Read, translate, analyse the following examples paying attention to Chiasmus and its stylistic function.

1. John 1:1-2: "In the beginning (A) was (B) the Word (C), and the Word (D) was (E) with God (F), and the Word (D) was (E) God (F). The same (the Word, C) was (B) in the beginning (A) with God." Here, D-E-F is repeated, but notice that the key words of the second D-E-F ("the Word was God") are the same as F-E-D ("God was the Word"), which fits the chiasmus.

2. Matthew 13:15: "For this people's heart (A) is waxed gross, and their ears (B) are dull of hearing, and their eyes (C) they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes (C), and hear with their ears (B), and should understand with their heart (A)."

3. Isaiah 55:8-9: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts (A), neither are your ways my ways (B), saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways (B), and my thoughts than your thoughts (A)."

4.In the end, the true test is not the speeches a president delivers; it’s whether the president delivers on the speeches. (Hillary Clinton, March 2008)

5.Chief Justice: Your means are very slender,
and your waste is great.

Falstaff: I would it were otherwise. I would my means
were greater and my waist slenderer. (W.Shakespeare. King Henry IV, Part Two)

SUSPENSE.

Suspense (тревога, ожидание, беспокойство) is often defined as “a quality in a work of fiction that arouses excited expectation or uncertainty about what may happen” or as “a feeling of excitement or nervousness which you have when you are waiting for something to happen and are uncertain about what it is going to be”. Suspense holds or is meant to hold the reader or the listener in tense anticipation. It is often realized through the separation of predicate from subject or from predicative, by the deliberate introduction between them of a phrase, clause or sentence (frequently parenthetic).

If you had any part—I don't say what—in this attack," pursued the boy, "or if you know anything about it—I don't say how much—or if you know who did it—I go no closer—you did an injury to me that's never to be forgiven" (Ch.Dickens)

This is a classical example of suspense which is based on the separation of the primary and secondary clauses by introduction of several phrases between them. The number of inserted items is so well counted or thought over that it doesn’t lengthen out the final targeted part of the sentence but makes its expectation more exiting and agog. The effect is intensified by the situation of menace. The speaker threatens the listener while suspense escalates anxiety of the latter. As a side effect suspense gives a certain priority to the speaker and makes his threat realistic and tangible. Suspense is greatest when it focuses attention on a sympathetic character. Suspense may be of romantic, comic, horrific, and tragic character and it is greatest when it focuses attention on a sympathetic character.

Writers often create suspense to increase the intensity of the story. Usually what a writer does is bring us to the point of intensity and then tell the story on a microscopic level. That is, the closer you get to the most intense part, the more the writer slows down.

Thus the stylistic function of suspense is to maintain the atmosphere of anxiety,

nervous expectation, tense anticipation and create an aura of constraint and a feeling of discomfort.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 1197