Гальперин И. Р. Стилистика английского языка

2. EMOTIVE PROSE

The substyle of emotive prose has the same common features as have been pointed out for the belles-lettres style in general; but all these features are correlated differently in emotive prose. The imagery is not so rich as it is in poetry; the percentage of words with contextual meaning is not so high as in poetry; the idiosyncrasy of the author is not so clearly discernible. Apart from metre and rhyme, what most of all distinguishes emotive prose from the poetic style is the combination of the literary variant of the language, both in words and syntax, with the colloquial variant. It would perhaps be more exact to define this as a combination of the spoken and written varieties of the language, inasmuch as there are always two forms of commuinication present – monologue (the writer's speech) and dialogue (the speech of the characters).

The language of the writer conforms or is expected to conform to the literary norms of the given period in the development of the English literary language. The language of the hero of a novel, or of a story will in the main be chosen in order to characterize the man himself. True, this language is also subjected to some kind of reshaping. This is an indispensable requirement of any literary work. Those writers who neglect this requirement may unduly contaminate the literary language by flooding the speech of their characters with non-literary elements, thus overdoing the otherwise very advantageous device of depicting a hero through his speech.
It follows then that the colloquial language in the belles-lettres style is not a pure and simple reproduction of what might be the natural speech of living people. It has undergone changes introduced by the writer. The colloquial speech has been made "literature-like." This means that only the most striking elements of what might have been a conversation in life are made use of, and even these have undergone some kind of transformation.
Emotive prose allows the use of elements from other styles as well. Thus we find elements of the newspaper style (see, for example, Sinclair Lewis's "It Can't Happen Here"); the official style (see, for example, the
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business letters exchanged between two characters in Galsworthy's novel "The Man of Property"); the style of scientific prose (see excerpts from Cronin's "The Citadel" where medical language is used).
But all these styles under the influence of emotive prose undergo a kind of transformation. A style of language that is made use of in prose is diluted by the general features of the belles-lettres style which subjects it to its own purposes. Passages written in other styles may be viewed only as interpolations and not as constituents of the style.
Emotive prose as a separate form of imaginative literature, that is fiction, came into being rather late in the history of the English literary language. It is well known that in early Anglo-Saxon literature there was no emotive prose. Anglo-Saxon literature was mainly poetry, songs of a religious, military and festive character. The first emotive prose which appeared was translations from Latin of stories from the Bible and the Lives of the Saints.
Middle English prose literature was also educational, represented mostly by translations of religious works from Latin. In the 11th and 12th centuries as a result of the Norman conquest, Anglo-Saxon literature fell into a decline. Almost all that was written was in French or in Latin. In the 12th and 13th centuries, however, there appeared the "Tales of King Arthur and his Round Table", some of which were written in verse and others in prose. They were imitations of French models. In the 14^th century there was an event which played an important role not only in the development of general standard English, but in the development of the peculiarities of emotive prose. This was the translation of the Bible made by Wyclif and his disciples.
Emotive prose actually began to assume a life of its own in the second half of the 15th century when romances and chronicles describing the life and adventures of semi-legendary kings and knights began to appear. One of the most notable of these romances was Malory's "Morte Darthur", printed by Caxton in 1471. It winds up a long series of poems and tales of chivalry begun in the 12th century. It was retold in prose from the French. "The Death of Arthur" is a work of great historical, literary and stylistic interest. Attempts were made to introduce dialogue into the texture of the author's narrative before this, but here dialogue becomes an organic part of the work. Dialogue within the author's narrative is a stylistic constituent of the substyle of emotive prose. True, Malory's dialogues were far from even resembling the natural features of living colloquial speech. The speech of the heroes lacks elliptical sentences, breaks in the narrative and other typical features of the spoken variety of English. Emotional colouring is shown not in the syntactical design of the sentences but in the author's remarks and descriptions. But nevertheless "Morte Darthur" must be counted as a historical landmark in establishing the principles of emotive prose. The introduction of dialogue means that the road to the more or less free use of colloquial language was already marked out. Further on, colloquial elements began to infiltrate into poetic diction as well.
With the coming of the sixteenth century, which incidentally heralded a great advance in all spheres of English social life,
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English emotive prose progressed rapidly. Numerous translations from Latin and Greek played a great role in helping to work out stylistic norms for the emotive prose of that period. Translations from modern languages, of Italian and French romances in particular, also began to influence the stylistic norms of emotive prose. The necessity to find adequate language means to convey the ideas and the stylistic peculiarities of the text in the source-language made the translators extend the scope of language resources already used in literature, thus enlarging the potentialities of stylistic devices and language media.

