SYMBOLS
Date: 2015-10-07; view: 405.
THEME
STYLE
a) Comment on the vocabulary of the story.What peculiarities of Matilda' character and age are reflected in her vocabulary?
b) Which of the following stylistic devices form the basis of the imagery of this story:
· epithet
· simile
· irony
· metonymy
· metaphor? Identify them in the text.
3. Comment on the syntactical peculiarities of the text you have read. Pay attention to:
a) length and complexity of the sentences
b) syntactical stylisic devices. Identify in the text:
· repetition
· inversion
· ellipsis
· polysyndeton
· climax
· break in the narrative
· parallel constructions?
Name the dominant devices.
4. To demonstrate the complex unity of the story, structure and imagery must be considered as they unfold together. Name the stylistic devices used in convergence in the following:
| Phrases | Sylistic devices |
| the trills long and terrible like little rolling drums | |
| In waves, in clouds, in big round whirls the dust comes stinging | |
| she can hear the sea sob | |
| why does he speak so kindly – so awfully kindly | |
| Oh, that kind voice – oh, that minor movement | |
| Does mother imagine for one moment that she is going to darn all these stockings knotted up on the quilt like a coil of snakes? She's not. No, mother. | |
| ... ‘I bring fresh flowers to the leaves and showers'... | |
| A big black steamer with a long loop of smoke streaming, with the portholes lighted, with lights everywhere... | |
| ...away fly the sentences like little narrow ribbons |
5. How would you define the author's choice of l-ge in this story:
- poetic – colloquial – literal – childlike – other?
6. Which of the mentioned linguistic peculiarities and stylistic devices determine such peculiarities of K.Mansfield's style as:
- deceptive simplicity
- clarity
- compression
- subtlety
- a kind of purity
- delicate poetic evocations?
Which of the following can be considered the theme of this story:
- difficulties and ambivalences of family relations
- frustrations of adolescent sexuality
- the fragility and vulnerability of relationships
- the attempt to extract beauty and vitality from mundane experience
- lonely existence
- other _______________?
1.In the story some ordinary objects appear to be transmuted into the artistically meaningful
being examined with the gaze of the heroine. Pick out the images evoking the mood of:
* turmoil
* peace and calmness
* exoticism
* romantic reverie
2. Mansfield is known for her capacity to describe flowers and plants in the way that is simultaneously naturalistic and symbolic. Consider the contrasting contexts of ‘chrysanths' and chrysanthemums : what symbolic meaning does the flower acquire?
3. Wind, the key word of the story, has certain traditionally symbolic meaning, rooted in European and world culture and fixed in reference-books and dictionaries of Symbolism. Try to find it. Is it relevant for the plot? What does the wind symbolize in this story? Is it a traditional or a newly created, individual symbol?
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