Masaryk university Faculty of Education Department of English Language and Literature Poetic licence and its interpretation DIPLOMA THESIS
Brno 2008 Written by: Jitka Kročilová Supervisor: Mgr. Olga Dontcheva Navrátilová, Ph.D. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Mgr. Olga Dontcheva Navrátilová, Ph.D. for her inspiring remarks and suggestions to my diploma thesis and for her kind support.
2 Declaration: I hereby declare that this diploma thesis is completely my own work and that I used only the sources listed in the bibliography. ………………………………………………… 10. 12. 2008
3 Contents: 1. Introduction ...... 6 2. Introduction to the Theoretical Part ...... 8 3. Poetic Licence ...... 10 3.1 Defining Poetic Licence ...... 10 3.2. Kinds of Poetic Licence ...... 10 3.3. Levels of Breaking the Rules ...... 11 3.4. Deviation ...... 12 3.4.1. Defining Deviation ...... 12 3.4.2. Types of Deviation ...... 13 3.4.2.1. Phonological and Graphological Deviation ...... 13 3.4.2.2. Lexical and Morphological Deviation ...... 17 3.4.2.3. Syntactical Deviation ...... 19 3.4.2.4. Semantic Deviation ...... 20 3.4.2.5. Dialectical Deviation ...... 22 3.4.2.6. Deviation of Register ...... 23 3.4.2.7. Deviation of Historical Period ...... 23 3.5. Parallelism ...... 24 4. Conclusion to the Theoretical Part ...... 25 5. E. A. Poe ...... 25 5.1. His Life ...... 26 5.2. The Romantic Period ...... 29 5.3. The Raven and Other Poems ...... 30 6. Introduction to the Practical Part ...... 31 7. Analysis ...... 31 7.1. Titles of the Poems ...... 31 7.2. Themes of the Poems ...... 33 7.3. Settings of the Poems ...... 36 7.4. Narrator ...... 38 7.5. Mood ...... 39 8. Poetic Licence ...... 41 8.1. Metre ...... 41 8.2. Rhyme ...... 45
4 8.3. Alliteration, Assonance, Chiming ...... 47 8.4. Elisions (Apocope, Aphesis, Syncope) ...... 47 8.5. Sections of Poems and Graphological Means ...... 48 8.6. Archaisms ...... 49 8.7. Borrowings from Other Languages ...... 51 8.8. Syntactic Rearrangements ...... 51 8.9. Repeated Constructions and Words ...... 52 8.10. Figurative Language ...... 55 8.11. Register ...... 58 8.12. The Haunted Palace Analysis ...... 58 9. Conclusion to the Practical Part ...... 61 10. Conclusion ...... 62 11. Resumé ...... 64 12. Bibliography ...... 65 13. Appendix 1: The Raven and Other Poems (text of the poems) Appendix 2: Glossary of Names
5 1. Introduction When reading poetry, many people have difficulties to understand what actually poets want to say. As a result, they make their own interpretations of poems that are less based on proper analysis but more on their internal feelings, which can lead to many interpretations that differ from one another and which have not much in common with the original intention of the poet. The number of the interpretations would not be such a big problem if they are adequate, I mean really based on what the poet wrote. Nevertheless, sometimes it is quite hard to understand, especially in the case of modern poetry, what a poem communicates, and if a poem does not evoke any of a reader's personal experience or feelings, he or she would be hardly ever interested in it. The fact that poetry is quite demanding on the reader, because of all hidden meanings and missing information, and requires, in the majority of cases, reading more than once and thinking about it, could be probably the reason for the declining interest in reading of poetry in today's hurried era. Reading poetry, as well as reading other literary genres, can develop the fantasy of readers and also the manner of how they reflect. Poets mostly give to the readers a new opportunity to think about things which they normally do not think about. That is why in this diploma thesis I would like to deal with poetry and possible ways how to interpret it. As a future teacher, I am convinced that better understanding of poetry and also literature in general can develop students' creative and critical thinking and can help them, in their own life, to search and find other points of view in their own life. The language of poetry (and not only poetical languages) is studied by the linguistic discipline called stylistic. It can help us to understand poetry more and to analyze it in greater detail. This discipline deals with a linguistic description and its relation to meaning (Short, 1996: 5) An analysis of all linguistic levels, i.e. grammar, sounds, words, textual structure can help readers not only to appreciate a poet's style of writing but also to understand how the poet uses stylistics means to express the meaning of a poem; thus it can support the interpretations of the poem by reasonable arguments and make them more complex and. How successful our interpretation will be depends largely on our knowledge of the language we analyze, i.e. its grammar rules and lexis. Poetry itself is very specific as we have to know grammar rules and lexis in order to understand what is odd in the poem, i.e. what is deviant. However, poetry requires not only good knowledge of language in which the poem is written but also
6 other specific features that, in the majority of cases, are associated with poetry. Thus the main task of this diploma thesis will be to reveal various kinds of oddity that we can see in poetry and its specific features, and to shed light on their possible interpretations. Indeed, before I start my analysis, I have to clarify some terms used when analyzing a poem from a stylistics point of view. I will focus on this in the first part of the theoretical body of this work where terms such as poetic licence, deviation, foregrounding and parallelism will be explained. Moreover, I will explain when they are used by poets and their main types. In the second part of the theoretical body, I will focus on the book of poetry chosen to be analyzed in the practical body of this work and its author. For this analysis was chosen the book of poetry written by an American poet E. A. Poe The Raven and Other Poems. I will introduce briefly his life and in what period of his life he wrote this famous book. Particular emphasis will be also devoted to the relation between his life and his work and style of writing. Last but not least, I will try to identify poetic effects and oddities used in Poe's poetry, give reasons for their use and suggest an interpretation of their meaning. The analysis of Poe’s poetry should reveal the role foregrounding and deviation play in poetry and when they are used. In conclusion, it is necessary to highlight that even a rigorous linguistic description can lead to various interpretations; what is important is to support the suggested interpretation by evidence from the text. It means that the interpretation of Poe's poems, presented in the practical part, is one of several possible interpretations; it is the analysis of the linguistic structure that would verify the accuracy of my choice.
7 2. Introduction to the Theoretical Part This part of my diploma thesis introduces the theoretical background for a study style of poetry as such. As poetry is a literary mode based on foregrounding and deviation, I will explain these two terms in the following paragraphes. The term "foregrounding" was firstly introduced in linguistics by the Prague School. Foregrounding is closely related with deviation. It is artistically motivated deviation used on purpose where a language pattern is broken (Leech, Short, 1999: 48). The intensity of foregrounding in poetry is maximum. In poetic language, it is not used to communicate some statement but it serves to attract the attention to the act of speaking and expression itself. Foregrounding occurs against a background of language, i.e. rules and norms of language that are stated, and it is not limited only to some linguistic levels (it can occur in any of them). As foregrounding is based on a comparison with the background, foregrounding of all levels in the same time is impossible. Therefore maximum foregrounding is not achieved by the number of elements that are foregrounded but by consistency (i.e. elements are foregrounded within a poem in a same way) and by a method (i.e. that relations among elements should be graded and organized systematically) (Mukařovský, 1982: 36, 37). Foregrounding can be understood as a kind of emphasis that is expressed through deviation and that differs from linguistic norms 1. Elements that are foregrounded, are considered and perceived as the most important and prominent. In principle, foregrounding is any deviation from the linguistic and/or non linguistic form (Short, 1996: 11, 12). Nevertheless, English poetry has its own norms that differ from the norms of English as a whole and basically it means that what is considered as odd in English language, is expected in poetry. These norms which were "attained" by stylistics consistency in a text are called "secondary" (Leech, Short: 1999, 55). Relations among all elements (foregrounded or not foregrounded) of a poem form the structure of the poem where each element becomes valuable only through its relation to a whole (Mukařovský, 1982: 38). When analyzing a poem, at first, it has to be identified what is foregrounded. This supposes knowledge of "the real English" and its linguistic levels. When identifying if something differs from norms or not, it is necessary to understand what a poet
1 Rules, norms and expectations of language are called "primary " norms (Leech, Short, 1999: 55)
8 communicates through this oddity and then interpret it. A reader's interpretation is influenced with many facts, e.g. what we know about the poet, about his or her life or about the historical period in which he or she wrote poems, but also the reader's personal experience. That is why the subjectivity of the interpretation and the possibility of more than one interpretation have to be taken into account. On the other hand, stylistic analysis selects some features to be analyzed and others are ignored. A principle of selection of stylistics features is based on two criteria and a relation between them: "a literary criterion, i.e. significances of a text, and a linguistic criterion, i.e. linguistic characteristics in which the significances of a text are manifested" (ibid: 69). Leech (1969) introduces two questions which are central to a successful analysis. The first question to answer is: " In which cases the deviation communicates something?" (Leech, 1969: 59). Deviation is the most significant proof that the information, that is foregrounded, is somehow important. Practically, it means that also the most trivial deviations and the deviations that could seem to us as a nonsense and unmotivated bear some significance and communicate important information. The second question to answer is: "When it communicates something what was intended by its author?" (ibid: 59). The answer to this question is rather subjective as poets do not explain their poems, thus their intentions remain unknown, which leads to many interpretations. In this case a profound linguistic analysis of the language and foregrounding can help. The problem is that each reader could consider as significant something else, since "The significance of a poem lies in the mind of the reader." (ibid: 60) Thus it is up to the readers to use their imagination and to complete an informational gap so often present in poetry. In the following three sections, I will explain in details the secondary norms used in poetry, i.e. poetic licence, its definition and its kinds. As poetry is based on deviation from linguistic levels, I will introduce the linguistic levels of breaking rules too. The main part of the theoretical body deals with deviation and its types.
9 3. Poetic Licence
3. 1. Defining Poetic Licence According to A Dictionary of Stylistics (2001) poetic licence is " the creative deviation from the linguistic norms of grammar, lexis and meaning" (Wales, 2001: 304). We can understand it as a kind of freedom of a poet to change particular rules for poetic effects. A similar definition is given by Leech in A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry (1969). He describes it as "the poet's right to ignore rules and conventions generally observed by users of the language." However, he amplifies his definition and adds that this liberty of the poets is not without limits and has its own rules. Although most of the manifestation of poetic licence affects grammar or morphology, we cannot consider each break of grammar rules as poetic licence (Leech, 1969: 36). To summarize the definitions above, poetic licence is supposed to be an usual method used in poetry (and not only in poetry) how to make a poem or a text more interesting. The usage of poetic licence is well elaborated and not used accidentally. In most cases, poets or writers want to express something important when using it, thus we know that we have to pay attention to it. In the next chapter, we will devote attention to the kinds of poetic licence.
