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Wilde often uses parallel constructions, a perfect means of creating the clean-cut syntax of his plays. By Prof. Galperin I.R.: “Parallel construction is a device which may be encountered not so much in the sentence as in the macro-structures dealt with earlier, viz. the syntactical whole and the paragraph. The necessary condition in parallel construction is identical, or similar, syntactical structure in two or more sentences or parts of a sentence”.
As you must have seen from the brief description, repetition is a powerful means of emphasis. Besides, repetition adds rhyth and balance to the utterance.
Parallel constructions deal with logical, rhythic, emotive and expressive aspects of the utterance. They create rhythical shape of the sentence, make it more emotional.
e.g. “Nobody is incapable of doing a foolish a foolish
thing. Nobody is incapable of doing a wrong
thing.” (p.216)
“How hard good women are! How weak bad men are!”
(p.77)
“Oh! Wicked women bother one. Good women bore
one.” (p.68)
These examples prove that Oscar Wilde wishes to give a musical value to every phrase. The parallel constructions produce a certain rhyth, wonderful sound and expressiveness.
Enumeration is the next syntactical stylistic device used by O.Wilde in his plays.
According to Prof. Galperin I.R., enumeration is a stylistic device by which separate things, objects, properties or actions are named one by one so that they produce a chain, the links of which, being syntactically in the same position (homogeneous parts of speech), are forced to display some kind of semantic homogeneity, remote though it may seem.
e.g. “Bad women as they are turned, may have in them
sorrow, repentance, pity, sacrifice.” (p. 67)
“She has got a capital appetite, goes long walks, and
pays no attention at all to her lessons.” (p. 301)
“I have also in my possession, you will be pleased to
hear certificates of Ms. Cardew’s birth, baptism,
whooping cough, registration, vaccination,
confirmation, and the measles”. (p.340)
Analysing these sentences we can see the musical chain of enumeration. It gives more objective value of the character’s speech. It gives the variety of thoughts and feelings.
One of the most typical phenomenon of Wilde’s plays is ellipsis. But this typical feature of the spoken language assumes a new quality when used in the written language. By Prof. Sosnovskaya V.B., ellipsis is an intentional omission from an utterance of one or more words.
Ellipsis makes the utterance grammatically incomplete. The meaning of omitted words is easy to understand. The context helps to understand the meaning of such words and the whole situation.
e.g. “Been dining with my people”. (p.45)
“Quite sure of.” (p.149)
“Jack: Dead!
Chasuble: Your brother Ernest dead?
Jack: Quite dead.” (p.312)
Ellipsis gives the picture of real life, real people, their feelings and emotions, the simplicity of their speech. It adds a certain charm to the conversation. It is right to suppose that the omission of the words in these sentences is due to the requirements of the rhyth.
Syntactical expressive means and stylistic devices add also logical, emotive, expressive information to the utterance.
There are also certain structures, whose emphasis depends not only on the arrangement of sentence members but also on their construction with definite demands on the lexico-semantic aspect of the sentence. They are known as lexico-syntactical stylistic devices.
Chiasmus is a good example of them.
According to Prof. Galperin I.R., chiasmus is based on the repetition of a syntactical pattern but it has a cross order of words and phrases.
e.g. “All the married men live like bachelors, and all the
bachelors like married men.” (p.114)
The effect of a cross order of words in this example produces an ironic character. Like parallel construction, chiasmus contributes to the rhythical quality of the utterance.
e.g. “The body is born young and grows old. That is life’s
tragedy. The soul is born old but grows young. That is
the comedy of life.” (p.111)
In this example the effect is increased because the members of chiasmus are antonyms “young, old, comedy, tragedy”. Usually chiasmus is a syntactical stylistic device, not a lexical one, but in this example the witty arrangement of the words gives the utterance an epigrammatic character. This can be considered as lexical chiasmus. Examples show the brilliancy of Wilde’s style.
One more stylistic device used by Wilde is antithesis.
According to Prof. Galperin I.R antithesis is based on relative opposition which arises out of the context through the expansion of objectively contrasting pairs.
Syntactically antithesis is just another case of parallel constructions. But unlike parallelism, which is indifferent to the semantics of its components, the two parts of an antithesis must be semantically opposite to each other, as in these examples from O.Wilde:
e.g. “Don’t use big words. They mean so little.” (p.252)
“Curious thing, plain women are always jealous of
their husbands, beautiful women never are!” (p.108)
Here we can see the semantic contrast, which is formed with the help of objectively contrasting pairs “big – little”, “plain – beautiful”, “always – never”.
e.g. “She certainly had a wonderful faculty of remembering
people’s names, and forgetting their faces.” (p. 98)
In this example we can see antonyms: “remembering” and “forgetting”, which create the contrasting pair and make the antithesis more expressive. But in his antithesis Wilde also uses some contextual antonyms.
e.g. “Men become old, but they never become good”.
(p.33)
“Men can be analysed, women merely adored.”
(p.180)
“…if one plays good music, people don’t listen, if one plays bad music, people don’t talk”. (p.199)
It is important to note, that Wild’s antithesis is always accompanied by parallelisms, thus showing the difference of phenomena compared.
e.g. “Cecil Graham: What is a cynic?
Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of
everything and the value of nothing”. (p.72)
Thus we can make a conclusion that syntactical expressive means and stylistic devices play an important role in Wilde’s style. Wilde is a talented writer who can make us feel the way he wants us to feel. This co-existence is built up so subtly, that the reader remains unaware of the process. It is still stronger when the aesthetic function begin to manifest itself clearly and unequivocally through a gradual increase in intensity, in the foregrounding of certain features, repetitions, of certain syntactical patterns and in the broken rhyth of the author’s mode of narrating events, facts and situations.
One can find different syntactical expressive means and stylistic devices in Wilde’s plays such as parallel constructions, repetition, chiasmus, antithesis and many others. These expressive means help the author to create his clear-cut and elegant style, to give rhyth to his language. They give a musical value to every phrase.
Wilde’s writing is skilful, playing, and understandable to everybody. It has a great charm and brilliancy of the author’s personality.
General Conclusion
Thus, in the English language not only lexical expressive means and stylistic devices but also syntactical expressive means and stylistic devices are used. Considering these stylistic devices and expressive means and their characteristic features we should say that out of the number of features which are clear in the styles, some should be considered primary, others-secondary. They are not equal in their significance, some of them bear reference to the main importance, others are widely used in everyday speech.
Having analysed the four plays of Oscar Wilde: “Lady Windermere’s Fan”, ”A Woman of No Importance”, “An Ideal Husband”, “The Importance of Being Earnest”, I came to a conclusion that it is not an easy task to single them out.
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