjoy, luck, question, answer, doubt, day, etc.

The words, denoting parts of human body could also be referred to this group: ‘a poet with a good ear , ‘one’s heart does not warm to the major characters’.

These words could be profitably discussed and practised within the idioms of which they form part: be all ears, keep one’s ears open, shut one’s ears to, prick one’s ears, play it by ear, etc or by heart, close/dear to one’s heart, do one’s heart good, etc.

Playing with words like these usually provides an excellent training ground. The only trouble is that although these phrases are very well explained in dictionaries, they are not always supplied with much-needed examples. This may often result in the wrong and ambiguous use of the idioms. Besides, being quickly picked up, they are just as easily forgotten. So the importance of practising them regularly should be brought home to the learners with the utmost clarity.

Another group of words stand out in the text. They are mostly the words that can be classed under the heading ‘false friends of a translator’ or, to say the least, the words that may produce all kinds of wrong associations and eventually lead up to their misuse.

Among them there are words like sympathy, character, real, intellectual, intelligent and some others. They deserve special attention and a comparative study of their use in English and that of similar-sounding words in Russian is called for.

The definitions and examples borrowed from the dictionaries bring out the differences very clearly:

Симпатия. Влечение, внутреннее расположение к кому-либо, чему-либо.

Мн. ч. симпатии. Теплые, нежные чувства, привязанность.

Симпатичный (о человеке). Вызывающий симпатию, располагающий к себе, милый, приятный.

Sympathy (for / towards smb) the ability to share in the feelings of others; a feeling of pity and sorrow for smb: feel great sympathy for smb: She showed no sympathy when I told her I was in trouble. He deserves sympathy for the way he has been treated.

Sympathies pl. Shared emotions or opinions, or the expression of these: you have my deepest sympathies on the death of your wife. My sympathies are/lie with the workers in this dispute. Some members of the party are thought to have fascist sympathies.

Sympathetic (to /towards / with smb) feeling, showing or resulting from sympathy: sympathetic towards smb who is suffering. Easy to like, pleasant.

In fact, only in this last example we come across an instance of coincidence. But considering the definition that we find in Longman: sympathetic figure / character literary someone in a book, play, etc who the author intends you to like, even this instance sounds too complicatedly coincidental for the sensitive reader’s peace of mind.

An analogous situation in taking place when we are dealing with words like intellectual or intelligent, each of which presents a problem for the learner, although for different reasons. The former because of the connotations it has developed, the latter because of being easily confused with a similar-sounding Russian word. Basically they can be said to mean ‘having or showing intelligence’. Theoretically speaking, anybody who has an intellect is an intellectual. But the word has come to mean a person with excellent mental abilities, enjoying activities that further develop the mind. Longman puts it as intelligent well-educated person, who spends a lot of their time thinking about complicated ideas and discussing them. (This is where it can be confused with ‘intelligent’). Nowadays we can observe its further development into a representative of the professional elite, not infrequently assuming powers (with or without sufficient justification) of judgement in matters of public concern.

‘Real’ tends to be used in the situations where the meaning could be more adequately rendered by ‘actual’ or ‘true’.

This naturally brings us to the study of synonyms. We may start by looking at the synonyms in the text and explaining their meaning and use. This, for example, we have two synonyms in ‘Beatrice and Benedick are the most touching of Shakespeare's couples’ and ‘Yet it is a most moving drama’. The dictionaries do not help much in this case because Oxford Advanced Learner's dictionary defines them almost identically as ‘a touching’ – causing feelings of pity or sympathy: a touching sight/story/scene; ‘moving’ – causing one to have deep feelings, esp. of sadness and sympathy: a moving story/tribute. It appears that the only difference between them is the degree of intensity of feelings, while in actual fact ‘touching’ means more ‘arousing tender feelings’ while ‘moving’ means ‘pathetic’.

In this connection the following observation should be made that might help make the study of synonyms easier for the learner. Probably synonyms could be viewed, at least occasionally, not as words with different connotations but as lexical units comprising very much the same semantic components, one or another of them coming to the fore in this or that case. Thus ‘moving’ and ‘touching’ can be both said to contain in their semantic structure pity, tenderness and pathos , but it is tenderness that prevails in ‘touching’ and pathos in ‘moving’.

‘A vapid wet young woman’ is another example of a similar kind. Longman defines ‘vapid’ as ‘lacking intelligence, interest, or imagination’, supplying it with a not very illuminating example: vapid piped music. Hornby in this case proves to be more revealing: vapid – dull or not interesting: the vapid conversation bored her. `Wet` is more clearly defined: (Brit. infml derog) (a) (of a person) without energy, strength, or courage. (b) (of conservative politicians) favouring moderate rather than extreme policies. Longman brings these two meanings together – unable to make decisions or take firm actions: Don't be so wet! Just tell them you don't want to go. Philip Howard in the Times throws some additional light on its origin and use: ‘Wet’ is connected with wet blanket, and I think it started life in the playground, where sensitive and weak children are reduced to tears by their rowdier playmates. The earliest use in the new political connotation that I can find is from 1981.The term was originally used by Mrs Thatcher in the old sense of soppy, feeble, liable to take the easy option.

