6: Style
Introduction
The sixth category, style, is crucial to any analysis of literature. This category includes an exceptionally wide range — from entire genres and media forms to specific techniques or tropes. Among much else, this category includes genres such as poetry, drama, prose, novel, novella, short story, tragedy, comedy, epic, satire, and parody, as well as more specific techniques such as imagery, sound, symbolism, irony, metaphor, conceit, sonnet, ode, dialogue, tone, internal monologue, dramatic monologue, catalogue, motif, leitmotif, etc.
When looking at style and form, there's often overlap with setting (1) when a story is structured along the lines of a journey, especially the genre of the epic journey (6), or when a particular setting recurs. There's often overlap with time (2) when analyzing plot or when looking at such things as flashbacks or foreshadowings (6). Again, decide what your focus is and don’t worry if on occasion you overlap with another category.
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From Image to Conceit
The following paragraphs look at imagery, symbolism and metaphor, and then illustrate how metaphor can be extended into a conceit.
Image & imagery. An image is a visual impression — as in E.J. Pratt’s seagull “etched upon the horizon” (from his poem, “Seagulls”). Here we see the seagull against the sky in our mind. The image is one of a bird in flight, a small and sharp living thing against a wide open space.
Symbol & symbolism. An image can remain a simple description, or it can be developed into a symbol. For example, a dove could simply be a bird a character sees on a path, next to a blue jay, and this may interest the character because he is an ornithologist. Or, the dove could be seen next to a hawk, and come to represent peace (as opposed to aggression), as in ‘hawks and doves.’
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Symbolism & the Apple
In the still life below, the apples are a food item, yet in the relief beside it the fruit symbolizes worldly knowledge, sin, and the fall from the Garden of Eden. The fruit’s also associated with other symbols, such as the fig leaf and the snake, to create a complex world of symbolism.
Still Life with Game Fowl, Vegetables and Fruits, 1602, by Juan Sánchez Cotán. In the Hernani Collection, Prado Museum, Madrid (Wikimedia Commons).
“The temptation of Adam & Eve by the devil. Pedestal of the statue of Madonna with Child, western portal (of the Virgin), of Notre-Dame de Paris, France.” Photo by Jebulon (Wikimedia Commons).
Generally, symbols have either a personal meaning (the seagull may symbolize freedom and beauty to E.J. Pratt) or a public meaning (the dove symbolizes peace to most people). In general, a symbol is an object, not a person. Avoid treating characters as symbols; rather, treat them as embodiments or representatives of certain types, classes, or ideas.
Metaphor. While a simile compares two things explicitly (“She is like a cat”), a metaphor compares them implicitly (“She is a fox”). Here's another way to think about the difference: similes are honest because they admit that a comparison's occurring, while a metaphor's a type of lie because it doesn't admit to a being a comparison; rather, it equates two things that aren't the same.
Conceit. A conceit extends or continues a metaphor, taking elements of it and exploring them in new ways. A metaphysical conceit links two vastly different things in extended and unexpected ways. The term often refers to the poetry of early 17th C. poets such as John Donne.
Often people are confused by literary terms such as metaphor and conceit, as if these came from some obscure realm of academia, rather than from the way people explain their experience. Yet using a metaphor’s a very natural way of explaining — through analogy — things that are often quite difficult to explain. And using a conceit’s merely extending this metaphor so that people can see the way things connect. We can see how this works in “The One with the Sonogram at the End” (S1 E2) from Friends.
Can you identify where simile shifts into metaphor, and metaphor shifts into conceit? Why are the guys (and Rachel) reluctant to say concretely what they mean?
Monica: What you guys don’t understand is, for us, kissing is as important as any part of it.
Joey: Yeah, right!....... Y’serious?
Phoebe: Oh, yeah!
Rachel: Everything you need to know is in that first kiss.
Monica: Absolutely.
Chandler: Yeah, I think for us, kissing is pretty much like an opening act, y’know? I mean it’s like the stand-up comedian you have to sit through before Pink Floyd comes out.
Ross: Yeah, and-and it’s not that we don’t like the comedian, it’s that-that... that’s not why we bought the ticket.
Chandler: The problem is, though, after the concert’s over, no matter how great the show was, you girls are always looking for the comedian again, y’know? I mean, we’re in the car, we’re fighting traffic... basically just trying to stay awake.
Rachel: Yeah, well, word of advice: Bring back the comedian. Otherwise next time you’re gonna find yourself sitting at home, listening to that album alone.
Joey: (pause)... Are we still talking about sex?
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Metaphor & Symbol: Pratt and Poe
In “Seagulls” by E.J. Pratt, the poet refuses in the first stanza to see the bird in terms of anything that it isn’t, yet in the second stanza he uses the metaphor of a wild orchid to suggest its freedom. By contrast, Poe’s raven is overloaded with meanings and symbolism from the moment it steps into the poet’s room in stanza 7 (the poems has 18 stanzas). In the final stanza the poet says that “his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,” and throughout the poem we’re given all sorts of hints as to its nefarious and uncompromising nature. Pallas is the Greek goddess Pallas Athena, whose bust symbolizes the bird’s brutal wisdom; Plutonian shore refers to Pluto, the god of the Underworld, and hence the death the poet can’t come to terms with. Because the poet is mourning a loved one who he’ll see “Nevermore,” the raven appears to symbolize death in all its inexorable and unforgiving finality
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Metaphor & Space in Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”
In 5. Theme: The Mermaid, I point out that some lyrics are so obscure that they invite very different interpretations. I note that in such cases, the approach I favour is to allow the text’s allusions and metaphors to breath in the speculative spaces the lyric creates overall. I see the ambiguities as watery currents that mingle and shift, yet nevertheless take the listener in a certain direction. I also advance the notion that a lyric is many things: it’s what it is, with all possible interpretations held at bay; it’s what the author thinks it is; it’s what someone in a car listening to the radio thinks it is; it’s what one careful reader argues it to be; and it’s what a different careful reader argues it to be. A critical interpretation in this context is an offering of a point of view, as well as a way into a world of discovery and appreciation. The important thing as I see it is to make the point of view start from the text and not contradict what’s in the text. The critic is then free to illuminate the text, and to give readers more than they may already have in mind.
In light of this approach, try to come up with an interpretation of Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.” Analyze a specific aspect — such as space (1), the theme of danger (5), allusion (6), metaphor (6), or conceit (6) — or make an argument about how two of these aspects work in tandem. Or, start with a hypothesis, such as space and metaphor suggest Baby Blue’s predicament, and then use these two categories to determine the nature of the predicament.
