Гальперин И. Р. Стилистика английского языка

Eighteenth century emotive prose when compared to that of the seventeenth is, in its most essential, leading features, characterized by the predominance of the third trend. This third trend, which may justly be called realistic, is not the further development of the puritan tendencies described above, although, doubtless, these tendencies bore some relevance to its typical features. The motto of this trend may be expressed by the phrase "call a spade a spade." By this phrase the adherents of the realistic trend in literature, and in emotive prose in particular, expressed the idea that all things should be called by their right names, that the writers should use plain, blunt words. This was a kind
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¹ Chamber's Cyclopedia, p. 290.
² See Saintsbury, G. A Short History of English Literature. Ldn., 1962, p. 512.
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of protest against the complicated and elaborate periphrases by which the most common concepts were often described.

The history of English literature gives their due to such prominent men-of-letters as Defoe, Swift and Fielding who were ardent apologists of this direction in prose writing, and who created fascinating novels, most of which are still reckoned among the masterpieces of English literature. The aim of this new school of writers was to make the language clear, precise, well-balanced, and moderate. They developed a manner of writing which by its strength, simplicity and directness was admirably adapted to ordinary every-day needs. But still the general philosophical and aesthetic views dominating at this period greatly influenced the manner of writing.
The writers of the 18th century did much to establish emotive prose as an independent form of literary art.
They considered that, being educated representatives of their society, it was their dity to safeguard the purity of the English language. However, the principles they followed were obscure and even contradictory. On the one hand, some of them, like Johnson, were against the introduction into literary English of any colloqual elements, regarding the latter as being inferior to the polished language of educated people. On the other hand, many others felt an urgent necessity to bridge the gap between literary and colloquial modes of expression in order to achieve a greater vividness and flexibility of utterance. Therefore, though using the general language of this period, at the same time they sought to subject it to conventional stylistic norms. ¹
These stylistic norms were very rigid. So much so, that the individual peculiarities of the authors were frequently over-weighed by the general requirement of the stylistic norms.
These norms are revealed in the levelling-off of the differences between the literary language and the spoken language of the time. The author's speech and that of the heroes resemble each other, so there is no speech characterization. All the characters speak alike and almost in the same way as the author himself does.
Another stylistic feature of the emotive prose of the 18th century is a peculiar manner of conveying the impression that the event narrated actually occurred, that the narrative possessed authenticity. This manner of writing imparts some of the features of official documents to emotive prose. Some of the works of emotive prose therefore, with their wealth of detail and what seems to be genuine fact, resemble chronicles. When the narrative is written in the first person singular, as it very often is, it reads almost like a diary. The narrative itself is generally impassionate, devoid of any emotional elements, with strict observance of syntactical rules governing the structure of the sentences. In such works there are very few epithets, there is almost no imagery. Such are most of the novels by Defoe, Swift, Fielding and others.
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¹ See also Клименко Е. И. Проблемы литературы и языка у английских просветителей и Генри Фильдинг. – «Вестник Ленинградского университета», 1952, № 5, с. 40.
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Illustrative in this respect are the works of Defoe. He really deserves the title of the originator of the "authenticated" manner in emotive prose. His novel "Robinson Crusoe" is written in a language which by its lexical and syntactical peculiarities has very much in common with the style of an official report.
Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, whose essays were written for the journals "The Tatler" and "The Spectator" also followed the general stylistic principles of this period. The most striking feature, of course, is the inadequate representation of direct speech. The most lively conversations (dialogues) are generally rendered in indirect speech and only fragments of lively direct intercourse can be found in long passages of the narrative. These are mostly exclamatory sentences, like "Sir Cloudesley Shovel! A very gallant man!" or "Dr. Busby! A great man! He whipped my grandfather; a very great man!"
The 18th century is justly regarded as the century which formed emotive prose as a self-sufficient branch of the belles-lettres style. But still, the manner in which emotive prose used language means and stylistic devices in some cases still resembled the manner of poetic style. At this time also it was difficult to tell a piece of emotive prose from an essay or even from scientific prose. This was mainly due to the fact that the most essential and characteristic features of these styles were not yet fully shaped.
It was only by the end of the 18th century that the most typical features of the emotive prose style became really prominent. Laurence Sterne with his "Tristram Shandy" contributed greatly to this process. Sterne thought that the main task of emotive prose was"... to depict the inner world of man, his ever-changing moods. Therefore at the foundation of his novel lies the emotional and not the logical principle."¹
With Sterne, emotive prose began to use a number of stylistic devices which practically determined many of its characteristic features. In "Tristram Shandy" there appear rudimentary forms of represented speech; the speech of the characters approaches the norms of lively colloquial language; the narrative itself begins to reflect the individuality of the author, not only in his world outlook but, which is very important for linguistic analysis, in his manner of using the language means of his time. He attempts to give speech characteristics to his characters, uses the different stylistic strata of the English vocabulary widely both in the individual speech of his characters and in the language of the author himself.
The role of Sterne in the shaping of the typical features of emotive prose of the following centuries is under-estimated. He was the first to make an attempt to overcome the traditional form of the then fashionable narrative in depicting characters, events, social life and human conflicts. It was necessary to enliven the dialogue and it was Laurence Sterne who was able to do so. The great realistic writers of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries to some extent followed in his footsteps.
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¹ Аникст А. А. История английской литературы. М., 1956, с. 184.
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