3. 2. Kinds of Poetic Licence Poetic licence can be divided into two different kinds according to versification – routine licence and creative licence. As for routine licence it occurs when a poet uses traditional versification; on the other side, we recon the creative licence when the poet "transcends the limits of the language to explore and communicate new areas of experience" (Leech, 1969: 36). Routine licence is rather connected with the poetry of the past (approximately from the 15 th century to the beginning of the 20 th century). Poets were free when writing the poetry but this freedom was not absolute. Poetic licence, i.e. the possibilities to break the rules of the language, were limited. They could use shortened form of some word where the initial part of the word was omitted (aphesis) or they could omit the medial part (syncope) or the final part (apocope). Thus we can encounter in poetry such
10 forms as 'tis instead of it is , ne'er for never or oft for often (Leech, 1969: 18). Other grammatical variants used till the later 19 th century, which are considered to be archaic nowadays, are: usage of 2 nd person pronouns ye, thou, thee, thy, thine ; verbal endings (e)st end (e)th ; negative and interrogative forms used without an auxiliary as in the sentence: I know not ; and last but not least, pronunciation of the past tense and the past participle endings separately, e. g. clothèd (ibid: 13). Moreover, the past poetry also used the so called "hyperbaton", i.e. the arrangement of syntatactic elements irregularly, or jumbled clause structures (ibid: 18). Concerning the dialect used in the poetry since 15 th century, it is clear that poets preferred Standard English to other dialects. The main reason for the usage of Standard English was to draw attention of educated people as it was (and still is) the sign of education (ibid: 9). In grand styles of poetry, we encounter quite frequently archaisms. Their function is seen mainly in hightening of the poetry (ibid: 13). As the opposite to the routine licence stands the creative licence. In this case creativity is connected more with innovation in the language. Leech (1969) claims that an author uses the language creatively if "he makes original use of the established possibilities of the language and if he goes beyond those possibilities" (ibid: 24). The creative licence is often used in modern poetry where, instead of Standard English, colloquialism, slang or idioms are used. In sum, the creative poetry avoids conventions connected with the poetic language and banality of everyday life (ibid). As mentioned above in the text, the disobedience to rules in poetry is regulated. In the following chapter, we will focus on the levels in which the broken rules can be often seen. 3. 3. Levels of Breaking the Rules As far as we want to comprehend which levels of the language are allowed to be broken, we have to distinguish in which levels the language is usually constituted. There are three levels: the level of realization, form and semantics (Leech, 1969:37). The level of realization includes phonology and graphology. Phonology is interested in sounds; it refers to the "written version of the spoken language" (ibid: 36); whilst graphology studies the writing system, i.e. punctuation, paragraphing and spelling. The
11 level of form deals with grammar and lexis and the level of semantics studies the meaning (ibid). Perhaps more exhaustive explanation of the levels and what is meant by the rules is provided by Montgomery (1992) . He explains that we use the rules of the language in major cases when we speak or write. We chain "together units of structure according to certain rules" (Montgomery, 1992:113). Nevertheless, we have to distinguish between the rule breaking in poetry and the one in everyday life. In most case, it is not something particular or odd when we break the language rules when speaking, e.g. slips of tongues, false starts or unfinished sentences; or when children or foreigners learn the language. Whereas the rule breaking in everyday usage does not have any system, in poetry, it is systematic and occurs regularly (ibid: 114). Similarly to Short (1996), Montgomery (1992) mentions that we can break the rules at three levels. We can break "rules of substance" (i.e. organization of sounds in speech), "rules of form" relating to words and "rules of meaning" which enable words, when put together, to have a predictable meaning" (ibid: 113). 3. 4. Deviation In the previous sections we dealt with rule breaking and we introduced the main levels of language. In the following sections we will focus on ways of rule breaking within the frame of the linguistic levels and we will define the linguistic term "deviation." 3.4.1. Defining Deviation According to Short, deviation is a linguistic phenomenon used in poetry quite often and it is considered to be "a key for understanding a poem" (Short, 1996: 10). It is the deviation in literature and poetry that "allows us to see the ordinary world, we live in, from unfamiliar and revealing angles" (Montgomery, 1992: 121). This effect is called either "defamiliarization" or "foregrounding" (ibid). On the other side, deviation is not the only thing that makes a poem or literature in general, and we have to realize that the degree of deviation depends also on authors, genres and periods. It differs from one author to another, from one period to another and from one genre to another genre. It differs also according to the level in which the
12 rules were broken (as it was pointed out in chapter 2.3.). But we will introduce various kinds of deviation that we can observe in poetry in the next chapter. 3.4.2. Types of Deviation
This chapter deals with types of the deviation. I will focus not only on their explication or examples but also on their possible interpretations and situations in which they are mostly used. 3.4.2.1. Phonological and Graphological Deviation
Phonology studies the system of sounds in a particular language, dialect or in language generally (Wales, 2001: 298). Thus when we say that something deviates phonologically it refers mostly to the sounds and pronunciation. Practically it means that sometimes readers of poems are forced to pronounce some words oddly or to stress the syllable that is not normally stressed to keep a rhyme scheme, e.g. the word wind pronounced as [waind] (Short, 1996: 54). Other specific types of the phonological deviation are those based on repetition or parallelism, i.e. assonance, alliteration and rhyme. Assonance is a term used for "patterns of repetition between vowel sounds" (ibid: 111), in particular, the repetition of similar vowels. But what is important is not how a word is written but how it is pronounced. Thus when doing analysis of a poem and looking for the assonance, it is important to know phonetic transcription. On the other hand, alliteration is based on "the repetition of same or similar consonants" (ibid: 107). Similarly, when we try to determine the alliteration in a poem, we have to focus on the sounds, as in the case of the assonance, and not on spelling. Another thing we have to realize is that the alliteration does not refer only to the repetition of the consonants at the beginning of a word but it can occur elsewhere in the word if it is a main stressed syllable, thus long alliterates with unlovely (Leech, 1969: 92). As a special kind of alliteration is considered "chiming", the similarity of sounds between words which contrast in reference and association, thus a reader is forced to find why a poet linked just these words, e. g. foul and fair (Leech, 1969: 95).
13 Rhyme has also something in common with similarity and identity of sounds but in this case it is the final syllable that is identical (ibid: 113). In most cases, the rhyme occurs at the end of a line in poetry but there are also poems in which the rhyme is in other position than at the end. These rhymes are called "internal" (ibid). Leech in his Linguistic Guide to English Poetry enlarges the types of rhymes with so called "reverse rhyme" (rhymes with an identity at the beginning of words as we can see in the examples: grea t/ gra zed) and "pararhyme" that is used instead of rhyme at the end of the lines in a verse structure, e.g. send/soun d (Leech, 1969: 89, 90). Rhymes are connected more with the pronunciation than with spelling, as we mentioned several lines above in relation to the assonance and alliteration, but in poetry, we can also see so called "eye rhyme". In this case, the similarity is expressed only with the spelling and not with the pronunciation, e.g. great/meat . Generally, it is possible to find these kinds of rhyme in old poetry as at that time words rhymed because they were pronounced differently. Rhyming, assonant or alliterative words have two things in common and they are "similarity or identity", i.e. the similarity or identity of final syllables (rhyme), vowels (assonance) or consonants (alliteration), and this similarity leads us to the conclusion that there is some connection among similar words. Thus a poet wants to express, when using these phonetic patterns, some relation among the similar words which a reader should reveal. But it is not the only reason for the usage of these effects in poetry, the other reason is to make a poem "musical" , which the alliteration, assonance, rhyme and other play with sounds support (Leech, 1969: 93). Other effects that make poetry "musical" are rhythm and metre. Both of them are important for the versification of a poem. Poetry is not the only art where rhythm is used. Other domains could be music or dancing. Nevertheless, poetry is the only one where rhythm is related with the language. The rhythm could be characterized as "the notion of regular periodic beat" (ibid: 104). It follows that there is coherence between the language and some regular happenings in time, e.g. regular clapping hands or ticking of a clock. When we read loudly an extract of a poem and clap our hands to the rhythm, there are always only some parts of the poem that are emphasized with the clapping. Which part will be stressed depends on the class of the language, i.e. if it is "stress timed" or "syllable timed". While the syllable timed languages have a stress on each syllable, the stress timed ones have the stress on the unit that is larger than one syllable. It comes to this, that an utterance is divided into several segments where each segment has one stressed
14 unit and several unstressed ones. This segment of the utterance, that begins with the first stressed unit and ends with the following stressed one, is called "measure". English belongs to the stress timed class (ibid: 105). The stress 2, which is understood not only as loudness but also as pitch of the voice and length, is placed on so called lexical words (i.e. nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) while grammatical words (prepositions, auxiliaries, articles, pronouns) are unstressed mostly in case when they are monosyllabic. Some poets deviate from this rule of a placement of the stress and they can place it on the grammatical words where a reader does not expect it. But this is rather rare. What is typical for serious poetry is a variation of a rhythmic pattern. This change helps poets to express various ranges of emotivity in their poems (ibid: 110). In some cases, the rhythmic structure can help readers to understand the meaning of the poem which is not explicit, e.g. when there is an extra unstressed syllable in all feet of one line and in others it is not, we are forced to read this line more quickly than the others, thus we can suppose that the poet wanted to express the speed of the action described in the line (Short, 1996: 151). As we mentioned above, poetry is not the only domain where we can find the rhythm, thus it cannot be considered as a specific feature for poetry. On the other hand, what is special and not found in other written texts or somewhere else than in poetry is metre "an extra layer of rhythmic structuring" (ibid: 127). The structure of metre in poetry is based on the regular change of a stressed and an unstressed syllable (Leech, 1969: 111). Metre is closely associated with the length of the lines that should be equal. The only exception is so called "free verse" where the length of the lines differs. The reasons why poets use metrication is to make their poems musical, and to differ this kind of writing from other kinds of literary texts. Last but not least, it is a possibility how to express that something is significant or important (Short, 1996: 130). The most frequent type of the metre that occurs in the English poetry is called iamb. This pattern 3 starts with an unstressed (weak) syllable and the second syllable is stressed (strong). The opposite metrical pattern (foot) is called trochee and starts with a stressed syllable and the following syllable is unstressed. Other two types of foot are anapest (two unstressed and one stressed syllable) and dactyl (one stressed syllable and 2 The stress can be placed also on pauses. This kind of stress is called "silent" and is placed mostly at the end of lines or in the middle where is marked with punctuation markers. At the end of the lines, it indicates that the end is coming whereas in the middle it emphasizes the phrase that comes behind the silent stress (Short,1996: 152). 3 In the language of poetry this metrical pattern is called "foot". The foot can start both with a stressed or unstressed syllable and it is repeated. (Leech, 1969: 112).
15 two unstressed). In most cases, there are several instances of the feet pattern in a line of a poem. The number of the repeated patterns depends on the choice of a poet. The most typical for the English poetry is iambic penatameter, i.e. that each line has five feet in the line. Other possibilities are monometer (one foot line), dimeter (two feet line), trimester (three feet line), tetrameter (four feet line) and hexameter (six feet line). Sometimes poets have to fit the language and what they want to say to the metre. They use special "poetic" grammar as rearranged syntactic forms, enjambment 4; elisions (omission of syllables) or special "poetic" orthography as an apostrophe used in the case of the elision or a diacritic mark as we can see in the word disguisèd where the mark above the vowel e symbolizes that a reader should pronounce the ending –ed which is not normally pronounced (Short, 1996: 131 136). Nevertheless, poets can fit all the levels of linguistic organization to the metre, not only grammar, phonology or graphology as mentioned above. The graphological form of poetry is a written text. Normally, a written text runs from the left hand edge to the right hand edge of a page and sentences begin with capital letters but not in poetry. In a poem, the lines do not run to the right hand edge of the page and each line begins with a capital letter, no matter if it is the beginning of the sentence or not. But this is not the only way how poetry can deviate graphologically, though. Other possibilities are to write a whole word in capital letters when a poet wants readers to pronounce the word clearly or to split a word to letters and to write each letter on the lines separately or, on the other hand, to write all the words together without orthographic spaces. They can also use special graphological marks as,for example, asterisks, etc. (Short, 1996: 54 57). Graphological deviation is used mostly when some words or utterances have special importance (it can be above mentioned "special" stress on one word) or when a poet wants to add some hidden meaning to the lines. To sum up, concerning the phonological and graphological level, it seems that what we consider as deviant in other types of texts, in poetry it became convenient and the norm for writing a poem, thus we need not consider it as deviant anymore. But in comparison to other kinds of written texts, it remains always deviant.
4 The term enjambment refers to "a grammatical overflow from one line to the next"(ibid: 123).
16 3.4.2.2. Lexical and Morphological Deviation Lexical deviation is connected with words. Before I start to discuss lexical deviation in the poetry and its purpose, I will focus on how the words are formed in English language. Main possibilities how to form words in English are: conversion, derivation and compounding. Conversion, sometimes called "zero affixation", is a process of forming words when a new word is adapted to a new word class without changing its form, i.e. without the addition of an affix (Leech, 1969: 43). Thus the word object can be both the noun and the verb. There is only a change in the stress which is on the first syllable when it is supposed to be the noun and on the second syllable when it is supposed to be the verb. The second type of forming new words is derivation (Leech uses a term "affixation") where an affix is added to some other word already existing in language (ibid). We can see it on the following examples of words: ability and disability , or kind and kindness , etc. The third type of word formation process is compounding by which new, compound lexes are formed from two lexical items (Wales, 2001: 74). However, we have to realize that the meaning of the compound lexeme is different from its separate parts. For example, the word greenhouse is compounded with the adjective green and the noun house but the exact meaning of this word is a house with a roof, mostly made from glass, where are grown plants that need protection (Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary). In the previous paragraphs I have mentioned the standard methods how the English language normally forms new words. Consequently, I will focus on how poetry deviates from these standards. Poets often form new words when writing poetry, which itself is an instance of deviation as these words do not exist in English, thus it deviates from the level of form. The most typical lexical deviation used in poetry is "neologism", i.e. that "a poet makes up a word which did not previously exist" (Short, 1996: 45). Leech calls these new words "nonce formations" as they are formed only for "a single occasion" and there is no serious justification and no new need for their formation (Leech, 1969: 42). Nevertheless, Leech adds herewith that a neologism is not a "violation of a lexical rule" but, according to him, it is more an enlargement of an existing rule which is "applied with greater generality than is customery" (ibid).