Another group of synonyms in the text that could be considered an example of synonymic condensation is in ‘a text which she finds boring, sentimental and superficial’. Though seemingly quite different from one another, the three adjectives undoubtedly have something in common, which is brought into prominence by the use of the adjective ‘superficial’. Beginning at one end of the scale with a term of general evaluation ‘boring’ – not interesting, dull, the author goes on to specify his view with ‘sentimental’ – dealing with emotions such as love and sadness in a way that seems silly and insincere – and clinches it with ‘superficial’ where practically all the meanings of it are involved: looked at more carefully; not thorough, deep or complete; having no depth of understanding or feeling.

Another pair of words that may be discussed in the same way is ‘unspeakable’ and ‘disagreeable’, the former being outwardly much stronger in its intensity. But ‘disagreeable’, being milder and less intense, is nevertheless a very interesting word as it tends to be one of those adjectives that often appear as part of an understatement. Thus being used by a representative of a certain age group, social class etc it could be in effect much more intense than ‘unspeakable’.

Synonyms can also be profitably discussed not only when they are used in the text like ‘consider-regard’ etc but when they do not all appear in it. In this way, for example, we can discuss the meaning and use of the adjective ‘disconcerting’. Longman defines it as making you feel slightly confused or worried . It is a curious fact that the number of words in English denoting a confused state of mind in quite considerable.

The use of ‘disconcert’ may give rise to a discussion of some of them, particularly those rather widely used like confuse, muddle, puzzle, perplex, embarrass, etc. Here again we can speak of a prevailing semantic component among the others that make up the semantic structure of a word. Thus if we accept confuse as the general word, meaning inability to think clearly, then disconcert adds to it an element of anxiety, embarrass – an clement of self-consciousness, perplex – doubt about how to decide to act, puzzle – a problem having too many parts or sides or being too involved etc.

There are also a number of words in the text that usually appear to be fairly easy to the learners because their basic meanings are associated primarily with concrete things, for example, ‘thick’. However when it comes to using them, their metaphoric meanings seem to come to one’s mind more readily than the direct ones where t he speaker begins to feel assaulted with doubts just because of the simplicity and ease with which he uses its equivalents in his mother tongue. Thus having mastered the use of ‘thick’ in ‘even Emilia she considers to be pretty thick not to have seen what her husband was really like’, the learner is less likely to forget it than ‘thick slice of bread, thick coat, thick line, thick crowd’, etc. In cases like this it is advisable to look closely not only at the above – mentioned word – combinations but also at their antonyms, for example, the adjective ‘thin’. The same approach works successfully for such pairs as ‘large – small’, ‘high – low’, ‘strong – weak’ etc. If might be also worth while to mention in this connection those words that have a tendency to be used in pairs like ‘high – low’ to look/ search high and low, ‘thick and thin’ – to go through thick and thin etc.

Special attention should be given to the verbs whose meanings change depending on the preposition they can be used with, e.g. care for – like, care about – be concerned about. Like in the case of synonyms other examples could be given to illustrate this phenomenon: be concerned with – have to do with or have as one’s concern or business: we are not concerned with this matter; be concerned about – be worried: I am concerned about my daughter’s health, be concerned in – be involved: quite a few people are concerned in this affair.

There are also a member of words in the text that should be closely studied and carefully explained in view of their psychological implications or their terminological nature, e.g. empathy, to resent, to inhibit. It we look at the verb ‘to resent’, again the definition given in Hornby is not very illuminating: to feel bitter or angry about smth insulting, offensive, etc: I bitterly resent your criticism, does she resent my/ me being here? Longman this time gives a clearer picture: to feel angry or upset about a situation or about smth that smb has done, especially because you think it is not fair: He resents having to get my permission first.

Phrasal verbs, although they do not actually abound in the text, could also be touched upon. Proceeding from the example ‘no doubt GCSE is calculated to bring out whatever is most negative about the authors who are studied’, the students may be encouraged to discuss other uses of the same phrasal verb or to think of other phrasal verbs with ‘bring’ and give examples with them or do a translation from Russian into English using these verbs. ‘Go on’ and ‘drop-out’ could be discussed in the same way. Some variety could be introduced into this work by asking the students to form nouns of the same component parts as phrasal verbs and explain their meanings and use, e.g. to drop-out – to leave school, university, etc without finishing one’s courses; to withdraw from conventional society. A drop-out – a person who withdraws from conventional society or from course of education.

A special note should be made of some of the words that are not usually given enough attention in the process of vocabulary analysis, for example, one: 'Othello’ is one of the greatest tragedies', ‘Nor would one choose Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony or Cornelius as close personal friends’; ‘Cassio is another lay figure, and one who has extremely bad luck’ etc. Questions may be asked concerning these ‘ones’ and more examples could be given to practise them.

