Stylistic Features of Oscar Wilde’s Wrightings

“She has got a capital appetite, goes long walks, and

pays no attention at all to her lessons.” (p. 301)

“I have also in my possession, you will be pleased to

hear certificates of Ms. Cardew’s birth, baptism,

whooping cough, registration, vaccination,

confirmation, and the measles”. (p.340)Analysing these sentences we can see the musical chain of enumeration. It gives more objective value of the character’s speech. It gives the variety of thoughts and feelings.

One of the most typical phenomenon of Wilde’s plays is ellipsis. But this typical feature of the spoken language assumes a new quality when used in the written language. By Prof. Sosnovskaya V.B., ellipsis is an intentional omission from an utterance of one or more words.32

Ellipsis makes the utterance grammatically incomplete. The meaning of omitted words is easy to understand. The context helps to understand the meaning of such words and the whole situation.

e.g. “Been dining with my people”. (p.45)

“Quite sure of.” (p.149)

“Jack: Dead!

Chasuble: Your brother Ernest dead?

Jack: Quite dead.” (p.312)

Ellipsis gives the picture of real life, real people, their feelings and emotions, the simplicity of their speech. It adds a certain charm to the conversation. It is right to suppose that the omission of the words in these sentences is due to the requirements of the rhythm.

Syntactical expressive means and stylistic devices add also logical, emotive, expressive information to the utterance.

There are also certain structures, whose emphasis depends not only on the arrangement of sentence members but also on their construction with definite demands on the lexico-semantic aspect of the sentence. They are known as lexico-syntactical stylistic devices.

Chiasmus is a good example of them.

According to Prof. Galperin I.R., chiasmus is based on the repetition of a syntactical pattern but it has a cross order of words and phrases.33

e.g. “All the married men live like bachelors, and all the

bachelors like married men.” (p.114)

The effect of a cross order of words in this example produces an ironic character. Like parallel construction, chiasmus contributes to the rhythmical quality of the utterance.

e.g. “The body is born young and grows old. That is life’s

tragedy. The soul is born old but grows young. That is

the comedy of life.” (p.111)