17 In poetry, there are also words which are formed by conversion, as we can see it in an extract of a poem written by Hopkins The Windhover where he uses the verb achieve as a noun instead of the usual form achievement (Short, 1996: 46). In this case the poet did not form exactly a new word but an alternative to a word already existing. Another way how to write a lexically deviant poem is to use in it a word which normally belongs to another variety of English (ibid). Since normally, poetry is associated with Standard English and rather formal words which are often archaic, the use of informal words is supposed to be deviant. I have mentioned above that the most typical lexical deviation in poetry is forming new words. The main reason for this is particularly to economize space and to compress (Leech, 1969: 44). Poets mostly need to have their poem rhythmical, they use rhythm, foot and rhymes and on behalf of it, they form the new words which fit in their poems more. Moreover, when poets use neologisms, they try to reveal the hidden possibilities of the language which were expressed so far only by paraphrasing it (ibid). Morphology deals with the grammar of words (Leech, 1969: 44). A building unit for a word is a morpheme which can be free, i.e. it can stand on its own, or bound, i.e. it cannot stand on its own (Short, 1996: 51). We consider as bound morphemes all affixes, e. g. in the word unstable , the prefix un- is the bound morpheme, whereas the adjective stable is the free morpheme. Thus one possibility of producing morphological deviations is to add to some word an affix which is normally not added to this word, e.g. perhapsless (ibid). In this case the irregularity in the the grammar is that the suffix –less is normally related to a noun and not to an adverb. Another case of breaking morphological rules is to invent a completely new morpheme as James Joyce did in his Finnegans Wake where he used the morpheme museyroom (ibid: 52). As there is not such a word as musey in the English language, this word is considered to be deviant. Last but not least, poets can use untypical word boundaries as in Hopkins' poem The Windhover the word king-dom (ibid). Normally we write this word together, i.e. without the hyphen. In this case, it is a graphological deviation (the hyphen) which indicates that we should focus on this word not as a whole ( kingdom ) but separately as two words ( king and dom ). Short mentions that the morpheme dom is a historical word which means doom (judgement). In this sense, the graphological deviation helps us to understand that the poet did not mean by this word a country ruled by a king but a judgement of the king (ibid).
18 Finally, another possibility of morphological deviation is to write several words together, i.e. as a one word, without gaps between words. In this case, the purpose of the deviation is to "enact what they mean"(ibid: 53). 3. 4. 2. 3. Syntactical Deviation
Concerning syntax, the most typical deviations are syntactic rearrangements called "hyperbatons." An example of hyperbaton is the sentence He me saw (Leech, 1969: 45). In this sentence there is an unusual the word order as compared to norm in the English language: which is subject + verb + object + object complement. The purpose of syntactic inversions and rearrangements in poetry is, in most cases, to "conform to a rhyme scheme" (Montgomery, 1992: 118). Another reason why poets use jumbled sentences is the so called "psychological immediacy", i.e. to provide as near images of what happens in a poem as possible (ibid). Another type of the syntax deviation is the usage of a word of a certain class in a position which is normally reserved for some other class as in the expression a grief ago (ibid). This expression is deviant because with the adverb ago , we normally use nouns expressing a time unit, e. g. a week ago, an hour ago , etc. Sometimes, poets also use transitive verbs as intransitive ones and vice versa or they do not use any article or subject, etc. The main reason for these deviations is, according to Leech, to "impressionistically evoke psychological states" (ibid: 46). However, some of the grammatical deviations became so common in the English poetry that nowadays they are not considered as deviant anymore and became prototypical. For example the adjective which modifies a noun and which comes after the noun is nothing exceptional in poetry (Short, 1996: 47). It is evident, that it deviates from the rules of the form but in poetry we can see it quite often. In poetry it is also typical overuse of conjuctions (polysyndeton) as we can see in the utterance cats and dogs and birds or, on the other side, usage of only sequences of nouns without any conjuction or comma (asyndeton). In the first case, the main purpose of this deviation is to perceive each noun individually, whereas, in the second case, is the purpose to read and to perceive it together as something "undifferentiated" (ibid: 50).
19 3.4.2.4. Semantic Deviation
As semantic deviation we understand "meaning 5 relations which are logically inconsistent or paradoxical in some way" (Short, 1996: 43). Leech introduces semantic deviation as some kind of "nonsense" or "absurdity" where the meaning is not in evidence at first sight and we have to look for it (Leech, 1969: 48). There are two signals that can help us to understand if a statement is literal or figurative. The first one is a textual signal, i.e. that the language is used in some unusual way and does not make literal sense as for example in the sentence: "I feel dead." The second one is a contextual signal, i.e. that the statement has the literal sense but the context, in which it is used, is inappropriate (Montgomery, 1992: 128). There are several possibilities how to make poetry semantically deviant. Firstly, it is the usage of figurative language such as metaphor, simile, metonymy and synecdoche. 6 Secondly, it is the usage of the elements that are redundant, i.e. pleonasm, tautology or periphrasis; and the elements that are absurd, i.e. oxymoron and paradox. Last but not least, we have to mention such deceptions as hyperbole, litotes or irony. We will explain each kind of semantic deviation individually in the following paragraphs. A metaphor can be a word or a phrase that, at first sight, does not fit into a passage and the topic of the passage but which, in some way, is similar to it. When we try to interpret metaphor, we are looking for these similarities and we interpret them in a new context. The word "metaphor" comes from the Greek word "metaphora" meaning "to transfer" or "to carry out" (ibid: 129). The example of the metaphor could be the sentence "The ship ploughs the waves" as the verb "plough" is not normally associated with the subject "ship" but it is mostly used in the context of agriculture and "ploughing the land". We can divide metaphors into four categories according to the relation between literal and figurative meaning. There are: concretive metaphor, animistic, humanizing and synaesthetic. The concretive metaphor refers to some concreteness or the physical existence that is used abstractedly, e.g. "the pain of separation". The animistic metaphor, where animate characteristics are used with inanimate words, is for example
5 The meaning can be literal, i.e. the fixed meaning for some word that is shared by all speakers; or non literal meaning which adds another meaning to that literal (Montgomery, 1992: 128). 6 These kinds of metaphor are called "tropes" (ibid: 127).
20 the expression "an angry sky" . The humanizing metaphor 7 uses human characteristics to things that are not human, e.g. "laughing valleys". Last but not least, the synaesthetic metaphor transfers the meaning from one domain to another, e.g. "warm colour." (Leech, 1969: 158). A special type of metaphor, which is not always considered as the figurative language, is simile 8. In both cases, there is some link between two terms but whereas in the simile the similarity is explicit, in the metaphor it is covert. In the simile, we often express the similarity with the usage of indicators as "like, as…..as" or "more….than", e.g. the sky is like a polished mirror (Montgomery, 1992: 129). Another kind of figure of speech, metonymy, can be understood as a kind of ellipsis or the name that is used for something that is normally associated with it, e.g. in the following sentence: "I have been reading Dickens." In this sentence, the word "book" is omitted. The name of the author is used for the books written by him (Leech, 1969: 152). A subcategory of the metonymy is the so called synecdoche. It occurs when one part of some thing is used for the whole as for example in the statement: "a new motor," which means "a new car." Here, the part of the car (the motor) was used for the whole (the car) (Montgomery, 1992: 130). As the synecdoche we also consider when a proper name is used as a common name, e.g. "a whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard " (Leech, 1969: 150). Less important and less frequently used in poetry than the figurative language are the redundant elements named above pleonasm and tautology. Whereas, pleonasm can be considered as a fault of style because a preceding or a following meaning is repeated, e.g. "my female grandmother" (it is not necessary to emphasize that "grandmother" is female as it results from the word), tautology is a statement which tells us nothing, it is vacuous, e.g. "My grandmother is female" . Its vacuity can serve to give some information about a character or a state of mind indirectly (ibid: 138). Very popular in poetry is the periphrasis. It means that a poet says more than is necessary, i.e. instead of the usage of some word is used its description – mostly a figurative description. Absurd elements used in poetry are realized as oxymoron or paradox. Oxymoron is a figure consisting of two linked expression that are semantically incompatible, e.g.
7 Another name for this kind of metaphor is anthropomorphic metaphor or personification (ibid: 132). 8 We do not consider it as the figurative language as they can be understood literally (Montgomery, 1992: 129).
21 "my male grandmother". On the other hand, paradox is an absurd statement, e.g. "my mother is male" (ibid: 132). Other tropes, such as hyperbole, litotes and irony, are used to express some personal feelings and opinions that can be either positive or negative. Whereas hyperbole is used in eulogy for an overstatement and exaggeration, litotes is used in disparagement for an understatement. In poetry, hyperbole is a more common feature and often celebrates human ideals like love or nature. Litotes was quite common in poetry during the Anglo Saxon period (Leech, 1969: 166 171). Irony, on the other hand, has two meanings – direct and oblique (we say one thing but we mean something else). It is used, in most cases, for some criticism (ibid: 172). To sum up, the majority of the semantic deviations are used to make poetry valuable and special. On the other hand, it is also the thing that sometimes makes it difficult to understand and a reader has to search a real, "hidden" meaning. 3.4.2.5. Dialectical Deviation
Dialectical deviation is the usage of social class or regional dialects in poetry. Since normally we expect that a poet will use a dialect called "Standard English" 9 , thus any divergence from this dialect as the deviation. As mentioned above, language can deviate in two domains. Firstly, a poet can use any regional dialect, i.e. the dialect spoken in various regions, or some of a world variety of English, such as Scottish English, American English, Indian English, Australian English, etc. The second domain in which language can deviate from the Standard English is a dialect connected with a social class. It includes not only a social group to which a person belongs to but also his or her age and gender, i.e. if it is a man or a woman. Dialectical deviation can involve any linguistic level, i.e. phonetic (dialects with accent), lexical (variation of words with same meaning), morphological and grammatical (usage of deviant grammatical rules or syntax) (Short, 1996: 81 82). There are many purposes which dialectism can serve in poetry. The most frequent is to express some social political act (ibid: 87).
9 As the Standard English we understand the English spoken on BBC news broadcasts. It is considered as the norm. Its usage is closely associated with education, and hence with a social class as well (Short, 1996: 92).
22 3.4.2.6. Deviation of Register
Register is a term introduced by British linguist Halliday. The register is determined with three variables: field, tenor and mode which serve "to interpret the social context of a text, the environment in which meanings are being exchanged" (Halliday, 1990: 12) The first variable of the register – the field "refers to what is happening, to the social action that is taking place" (ibid). It has consequences for the linguistic structure. Language deviation according to the field can be used for a characterization and also for parody (Short, 1996: 84, 97). Tenor refers to "who is taking part, to the nature of participants." (Halliday, 1990: 12). According to some particular situation we chose the language. In formal situations we use a formal language and in informal situations an informal one. In poetry, poets usually use formal language. The reason for formality is mostly the fact that it is expected to be serious (Short, 1996: 84, 93). Finally, mode refers to "what part the language is playing, what it is that the participants are expecting the language to do for them in that situation." (Halliday, 1990: 12). Within the medium we distinguish between speech and writing. Poetry is prototypically written and does not evoke any characters, which causes its formality (Short, 1996: 93). The deviation of register in poetry can mean either borrowing of the language from non poetic registers but also a new invention. It is used mostly in modern poetry when modern poets mock the style of writing poetry cultivated in the eighteenth century (Leech, 1969: 50 – 51).
3.4.2.7. Deviation of Historical Period
Freedom of poets does not involve only the above mentioned deviation but they can also use a language not restricted to their own historical period. As English poets appreciate languages of dead poets, we can very often see in poetry dead languages as Latin or Greek. These ancient languages and words (archaisms) became quite institutionalized in poetry (ibid: 51).
23 3.5. Parallelism
Parallelism is a type of foregrounding that is based on repetition with a difference i.e. there is some degree of repetition between textual elements but also some degree of difference (Montgomery, 1993: 103). Thus the parallelism is not only a mechanical repetition but there is always some contrast. In conjunction with deviation it forms the basis of the poetic language. In poetry, we can see the parallelism of different intensity and strength. To find out the degree of regularity, we have to be able to answer the following questions: "Does the parallelism extend to both lexical and grammatical levels? Does it operate simultaneously on different layers of structure? Does it involve patterning on both phonological and formal levels?" (Leech, 1969: 65). The more we identify similarities through various levels, the stronger is the parallelism. Actually, parallelism is "a method where some features are held constant (usually structural features) while others (usually lexical items) are varied" (Short, 1996: 14). Parallelism can be of different types, for example the case of alliteration and rhyme is a kind of parallelism between sounds of words. The other kinds of parallelism that we can see are between groups of words, between characters, plots, etc. (Montgomery, 1993: 103). Whereas varieties of sound patterning (rhyme, rhythm) are considered to be formal parallelism (we are interested in both sound and look), another type of parallelism deals with meaning and that is why we name it as parallelism of meaning (ibid: 103). There are many reasons why the parallelism is used in poetry. Firstly, it can help us to understand a poem. As there is always some similarity and some variety in the parallelism, we understand better the relation between various parts. It is also used for emotive effects and last but not least, it can help us to remember easier the poem. (ibid: 107 109).
