Literary device

“ This literature proper was likely to take the form of verse in the eleventh century. A practical matter would be put in prose; but the effervescence of the soul, or the intended literary effort, would fall into rhyme or resort to metre. ”

“ Now in prose, and especially in fiction, which enjoys the advantage of being the most elastic of all literary forms, the architectural element is far less in evidence, because the best technique in fiction demands the most careful framework, most carefully disguised. ”

“ A reader of any catholicity of taste can recall numerous examples of the various modes of narration, and in future reading it will be directly profitable for the writer to note the narrative device employed, and how it has aided or hampered the development of the fiction. ”

“ In the vocabulary and diction the influence of the epic is patent. But the romantic poets elaborated the style by devices. They cultivated the use of long epithets of seven or eight syllables which filled a whole verse, and they could appeal to classical literature for the propriety of this device. Such compounds occur occasionally in Digenes; they are a feature in the romances. ”

“ Wordy insignificant passages in a literary product are the outcome, not of a particular rhythmical arrangement, such as prose or verse, but of a want of artistic feeling, to which even great geniuses are at times subject. ”

“ In short, the sensory or formal effect of words has very little play in the literature of analysis and exposition. But as’ soon as prose becomes more emotive than scientific, the formal side becomes prominent. ”

“ Doubtless there are classes of literature in which form or expression predominates, and we cannot read poetry, for example, or the drama, or even the higher class of fiction, without lingering upon the finer passages, to get the full impression of their beauty. In reading works of the imagination, we read not for ideas alone, but for expression also, and to enjoy the rhythm and melody of the verse, if it be poetry, or, if prose, the finished rhetoric, and the pleasing cadence of the style. ”

“ In this process of moulding and adjustment, each element, under the poet's deft handling, yields somewhat to the other, the natural rhythm of language and the formal rhythm of metre; and the result is a delicate, exquisite compromise. When we attempt to analyze it, its finer secrets defy us, but the chief fundamental principles we can discover, and their more significant manifestations we can isolate and learn to know. In all the arts there is a point at which technique merges with idea and conceals the heart of its mystery. ”

“ And this is that I would say, at present, of these two requisites of universal poetry, namely, that licence of expression, which we call the style of poetry, and that licence of representation, 11 which we call fiction. The style is, as it were, the body of poetry; fiction, is its soul. Having, thus, taken the privilege of a poet to create a Muse, we have only now to give her a voice, or more properly to tune it, and then she will be in a condition, as one of her favourites speaks, to ravish all the Gods. ”

“ The secret seems to lie in the fact that physiography gives varied and vivid material susceptible of literary presentation, while the fixed qualities of the subject matter control the choice of terms and the mode of expression. ”

“ To put these materials to poetical use, is required an imagination capable of painting nature, and realizing fiction. Nor is he yet a poet till he has attained the whole extension of his language, distinguished all the delicacies of phrase, and all the colours of words, and learned to adjust their different sounds to all the varieties of metrical modulation. ”

“ In its last analysis, such a conception of literature amounts to the unimpeded intercourse of mind with mind. Literature would be a language which dispenses with gesture, facial expression, tone of voice; which is, in its halts, accelerations and retardations, emphases and concessions, the apotheosis of conversation. But this clearness,--in the sublime sense, including the ornate and the subtle,--this luminous lucidity,-- is it not quite indeterminate? Clearness is said of a medium. WHAT is it that shines through? ”

“ These pioneers had in their hands the fifth device which Man has found for satisfying his soul’s appetite for inspiring tales, more universal in its appeal than the tongue, the play, the novel or the poem, and many of them degraded it, alienating in the beginning those conservative, constructive forces in the community which have only recently come to the assistance of the screen. ”

“ In each case language is made the bearer of the writer's personality. Style in literature is the breathing forth of soul and spirit; as is the soul, and as is the spirit in depth, sympathy, and power, so will the style be rich, distinctive, and memorable. Professor Raleigh says that "All style is gesture—the gesture of the mind and of the soul. ”

“ But language, by its very nature, offers to the ear not only a pattern of rhythm but also a pattern of letters. A mastery of literation is therefore a necessary element of style. Effects indisputably potent in suggestion may be gained by running a recurrence of certain letters, deftly for a time withheld,—since blatancy must always be avoided,—and yet triumphant in harmonious return. The great sentences of literature which echo in our ears because their sound is married to their meaning will be found upon examination to incorporate an intricate pattern of tastefully selected letters. ”

“ The design of the following poem is to give a view of these, in the largest acceptation of the term; so that whatever our imagination feels from the agreeable appearances of nature, and all the various entertainment we meet with either in poetry, painting, music, or any of the elegant arts, might be deducible from one or other of those principles in the constitution of the human mind, which are here establish'd and explain'd. ”

“ The paper, type and ink are the body, in which its soul is domiciled. And these three, soul, body, and habilament, are a triad which ought to be adjusted to one another by the laws of harmony and good sense. ”

“ The Flourishes of Fancy resemble the Flourishes of the Pen in Mechanick Writers, and the Illuminators of Manuscripts, and of the Press, borrowed their Title perhaps from the Illumination, which a bright Genius every where giveth to his Work, and disperseth through his Composition. ”

“ It has, once more, the interest of poetry—of poetical presentation, which is independent of any subject or intention, which is capable of being adapted perhaps to all, certainly to most, which lies in form, in sound, in metre, in imagery, in language, in suggestion—rather than in matter, in sense, in definite purpose or scheme. ”

