Stylistic Features of Oscar Wilde’s Wrightings

METONYMY

In these four plays we can also observe some metonymies.

According to Prof. Galperin I.R., metonymy is based on a different type of relation between the dictionary and contextual meanings, a relation based not on identification, but on some kind of association connecting the two concepts which these meanings represent.24

According to Prof. Sosnovskaya V.B., units of poetic speech called metonymy are also based upon analogy. But in them there is an objectively existing relationship between the object named and the object implied.25

According to Prof. Kukharenko V.A., metonymy also becomes instrumental in enriching the vocabulary of the language and it is based on contiguity (nearness) of objects or phenomena.26

So, according to these three definitions, we can say that metonymy is a transference of meaning based on a logical or physical connection between things. In metonymy a thing is described by its action, its function or by some significant features. It is one of the means of forming the new meanings of words in the language.

e.g. “…a thing more tragic than all the tears the world has

ever shed”. (p. 65)

“She was stern to me, but she taught me what the

world is forgetting, the difference that there is between

what is right and what is wrong”. (p. 26)

“Do you think seriously that women who havecommitted what the world calls a fault should never be

forgiven?” (p.27)

In these three examples we can see the same metonymy, that is used by the same word “world”. Here the author means the people who love in the world. Here we also can see that container is used instead of the thing contained: “world” instead of “people”. We can observe the same situation on the following example:

e.g. “The whole London knows it”. (p.32)

The author means people living in London, but not the city as itself. Through the combination of metonymical details and particulars Wilde creates the effect of powerful upper-class society. The scope of transference in metonymy is much more limited than that of metaphor, which is quite understandable: the scope of human imagination identifying two objects on the grounds of commonness of one of their innumerable characteristics is boundless while actual relation between objects are more limited. This is why metonymy, on the whole, is a less frequently observed stylistic device than metaphor.

Oscar Wilde does not pay much attention to metonymy. But his metonymies have a great potential power. They reach the emotional reliability, which creates the effect of reader’s presence in the literary world. Metonymical details and particulars sometimes serve the so called “evidences” of the actions and feelings of the heroes.

As a brief conclusion we can say that Oscar Wilde resorts to the use of a great number of stylistic devices in his plays.

For Wilde language is the most important way for expression of his thoughts and feelings. According to the examples mentioned above, we can see that Wilde’s language is very expressive and vivid, and at the same time it is plain and understandable to any reader.

Syntactical expressive means and stylistic devices.

The expressive means of a language exist as a certain system of literary devices within the literary form of the common language. The system of expressive means of language differs from that of another, not in the existence of some device but in the role which this device plays, and the place which it occupies in this system.