24 4. Conclusion to the Theoretical Part The discussion of the existing views on poetry and its language has highlighted a number of important points. First of all, I have defined poetic licence and its main types. I have explained that it was connected with breaking of linguistic rules and I have also introduced the linguistic levels which the breaking of rules is connected with. Secondly, I have dealt with deviation. I have introduced the main types of deviation connected with some linguistic levels and their examples. Last but not least, I have defined the notions of foregrounding and parallelism that are closely related to poetry and deviation. It is necessary to emphasize that in the previous chapters, I have focused not only on definitions of the above mentioned terms but I have also tried to explain the most typical situations in which poets normally use them and to interpret their purpose. As I believe that the historical period and the life of a poet influence his or her writing, in the next chapter I will focus on the life of Edgar Allan Poe and on several events from his life that might have influenced his style of writing. I will also introduce briefly his book of poetry that I will analyze in the practical part of this diploma thesis and I will also mention the circumstances that led him to write such poems.
25 5. E. A. Poe
In the following three chapters, we will deal with Poe's life. As it is not possible to introduce the large amount of his works (it is not the objective of this thesis), we will mention only some of his key works. Then we will briefly focus on the period of romanticism and introduce more extensively his book of poems that will be analyzed in the practical part.
5.1. His life
Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809. He was one of three children of Elizabeth Arnold, an actress and David Poe, an actor as well. His father, who inclined to alcohol, left his mother before Poe's birth. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was two. After the death of his mother, he was adopted by John Allan and his wife and moved to Richmond. Allan was a trader with wheat, teas and coffees, wines and liquors and tobacco. Poe was very close with Mrs. Allan and her sister Anne whom he called Aunt "Nancy"(Porges, 1963: 11) Poe's later childhood was quite careless and pleasant. He studied at Classical School Latin, Greek and mathematics and at these times (at the age of 13) he started to write poetry. Even at that period of his life, he was fascinated by thoughts of horror and death and he projected his fascination already to his first poems. At the same time, his schoolmate presented Poe to his mother Jane Stith Stanard. In her he found the closeness and the sympathy that he started to lose at home from his foster father. Mrs. Stanard encouraged him in writing poetry and she gave him also suggestions for improving his poetry. She was for him the dearest friend so when she went insane and soon after died, he wrote his poem about the tragic loss of the beautiful woman he admired, about his first ideal love. He named this poem To Helen . The name was borrowed from the story of Helen of Troy whose beauty caused the Trojan War. As Poe always admired perfect Greek beauty, he borrowed the name to celebrate his ideal "Helen" – Mrs. Stanard who became for him that lovely, deathless woman. At the same time, his foster father started to have some financial troubles. (ibid: 26 29). On February 14, 1826, Poe entered the University of Virginia. He had to leave in Richmond his first real love Elmira. When he told her: "I'll love you always. Promise me that you'll wait my return," he meant it seriously and so did she when she answered
26 that she would (ibid: 39). Their love seemed to be eternal but Elmira's parents did not wish this close relation between Poe and Elmira and when Poe left to the university, they started to find for Elmira someone more convenient, her future husband. Thus when Poe wrote her from the university, his letters remained unanswered. This was not the only thing that caused young Poe anguish. Another think that made him unhappy were expanses at the university. He got in debts at the very beginning of his college career as his foster father did not send him enough money to pay all his expanses. His school fellows were rich men and they spent most of their time playing cards. As they did not play only for pleasure but gambled, many of unlucky students lost large sums of money. Hand in hand with the playing cards went drinking of alcohol. This type of atmosphere influenced also Poe. As he fell into large debts, he turned to gambling, hoping to win some money. But he ran into debts more than he was before. Poe also wanted to be considered as a "regular" fellow of gambling parties and he turned to drinking as well (ibid: 44, 45). His university life finished after eighth months as his foster father did not want him to send more money for his expenses. He came home indebted. He wanted to see his love Elmira but he learnt that her parents were arranging for her to marry an older man who could provide for her. The constant reproaches of his foster father because of his debts, the loss of his love and the impossibility to find a job forced him to leave Richmond. He moved to Boston where he, for the first time, published his book of poetry called Tamerlane and Other Poems. 10 It was Poe who paid the printing of this book of poetry, and he soon ran of money. He did not have enough money for its distribution and he sent only two copies to magazine reviewers. As he found himself again without money, he enlisted in the United States of Army. At these times he started to polish an imaginative poem called Al Aaraaf 11 . During this time, he lost another woman that he loved more than anything else, Mrs. Allan, his foster mother. 10 He wrote the poem Tamerlane during his days at the university. It tells a story of a Mongol emperor who is dying and who is telling the story of his life to a holy friar. A theme of this poem is regret over a wasted life. Too late the Mongol emperor realizes that he wasted his life in battles and his ambition to rule destroyed love that he shared as a youth with one girl (Porges, 1963: 62). 14He borrowed the title from the Al Aaraaf of the Arabians which means "a medium between Heaven and Hell where men suffer no punishment, but yet do not attain that tranquil & even happiness which they suppose to be characeristic of heavenly enjoyment" (ibid: 66). It is a tale of another world –of a star which appeared and disappeared. There is a palace there of its presiding Deity and many of the lost sculptures of our world have flown to the star Al Aaraaf, which is better place for their divinity (ibid: 74). .
27 With his regiment, he got in Baltimore where his elder brother Henry lived with other relatives. Henry was seriously ill (he suffered from tuberculosis) and that is why he turned more and more to alcohol. He died at the age of 24. Poe felt that routine and demanding duties in the army were not for him. He did not have time to write and he fell into depression again and turned to drinking. He could not support it and later he was dismissed from the army. He stayed in Baltimore with his relatives – with his aunt, her children Henry and Virginia and with his grandmother (ibid: 83, 84). Even if Poe wrote many poems during his youth, he still remained unknown. His first success came with his short stories. His bizarre tale Metzengerstein 12 was published in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier; A MS. Found in a Bottle 13 was awarded a prize by the Baltimore Saturday Visiter; the horror tale Berenice 14 appeared in the Messenger . But although he succeeded a little with his works, he still lived in poverty and was indebted. In this time, his foster father died. During his life, his relation to Poe froze and it remained like this till his death. Mr. Allan did not leave any lifetime provisions to Poe even if he was quite rich. Thus Poe continued to live in poverty, without any money. The only thing that delighted him at these times was his cousin Virginia. Although she was very young and was his cousin, he married her and his love to her and her beauty inspired him in his writings (Ligeia, Eleonora, Morella )15 . For him, she was the ideal woman, personification of ideal beauty. Even if it was never proved that Poe was a user of opium, his stories like The Oval Portrait, The Fall of the House of Usher, Berenice, Ligeia, Tales of the Folio Club shows that maybe he was. In these stories we can encounter fantasies of the mind, strange images, odd language and also detailed description of the usage of opium. In August 1835, Poe became assistant editor in the Messenger . He started to devote his time to literary criticism. When he became editor of the Graham's Magazine in 1841, they printed his story The Man of the Crowd . With this story, Poe built the foundation for the detective story – the story of crime and investigation. The other detective stories are: The Murder in the Rue Morgue (with his famous character, detective Dupin), The Mystery of Marie Roget or The Purloined Letter (ibid: 127, 131).
12 It tells a story of a nobleman whose evil nature and passion for revenge are beyond control. Never before had a writer created so shocking story of terror and death (Porges, 1963: 84). 13 The plot is set at the sea. Poe describes fearful happenings set in atmosphere of supernatural (ibid: 88) 14 In this story appeared his favourite theme – the death of a beautiful woman (ibid: 96). 15 In Ligeia he depicted once more the atmosphere of tragedy and the death of a beautiful woman. Whereas in Ligeia an in Morella the women rejects the death and returns from it, Eleonora accepts it with tranquillity (ibid: 114, 134).
28 In other stories, Poe experimented with psychological effects. The majority of his stories and poems explore the psyche. We can name for example the best known story The Pit and the Pendulum where he described the overwhelming fear that gained control of a prisoner, The Tell-Tale Heart (the story about the madman who does not believe that he is mad) or The Black Cat (the story about the changes that occur in a man caused by alcohol. Poe described the graduation of the man's disease and how it grew upon him) (ibid: 145 146). In the same time, he became fascinated with hieroglyphs and cryptograms. The two stories where Poe experimented with them were: The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym and The Gold Bug (ibid: 148, 149). In the year 1846, Poe reached the height of his career and became famous. Only one year later, his wife Virginia died of tuberculosis. That leaded to Poe's complete breakdown and depression and he turned to drinking again. He outlived his wife for only two years. In October, 1849, was Edgar Allan Poe found delirious on the streets of Baltimore and was taken to the Washington College Hospital. He was not able to explain how he came to be in this condition and a couple of days later he died. The fact that he was found in this condition during the election that were held in that time in Baltimore, leads many people to suggest that Poe was a victim of so called "cooping", which was a practice when unwilling participants were drugged and intoxicated with alcohol, and then forced to vote several times for a particular candidate in an election (ibid: 184). 5.2. The Romantic Period
Poe is considered to be one of the representatives of Romantic movement. This movement originated in the 2 nd half of 18 th century in Western Europe. It reached the America in 1820. Romantic writers preferred art to science, individual to society. They emphasized the importance of so called "self" and psychology. The term "self" was understood as "a mode of knowledge opening up opening up the universe" (VanSpanckeren, An Outline of American Literature ). The possible themes were beauty, nature but also dehumanization, loneliness and death in life. As the Romantic movement had two main subgenres – Transcendentalism and Dark Romanticism, we have to emphasize that Poe is considered to be the representative of the Dark Romanticism. This movement was a reaction to the
29 Transcendental movement. 16 They present characters as sinful (opposite of the divinity of the transendentalists) and self destructive and mostly their characters fail when trying make changes for better. As they were influenced by the settings of Gothic horrors, they depict the nature as a dark, mysterious and decaying place and they often adapt to their works images of satan, devil, ghosts or vampires (Wikipedia). 5.3. The Raven and Other Poems
The book of poetry written by E.A. Poe The Raven and Other Poems is a compilation of his poems written during his life. It was firstly published in 1845 in New York by Viley and Putnam. In that time, it contained thirty poems that were divided into two groups. The first began with The Raven and it was followed by Poems written in Youth. In this diploma thesis, we will focus only on the first group including the poem The Raven and other seventeen poems. The volume is devoted to a woman – to Miss Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, the one of the most respected poet of the Victorian era and the wife of Robert Browning. Poe considered poetry as "the rhythmical creation of beauty where the intellect or conscience has only collateral relations" (Porges, 1963: 184). His relation to poetry is expressed in the preface to The Raven and Other poems , where he wrote: "With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence" (Poe, 1997: 14). It shows that poetry was his love.
16 Transcendentalists believed in the unity of the world and the God. The soul of each individua was considered as indentical with the world (VanSpanckeren, An Outline of American Literature ). Their works were optimistic and main themes were nature, mankind, divinity and social reform (Wikipedia).
30 6. Introduction to the Practical Part This part of my diploma thesis deals with the stylistics analysis of the book of poetry The Raven and Other poems. It is divided into two main parts. In the first part, I will focus on the analysis in general, i.e. the analysis of titles, themes, setting (where and when a poem sets), narrator and mood of poems. The second part deals with structure of poems and an analysis of poetic licence used in Poe's book of poetry. I will focus on deviations that are considered as institutionalized in poetry. The aim is to find out Poe's poetical style in general. That is why I will not mention repetitious deviations with the same function from all eighteen poems but just only a few of them with examples. At the very end of the practical part, I will analyse one poem (the poem The Haunted Palace) in more details to show which stylistics means Poe uses and how they help him to support its meaning. For verification of archaisms in Poe's poetry, I used The Consice Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (1993) , Online Etymology Dictionary and The English Language (2002). It is essential to highlight that I focused on archaisms that were archaic in his time, i. e. in 19 th century. I have elaborated Glossary of Names, which is enclosed to this diploma thesis, where I explain all the names and expressions from Greek mythology, Bible or Koran to which Poe refers in his poems.
7. Analysis
7.1. Titles of the Poems
The book contains eighteen poems. Poe often uses only one word in his titles: The Raven, The Sleeper, The Coliseum, Lenore, Israfel, Dreamland. The Raven was published for the first time in January, 1845 in the Evening Mirror (Quinn, 1969:438). The Sleeper occurred for the first time under the title Irene in 1831 in the collection Poems of Edgar A. Poe . Later, in 1832, the title was changed to The Sleeper (ibid: 175, 184). The poem The Coliseum was firstly published in the Baltimore Saturday Visitor in October, 1833.
31 The poem Lenore was firstly published on February, 1843 in The Pioneer. Actually, it was a revision of his previous poem A Paean (Quinn, 1969: 464). Lenore is the name of the main character in the poem and it is said that his poems was inspired by his wife Victoria (Wikipedia).
