6. Style

A-N

Alliteration refers to repetition of consonants, as in pretty pennies.

Allusion versus reference. An allusion is indirect, calling something to mind without mentioning it explicitly, whereas a reference is an explicit indication. While both are types of reference, an allusion is an indirect or vague reference, whereas a direct reference is a clear, unambiguous reference. Take, for instance, the final two stanzas in The Eagles’ song “Long Road Out of Eden”:

Been down the road to Damascus, the road to Mandalay
Met the ghost of Caesar on the Appian Way
He said, "It's hard to stop this binging, once you get a taste,
But the road to empire is a bloody stupid waste"

Behold the bitten apple - the power of the tools
But all the knowledge in the world is of no use to fools
And it's a long road out of Eden

The “road to Damascus” is an indirect reference to Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, whereas “Caesar on the Appian Way” is a more direct, clear reference (which is made even more clear by the quote from this fictional Caesar). The “bitten apple” might seem somewhat allusive at first, yet given the song’s title and given the final repetition of the title, it’s clear that the Eagles are referring to the scenario of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds, as in eels leaping eagerly.

Enjambment refers to a line that has no end punctuation and flows into the next line. In the above quote from The Eagles, there’s no punctuation at the end of the lines, yet there’s no enjambment because the lines stand on their own; one line doesn’t run smoothly into the next. In the following excerpt from stanza 52 of Shelley’s Adonais, the first and second lines are separated by a comma, while the second line flows into the third and thus is a good example of enjambment:

Rome's azure sky,
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.

Epic: usually a long poem which is elevated in tone and provides a vision of life that is complex, detailed, and coherent. The epic covers a wide scope of action, depicts a wide canvas of life, and treats themes that are crucial to culture and civilization: honour, love, friendship, family, freedom, fate, war, death, religion, the afterlife, etc. The major Western epics — Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, Dante’s Divine Comedy, and Milton’s Paradise Lost — usually follow the literary conventions of invoking a muse (traditionally Calliope, the Greek muse of epic poetry) and starting in the middle of the action (in medias res, “in the middle of things”). They often include a battle, a sea journey, and a journey to the afterlife. Mock epics are common in the 18th century, and both Byron’s Don Juan and Joyce’s Ulysses subvert the epic tradition in numerous ways. See the separate page on The Epic.

Form & Genre. Genre refers to the type of work, such as play, film, novel, poem, short story, epic, lyric, sonnet, ode, elegy, satire, narrative, comedy, tragedy, farce, etc. The categories of form and genre are complex and extensive, but for the present purposes of literary analysis they can be thought of as emphasizing form rather than content. For example, take Pound’s lines “In a Station of the Metro / The apparition of these faces in a crowd; / Petals on a wet black bough.” You could look at these lines in terms of the theme of nature vs. industrialization (5), or you could look at the form of the poem, which is short and similar to the Japanese haiku (6): it has three lines; it focuses on nature; it lacks specificity or dialogue; and it’s indirect and imagistic. Compare it for instance with this haiku by Basho: “On a leafless branch / A crow comes to rest – / Autumn nightfall.”

To take another example, if a character starts off noble and powerful yet ends up losing everything, you may want to examine his character in terms of the genre of tragedy (6). This doesn’t stop you from using the other categories as well. For instance, you could examine his character development (3) from power to ruin in terms of psychology (3). You could look at the content of his personality, analyzing how it works in relation to space (1), time (2), other people (4), and issues (5). Yet if you were to see his overall character development in terms of form, you could see it in terms of tragedy (6), which is a pre-determined or conventional form in which a character falls from power or grace. Again, this doesn’t stop you from using the other categories as well. For instance, you could analyze the way the author depicts the tragedy in terms of dialogue, metaphor, irony, tone, or any number of literary strategies or devices (6).

Hyperbole is exaggeration or overstatement.