In conclusion a few words may be said about the author’s manner of writing. What makes this article a lively and entertaining piece of writing in spite of the serious subject matter? In this text we can distinctly hear several voices: the author himself, his daughter and her contemporaries, their views presented in the author’s interpretation and also the prospective reader whose opinion is brought in directly or who is appealed to offer his own judgement or evaluation: ‘We all met far too many Hamlets in our lives’ or ‘It is in comedies that one finds sympathetic Shakespearean characters’, or ‘Whether one does really sympathize with Shakespearean's character’. Examples of conversational , highly colloquial English and slang, reference to the events of the day (O.J. Othello) contribute to the effect of liveliness and spontaneity: to get a kick out of smth, to stiff, gee, vow etc.

Vocabulary analysis of the text may be accompanied by exercises specially devised to practise some of the above mentioned words and word-combinations. Translation should be used extensively as a final criterion of understanding.

This list of points made in connection with the text the study of which can contribute in the final account to the enlargement and enrichment of the students’ vocabulary does not by any means include all the opportunities the text presents and does not claim to be anything in the nature of carefully laid out instructions. The utmost one could hope to achieve by perusing is a few guidelines with a view to expanding and transforming them to suit one’s particular purpose.

History of English MC

Sketches of the English Literary History
(from Bede to Tyndale)

by Andrej A. LIPGART

The present work is considerably different from other articles published in this collection of papers, for in it one finds no examples of a certain type of philological analysis. On the contrary, this work is of a definitely socio-cultural order, and it is placed here side by side with other teaching materials simply because the encyclopaedic information contained in it is something students of philology need as badly as any learner-oriented linguistic descriptions of the phonetic, timbrological or stylistic analysis.

The present paper is meant for those who are one way or another involved in studying the history of the English language and literature and who feel that their knowledge of the subject is so far insufficient. Here an attempt is made to give the reader an idea of the names, events and tendencies which are most important for understanding the dynamic of English literary history up to the first part of the sixteenth century; hence this paper may be used as an additional material to the course of lectures on the subject.

Though the work abounds in value judgments and in no way resembles a dispassionate narration, its author's accuracy in rendering the very historical facts may be easily checked by turning to the books the author of the "Sketches..." himself used when writing this paper:

9. Chambers, R.W. Man's Unconquerable Mind. London, 1952. Daniell, D. An Introduction to Tyndale's New Testament//

10. Tyndale's New Testament. New Raven – London, 1989.

11. Dickens, Ch. A Child's History of England. London,

12. The Oxford Companion to English Literature / Ed. by

13. P.Harvey. 4th edn. Oxford, 1967.

14. The Pelican Guide to English Literature / Ed. by Boris Ford. Vol.1-7. Penguin Books, 1969.

15. Priestley, J.B. Literature and Western Man. London, 1962. Robinson, F.N. The Life of Chaucer // The Works of

16. Geoffrey Chaucer. Boston, 1957.

17. Trevelyan, G.M. History of England. Longman, 1973.

* * *

The Anglo-Saxons

The ancestors of those who inhabit England now were strong belligerent people with no particular craving for knowledge. There were things in life which they could do and did do well, for otherwise they would not have survived in those truly dark and hard times. But learning as something not immediately relevant to the material sustenance of life was basically outside the scope of their interests. Like all other folks they had a language, and they used it not only for communication but also for producing their warrior songs and legends. It follows that one would not be justified in saying that the aesthetic side of the language was completely unknown and alien to them. But still these were just the nonessential and not very sophisticated extras to their otherwise crude existence.

Apart from being warriors the Anglo-Saxons had also been Christians. England was baptized at a surprisingly early time – approximately in the fifth century. It was not one undivided country then; it consisted of several kingdoms which were often at war with each other. But in spite of this disunion the Christian religion (not without resistance at first) was gradually accepted by people all over the country, and this certainly influenced the life and culture of England.

The Anglo-Saxon Language

In the beginning, however, this influence was not really great. All religious ceremonies were conducted in Latin, and most English people had no idea of this language and consequently of what the whole thing was about. In this respect they were not much different from modern believers who often do not go deeply into what is being preached to them and accept everything unquestioningly. But modern people at any rate can understand what is said in the church if they want to, while with the Englishmen of the seventh century it was out of the question.

The language those people spoke is called Anglo-Saxon. It was not sufficiently developed, and it could be used almost exclusively in the elementary everyday intercourse. In religious texts as well as in legal documents, pieces of didactic literature and so on the only language used was Latin. This practice was so firmly established that for a very long while it never occurred to the few learned people who still could be found in England that all this might just as well be said in Anglo-Saxon. On the contrary, they were absolutely sure that their native language could not be used for more elevated and noble purposes. They knew their Latin and were satisfied with it.

Old English Scholars

We should not treat English scholars of that period slightingly and disparagingly, as a mere group of funny provincials. Some of them were people of very considerable abilities and learning – for instance, Bede the Venerable (673-735), the author of the 'Church History of England' and some treatises devoted to natural sciences. English monks had every reason to be satisfied with their achievements so long as they encountered among themselves people like Bede the Venerable and so long as the tradition of Latin scholarship was kept up and transmitted from generation to generation.