The poem Israfel was firstly published in April, 1831 in the Poems by Edgar A. Poe (Quinn, 1969: 175). The poem Dreamland was published in 1844 in the Graham's Magazine (ibid: 415).
In some of his poems alliteration occurs already in the title (written in bold) – Bridal Ballad, The City in the Sea or assonance (in bold) – The Conqueror Worm, The Valley of Unr est, The Haunt ed Pal ace.
The poem Bridal Ballad was firstly published under the title Ballad in January, 1837 in the Southern Literary Messenger and later it became Bridal Ballad (ibid: 260, 464).
The City in the Sea firstly appeared under the title The Doomed City (1831), then as The City of Sin. Under the title The City in the Sea it was published for the first time in 1845 in The Raven and Other Poems (ibid: 175, 464, 481).
The Conqueror Worm was published in January, 1843 in the Graham's Magazine (ibid: 390 391).
The poem The Valley of Unrest firstly occurred as The Valley of Nis in 1831 in Poems by Edgar A. Poe (ibid: 175). Under the title The Valley of Unrest it appeared in 1845 in the American Review (Wikipedia).
The poem The Haunted Palace was firstly published separately in the American Museum in April, 1839 and lately it was incorporated in Poe's short story The Fall of the House Usher (Quinn, 1969: 271).
Poe also uses graphological marks – dashes to specify the genre of a poem as in Eulalie – a song, Sonnet – to Zante, Sonnet – Silence (there is alliteration too in the title), or he uses longer lines instead of letters: To_____s S. O_____d, To_____ (in this case he did not want to write, for some reason, the whole name of a woman to whom he devoted these two poems).
The poem Eulalie – a song was firstly published on July, 1845 in the American Review (ibid: 480). It is considered to be inspired by his wife Victoria, his mother Eliza Poe or by his foster mother Frances Allan (Wikipedia).
32 Sonnet – to Zante was firstly published in January, 1837. one, contains the proper Zante is an island close to Greece to which Poe addressed this sonnet(Quinn, 1969: 260). The poem Sonnet Silence firstly occurred in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier in January, 1840 (ibid: 294). The poems To F_____s S. O_____d and To F_____ were both devoted to one woman, to Mrs. Frances Sargent Osgood, a friend of Poe and a poet. The relationship between them was considered as platonic love. In spite of the fact, that it was criticized by other people, it was strongly supported by his wife Virginia who was aware of her serious disease (tuberculosis) and of her dying and who was looking for somebody who would take care of Poe after her death. Virginia invited quite often Mrs. Osgood to their home as she believed that Mrs. Osgood influenced Poe positively. In her presence, he stopped drinking and kept from stimulants to impress her (Quinn, 1969: 477, 478). The poem To F_____s S. O_____d17 was firstly published under this title in 1945 in the collection The Raven and Other Poems. The second poem, To F_____ ,18 firstly appeared under this title in the Brodway Journal in 1945 (ibid: 478, 479). The poem The Catholic Hymn firstly occurred in Morella 19 in April, 1835 and was published in the Southern Literary Messenger (Quinn, 1969: 208). The poem To One in Paradise was firstly published as a part of the short story The Visionary. In 1831, it was published separately for the first time in the Saturday museum (ibid: 214, 374).
7.2. Themes of the Poems
The typical theme of Poe's poems was the death of a young and beautiful woman. He considered this theme as the most poetical one. However, it is evident that he was inspired by his life and by the death of women that he loved. This theme occurs in the following poems: The Raven, The Sleeper and Lenore.
17 This poem was firstly published under the title Lines Written in an Album , later under the title To a Fair Maiden (Quinn, 1969: 230, 283). 18 This poem, as well as the poem To F_____s S. O_____d, appeared in the previous years as To Mary (printed in the Messenger in July, 1835) and as To One Departed (printed in the Graham's Magazine in April, 1842) (ibid: 217, 331). 19 Morella is a short story written by E. A. Poe.
33 In The Raven the theme is stated directly. It tells the story of a distraught lover who mourns for the loss of his beloved woman Lenore. He is trying to reduce his sorrow over books but without success. He is anguished and when he hears for the first time tapping on his door, his fear gets stronger. When he finally finds out that the tapping does not come from the door but from a window, he opens the window. At this moment, a raven enters his room and a strange discourse between the young man and the raven is starting. At the very moment, the young man is surprised that the raven is speaking and he does not understand why the raven is constantly repeating a phrase "Nevermore". This repetition of one word makes the young man more and more nervous. He alternates between desire to forget and desire to see and hug his beloved love again. As the poem develops, the young man loses his hope. He lapses to deeper depression from which his soul shall be lifted – nevermore. The theme of the poem The Sleeper is similar to that one in The Raven , i.e. the death of a beautiful woman. But in this case, the poet alternates the main characteristics of the death and life and shows how they are linked. In The Sleeper , there is "an uncanny association between the dead woman and The bodiless airs, a wizard rout, which Flit through thy chamber in and out." (Quinn, 1969: 185) According to an old superstition, many people, in 1831, did not sleep with open windows because they were afraid of evil spirits which they believed to be in the night air (ibid). The narrator of the poem also denies admit the truth that his love is dead as he talks to her and asks her if she is not scared of that "bodiless airs" refusing the fact that now she is one of them. The poem Lenore is another variation on the theme of the death of a young and beautiful woman called Lenore. In this poem, the narrator and the lover of Lenore criticize others during her funeral because of their hypocrisy and blames them of her death. At the same time, a theme of undying and deep love occurs here as the narrator hopes in Lenore's well being after her death in Heaven.
34 The theme of the death of a beloved woman occurs also in the poem To One in Paradise. It does not utterly fall to this theme as its main theme is not the loss of a beloved woman but the regret over this loss that lasts too long and kills. The narrator mentions his dream that remained unfulfilled and his unfulfilled dream is his lost love. The rest of the poem is devoted to what happens when you cannot get rid of your past and your unfulfilled dreams. The consequence is spiritual death and stagnant mind. The theme of death occurs in Bridal Ballad too but in this case the death concerns a man. The poem is about the newly wedded woman. She tries to persuade herself that she is happy as a bride but she has reproaches that she broke the vow that she gave to her previous lover to love him eternally. Another theme of Poe's poems is love. This theme occurs in his two poems: Eulalie-a song, To F_____ ans To F_____s S. O_____d. The poem Eulalie-a song shows how love can heal sadness and sorrow. It is a bridal song about a man who overcomes his sadness and sorrow (perhaps after death of his love?) when falling in love and marrying a woman called Eulalie. At the beginning, the narrator describes his loneliness, sadness and how his life was empty. But his new love and his bride Eulalie transformed his sadness to happiness. The poem To F_____ also deals with love but in this case, it is platonic love. The narrator's dreams (in fact Poe's dreams) about a woman whom he admires (Mrs Frances Sargent Osgood), helps him to calm the chaos, woes and loneliness of his life. As already mentioned, this poem was written for Frances Sargent Osgood who Poe admired. The second poem written for her To F_____s S. O_____d is rather an encouragement for her to stay as she was, not to change and follow a current path to achieve the goal – to be loved. Both of these poems are rather an expression of Poe's sentiment to this woman. Other themes are those one that are somehow connected with soul. These themes occur in three poems: Valley of Unrest, The City in the Sea and Sonnet-Silence. The main theme of the poem Valley of Unrest is eternal sadness of soul and its stagnancy. The theme of this poem is not stated directly. The poem The City in the Sea has similar theme to the previous poem – "dead soul." The Sonnet-Silence differs from the previous two poems. In this poem, a contrast between the silence, that is harmless and "terrorless" (the silence of body) and that one
35 that is full of terror (the silence of soul) is drawn. As the silence is understood death. The speaker warns that the death of soul is worse than the death of body (ibid: 295). The theme of the poem Dreamland is the life between death and life. A voyager arrives to the place between death and life, to the place that is beyond time and space (ibid: 416). This place is odd as there are "seas without a shore, skies of fire," it seems to be quite sad and dark as there are "lone, dead, still and chilly waters, grey woods and swamps." There are some "shrouded forms" that live there. They try to convince the voyager that this is a good place to stay. But the narrator warns that the voyager cannot see the mysteries of this place properly and that he or she should not try to see it openly. In the end, the voyager returns from this place between death and life to this life. Another theme that occurs in Poe's poetry is glorification of something. This theme is present in three poems: Sonnet-to Zante, The Coliseum, Catholic Hymn and Israfel. Whereas, the poem Sonnet to Zante glorifies the beauty of an island near to Greek, Zante, and its nature (ibid: 260), The Coliseum glorifies the faded pomp of Rome. The Catholic Hymn is not glorification at all. The speaker addresses to Maria, Mother of God, and pleads her to be still with him and for better future. In the poem Israfel music (poetry) created by an angel Israfel is glorified. The narrator compares his limited possibility to create his own "music" (poetry) on Earth to Israfel's creation of music in Heaven. Through this poem, Poe expresses his opinion on the creation of poetry (ibid: 181). Last but not least, the theme of dark forces that rule the world or man occurs in two poems: The Conqueror Worm and The Haunted Palace . Whereas in the Conqueror Worm dark forces rule the mankind, in the Haunted Palace they rule a man. The Conqueror Worm is about the tragedy of mankind which is ruled by dark forces (ibid: 391). Death is the only one that always wins and takes it all . The theme of the last poem, The Haunted Palace , shows how evil, which can be understand either as immorality or disease, can sicken a human being. "It depicts, under the allegorical disguise of the ruin of a palace, the decay of a human soul." (ibid: 271).
36 7.3. Settings of the Poems
The setting of The Raven is a chamber of a house and it happens at midnight. All this information is written directly in the poem. We also know that the narrated events takes place during December. A similar setting has The Sleeper as it takes place in a chamber where a dead woman lies in bed "at midnight, in the month of June." The setting of Lenore is probably in a church yard or church during a funeral. This poem is out of time as there is no information about when it happened. Other poems that are out of time are: The Valley of Unrest, The Coliseum, Dreamland and Sonnet – to Zante. In these poems only the place is mentioned (where it happens/happened). The poem The Valley of Unrest takes place in a valley that is sad, restlessness and motionless. But there is no information where the valley can be found, there are only its characteristics. The Coliseum takes place in Rome. The poem Dreamland is set to "an ultimate dim Thule" (see Appendix 2). Poe described this place as "a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime, out of space – out of time." Sonnet to Zante is set to a Greek isle called Zante (Zakynthos). The poem The Conqueror Warm takes place in a theatre. We know that the poem takes place during some gala night and "within the lonesome latter years." This expression could mean near the end of life. There is no other more specific information about setting. The poem Israfel is a little special as there is no information about time but there are two places where the poem is set. The first one is Heaven as seen in the following verse: "In Heaven a spirit doth dwell"
The second one is this world, i.e. Earth. The place is changed in the seventh stanza: "Yes, Heaven is thine; but this Is a world of sweets and sours;"
37 Another poem that has two places where it is set is The Haunted Palace . The first one is "the greenest valley" , the second one is in a palace. In fact, the palace is a metaphor for a man and the greenest valley , a metaphor for a human mind(see bellow, chapter 6.2.8. Figurative Language). There are approximate time references as the narrator says that "this was in the olden time long ago." The rest of poems, i.e. The City in the Sea, To One in Paradise, Eulalie – a song, To F_____, To F_____s S. O_____d, Sonnet – Silence are out of place and time, which is the most typical setting for Poe. 7.4. Narrator
In the poems The Raven, The Sleeper, Dreamland, To One in Paradise, Eulalie – a song, To F_____ , Poe uses as a narrator the so called persona, i.e. first person narrator. The narrator is explicated and does not change within the poem. In the poem Lenore , there is a change of the narrator. In the first half of the first stanza, there is some group of people who talk as there are such expressions as: "Let the bell toll! And, Guy de Vere, hast thou no tear? – weep now or nevermore!" From the previous example we can deduce that the name of the second narrator is Guy de Vere who starts narrating in the second part of the first stanza. In the poem The Coliseum there is also a change of the narrator. The whole poem is narrated in the first person but in the fifth stanza, there is a change as we can see in the following example: "'Not all' – the Echoes answer me - 'not all! …We rule the hearts of mightiest men – we rule With a despotic sway all giant minds."
The last stanza of this poem is narrated by "the Echoes" that the first narrator hears to speak. The whole stanza is written in the direct speech. They answer to the first narrator's rhetorical question from the previous two lines: …All of the famed, and the colossal left By the corrosive Hours to Fate and me?