Sixteenth century professional literary men like Philip Sidney, John Lyly, Robert Greene and others known as the "University Wits," alongside their interests in poetry and the dramatic art, did not neglect emotive prose. A special stylistic trend arose named after a literary work by Lyly entitled "Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit." The whole book is written in a high-flown, over-refined manner. There is a fine subtlety of expression combined with an unrestrained use of periphrasis. One can find allusions, parallel constructions, antithesis, similes and many other stylistic devices in such abundance that they pile up on one another or form long monotonous chains, the links of which are instances of a given stylistic device.
Inasmuch as this literary work has had rather a notable effect on the subsequent development of emotive prose (Lyly is called the pioneer of the English novel), it will not come amiss to give a sample of the prose of "Euphues":
"The merchant that travaileth for gain, the husbandman that toileth for increase, the lawyer that pleadeth for gold, the craftsman that seeketh to live by his labour, all these, after they have fatted themselves with sufficient, either take their ease or less pain than they were accustomed. Hippomenes ceased to run when he had gotten the goal, Hercules to labour when he had obtained the victory, Mercury to pipe when he had cast Argus in a slumber. Every action hath his end; and then we leave to sweat when we have found the sweet. The ant, though she toil in summer, yet in winter she leaveth to travail. The bee, though she delight to suck the fair flower, yet is she at last cloyed with honey. The spider that weaveth the finest thread ceaseth at the last, when she hath finished her web.
But in the action and the study of the mind, gentlemen, it is far otherwise, for he that tasteth the sweet of his learning endureth all the sour of labour. He that seeketh the depth of knowledge is as it were in a labyrinth..."
This passage shows the prolixity of what came to be called the euphuistic style¹ with its illustrations built on semantic parallelism and the much-favoured device of mythological allusions; with its carefully chosen vocabulary, its refinement and grace.
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¹ The word 'style' is used here not in the terminological sense employed in this book, but in a more general, looser application.
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Lyly's aim was to write in a style that was distinct from colloquial speech and yet not poetry. He actually says that Englishmen wished "to hear a finer speech than the language will allow." Euphuism was orientated upon the language of the court and the nobility and barred all kinds of lively colloquial words and expressions. In general it is characterized by artificiality of manner.
Euphuism bred a liking for excessive embellishment, and this in its turn, called forth an unrestrained use of rhetorical devices unmotivated by the content and unjustified by the purport of the communication.
But not all 16th century emotive prose was of this character. Walter Raleigh's writing was much simpler, both in vocabulary and syntax; it was less embellished and often colloquial. Roger Ascham, though an excellent classical scholar, chose to write "English matter in the English speech for English men." He writes in a plain, straightforward, clear manner with no attempt at elegance. Philip Sidney wrote prose that could be as clear as Ascham's. Even when his sentences are long, they do not lose their clarity. In contrast to Ascham he did not scorn ornament, but, unlike Lyly, he used it in moderation. The prose of Richard Hooker, who wrote on contraversial religious themes, is restrained and has power and balance. Hooker also had considerable influence on the development of English emotive prose.
Euphuism, however, had merits in its time. It made men-of-letters look for finer, more elegant forms of expression and this search inevitably made them more form-conscious – they learned to polish their language and, to some extent, developed a feeling for prose rhythm. But at later periods euphuism became reactionary, inasmuch as it barred all kinds of lively colloquial words and expressions and hindered the process of liberating the belles-lettres style from rigid poetical restrictions. The "democratization" of the means of expression was incompatible with the aristocratic artificiality and prettiness of euphuism.
A great influence on the further development of the characteristic features of the belles-lettres style was exercised by Shakespeare. Although he never wrote prose, except for a few insertions in some of his plays, he declared his poetical credo and his attitude towards all kinds of embellishments in language in some of his works.¹ Also in his "Love's Labour Lost" Shakespeare condemns the embellishing tendencies of some of the poets. Here is a well-known quotation which has long been used to characterize the pompous, showy manner of expression.
"Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,
Three-pil'd hyperboles, spruce affectation:
Figures pedantical; these summer flies
Have blown me full of maggot ostentation:
I do forswear them..."
On the whole the emotive prose of the 16th century had not yet shaped itself as a separate style. Verse and drama predominate among
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¹ See Galperin. I. R. An Essay in Stylistic Analysis. M., 1968, p. 18.
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works of belles-lettres. The small amount of prose written, in particular emotive prose, can be ascribed to the general strong tendency to regard the spoken variety of the English language as inferior and therefore unworthy to be represented in belles-lettres. And without speech of characters there can be no true emotive prose. This perhaps explains the fact that most of the prose works of the period were histories, biographies, accounts of travels, essays on different philosophical and aesthetic problems. There were, of course, exceptions like Robert Greene's "Life and Death of Ned Browne" and Thomas Nash's "The Unfortunate Traveller, or The Life of Jack Wilton," the former being a story of crime and the latter an adventure story. These are precursors of the modern novel.