But scholars of Bede's level are not born every now and then. Keeping up the tradition is also quite a cumbersome task – if you forget about it even for a short while, it might be irretrievably lost. We do not know whether it was anybody's personal fault, or just the result of an objective historical process, but the undeniable fact remains: in the second part of the ninth century learning in England came to a standstill. The amount of people who knew Latin had decreased greatly, while the English language remained in a rather deplorable state.

The Alfredian England

It was then that King Alfred nicknamed the Great (849-901) decided to undertake an enormous work about reviving learning in England. Seeing that his beloved subjects knew neither Latin nor English he decided that it would be much more profitable to encourage the development of their mother tongue rather than to concentrate exclusively on Latin.

At that time England was greatly oppressed by the Danes, and some parts of the country were under Danish jurisdiction. Alfred's own kingdom (Wessex) was not included in the territory of the so-called Dane law, but the invaders made plundering raids on Wessex as well. That is why Alfred and his people were in a state of permanent war with the Danes, and the king had to spend some particularly unfavourable years in disguise.

During those years and later on Alfred had quite a number of things to think about, but nevertheless he found the time and the opportunity to translate some Latin books into English, to found schools and to disseminate knowledge in all imaginable ways. The amount of prose books in English increased considerably, because apart from translating texts King Alfred also wrote some pieces on the history of England which became part of the so-called Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle had originally been a bare record of most memorable events in England since the beginning of the Christian era, and this record enabled the clergy to work out when Easter would fall in a given year. It was compiled by monks working at different centres (notably, Winchester, Canterbury and Peterborough), and it was characterized by the uniformity of style – no attempts were made to produce a detailed description, let alone to impress the reader aesthetically.

In Alfred's time the style of the Chronicle changed drastically, and the dry chronological record was substituted by vivid and detailed accounts of certain events, especially of the wars with the Vikings. Although soon after Alfred's death the authors of the Chronicle returned to the original annalistic style, in the later tenth century the Alfredian traditions were revived and developed still further by combining the straightforward narration with conscious rhetorical art.

We do not know exactly what part of the Chronicle had been Alfred's own work and what part of it had been merely inspired by the King. Some of the present day historians say that Alfred was very much the legendary figure and that we cannot be sure that he had really done everything which is ascribed to him. For lack of historical evidence all attempts to find out what was done by whom in this case are inevitably doomed to failure, but this does not invalidate the general conclusion: due to the collective efforts of King Alfred and his comrades the English language was gradually turning into a literary one, and England became a much more enlightened country than it had been before.

The Decay of Learning After Alfred's Death

There was one mistake which Alfred had made in the course of his otherwise admirable activities. While conducting his edifying work he did not act single-handed – he was assisted by a group of enthusiasts who were very educated people and who supported the king in all his undertakings. As a result many of Alfred's ideas came true, but quite a number of things still remained to be done, and the king as the initiator of the whole enterprise had to see to it that the work would be continued in the future, even after his own death. And this was precisely what he did not do.

He might have vested the responsibility for spreading knowledge in the future English kings, but as learning seldom goes together with power Alfred's successors – the warriors that they were – could not be relied upon in this respect. Making it the duty and the prerogative of Church would be more reasonable: in spite of all reservations one has to make with respect to this institution at that time it was the only public body to provide continuity of Alfred's work. Some profanation was, of course, inevitable, but all the same the Church leaders would not have allowed to bring this enterprise to naught, had they been called upon to supervise it.

However, Alfred paid surprisingly little attention to founding monastic schools and to supporting religious communities as centres of knowledge. As a consequence of it almost immediately after the king's death the country began to return to its former not very bright state, and fifty-odd years had to pass before Alfred's work was continued – by monks of the Benedictine order.

The Benedictine Renaissance

At that time England was ruled by St. Dunstan (924-988) in the name of several boy-kings. Like many other so-called saints, this clever priest was not at all saintly in real life: he knew perfectly well which side his bread was buttered, and did not hesitate to destroy his enemies physically when the opportunity presented itself. But whatever his deficiencies, there are some things to be said in his favour.

Being a crafty politician, he managed to make the Danes an integral part of the nation, and for the time being it saved the country from civil war. The second achievement of St. Dunstan was that he restored and reformed English monasteries. Being a highly educated man, he understood the advantages of learning and did not confine his activities to improving merely the material side of monastic life. He encouraged scholarly work as well, and fortunately for England, soon there appeared people who found themselves equal to the task.

The most noteworthy among them, Aelfric and Wulfstan, were much younger than St. Dunstan. For decades after his death they went on writing and translating religious and scientific books, and they spared no effort in stimulating their disciples to follow their path. Thus, slowly but surely, the cultural revival was taking place, and in the course of it the English language was getting more and more developed.

The Norman Conquest

Didactic prose formed a considerable, but not the only part of the Old English literature. The picture of it would be incomplete if we forget about the Germanic heroic verse with 'Beowulf' as its brightest example, about the Christian devotional poetry and some lyrical texts, about the historical prose and about the unique attempt of an unknown author at writing a novel in the modern understanding of the term ('Apollonius of Tyre').