Metonymy and synecdoche are words you don't need to know, yet they can be helpful. In metonymy, one thing stands for something else that is closely related — as in the pulpit standing for sermons or preachers. In synecdoche, a part stands for the whole. For instance, lending a hand stands for making your body and mind available in order to help someone.

Mood is difficult to tie down to only one of the six categories. For instance, if mood's created by setting (let’s say a graveyard at midnight), it's a function of space (1) and time (2). If it's created by the sound of words and the implication of images (as in gloom and a tooth dripping with blood) then it's a function of style — in this case onomatopoeia and horror imagery (6). Mood is often a function of space, yet can also be a function of sound. Simple spatial categories like colour can create a mood, yet the colour isn’t so much a function of space as the way we respond emotionally to a wavelength, which is spatial (as is everything at some point) yet has more to do with how we make associations. many subtle und,

Mood & the Raven

In depicting Poe’s raven, Doré and Manet use different drawing styles to create two very different moods. Doré highlights the raven’s association with cosmic Death and obscure nefarious forces, while Manet highlights the raven’s disruption of an ordered Modern world. Doré supplies a backdrop of dark, nebulous, receding cosmic space. The allegorical and frightening figure of Death dominates the world, which is shrouded in clouds and mists, which seem to drift off into the dark cosmos. This creates a mood that’s sombre and perhaps hopeless. Manet’s sketch on the other hand is more optimistic. The straight edges of the window suggesting order, over which the man seems to be master: he can open or close the window at will. The world outside may be one of grim factories and the bird may ultimately bring despair, but for now the man is in control of the situation. Manet creates a more hopeful mood, or at the least he creates a tension between what the bird represents and how the man may react to it.

Narrative means story. For example, a narrative poem is one that tells a story. Narrative is a crucial, fundamental category, like space or character. Like character, which is crucial to literature because we are humans and like to think about situations from a human perspective, narrative explains a sequence of actions, which relates to us because we perform and are engaged in sequences of actions all the time, and because we like to think about what these sequences mean.

Narration can be the main strategy of a text or it can be a momentary strategy within a larger structure. One can refer to very brief narratives as mini-narratives or moments of narrative. For instance, in Alanis Morisette’s song “You Oughts Know” she berates her former lover in various ways, and at one point sings, “I hate to bug you in the middle of dinner.” This is a mini-narrative because it creates a picture in the listener’s mind of a specific complex situation that occurs at a specific place and time. One can imagine the man sitting down to dinner with his family and all of a sudden an angry ex shows up at the dinner table.

Hallelujah

A more complex situation involving narrative moments can be seen in “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen. In the first stanza Cohen refers to the Bible’s David pleasing God with his music: “I've heard there was a secret chord / That David played, and it pleased the Lord.” He then asks the question, “But you don’t really care for music, do ya?” This question seems out of context, or at least it refers to another context (his relation to a woman who he’ll return to later), after which he returns to his take on the bliblical context: “the baffled king composing Hallelujah.” In the second stanza he continues referring to David, then switches narratives to the story of Samson and Delilah:

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the hallelujah

The elements of the momentary narrative about David are two people (you and her), a location (a roof), a specific time (the moment he saw her), and a specific action (he saw her). All the elements of a complex human interaction are set up. A full narrative would of course take this situation and develop it, as occurs in 2 Samuel 11 where David then sleeps with the woman (Bathsheba) and then manages to get the woman’s wife killed so that he can become her husband. This does not at all please the Lord — which brings Cohen’s mini-narrative to a conclusion, since it began with David’s music pleasing the Lord.

One can see Cohen’s poetic strategy in terms of two biblical mini-narratives which fit into a larger narrative about his relation to a woman. One can also see it in terms of two biblical references that he uses in a larger exploration of love and religion. Remember that if a writer draws our attention specifically to something well-known, it’s a reference, whereas if a writer draws our attention vaguely to something well-known, it’s an allusion (see allusion above).

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