The seventeenth century saw a considerable development in emotive prose. It was an epoch of great political and religious strife, and much that was written had a publicistic aim. The decline in drama due to the closing of the theatres by the Puritans in 1648 may also have had its effect in stimulating the development of emotive prose.
The two contrary tendencies in the use of language means, so striking in the 16th century, assume new forms in the 17th. There was first of all the continuation of the classical tradition, and secondly there was the less scholarly, but more English prose that had been employed by the forty-seven translators of the "Authorized Version" of the Bible. As is known, during the 16th century the English literary language had received large additions from classical Greek and Latin and also from modern French and Italian. Some writers considered it good style to introduce not only lexical but also syntactical innovations: sentences were often built according to classical patterns. Burton, Browne and others constructed long passages following Latin models. One of the 17^th century writers states:
"Many think that they can never speak elegantly, nor write significantly, except they do it in a language of their own devising; as if they were ashamed of their mother tongue, and thought it not sufficiently curious to express their fancies. By means whereof, more French and Latin words have gained ground upon us since the middle of Queen Elisabeth's reign than were admitted by our ancestors..."¹
The two tendencies were combined in the prose works of Milton who, being a Puritan, recognized the Bible as the highest authority in all matters, but who had a deep knowledge of the ancient classics as well.
The influence of the Bible on English emotive prose is particularly striking in the works of John Bunyan. "The Pilgrim's Progress" represents a new trend in the development of emotive prose. Here is an excerpt from the work:
"Now Giant Despair had a wife, and her name was Diffidence; so when he was gone to bed, he told his wife what he had done,
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¹ Cit. from Chamber's Cyclopedia of English Literature, p. 310.
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to wit, that he had taken a couple of prisoners and cast them into his dungeon, for trespassing on his grounds. Then he asked her also what he had best to do further to them. So she asked what they were, whence they came, and whither they were bound, and he told her. Then she counselled him, that when he arose in the morning he should beat them without mercy. ...The next night she talked with her husband about them further, and understanding that they were yet alive, did advise him to counsel them to make away with themselves. So when morning was come, he goes to them in a surly manner, as before, and perceiving them to be very sore with the stripes that he had given them the day before, he told them that since they were never like to come out of that place, their only way would be forthwith to make an end of themselves, either with knife, halter, or poison: for why, said he, should you choose life, seeing it is attended with so much bitterness? But they desired him to let them go. ... Then did the prisoners consult between themselves, whether it was best to take his counsel or no; and thus they began to discourse: –