For an eleventh century literature these achievements are by no means unimpressive. And who knows what the future achievements of the Anglo-Saxons could have been, if in the year 1066 a plague had not come to England. But this plague came, and its name was the Norman Conquest.

Describing the reign of William the Conqueror and his successors some modern historians try to prove that Norman influence was not entirely negative and destructive. After all, by the time of the invasion England had no strong central power, and the Normans established it, saving the country from the disorders of feudalism characteristic of medieval Europe. As for the language, these historians admit that the Normans did not speak English and as a result this language ceased to develop and existed in the form of separate dialects, while the official languages of the state were French and Latin. But even here they manage to find something positive: having returned to its primeval state, the English language got rid of its clumsy inflections and elaborate genders, it enriched the vocabulary by borrowings from French and Latin and finally became more supple and graceful than it had been before.

The English Language Between 1066 and the Age of Chaucer

One cannot help being impressed by the benevolence of people comfortably seated in their armchairs. Giving these cheerful accounts they somehow forget about the price of the political reforms and linguistic transformations in question.

The immediate consequence of the invasion was that for generations to come the Anglo-Saxons were turned into slaves, and their magnificent literature perished. It was only in three centuries that English began to regain its status as a literary language owing to the genius of Chaucer, but his language was so different from Old English that Bede and Aelfric would hardly be able to understand it.

Of course, the three centuries between the Norman Conquest and the age of Chaucer were not spent in complete spiritual torpor as far as language and literature were concerned. Some literary texts – both poetic and prosaic – were created occasionally, but they were written in different regional dialects some of which were mutually incomprehensible and none of which was more important than the others. That is why these spasmodic attempts at continuing the old tradition gave no tangible results: what was done in 1066 for political reasons could be undone only under favourable political circumstances and not in a piecemeal fashion. It is no wonder then that it took England so much time to recover after the Norman shock and to produce a person who began to set things in their right places.

In the course of those three centuries the noblemen of Norman origin were getting increasingly Anglo-Saxon – partly through mixed marriages, partly through associating with the native population. But, however important this fact may be, it did not change the linguistic situation at once, and for a while the English language remained neither here nor there. The drastic change took place when speaking English became a matter of patriotism, and the patriotism of French-speaking people was questioned. It happened in 1337 when the Hundred Years' War with France began.

Geoffrey Chaucer: Some Biographical Notes

Geoffrey Chaucer was born in 1340 in the family of a London vintner. In 1357 he was employed in the service of Lionel, afterwards duke of Clarence. In 1359 he was in the army with which Edward III invaded France, was taken prisoner, but shortly ransomed. After that he held various positions at court and in the king's service: he was sent on a mission to Genoa and Florence where he perhaps met Boccaccio and Petrarch, then he was sent on secret service to Flanders and was attached to embassies to France and Lombardy. Having made a successful career as a diplomat for some years he was clerk of the king's works at various places and as an important official received pensions from Edward III, Richard II and Henry IV. He died in 1400 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

From this brief biographical note one might conclude – but wrongly – that in Chaucer's life there was little time for literary work. But when a person is genuinely interested in something it is not difficult for him to find free time even in the most packed timetable. And Chaucer was exactly this kind of person. He began to write at the age of 19, and he continued to do it with an unremitting enthusiasm until the last days of his life. On his way to perfection he went through periods of French and Italian influence, and it is only with the "Canterbury Tales" that the period of his artistic maturity began.

The Canterbury Tales

To a modern reader the plot of the "Canterbury Tales" would seem surprisingly unoriginal. The text begins with the general prologue from which one learns the following: a party of twenty-nine pilgrims who are about to travel to the shrine of Becket at Canterbury, get together at the Tabard Inn in Southwark. After supper the host proposes that they shall shorten the way by each telling two stories on the way there and two on the way back. The pilgrims agree and the tales follow, preceded each of them by a short prologue in which the story teller – be it the Knight, the Squire, the Yeoman, the Prioress or the Nun – is briefly, and often humorously, described and which serves as a means of bringing the apparently disjointed stories together.

The content of the stories might seem even more surprising. Out of the 23 stories included in the text (Chaucer never fulfilled his original plan of writing more than one hundred stories) very few were created by the author himself. The Clerk's Tale and the Shipman's Tale were borrowed from the 'Decameron', other tales are related to French and Italian texts, and in many cases their plot is so close to that of the original that presently Chaucer's work would be characterized as downright plagiarism, the word-combination 'literary allusion' being too delicate an appellation to be used here. How can this specific situation be accounted for, seeing that the "Canterbury Tales" had been admired not only by common people who could have been not so well versed in European literature generally, but also by the more sophisticated audience who evidently knew the sources of borrowings?

"Canterbury Tales" in Historical Context

To really understand the situation one has to look at it through the eyes of Chaucer's contemporaries. In their opinion originality was not the merit of a literary text; in fact it was not among the requirements such a text had to meet. They did not mind reading or listening to a text the plot of which was familiar to them, provided that it was amusing and told in a lively and agreeable manner. Amusement was not to be drawn exclusively from pieces of buffoonery or descriptions of love affairs: of course these two types of writing delighted the public enormously, but people were ready to appreciate more serious texts as well, no matter that very often the content of such texts was maudlin and dubious, like that of the story about a Christian boy murdered by horrible cruel Jews.

