Stylistic Features of Oscar Wilde’s Wrightings

According to Prof. Sosnovskaya V.B., hyperbole (overstatement) as the word itself suggests is an expression of an idea in an exceedingly exaggerate language. The supra-average cases of overstatement are characteristic of an obviously emotional, if not altogether impassioned, manner of representation.22

V.V.Vinogradov, developing Gorki’s statement that “Geniune art enjoys the right to exaggerate”, state that hyperbole is the law of art which brings the existing phenomena of life, diffused as they are, to the point of maximum clarity and conciseness.23

So, hyperbole is aimed at exaggerating quantity or quality. It is a deliberate exaggeration. In hyperbole there is transference of meaning as there is discrepancy with objective reality. The words are no used in their direct sense.

e.g. “I wish I had known it was your birthday, Lady

Windermere, I would have covered the whole street in

front of your house with flowers for you to walk”. (p.

24)

“I have never loved anyone in the world but you”.

(p.34)

In order to depict the degree of the love of his character Wilde resorts to the use of these hyperboles. I think that the most important function of hyperbole is the emotional expressiveness.

e.g. “I have met hundreds of good women”. (p.71)

“You have seen me with it a hundred times”. (p.303)

In these hyperboles Wilde uses the exaggeration of the quantitative aspect. They make their way not on the direct meaning, but on the great emotional influence. But literary hyperbole is not the simple speech figure. It is one of the most important means of building up the plot of the text, the imagery and expressiveness. It is the transmission of the author’s thought.

e.g. “I never can believe a word you say!.” (p.49)

“He talks the whole time”. (p.115)

“Well, you have been eating them all the time”. (p.284)

In the literary sense hyperbole is the important means of expressive speech. Sometimes they are not perceived in their direct meaning, but they at once create the pathetic and comic effect, as in the above-mentioned examples. In general, literature has a constant necessity in the artistic exaggeration of reflection of the world.

e.g. “I would do anything in the world to ensure

Gwendolen’s happiness”. (p.284)

“But now that I see you, I feel that nothing in the

whole world would induce me to live under the same

roof as Lord Windermere”. (p.61)

Hyperbole may be also called the means of artistic characterisation. Hyperbole is a device which sharpens the reader’s ability to make a logical assessment of the utterance. In order to create his hyperboles Wilde uses such words as “hundreds”, “thousands”, “all the time”, “nothing in the world”, etc. Wilde’s hyperboles bring the brightness, expressiveness and the emotional colour of the language. Hyperbole is like a magnifying glass; it helps to observe in details the phenomena of life, in its realities and contradictions.