Шпаргалка по "Стилистике"

8. The belles-lettres style. Language of prose.

It’s a func style. FS of language is a system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim in communication. In Eng literary standard we distinguish the following major FS: 1) lang of belles-lettres; 2) lang of publicistic literature; 3) lang of newspapers; 4) lang of scientific prose; 5) lang of official documents.

Each FS is subdivided into a number of substyles. The belles-lettres FS has the following substyles: a) the lang style of poetry; Its first differentiating property is its orderly form, which is based mainly on the rhythmic and phonetic arrangement of the utterances.  b) the lang style of emotive prose; Apart from metre and rhyfne, what most of all distinguishes emotive prose from the poetic style is the combination of the literary variant or the language, both in words and syntax, with the colloquial, variant. c) the lang style of drama; . The first thing to be said about the parameters of this variety of belles-lettres is that, unlike poetry, which, except for bal¬lads, in essence excludes direct speech and therefore dialogue, and unlike emotive prose, which is a combination of monologue (the author's speech) and dialogue (the speech of the characters), the language of plays is entirely dialogue.    belles-lettres style embraces numerous and many-sided genres of imaginative writing. The purpose of the belles-lettres style is not to prove but only to suggest a possible interpretation of the phenomena of life by forcing the reader to see the viewpoint of the writer. This is the cognitive function of the belles-lettres style.

Only three FS are recognized in  stylistics. As to the newspaper style, it is often regarded as part of the publicist domain and is not always treated individually. But the biggest controversy is flaming around the belles-lettres style. The unlimited possibilities of creative writing, which covers the whole of the universe and makes use of all language resources, led some scholars to the conviction that because of the liability of its contours, it can be hardly qualified as a functional style. Still others claim that, regardless of its versatility (непостоянство), the belles-lettres style, in each of its concrete representations, fulfils the aesthetic function, which fact singles this style out of others and gives grounds to recognize its systematic uniqueness.

Prose is the most typical form of written language, applying ordinary grammatical structure and natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure (as in traditional poetry). Prose is reciprocal to poetry. While there are critical debates on the construction of prose, its simplicity and loosely defined structure has led to its adoption for the majority of spoken dialogue, factual discourse as well as topical and fictional writing. It is commonly used, for example, in literature, newspapers, magazines, encyclopedias, broadcasting, film, history, philosophy, law and many other forms of communication.

Structure

Novels, essays, short stories, and works of criticism are examples of prose. Other examples include: comedy, drama, fable, fiction, folk tale, hagiography, legend, literature, myth, narrative, saga, science fiction, story, theme, tragedy.

Prose lacks the more formal metrical structure of verse that is almost always found in traditional poetry. Poems often involve a meter and/or rhyme scheme. Prose, instead, comprises full, grammatical sentences, which then constitute paragraphs and overlook aesthetic appeal. Some works of prose do contain traces of metrical structure or versification and a conscious blend of the two literature formats is known as prose poetry. Similarly, any work of verse with fewer rules and restrictions is known as free verse. Verse is considered to be more systematic or formulaic, whereas prose is the most reflective of ordinary (often conversational) speech. On this point Samuel Taylor Coleridge requested, jokingly, that novice poets should know the "definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose,—words in their best order; poetry,—the best words in their best order." In Moliere's play Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, Monsieur Jourdain asked for something to be written in neither verse nor prose. A philosophy master replied that "there is no other way to express oneself than with prose or verse," for the simple reason being that "everything that is not prose is verse, and everything that is not verse is prose."