This collection taken as such might seem weird and shapeless, though in medieval times such stories were in wide circulation. But Chaucer was too creative a person to be satisfied with this parrot-like rendering and not to try and find ways of expressing his attitude to what was being told, at least indirectly. In the "Canterbury Tales" the above-mentioned thoroughly anti-Semitic story is produced by the Prioress whose hypocrisy and prudishness are duly emphasized in the Prologues which makes it difficult for the reader to take her words at their face value. Very much the same can be said about other texts, and as a result the tales acquire an additional socio-cultural dimension and turn out to be more complex than it could have appeared at first sight. Those readers who notice it would not fail to appreciate the humour and the mastery with which the whole thing is arranged.

The Linguistic Merits of Chaucer's Works

But this was not the whole story. Even more important in this case was the linguistic factor. Never ever in the history of English literature had a text of this length and diversity been created. The English reader suddenly learnt that his crude native language, his despised mother tongue could render with almost the same elegance and virtuosity all those things which so far had been expressed in French and Latin exclusively. Very naturally this was impossible without Chaucer borrowing extensively from the Romance languages, but to become part of the English language such borrowings had to undergo assimilation, and as a result English did not lose identity – it only improved its former not very presentable self.

The London dialect in which Chaucer's texts were written, though not yet predominant in the country, was accepted by more and more English people, and the fact that it was registered in such authoritative texts laid the foundation for it one day beginning to reign supreme. It had a long way to go still, and this way was not an easy or a straight one, but the task in this case was infinitely less complicated since the direction for further movement had already been specified. All this accounts for the popularity of Chaucer's writings, and especially of the "Canterbury Tales", among his contemporaries and for the veneration with which his name was treated since then.

In Middle English literature there were no texts which would match the "Canterbury Tales" from the point of view of their aesthetic value or popularity among the reading public. This is no wonder when you think of it seriously, for Chaucer was endowed with a great talent which by far exceeded that of many other writers, to say nothing of the more ordinary compilers and scribblers. However, after his death the literary tradition was not broken, and some texts of devotional, lyrical and mystical character were created, thus preparing the grounds for the efflorescence of English literature during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First. These texts being primarily of historical interest we might have stopped at that and from the Age of Chaucer pass straight to the Age of Shakespeare, had it not been for the necessity to say a few words about one more very important aspect of the cultural life of England – the tradition of the Bible translation.

The Bible in European Culture

It is common knowledge that nowadays people's attitude to the Bible ranges very widely, from open defiance or at least sceptical mistrust to ardent veneration. But whatever attitude one takes, there is no point in denying the obvious fact that for centuries this book has been of exceptional importance for millions of people and that its influence on various aspects of their life has been stupendous. Containing, on the one hand, specimens of Hebrew didactic, historical and poetic writings, and on the other, relating the events of Jesus Christ's life and the main points of his teaching, the two respective parts of the Bible – the Old and the New Testament – were not equally significant for Christians, the latter being more immediately relevant to their religious practices and their daily experiences than the former. But whatever the possible discrepancies could be, for Europeans in Middle Ages the Bible as a whole remained the Book with the capital 'B', the Alpha and Omega round which everything else was centred.

Written basically in Hebrew and only partly in ancient Greek, in the early ages of Christianity the Bible was translated into Latin, and it was in this second-hand form, with distortions and misinterpretations of the original, that this book was accepted by Europeans. The Christian priests did not mind this, and they did not make any attempts to correct the mistakes, let alone to translate the Bible into their own native languages. As they were among the very few who could at all read and understand the sacred text, they were perfectly satisfied with the situation, for in such conditions they found it very convenient to manipulate the opinion of the Christian flock of which they were the divinely appointed shepherds.

Bible Translation in England: An Overview

England was no exception in this respect. After the Christianity had been established in this country the English priests successfully acted in the capacity of the only addressees of the Lord's Word, and although in the 10th century much of it had been translated into Old English this did not change the situation. After the Norman Conquest such work became absolutely unthinkable.

The first serious attempt to bring the Biblical text closer to the common people and to disturb the priests in their splendid isolation was made in the second part of the 14th century, during the age of Chaucer. At that time a great religious reformer John Wycliffe (1320-1384) who had a lot of disciples and followers prepared the first complete English translation of the Bible. Though it was made from the Latin text and not from the Hebrew and Greek original, it infuriated the Church leaders who would tolerate no such interference. In order to protect their rights in 1408 they adopted the so-called Constitutions of Oxford in which it was fixed that any person who dared to translate the Bible, to read it in English or to give it to other people should be executed. And executed they were, the not so few courageous ones who refused to recognize this copy right, thus greatly aggravating the existence of the copy right owners.

