Thursday, July 25, 2019

Carry out a close linguistic analysis of the following texts using any Assignment

Carry out a close linguistic analysis of the following texts using any appropriate analytical approaches encountered in Part 2 o - Assignment Example And perhaps that is where the creativity of the poet comes in, the ability to draw from the entirety of the canon and yet portray it with a fresh perspective as one’s own. In turn, this is what the parody has also attempted to do. The introductory lines of Text One showcase a range of juxtapositions as a literary device. The words ‘dead’ and ‘dull’ give a contrast when read alongside the positive words such as ‘April’, ‘Spring’, and ‘lilacs’. The syntax is also prominent as we are left with various present participles which are placed at the ends of the first five lines. This gives us a feeling that there is movement which is taking place and we are part of the progression. The language is to the point while maintaining its paradoxical beginnings. The alliteration is smooth (‘Winter kept us warm’) and the action of the poem keeps us in a place which is somewhere between and within the present and the past. Another literary device used is the poet’s use of sudden sound effects. An example is the monosyllabic verse execution of line 4, and the /s/ and /l/ which dominate from line 8 onwards. The second text seems to keep none of this in mind and goes along the text as a simple conceptual guide, failing to pick up on the points of formalistic techniques. If anything, it inserts colloquial language at every given opportunity. When comparing both of these texts and attempting to dub one as more ‘literary’ then the other, I find Carter’s systematic analysis a key tool in carrying out such a linguistic analysis. Of course different levels can be used as done by Bradford but that can be done at a later stage. This may be since Carter gives a checklist to work out at the surface levels whereas Bradford’s style calls for a more layered reading of the texts. Using both methods one can achieve both a vertical as well as horizontal understanding of the level of literariness of both the texts. First off, The Wasteland can be read in itself and understood as a work of poetry but perhaps to reach the full meaning one may need an understanding of the works which are incorporated by Eliot. A way of overcoming this is by the index and notes provided by Eliot himself to the poem. The parody, by virtue of being written for the sake of comic reminiscence, requires one to know at the most basic level what it is a parody of whether one understands the parodied or not. In this way, I would place Text One as somewhat medium dependent and Text Two as highly medium dependent. Genre mixing also takes place in both of these texts. The Wasteland uses a number of other languages throughout. In this excerpt Latin and Russian is used. No translation is provided and a consultation outside the text needs to take place. Text Two on the other hand attempts to avoid this. No Latin is used and the Russian employed at the end is given a translation, showing that one need not pay attention to the sounds or the literary effects taking place in the text but simply on the new spun meaning which is accorded by it. The semantic densities of the texts need to be understood as well. There are a number of levels at work in Eliot which are carried over into the parody as well. These levels are of course linguistic levels and depend mostly on sound. Where Eliot focuses on this, the parody

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