38 Thus it is evident that the echo in this case is not considered to be the repetition of words said. The fact that the word is written with a capital letter could lead to a suggestion that it is a kind of personification of the echoes. In the poems The City in the Sea, The Haunted Palace, Catholic Hymn, Israfel, The Valley of Unrest, Sonnet – to Zante, To F_____s S. O_____d, Sonnet – Silence , the narrator is implicit, i.e. suggested. Whereas in the poems The Haunted Palace and The City in the Sea we suppose that the narrator is a group of people or that the narrator speaks for more than one person (because of usage of the possessive adjective "our" as in the following example from The Haunted Palace: "in the greenest of our valleys"), the narrator of the rest of poems can be equated to Poe. It is him who is suggested to be the narrator because these poems are his personal "confession." The exception is the poem Bridal Ballad . This poem is quite special as it is narrated by a woman – a bride. In this sense, this poem deviates from the others as, normally, in Poe's poems or short stories it is often a man who is the narrator. 7.5. Mood
When we talk about mood of poetry, we mean its temper and atmosphere. The mood of a poem is determined mostly by the poet's choice of words or by syntax or rhyme scheme. The mood can be melancholic, joyous, ironic, satiric, contemplative, etc. Mood can embody all the human emotions. In the poem The Raven, there is the most typical mood for Poe and it is somberness, melancholy and scary atmosphere. It is created by words like weary, dreary, bleak, dying, sorrow, sad, darkness, stillness, mystery, ebony, grave, stern, lonely, grim, ghastly and gaunt . The poems with a similar mood are: The Valley of Unrest, The Sleeper, Lenore, Dreamland, The City in the Sea and The Conqueror Worm . In the poems The Valley of Unrest, Dreamland, The City in the Sea and To One in Paradise, there is also the atmosphere of deadness and motionless. This stagnancy is expressed with words like motionless, dead, still, eternal rest, serene, dim, mute and dull. In the following poems, there are two kinds of mood that alternate: one is somber and the other is joyous. It concerns the poems Bridal Ballad, The Coliseum, The Haunted Palace and Eulalie – a song.
39 In Bridal Ballad , the joyous mood is depicted with words like: happy, love and kiss. On the other hand, the sadness with reproaches is expressed through the words like knell, church-yard, sigh, dead, sorely, evil and forsaken. The poem The Coliseum is written in the sad and regretful mood only the last stanza became more optimistic. The ambiguity of the mood is expressed through the words like buried, shadows, gloom, desolation, dim Night, bat, sad and blackened shafts, mouldering, wreck, ruin, corrosive, impotent and on the other side the words like pomp and power, grandeur, glory, sun, mightiest, fame and renown. The Haunted Palace starts with quite joyous mood (words like radiant, glorious, sweet, happy, musically, glory, sparkling, sing and beauty are used) and the last two stanzas turns to the somber mood ( evil, sorrow, mourn, desolate, dim, entombed, discordant, ghastly and hideous ). In the poem Eulalie – a song , there are only three lines in the first stanza that are written in the somber mood (usage of words like alone, moan, stagnant, doubt and pain ). Then the mood is changed to the joyous (words like smiling, bright, radiant, shines, strong, Astarté – see Apendix 2 ). Sonnet – to Silence is written in a rather warning and advisory tone. To contribute the mood, the following expressions are used: render him terrorles, dread him not or commend thyself to God. The mood in the poems Catholic Hymn, Israfel, Sonnet – to Zante, To F_____s S. O_____d and To F_____ differs from the mood of the previous poems as they are optimistic and joyous. The mood in the poem Catholic Hymn is optimistic and hopeful about the future although the present is not so pleasant. The optimism is described with such words like joy, good, grace, radiant shine, sweet hopes. The mood of poems Israfel and Sonnet – to Zante is panegyric. Whereas in Israfel the words well, spell, enamoured, laurels, best, ecstasies, perfect bliss are used , in Sonnet – to Zante, the mood is depicted with the following words: fair, gentle, radiant, bliss, verdant slopes, Isola d'oro, Fior di Levante. 20 The last two poems, To F_____s S. O_____d and To F_____ , are written in the admiring and love expressing mood. Poe uses words like grace, beauty, praise, love, beloved, Eden, bland repose, enchanted, serenest, bright and smile . 20 The last two expression are written in the Italien language and their meanings are: the golden isle, the flower of Levant (of East).
40 8. Poetic Licencce
8.1. Metre
This section will be concerned with the metre of the poems, i.e. focus on stressed and unstressed syllables. It is necessary to say, that in my analysis stressed syllables will be underlined to differ from unstressed syllables. Feet will be indicated with the following symbol: | . The poem The Raven is mostly written in trochaic octameter, i.e. that there are eight feet in one line, as we can see in the following two lines: Once up|on a | mid night | drear y, | while I | pond ered | weak and | wear y |. The poems The Valley of Unrest, Dreamland and The Haunted Palace are written mostly in trochaic tetrameter as seen in the following examples: Once it | smiled a | sil ent | dell Where the | peo ple | did not| dwell (The Valley of Unrest) or By a | route ob|scure and | lone ly Haunt ed | by ill | an gels | on ly (Dreamland) The poems Catholic Hymn and The Sleeper are written mostly in iambic tetrameter:
41 At moorn | at noon | at twi |light dim Mar ia | you hast | heard my | hymn (Catholic Hymn)
At mid |night in | the month | of June I stand | beneath | the my |stic moon (The Sleeper) In the poem The City in the Sea , iambic, trochaic and anapestic tetrameter are combined. We can see the iambic tetrameter in the first line of the first stanza: Lo! Death | has reared | himself | a throne The combination of the iambic, trochaic and anapestic tetrameter is, for example, seen in the second line of the first stanza: In a strange | cit ty | ly ing | alone The combination of iambic, trochaic and anapestic tetrameter and trimeter is used in the poem To F_____s S. O_____d. For example, the poem starts with the combination of dactyl and iambic tetrameter: Thou would | be loved ? | then let | your heart and it continues, in the second line, with the trochaic tetrameter: From its |pre sent | path way |part not and then, the third line starts with anapest and continues with iamb: Being ev |erything | which now | you are and then the fourth line that is written in iambic and anapestic trimeter:
42 Be noth |ing which | you are not . The combination of the iambic and anapestic trimeter and tetrameter is also used in the poems Israfel, The Conqueror Worm and To F_____. The poems Bridal Ballad and To One in Paradise are written mostly in iambic trimeter: The ring | is on | my hand (Bridal Ballad) Thou wast | all that | to me For which | my soul | did pine (To One in Paradise) In the poem Eulalie – a song, several types of metre are combined. There is the iambic and also anapestic dimeter, trimeter and also heptameter (seven feet), e.g.: I dwelt | alone In a world | of moan And my soul | was a stag |nant tide Till the fair | and gen |tle Eu |lalie | became | my blush |ing bride Till the ye |llow-haired | young Eu |lalie | became | my smil |ing bride . The poem Lenore is written mostly in iambic and trochaic heptameter: Come let the | bu rial | rite be | read the | fun eral | song be | sung And Guy | de Vere | hast thou | no tear | weep now | or ne |vermore . In this book of poetry, there are two sonnets 21 : Sonnet - Silence and Sonnet to Zante . They are written mostly in a combination of iambic and anapestic pentameter as see in the following examples: 21 Sonnet is a poem that consists of 14 lines and they are usually written in iambic pentameter (Wikipedia).
43 There are | some qua |lities | some incor |porate things That have | a doub |ble life | which thus | is made A type | of that | twin en |tity | which springs From ma |tter and light | evinced | in sol |id and shade (Sonnet - Silence) Fair isle | that from | the fair |est of all | flow ers Thy gent |lest of all | gent le | names dost | take (Sonnet to Zante) The last poem The Coliseum is quite untypical for Poe because it is written in blank verse. This poem is written mostly in the iambic pentameter as seen bellow: Here where | a he |ro fell | a co |lumn falls Here where | the mi |mic eag |le glared | in gold A mid |night vi |gil holds | the swart |hy bat . Poe's poetry approves his claim that it is "the rhythmical creation of beauty" (Edgar Allan Poe Quotes ). In all his poems he works with sounds and the poems are strictly elaborated. The fact that Poe often combines several types of metre indicates that his poetry is serious and emotive. Nevertheless, even if he uses the rhythm that is deviant in normal language but typical for poetic language, we can encounter in his poetry deviation from the usage of the metre in poetry. He sometimes emphasizes grammatical words as, for example, in the first line of the first stanza of the poem Bridal Ballad where the preposition "on" in the verse "the ring is on my hand" is stressed. By this stress he emphasized and drew attention of readers to the fact that she (the narrator) is married now, which is important information because, as we mentioned in the chapter 6.1.2., the poem deals with the just married woman who cannot forget her previous lover to whom she gave the woe to love him forever. The ring on her hand is the indicator that she broke her vow. Thus the proper analysis of metre and finding stressed words can help us to understand the meaning if it is not visible at the first sight. Metre also helps to poets to depict the atmosphere of a poem as the lexical words (those
44 ones that bear the meaning) are stressed and so they emphasize the mood of the poem (either somber or joyous). 8.2. Rhyme
Except the poem The Coliseum which is written in blank verse and thus there is no rhyme, all the poems in the book are written in some type of rhyme. The most frequent are internal and end rhymes. The combination of both of them is used in the poems The Raven, Lenore and Israfel. This combination of rhymes makes the poems much more musical than when only one type of rhyme is used. We can see it in the following example from The Raven :
Once upon a midnight dreary , while I pondered, weak and weary , Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore , While I nodded, nearly napping , suddenly there came a tapping , As of some gently rapping , rapping at my chamber door . 'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, ' tapping at my chamber door - Only this, and nothing more . (Stanza 1)
In the example, tree different types of rhyme that Poe uses in this poem are highlighted. The internal rhyme is written in read, the end rhyme in blue and those internal rhymes, that do not rhyme within one line but they rhyme with the syllables from the following line, are written in green. The both types of the internal rhyme are used also in the poem Lenore :
AH, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forev er ! Let the bell toll ! – a saintly soul floats on the Stygian riv er ; And, Guy de Vere , hast thou no tear ? – weep now or
45 never more ! See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Len ore ! Come! let the burial rite be read – the funeral song be sung !- An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young – A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young . (Stanza 1) Whereas in the first part of the stanza Poe uses the end rhyme and the internal rhyme within one line, in the second part, he uses the end rhyme as well but the internal rhyme of three different lines. In the poem The Conqueror Worm we can encounter, except the most typical end rhyme, also an eye rhyme (I have used the pink color to highlight it). It concerns only two couplets in the last stanza: … While the angels, all pallid and wan , Uprising, unveiling, a ffirm That the play is the tragedy, ' Man ', And its hero the Conqueror Worm .
As we can see, the words wan and Man rhyme only when we look at them but they are pronounced differently. In the majority of cases, the function of rhymes is to make a poem rhythmical but also musical. Another function is that the words, that rhyme, are related by a particular similarity not only in syllables but also in meaning. This can help when the poem is difficult to understand. 8.3. Alliteration, Assonance, Chiming
Apart from rhyme and metre, Poe uses in his poems alliteration and assonance. They occur in almost every of his poem. They are used for artistic effects but words that are similar in sounds somehow connected either in meaning or one of a word characterizes the other. The place where alliteration or assonance occurs can also be different. For example in The Raven , alliteration in the first stanza nodded, nearly
46 napping is front alliteration (it is placed on the first consonant) that intensifies. Firstly, the narrator only nodded , i.e. that his head started going down as he got asleep, and after that he was nearly napping , i.e. that he was sleeping for a short time. Another kind of alliteration in the same poem occurs in the third stanza: silken sad un certain ru stling (alliteration is highlighted in bold). It is front and interior alliteration as it occurs at the beginning of words but also in the middle. The adjectives silken, sad and uncertain characterize a noun rustling . Sometimes, the poet uses back alliteration but it is not so often. For example, in The Raven , third stanza, there is a mixture of back and front alliteration and internal assonance: Th is it is, and nothing m ore. In this line, the consonants [ s] at the end of word this and is is repeated; consonant [ n] in words and and nothing . The vowels [ i, o ] are repeated, which is a sign of assonance (highlighted in red) there is also assonance as the vowel i is repeated four times. Both alliteration and assonance are used in poetry to grab attention and to stick better in memory. Chiming does not occur in Poe's poetry frequently. In Israfel, he uses it to describe two contradictory sides of this world: the good one and the bad one – world of sweets and sours. In Sonnet – Silence , there is chiming when Poe describes ambiguity of two incorporate things that evinced in solid and shade and sea and shore . In The Coliseum , it was used to express a motion of a lizard: swift and silent lizard . 6.2.4. Elisions (Apocope, Aphesis, Syncope)
Necessity to fit metre leads sometimes to omission of an unstressed syllable. For example in Dreamland, 'tis (aphesis) instead of it is (fourth stanza) is used to fit trochaic tetrameter ; o'er and ne'er (syncope) in The Sleeper (fourth stanza) is used to fit iambic tetrameter. In case that elision occurs in the last word of a line, an unstressed syllable is omitted to fit both metre and rhyme. For example in The Raven (thirteenth stanza), Poe uses the syncope o'er to rhyme with words core and nevermore . In Catholic Hymn , an unstressed consonant v is omitted in a word o'ercast to make a couplet with a word Past . Syncope occurs in this kind of poetry only twice. Firstly in The Sleeper (fourth stanza): oft instead of often and in Catholic Hymn : morn instead of morning.