In the course of the 15^th century the official Church more or less controlled the situation. The disastrous end of the Hundred Years' War (1453) followed by the no less disastrous civil war, the War of the Roses (1455-1487), left no room for any other public movement as well as for any systematic religious, literary or artistic activities. But when in 1487 after the death of King Richard the III and the coronation of Henry VII the internal peace was established, the adherents of the undemocratic religious traditions began to find it increasingly difficult to resist the Reformation movement.

The Reformation movement

Initiated in Germany by Martin Luther and some others, Reformation soon became very popular among the English people who approved both of its political and of its spiritual side. For them acquiring a complete text of the Bible in English became one of the most important tasks, and they would not be satisfied with Wycliffe's inadequate rendering; so it was an understood thing that someone had to translate the Bible from the Hebrew and Greek original.

However, not every adherent of the new religion found himself equal to the task. In those good old times there was no lack of enthusiasts, but in this case enthusiasm alone (even if it was accompanied by some glimpses of education) would not suffice. To produce something worthwhile one had not only to be a devoted protestant and to really know the ancient languages, but also to be aware of Wycliffe's rather sad experience, carefully avoiding the undesirable pomposity of diction and keeping mostly within the bounds of the then conversational English language which in actual fact corresponded to the style of the original text. This combination of religious belief, sound scholarship and literary talent was quite a rare thing not to be immediately found, but eventually there appeared a person who possessed all the necessary qualities and who was ready to sacrifice himself doing this work. The name of this person was William Tyndale.

William Tyndale: Some Biographical Notes

Like so many other English priests, Tyndale received an education at Oxford and Cambridge and was peacefully preaching in some provincial town, until the idea of translating the Bible came to his mind. He had all the necessary accomplishments to do this, for he shared the main points of Protestantism, he knew Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, German, French and Spanish and he was a born philologist in the sense that he was perfectly aware of the stylistic potential of a language – the possibility to express a thought in different ways thus considerably modifying the general meaning of an utterance.

When Tyndale began his work, he evidently could not foresee what it would lead him to, especially as in the beginning all went well, and he even hoped that his translation would have the official approval of Tunstall, the bishop of London. Instead of this the bishop banned Tyndale to print the Bible anywhere in England, making the latter realize that quiet scholarly work was not something life had in store for him. In 1522 Tyndale had to flee to Germany where in three years he completed and published his translation of the New Testament; he brought these books to England and tried to spread them among the population, but his dear friend the Bishop started buying and burning these books with almost hysterical thoroughness. The situation being what it was, staying in England became quite dangerous for Tyndale, and so with the money he had received for his books and with the remaining copies of the Bible he left for Germany, but on his way there he got shipwrecked and lost both the money and the books. Such a thing as Tyndale's translation of the New Testament ceased to exist.

Bible Translation: The Catholic Opposition

The more moderate English church leaders were quite satisfied with the turn the events had taken, but the bishop of London had his own standards of thoroughness and his own idea of perfection. Being unable to destroy Tyndale physically he joined forces with no less a person than the Chancellor of England, the wonderful humanist Sir Thomas More, and this association slightly consoled his troubled mind when from burning Tyndale's books these nice people passed on to burning Tyndale's comrades for the heresy of not renouncing what he had written.

There was a certain distribution of duties in this tandem – Tunstall's talents were more on the practical side, while the author of 'Utopia' was responsible for the ideological part of these unseemly activities. Sir Thomas More proceeded from the strictly logical premises – it is better to burn a couple of heretics than to allow a civil war in which thousands of people would perish, and as unauthorized Bible translation inevitably led to religious controversies Sir Thomas More insisted on his right to weed the ecclesiastical garden. The great humanist was fairly consistent in his reasoning, but there was something peculiarly inhuman and morbid in his estimation of himself and in the eagerness with which he was separating the sheep from the goats.

Tyndale-More Controversy

Tyndale as goat number one deserved special attention of the tandem. The bishop of London started urging the German authorities to extradite Tyndale, while Sir Thomas More waged a long and violent polemics against him denying him the right to translate the Bible and describing Tyndale as one of the 'hell-hounds that the devil hath in his kennel', as a deceiver, a hypocrite 'puffed up with the poison of pride, malice, and envy'. The one serious objection he could formulate was that Tyndale had wrongly substituted the word 'congregation' for 'church', 'elder' for 'priest', 'love' for 'charity'. Instead of simply ignoring all this Tyndale patiently explained to his opponent that he had used these words following the original, that he would promise not to continue his work if the official Church took upon itself the responsibility for the Bible translation, but he spoke in vain – Sir Thomas would not listen, and the Church leaders would not do anything. That is why Tyndale finally tried to forget about it and went on working on his second translation of the New Testament.

This time Tyndale did not work alone. He was assisted by a young protestant called John Frith who shared his religious views and who was very much devoted to the idea of the Bible translation. By the beginning of 1530-ies they had completed the translation of the New Testament and here the question of how to bring the books to England immediately arose. For obvious reasons Tyndale could not go there, and so John Frith suggested that he would do it; he did not deceive himself as for the possible consequences of this enterprise, but he could not do otherwise.

