Logical-semantic classification of parallel words and patterns

With regard to the logical-semantic arrangement of the literary text parallel words and patterns can bring forth the following main types: analogy, antithesis, gradation.

Analogy

Analogy is a form of thought in which one thing is inferred to be similar to another thing in a certain respect, both things being different on the whole. Consider the ana­logy in the following stanzas created by parallel construc­tions —

(i) Follow a shadow, it still flies you; Seem to fly it, it will pursue: So court a mistress, she denies you; Let her alone, she will court you. (Jonson)

(ii) Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud; Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun, And loathsome cancer lives in sweetest bud. All men have faults. (Shakespeare)

Antithesis

Antithesis is the pitting of one idea against the other in reiterated syntactic constructions to emphasize a contrast. Thus Dickens resorts to an effective antithesis in his Tale of Two Cities to describe the turbulent days of the French Revolution as he understood them: —

­ It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the era of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of Hope, it was the winter of Despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.

The authors of Modern English point out that antithetical parallel patterns of denial and confirmation have great pos­sibilities for emphasis and quote the ^following passage:—

They are not beautiful: they are only decorated. They are not clean: they are only shaved and starched. They are not dignified: they are only fashionably dress­ed. They are not educated: they are only college pass­men. They are not religious: they are only pew renters; they are not moral: they are only conventional... (Shaw)

Consider also the following excerpt based on denial and positive down-toning:—

When your husband is blind and returns to the home of his youth, you are inclined to play down the devas­tation.

You don't say the stables are rotting; you describe them as being in need of repair. You don't say the dri­ves, guarded by wrought-iron gates, are almost invi­sible; you say they could do with a bit of weeding. You don't say the lawns are jungles; you say they need cutting rather badly. (Bingham)

Gradation

Gradation is an arrangement of parallel words or statements in ascending or descending order of importan­ce, intensity, etc.

The ascending order is known as с 1 i m a x (Gk. "ladder"). The following fragment from Brutus' funeral speech in Sha­kespeare's Julius Caesar is an example of climax in parallel utterances:—

As Caesar lov'd me, I weep for him; as he was for­tunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honour him; but, as he was ambitious, I slew him. There is tears for his love; -joy for his fortune; honour for his valour; and death for his ambition.

Consider also a climax arrangement of parallel words:—

(i) Only a moment; a moment of strength, of ro­mance, of glamour — of youth! (Conrad)

(ii) She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends,— a mammoth task. (O. Henry)

S. Yu. Medvedeva distinguishes between three composi­tional types of climax in a simple sentence (24, 101; examples are quoted from this work):—

(1) The climax consists of homogeneous members without any adjuncts to them:—

Who would risk a throne, the world, the universe,

To be loved in her own way. (Byron)

(2) The climax consists of homogeneous members, each member having an identical adjunct:—

I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions.

I want to use them, to enjoy them, to dominate them.

(Wilde)

(3) The homogeneous members of the climax have dif­ferent adjuncts each:—

Oh, what do you say, now, of Stephen Blackpool, with a slight stoop in his shoulders and about five feet seven in height, as set forth in this degrading and dis­gusting document, this blightning bill, this pernicious placard, this abominable advertisment. (Dickens)

S. Yu. Medvedeva points out that the main purpose of climax is to give a vivid emotional-evaluative characteriza­tion of persons:—

She was a crashing, she was a stupendous, she was an excruciating bore. (Maugham)

The opposite arrangement, by which the thought descends from higher to lower in an abrupt or ludicrous manner — for point, humour, or any other purpose — is called a n t i с 1 i-max or bathos (Gk. bathos "depth"):—

(i) Not louder shrieks to pitying heaven are cast, When husbands or when lapdogs breathe their last.

(Pope)

(ii) The explosion completely destroyed a church, two houses, and a flowerpot, (quoted from 59, 293)

(iii) As I left the hotel there was a race riot. Down upon me charged a company of freedmen, or Arabs, or Zulus, armed with — no, I saw with relief that they were not rifles, but whips. And I saw dimly a cara­van of black, clumsy vehicles; and at the reassuring shouts, "Kyar you anywhere in the town, boss, fuh fifty cents", I reasoned that I was merely a,,fare" instead of a victim. (O. Henry)

To end our discussion of syntactic repetitions it should be emphasized once again that they are a most important part

of poetic rhetoric, and student analysts should be able to discern in literary texts and to name correctly such figures as binomials, trinomials, catalogues, polysyndeton, asyn­deton, syntactic reduplication; parallel patterns, chiasmus, syntactic anaphoras, epistrophes and framing; analogy, an­tithesis, climax and anticlimax.