47 8.5. Sections of Poems and Graphological Means
In the majority of cases, poems are divided into several stanzas of several lines that run from the left hand edge to the right hand edge and each line starts with a capital letter. Quite often is all the first word of a poem written with capital letters, which means that the word is stressed. Words that are emphasized within a poem are written in italics. Each stanza is finished with a full stop or with an exclamation mark (in case of vocative sentences). Lines within stanzas are finished with a comma or a semi colon. The division into stanzas (formal sections) matches poems' thematic sections. In the poems The Valley of Unrest, Catholic Hymn and To F_____s S._____d the so called stichic lines are used, i.e. there are no stanzas and the lines are of similar length and metre. The poems Sonnet – Silence and Sonnet to Zante are the other exception . Both of them are sonnets which mean that there are no stanzas and that they should consist of 14 lines. Sonnet – Silence deviates from this formal norm of sonnets as it has fifteen lines. In the poems, where there is a direct speech, quotation marks are used. The necessity to make a longer pause, when reading a poem loudly, is marked with a dash ( ). Special punctuation is used in the titles of two poems: To F_____s S. O_____d and To F_____ . These longer lines are used instead of a first name and a surname that Poe, for some reasons, did not want to mention. The notes below in brackets, which indicate that it concerns Mrs. Frances Sargent Osgood, are the notes of the publisher. In some poems ( Israfel, The City in the Sea , To One in Paradise, To F_____, Sonnet – Silence, The Haunted Palace ) parentheses are used to show that what is inside of them should be considered as separate and that there is some additional information, e.g.: BELOVED! amid the earnest woes That crowd around my earthly path – (Drear path, alas! where grows Not even one lonely rose) – … (To F_____)
48 In this case, there is some more information about the narrator's path (that the path is deserted and without any rose). Special graphological marks are used to express different pronunciation to fit a rhyme pattern. Poe uses the so called apostrophe (') to mark that there is some elision in a word (especially, elision of an unstressed vowel or consonant), e. g.: Above the closed and fringèd lid 'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid, That, o'er the floor and down the wall, (The Sleeper)
In this verse, apostrophe occurs three times: in the preposition 'neath (instead of beneath ) then in slumb'ring (instead of slumbering ) and finally, in the preposition o'er (instead of over ). There is also another mark in the adjective fringèd. In this case, the graphological mark means that the ending –ed is pronounced as [ id]. Thus this word is read as [fringid]. Normally, the ending –ed is not stressed and the word would be read as [fringd]. Thus this word deviates not only graphologically but phonologically too.
8.6. Archaisms In Poe's poems, there are some words that are archaic such as lore (a book of knowledge or myths, a noun used in Old English), quoth (said), thereat (there , used in Old English), unto (to , it was used till the 13 th century) in The Raven ; lo (look , used in Middle English) and oft (often , Middle English) in The Sleeper ; morn and even in The Valley of Unrest (morning, evening; used in Middle English); fanes (temples , used in 16 th century) and bowers (a word was replace in 16 th century with a word arbor ) in The City in the Sea ; therein (in there , Old English) in To F_____ ; lone (alone , in 16 th century, it was replace by lonely) and levin (lightening , 13 th century) in Israfel ; avaunt (move on , used in 15 th century)in Lenore; alas (unfortunate , 13 th century) in The Coliseum ; red-litten (red-lightning ) in The Haunted Palace. Archaic forms of possessive and personal pronouns used in Middle English, such as thy (your), thou (you), ye (you), thee (archaic objective case of thou ), thine (your) and a reflexive pronoun thyself (yourself) are also often used in his poems.
49 Poe frequently uses in his poems archaic conjugation of verbs in present simple which was common in Middle English. As Crystal (2002) introduces, the conjugation of verbs in present simple at that time was different. He explains it on the example of a verb play : I play(e) thou playest he/she playeth we, you, they playe(n) (Crystal, 2002: 195 ). This way of conjugation is evident in Poe's poems in the following verbs : art (are) hast and hath (second and third person from have ), despisest (second person of singular, present tense from despise ) wast (was ), didst (second person of singular, past indicative of do ), doth (third person of singular does ), haunteth (third person of singular haunts ), lieth (lies). In the poem Lenore (last stanza), Poe uses an archaic subjunctive mood lest meaning "in order to prevent any possibility that something will happen" (Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary). Sometimes, in spite of the fact that a word is used even today we have to consider it as archaic because it had another meaning in that time. Thus following lines in the poem Israfel would show kind of paradox: Tottering above In her highest noon. The enamoured moon …
As the highest noon , we understand midday or afternoon and normally, we do not link midday with the moon but with the sun. The fact that the word noon was in Old English used for midnight gives to these lines a sense. But in this case, it is difficult to recognize whether Poe intended to express paradox or whether he only used an archaic word.
50 8.7. Borrowings from Other Languages
There are not many borrowings from other languages in Poe's poems. In fact, there are only three: in the poem Lenore , an utterance "we have sinned" is written in Latin – Peccavimus and in the same poem, there is a borrowing from French language: débonair (charming) ; in Sonnet – to Zante , there are three last sentences in Italian language: Isola d'oro! Fior di Levante! (Golden isle! Flower of Levante). Whereas the Latin expression Peccavimus used in Lenore could be understood as a paraphrase on a notorious known utterance from Confiteor 22 : mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa (my fault, my fault, my maximum fault) , and this could be, probably, the reason why Poe chose Latin language here, the French word débonair is used only to fit an internal rhyme (in bold) : For her, the f air and debon air ,… The usage of Italian language in Sonnet-to Zante emphasizes Poe's deep admiration of this isle. Nowadays, the isle Zakynthos is considered to be Greek but Poe refers here to the times when Zakynthos was a part of the Republic of Venice.23 The fact that this isle was under the rule of the Republic of Venice, influenced its culture but also the language.
8.8. Syntactic Rearrangements
This kind of deviation, used to fit a rhyme and metre or to emphasize a particular word, occurs in Poe's poetry quite frequently. If we compare Poe's version of the poem The Raven (two lines from the seventh stanza) where the syntactic rearrangement is evident with a version that is syntactically correct (i.e. my arrangements of the original version), there is not only a change of rhyme and metre but even the change of mood which seems to be more dramatic in Poe's version. As the poet tries to depict and approximate the atmosphere and to draw the readers into the action readers and influence their feelings, it seems that Poe's version is more cogent than the syntactically correct version which is more likely a statement. The examples are introduced below:
22 Confiteor is an introductory act of repentance of a catholic celebration where a man confesses his imperfection and sins to God (Wikipedia). 23 Venetian republic was an Italian state that existed from the 7 th century AD to the year 1797 (Wikipedia).
51 In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore; Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; (Poe's version) A stately raven of the saintly days of yore stepped there in; He made not the least obeisance; he did not stop or stayed a minute; (syntactically correct version)
8.9. Repeated Constructions and Words
In Poe's poems, repetitive structures occur quite often. A part of these structures is sometimes changed. He uses them as a kind of refrain, or as a kind of enumeration or when he wants to give some additional information. In The Raven, each stanza is finished with a line containing an utterance nothing more or the word nevermore where sometimes, the rest of the line is changed. The repetition of the word nothing more occurs in the first part of the poem, before the raven comes to the narrator's room. The narrator is not sure, if the tapping he heard while he was napping is just a dream or reality. In the second part of the poem, where the word nevermore occurs after the raven enters the narrator's room, it is mostly the raven who repeats this word and the narrator guesses what the raven means by this word. He figures it out at the very end of the poem. This repetition can be understood as a kind of refrain. A similar repetition occurs in Sonnet – to Zante. From the eighth to eleventh lines, Poe uses the repetition of two words no more . Once more then, this utterance occurs in To One in Paradise (third stanza). In Bridal Ballad , each stanza finishes with a line And I am happy now or with its alternations: And who is happy now, May not be happy now . This parallelism expresses the bride's uncertainty and doubts about her happiness. In The Sleeper, in the third stanza, the word strange is repeated three times and the following two stanzas start with lines that are parallel to each other:
52 The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep, Which is enduring, so be deep! … My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep As it is lasting, so be deep!
Whereas in the first two lines, the narrator mentions some lady and he is impersonal, in the following two lines, he specifies it and becomes more personal. Now, there is no doubt that the lady who is sleeping (is dead) is the narrator's love. The poem The Coliseum seems to be formed, for the most part, from syntactic parallelism. There is the syntactic parallelism in the third stanza, fourth and fifth stanza: Here, where a hero fell, a column falls! Here, where the mimic eagle glared in gold, … Here, where the dames of Rome their gilded hair … Here, where on golden throne the monarch lolled, (Stanza 3) …these walls – these ivy-clad arcades – These mouldering plinths –these sad and blackened shafts- These vague entablatures – this crumbling frieze – These shattered cornices – this wreck – this ruin – These stones - alas! these grey stones… (Stanza 4) 'Not all' – the Echoes answer me - 'not all! Not all our power is gone – not all our fame – Not all the magic of our high renown – Not all the wonder that encircles us – Not all the mysteries that in us lie – Not all the memories that hang upon
53 (Stanza 5) In this case, the syntactic parallelism is used to enumerate different kinds of things. A kind of enumeration is also used in the poem The City in the Sea, where and adverb up is repeated to describe the city: But the light from out the lurid sea Streams up the turrets silently – Gleams up the pinnacles far and free – Up domes – up spires – up kingly halls – Up fanes –up Babylon-like walls – Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers … Up many and many a marvelous shrine (Stanza 2) In Lenore, Poe uses parallelism to specify and to make more precise the information given a line above: The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes – The life still there, upon her hair – the death upon her eyes. (Stanza 2) Whereas in the first line, it is only mentioned that there is no life in Lenore's eyes; in the second line, it gradates and the word life is changed for death . In the poem Dreamland, the first and the last stanza are nearly identical. There is only change in the fifth and sixth line: I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule- (Stanza 1) I have wondered home but newly From this ultimate dim Thule. (Stanza 5)
54 Whereas the first stanza, and the following stanzas too, give information about the narrator's trip to Thule and his stay there, the last stanza informs that he left this place and returned home. Another kind of the parallelism within this poem can be found in the second and in the third stanza: Their lone waters – lone and dead, - Their still waters – still and chilly With the snows of the lolling lily. (Stanza 2) Their lone waters, lone and dead, - Their sad waters, sad and chilly With the snows of the lolling lily, - (Stanza 3) The change of the adjective still for the adjective sad expresses gradation, i.e. that the fact that the waters are without motion provokes their sadness. Each stanza of the poem Eulalie – a song ends with the syntactic parallelism where Poe changes verbs and adjectives as seen bellow: Can vie with the modest Eulalie's most unregarded curl – Can compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie's most humble and careless curl. (Stanza 2) Parallelism, used nearly in all of Poe's poems, contributes to their rhythm. 8.10. Figurative Language
Poe's style of writing does not consists only in a play with sounds and repetition but also in the usage of figurative language. Out of the eighteen poems included in the book of poetry The Raven and Other Poems , seven are figurative and these are: The Valley of Unrest, Israfel, Dreamland, The City in the Sea, The Conqueror Worm and The Haunted Palace (as The Haunted Palace will be analysed in a separate section of
55 this thesis, I will only focus on the remaining six poems). Naturally, Poe uses figurative language even in the rest of his poems but they are not written all in metaphors as it is in the above mentioned poems. The Valley of Unrest is a rewriting of the poem The Valley of Nis. As Quinn introduces (1969), Poe explained during his life that the word Nis means Sin written backward (anagram). 24 In fact the word "valley" is considered to be a metaphor for "soul." The poem communicates that the valley (soul) is formed partly by angels, partly by devils and a large part is a broken heart. The restlessness of the valley, that is eternal, is some kind of punishement for some sin (Quinn, 1969: 184). A kind of humanizing metaphor is used already in the first line: smiled a silent dell. The mild- eyed stars can represent the angels who keep watch above the flowers where these flowers in this context could be understood as "products of the soul", i.e. thoughts, feelings, passions. Another example of a mixture of an animistic metaphor and paradox are the following two lines from the same poem:
In the midst of which all day The red sunlight lazily lay.