The Death of Tyndale

In 1533 John Frith came to England, but the local clergy were on the alert – in two months he was arrested and taken to prison. A worthy disciple of his elder colleague, in prison he showed himself at his best: he refused to recant and courageously defended Tyndale testifying that every line in his translation was true to the original text. In 1534 John Frith died the death of a martyr – he was burnt alive.

This, probably, was too much even for Tyndale. Soon after the catastrophe with the first translation he wrote: "If they shall burn me they shall do none other thing than I look for"; now these words acquired a new significance for him. One can hardly imagine what agony of grief and despair he went through, and the only refuge he could find under the circumstances was the continuation of his work. But things were already coming to their logical end – in 1535 Tyndale was arrested by the German authorities and then for a year he was kept in Vilvorde Castle near Brussels where he suffered from cold, darkness and most of all – because of being unable to go on with his work, for he was not given his Hebrew Bible, Hebrew Grammar and Hebrew Dictionary. A year later Tyndale was executed; the laws of the Empire were more merciful than those of England, that is why before being burnt he was strangled.

The Establishing of Protestantism in England Tyndale's last words were: "Lord, open the King of England's eyes". King Henry VIII was a practical man, and the biblical text was not among things he would gladly look at, but in 5 years after Tyndale's death Protestants became so powerful in England that the King had to order a copy of the English Bible to be placed in every church within his realm. Thus the royal eyes had to gaze upon the Bible translation which was begun by Tyndale and completed by another very talented scholar Miles Coverdale.

But this was not the end – the story of Tyndale's Bible had a continuation. After the death of king Henry VIII and the short reign of his son Edward VI (1547-1553) Henry's elder daughter who was a devoted Catholic became Queen of England. In English history this delightful lady is commemorated as Bloody Mary, a telling nickname which even Richard III in spite of all his butcheries had been spared. When this energetic queen did something, she did it on a grand scale: during the 5 years of her eventful reign Protestants were burnt in thousands, and the Protestant Bibles shared the fate of their owners. But when in 1558 Queen Mary died and her sister Elizabeth came to power, this inquisitorial paradise was done away with once and for all, and Protestantism was re-established in the country.

The King James Bible

In 1560 the so-called Geneva Bible was published; it was based on Tyndale's and Coverdale's translation and it became enormously popular among the English people. The official Church tried to diminish its popularity by publishing a Latinised Bishops' Bible, but this did not change the situation, and the Geneva Bible remained the book which English people read from their early childhood. This text was so good that when in 1604 King James I appointed a committee of 47 persons responsible for producing another Latinised translation, the members of this committee secretly disobeyed the King's order to take the Bishops' Bible as the model for imitation. In their work they were guided by Tyndale's text which they only slightly 'improved' by introducing phrases like "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" instead of the clear and straightforward original wording 'For the day present hath ever enough of his own trouble'.

Having completed this highly fruitful work the members of the committee wrote a flowery dedication and presented the whole thing to King James who immediately discovered the forgery and in a state of great fury refused to authorize the text. Nevertheless now this Bible of 1611 is called the King James Bible or the Authorized Version, it is considered to be one of the greatest monuments of English literature, and the collective genius of the members of the committee is sung in numerous publications on the subject, while Tyndale as a heretic once condemned by the official church is only vaguely, if at all, mentioned. But, probably, he would not be disappointed at it, because personal fame was not something he strove for; much more important for him would be the fact that for generations of English people his simple stern style and the magnificent periods of Coverdale became the pattern of English which they learnt when being very young, and that the sacred message he sought to convey was not forsaken. In his noble self-abnegation Tyndale would not have wished for more.

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[1] See Olga Akhmanova. The Dictionary of Linguistic Terms. M., 1968, p.p.374, 159.

[2] See, for example, Carey G.V. Mind the Stop. Cambridge, 1980; Gowers, Sir Ernest. The Complete Plain Words (Revised by S.Greenbaum and J.Whitcut), London, 1986; Fowler H.W., Fowler F.G. The King’s English. Oxford, 1951.

[3] See Щерба Л.В. Языковая система и речевая деятельность. Л., 1974, с.243.

[4] See Gowers, Sir Ernest. The Complete Plain Words. Penguin, 1969, p.236.

[5] See Александрова О.В. Проблемы экспрессивного синтаксиса. М., 1984, с.86.

[6] See Partridge E. You Have A Point There. London, 1977, p.184.

[7] See Баранова Л.Л. Онтология английской письменной речи. М., 1998, с.157-160.

[8] See Яковлева Е.Б. Лексикализация синтагматических рядов в современном английском языке. Дисс…докт.филол.наук. М.,1990.

[9] Cf. 1566 J. Studley tr. Seneca’s Agamemnon (1581) 147 b, Thou that dost rule with him, made jointer of his mace.

c1590 Greene Fr. Bacon x. 8 Ile make thy daughter ioynter of it all, So thou consent to giue her to my wife.

Joint 2. a. Of a person or persons: United or sharing with another, or among themselves, in some possession, action, liability, etc.; having or doing (what is expressed by the noun) together or in common.

join ... 6. a. To link or unite (persons, etc. together, or one with or to another) in marriage, friendship, or any kind of association, alliance, or relationship; to unite, associate, ally.