“ When they write their books, they write the history of their inner life. You open a book and you read twenty lines, and in the tone and character of those twenty lines you seem to feel the beating of the writer’s pulse. ”

“ Say that the new methods in literature concentrate all styles, comedy and tragedy, description, character-drawing and dialogues, in a series of pictures set in the brilliant frame of a plot which holds the reader's interest. The Novel, which demands sentiment, style, and imagery, is the greatest creation of modern days ”

“ No marking can give you particulars of what is necessary, as the modulation of voice or variety in emotional expression—the light and shadow in the coloring of your word-picture—must depend upon your artistic "sense and genius." Imagine your picture, understand the meaning of every word and suggest its meaning in tone, concentrate yourself in the thought and feeling of the piece, and let your voice be governed by that, and you will not go far wrong if you have faithfully practised what has been recommended in the previous pages of this book. ”

“ Who, widely excelling in the Knowledge of Human Nature, hath given to his infinitely varied Pictures of it, such Truth of Design, such Force of Drawing, such Beauty of Colouring, as was hardly ever equalled by any Writer, whether his Aim was the Use, or only the Entertainment of Mankind. ”

“ The desire so to adapt a great piece of literature to the screen that it will be in every way worthy of the original poet in that it is a faithful reflection of his aims, is in itself altogether praiseworthy. ”

“ We have seen the artistic spirit working, first in the delightful and technical sphere of language, the sphere of expression as opposed to subject, then controlling the imagination of the poet in dealing with his subject. ”

“ This triple mode of seizing on reality offers art the well-known division into first, the plastic arts, which elaborate their content for vision in the external form and colour of objects, secondly, in the art of sound, music, and thirdly, into poetry, which as the art of speech uses tone merely as a symbol, in order, by means of it, to address itself directly to what is ideal in the contemplation, emotion, and imagination of our spiritual life. ”

“ A clear, flexible, musical voice, distinct articulation, pauses nicely adjusted and skilful inflexions may make one a perfect mechanical reader, but is such vocalizing good reading? What is it, but a mill so grinding its grist of words as to crush out the soul in them, leaving their corpses laid out upon the lips of the elocutionary undertaker. ”

“ The flow is easy, the style graceful and natural; but the step from poetry to prose is substantial as well as formal; the imagination is ossified, and we exchange the exuberance of legendary creativeness for the dogmatic record of fact without reality, and fiction without grace. ”

“ The inherited habit of composition in the form of oral verse and prose is vastly older than our modern practice of secluding ourselves and scratching down rows of little black symbols on a white expanse of paper, or still more incongruously tapping celluloid keys with the tips of our fingers. ”

“ The object of the science of metre is to describe and analyse the various rhythmical forms of speech that are characteristic of poetry in contradistinction to prose.
Poetry is one of the fine arts, and the fine arts admit of a division into Plastic and Rhythmic; the Plastic arts comprehending Sculpture, Architecture, and Painting, the Rhythmic arts, on the other hand, comprehending Dancing, Music, and Poetry. ”

“ Poetry, on the contrary, avails itself, in its manner of objective communication, of the very means adopted in these spheres of mental activity, that is to say, human speech; it finds itself, consequently, otherwise placed than are the plastic arts and music, which occupy a different field of conception and expression. ”

“ But these arts, as they grew more correct and deliberate, were naturally led to extend their imitation beyond the peculiar objects of the imaginative powers; especially poetry, which, making use of language as the instrument by which it imitates, is consequently become an unlimited representation of every species and mode of being. ”

“ But, as I wish to guard against the possibility of misleading by this classification, it is proper first to remind the Reader, that certain poems are placed according to the powers of mind, in the Author's conception, predominant in the production of them; predominant, which implies the exertion of other faculties in less degree. Where there is more imagination than fancy in a poem it is placed under the head of imagination, and vice versa. ”

“ The last step of the complication, which can only be indicated here, and will be developed in a later chapter, comes with the mutual adjustment of the natural prose rhythm and the metrical pattern of the verse. Such a sentence as the following has its own peculiar rhythms: "And, as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet's pen turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name." ”

“ We can obtain the effect of certain dramas by simply reading them; others need declamation and scenic display: some artistic intuitions, for their full extrinsication, need words, song, musical instruments, colours, statuary, architecture, actors; while others are beautiful and complete in a single delicate sweep of the pen, or with a few strokes of the pencil. ”

“ Indeed, so flexible, adaptable and penetrable is the style, and so admirably has the use and proper direction of the imagination been developed by the school of fiction, that every branch of literature has gained from it power, beauty and clearness. ”

“ And these several discoveries have placed the results of mere imitative art within reach of the mass; in other words, her prose language, that which mechanical science can utter, is so universal, that her poetry, that which must be conceived and expressed through individual genius, the emanation of the soul, is more distinctly recognized and absolutely demanded from the artist, in order to vindicate his claim to that title, than ever before. ”

“ It is clear that an artist in words, in jotting down thoughts and images as they first emerge, may instinctively use language which is subtly blended of verse and prose, like many rhapsodical passages in the private journals of Thoreau and Emerson. ”

“ It is at this point that poetry or the art of speech, confronts us, which now incorporates its art-productions in the medium of a speech elaborated to an instrument of artistic service, precisely as intelligence already in ordinary speech makes intelligible to spiritual life all that it carries in itself. ”