Normally, we do not link the noun sunlight with the verb lay but rather with the verb shine. The fact that the sunlight is red form a kind of paradox with the previous line because normally, the sunlight is red only when the sun goes down and not all day (notice that to fit the rhyme, Poe omits the final –s of third person of singular of the verb lay ). Another kind of paradox is in the following lines : The sad valley's restlessness. Nothing there is motionless –
Normally, if something is restless it is considered to be "unable to stay still, quiet or calm" (Cambridge Advanced Learner's) which does not correspond with the word motionless . What is more, sad valleys restlessness is an animistic metaphor. In this poem, there is also an example of synesthetic metaphor: clouds that rustle through the
24 Anagram is a word play where letters are rearranged. The result of this rearrangement is a new word which contains all the original letters (Wikipedia).
56 unquiet Heaven (normally, clouds do not make any sound), or simile: those trees that palpitate like the chill seas. In Israfel , Poe compares the creation of music in Heaven by the angel Israfel to the creation of poetry on the Earth. Similarly to the previous poem, Poe uses figurative language: a humanizing metaphor: the enamoured moon blushes with love, or he mixes a paradox and a metaphor as in the following lines: And the shadow of thy perfect bliss Is the sunshine of ours.
Here, Poe compares the shadow to the sunshine (metaphor) but he uses for his comparison antonyms, which is by itself, paradoxical. In the poem Dreamland , Poe compares the life between death and life to the voyage to an ultimate Thule (see Appendix 2). He uses metaphors: lone and dead waters (animistic metaphor), snows of the lolling lilly, sheeted memories, murmuring mountains, skies of fire (synesthetic metaphors); but he also uses other tropes: bottomless vales (oxymoron), seas without shores (paradox), lakes that endlessly outspread (hyperbole), tis an Eldorado (metonymy; see Appendix 2). Similarly as Poe compares the soul to a valley in The Valley of Unrest , he compares the soul, ruled by the death and by the hell, to a city in The City in the Sea. As in the previous poems, Poe uses a synesthetic metaphor: Death has reared himself a throne, an animistic metaphor: Death looks gigantically down, the hours are breathing faint and low (here there is also grammatical deviance because normally, when explaining how somebody is breathing, we use adverbs and not adjectives. So instead of the adjectives faint and low , we would use faintly and lowly. Once again, this kind of deviation was used to fit a rhyme with a previous word glow ) or oxymoron: seas less hideously serene. The poem The Conqueror Worm is probably inspired by a Shakespeare's quotation from his play As you like it: All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players…In this poem, Poe compares human life to a theatre piece. Angels from the poem are a metaphor for spectators, by mimes are meant people, by a crawling shape is meant a serpent that occurs as a symbol of sin in the Bible (Quinn, 1969: 391). Poe uses again in this poem a paradox when he writes that mimes mutter
57 and mumble or a metaphor when he compares the curtain in the theatre to a funeral pall . The usage of a figurative language occurs in plenty of Poe's poems. Its frequent usage in poetry is what makes poetry different from others literary genres and it helps poets to express with minimum words something what normally should be written on several pages. It helps them to depict the mood of a poem and to express feelings. 8.11. Register
Although, Poe's poems are rather formal (there are no characters in his poems, only a narrator; he uses rather formal, archaic or literal words), there are minor deviation from register. Firstly, in the poem Sonnet-Silence, he uses a contracted form and in the ninth line, instead of his name is 'No More' , he writes: his name's 'No More.' As contracted forms are usually considered to be informal, that is why it is a kind of deviation from otherwise formal register of his poems. It was used to fit a pentameter. Secondly, in the poem The Coliseum, he uses, in the second stanza, a noun Eld which is considered to be dialectical. 8.12. The Haunted Palace –Analysis
The poem The Haunted Palace is about a king named Porphyrogene who went crazy. Poe depicts in this poem the difference between a mentally healthy and mentally ill man. This poem is written mostly in a combination of trochaic and anapestic tetrameter. Poe uses only an end rhyme, whose structure is AB, AB. Apart from rhyme and metre, he uses, in each stanza and nearly in each line, either alliteration or assonance or both of them together, for example: Radia nt pal ace – reared its h ead (alliteration is written in bold, assonance in red). As we can see, there is a repetition of the consonants r and d and a repetition of, vowels e, i and schwa. All these repetitions and play with sounds help to make the poem rhythmical and by a stress on particular words, it depicts also the mood of the poem. Another thing that helps to depict the mood of the poem is the choice of words. In the first part of the poem (the first four stanzas), there are words like: greenest, fair, angels, radiant, yellow, glorious, golden,
58 gentle, sweet, happy, luminous, glory, well-befitting, glowing, sparkling, sing, beauty, wit and wisdom which evoke a joyous mood. However, the joyous mood of the poem changes in the last two stanzas into a mood that is rather somber, sad and eerie. To evoke this kind of mood, Poe uses words like: evil, sorrow, mourn, desolate, discordant, ghastly, pale, hideous. The poem is divided into six stanzas and each of them has six lines. Dashes are used to mark, where in the poem is necessary to make a pause when reading. Three parentheses are used to give some additional information. For the first time, the parenthesis is used in the second stanza, to inform the reader that everything that is described in the poem, happened a long time ago:
(This –all this –was in the olden Time long ago,) In the third stanza, it is the name of the king about whom the whole poem is that is written in parenthesis. His name is Porphyrogene. For the last time, parenthesis is used in the last but not one stanza to express that his mental health has changed to the worse:
(Ah, let us mourn! – for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate!) In the word morrow , the first syllable to is omitted (aphesis). This usage of morrow instead of tomorrow is archaic. To fit the metre, Poe uses a different pronunciation of the words well-tunèd and wingèd which is marked with a graphological mark above the vowel e. The change of the king's mental health is expressed by a choice of a tense. Whereas in the first part of the poem, Poe uses past simple, in the last two stanzas, he uses mostly present simple. It can help us to understand that the first part of the poem happened in the past and that now something has changed. However, the change of the king's statement is also expressed with the usage of parallelism in the third and last stanza:
59 Wanderers in that happy valley, Through two luminous windows, saw Spirits moving musically, To a lute's well-tunèd law, (Stanza 3) And travellers, now, within the valley, Through the red-litten windows see Vast forms, that move fantastically To a discordant melody, (Stanza 6) Poe sometimes uses syntactic rearrangements either to stress a particular word or to fit a rhyme. For example, in the following line : Never seraph spread a pinion the adverb never is highlighted, i.e. the information that it never happened is somehow important. The second stanza of this poem starts with a syntactically rearranged line which is quite typical for poetry. Adjectives that normally precede a noun are postponed and they occur behind the noun: Banners yellow, glorious, golden The whole poem is metaphorical. In fact, Poe compares the king Porhyrogene to a palace, which is evident from the first stanza:
Once a fair and stately palace – Radiant palace –reared its head. Normally, a palace does not have a head, thus from this we can figure out that it concerns a human being. Then, Poe continues with a metaphorical description of the king. He compares his hair to yellow, glorious and golden banners that float and flown on his roof (head); his
60 face to the plumed and pallid ramparts ; his eyes to windows , his mouth and teeth to pearl and ruby. The fact that the setting of this poem is inside of the king's head, is evident from the first stanza, fifth line: In the monarch Thought's dominion –
Poe compares the interior of the king's head to a valley and the king's thoughts to wanderers, travellers or hideous throng . Other examples of metaphors used in this poem are: a wingèd odour, spirits moving musically, lute's well-tuned law, Echoes that sings in voices of surpassing beauty, evil things in robes of sorrow that assailed , the glory that blushed and bloomed, old time entombed. Apart from metaphors, we can encounter in this poem hyperbole: a troop of Echoes, ghastly rapid river; oxymoron: sweet duty , or paradox: and laugh – but smile no more. By using figurative language, Poe depicts not only what happens inside the head of a mentally healthy and then a mentally ill king, but he transmits this estate of the king to readers so that they can imagine it quite precisely.
9. Conclusion to the Practical Part
This part of my diploma thesis dealt with the stylistics analysis of Poe's book of poetry The Raven and Other Poems in general. Firstly, I have introduced general information about the poems. I have introduced the titles of poems and information about when and where they were published; the main themes of the poems, their setting, narrators and mood. Secondly, I have focused on the analysis of deviations used in Poe's poetry and I have introduced examples from the poems. I have started my analysis from the description of metre, rhyme, assonance, alliteration, chiming and elisions, through sections of poems, graphological marks, archaisms and borrowings from other languages to figurative language and register. At the end of each section of my thesis, I have explained what was probably the main reason for the usage of a chosen kind of deviation in Poe's poetry.
61 At the very end of this work, I have analysed in details one poem, The Haunted Palace, to prove how the chosen style of a poet helps him or her to communicate the meaning they want. The analysis of Poe's poetry proved, that his style of writing is based on elaborated usage of sounds (either metre, rhyme, alliteration, assonance or chiming) but also on the usage of figurative language. His choice of words depicts the mood of poems and the fact that he uses only Standard English and rather formal words proves that his poetry is formal and serious. In the majority of cases, his themes and the mood of the poems correspond with his life in which he often had to fight with sadness and depression over the loss of someone he loved.
10. Conclusion
My analysis has verified that foregrounding and deviation are typical features of poetry. As traditional poetry is based on "a play with sounds", the most typical deviation used in this type of poetry is phonological. In most cases, other kinds of deviation are subordinated to phonological deviation which may be regarded as dominant. Deviations from other linguistic levels (such as syntactic rearrangements, contracted forms, repeated constructions, words or syllables) occur mostly to help to fit a rhyme or a metre. However, this statement is not valid for modern poetry which, in the majority of cases, is written in free verse. From the analysis it is evident that various kinds of deviation are mixed not only within a poem but also within a line or one word (as proved with a word fringèd that deviates at the same time phonologically and graphologically or a word morn that deviates lexically and at the same time phonologically). This analysis also proves that writing poetry is not a matter of spontaneity but rather a matter of a precisely elaborated style. It requires from poets not only knowledge of language, i.e. its rules and norms to be able to deviate from them, but also knowledge of poetic licence to fit the pattern used in poetry or deviate from this pattern. The choice of types of deviation is always up to poet. Some poets, who ignore poetic licence, try to express their disrespect to tradition. Their poetry is considered to be more creative as they introduce new elements never
62 used before. In fact, they enlarge poetic licence. On the other hand, I believe that perfect and precise work with a language and sound is admirable in the same way. Nevertheless, poetry is not demanding only for poets but for its readers too. A good analysis of a poem supposes knowledge of poetry as a genre and its main style markers. Without this knowledge, a reader may find himself/herself lost as he/she will not know on which features to focus. The analysis of words chosen by a poet can help to understand the mood of a poem as well as the analysis of metre and stressed words that are important and bear the meaning of the poem. Similarly, figurative language, that helps poets to express within one utterance more than is usual and transmits to the readers meanings and feelings that are at the first sight hidden. Frequent reference of poets to some historical events or persons requires knowledge of history or, at least, willingness to find the information; and usage of figurative language and symbols, the ability and patience to find hidden information in context. Said in metaphors, reading poetry could be compared to an investigation of crime in some detective story. In both of them, there are some pieces of hidden information that an investigator tries to find. But whereas in the detective story, the reader accepts only the passive role of an observer, in poetry he/she behaves actively and takes the role of the investigator.
63 11.Resumé
This diploma thesis focuses on the deviation from the linguistic norm used in poetry. The theoretical part deals with the introduction poetice licence, i. e. deviation that is used in poetry. The linguistic terms such as foregrounding, deviation and parallelism are introduced. It defines the types of deviation in terms of particular linguistic levels and their interpretation. The practical part is devoted to the analysis of the types of deviation that occur in poetry of E. A. Poe and to the analysis of his style of writing. For the analysis his book of poetry The Raven and Other Poems was chosen. The particular poems are analysed in general but at the very end the stylistics analysis of the poem The Haunted Palace is introduced in more details. Tato diplomová práce se zaměřuje na odchylky od lingvistické normy užívané v poezii. Teoretická část se zabývá ustálenými normami, které se používají v poezii. V této části diplomové práci jsou vysvětleny lingvistické pojmy jako aktualizace, deviace a paralelismus. Práce dále uvádí s jakými odchylkami se můžeme setkat v rámci jednotlivých lingvistických úrovní jazyka a jejich možnou interpretaci. Praktická část je věnována rozboru odchylek od jazykové normy, které se objevují v poezii E. A. Poea a rozboru jeho básnického stylu. Pro samotnou analýzu byla vybraná jeho sbírka poezie The Raven and Other Poems. Jednotlivé básně jsou analyzovány obecně, ale na samém závěru je uvedena stylistická analýza básně The Haunted Palace detailněji.
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