Belles letters style of English Plan: Introduction Main Body The belles-letteres Style

Classification of functional styles, belles-letteres style

A functional style of language is a system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim in communication.

In the English literary standard Galperin distinguishes the following major functional styles (FS): belles-letteres; publicistic literature; newspaper; scientific prose; official documents.
The belles-letteres FS has the following substyles: style of poetry; of emotive prose; of drama. The publicistic FS comprises the following substyles: style of essays; of oratory; of feature articles in newspapers and journals.
The newspaper FS falls into: style of brief news items and communiqu?s; of newspaper headlines; of notices and advertisements.
The scientific prose FS also has three divisions: style of humanitarian sciences; of ‘exact’ sciences; of military documents.
>The official documents FS can be divided into four varieties: style of diplomatic documents; of business documents; of legal documents; of military documents.
The belles-letteres style rests on certain indispensable linguistic features which are:
1.Genuine, not trite, imagery, achieved by purely linguistic devices.
2.The use of words in contextual and very often in more than one dictionary meaning, or at least greatly influenced by the lexical environment.
3.A vocabulary which will reflect to a greater or lesser degree the author’s personal evaluation of things or phenomena.
4.A peculiar individual selection of vocabulary and syntax, a kind of lexical and syntactical idiosyncrasy.
The introduction of the typical features of colloquial language to a full degree (in plays) or lesser one (in emotive prose) or a slight degree, if any (in poems).
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LANGUAGE OF POETRY
The first substyle we shall consider is' v e r s e. Its first differentiating property is its orderly form, which is based mainly on the rhythmic and phonetic arrangement of the utterances. The rhythmic aspect calls forth syntactical and semantic peculiarities which also fall into a more or less strict orderly arrangement. Both the syntactical and semantic aspects of the poetic substyle may be defined as compact, for they are held in check by rhythmic patterns." Both syntax and semantics comply with the restrictions imposed by the rhythmic pattern, and the result is brevity of expression, epigram-like utterances, and fresh, unexpected imagery. Syntactically this brevity is shown in elliptical and fragmentary senten­ces, in detached constructions, in inversion, asyndeton and other syntac­tical peculiarities.
Rhythm and rhyme are immediately distinguishable properties of the poetic substyle provided they are wrought into compositional patterns. They can be called the external differentiating features of the substyle, typical only of this one variety of the belles-letteres style. The various compositional forms of rhyme and rhythm are generally studied under the terms versification or prosody.
Let us examine the external properties or features of the poetic sub-style in detail.
a) Compositional Patterns of Rhythmical Arrangement Metre and Line
English versification is no exception. We have already discussed some of the most general points of rhythm. This was a necessary introduc­tion to English versification, in as much as 'English verse is mostly based on rhythmical arrangement and rhyme. Both rhythm and rhyme are objective qualities of language and exist outside verse. But in verse both' have assumed their compositional patterns and, perhaps, due to this, they are commonly associated with verse. The most observable and widely recognized compositional patterns of rhythm making up classical verses are based on:
alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables, 14
equilinearity, that is, an equal number of syllables in the lines,
natural pause at the end of the line, the line being a more or less complete- semantic unit, .

identity of stanza pattern,

Established patterns of rhyming.
Less observable, although very apparent in modern versification, are all kinds of deviations from these rules, some of them going so far that classical poetry ceases to be strictly classical and becomes what is called free verse, which in extreme cases borders on prose.
The unit of measure in musical rhythm is the time allotted to its reproduction, whereas the unit of mea­sure in English verse rhythm is the quality of the alternating elerhent (stressed or unstressed). Therefore English versification, like Russian, is called qualitative, in contradistinction to the old Greek verse which, being sung was essentially quantitative. In classic English verse, quanti­ty is taken into consideration only when it is a matter of the number of feet in a line. Hence classic English verse is called syllabo-tonic. Two parameters are taken into account in defining the measure: the num­ber of syllables (syllabo) and the distribution of stresses (tonic). The nature of the English language with its specific phonetic laws, however, is incompatible with the demand for strict regularity in the alternation of similar units, and hence there are a number of accepted deviations from established metrical schemes which we shall discuss in detail after point­ing out the most recognizable English metrical patterns.
These arrangements of qualitatively different syllables are the units of the metre, the repetition of which makes verse. One unit is called a foot. The number of feet in a line varies, but it has its limit; it rarely exceeds eight.
It will be observed that here again is a violation of the requirements of the classical verse according to which the line must be a more or less complete unit in itself. Here we have the overflowing of the sense to the next line due to the break of the syntagm in the first and sixth lines— the close predicate-object groups. The lines seem to be torn into two halves, the second half flowing structurally into the first half of the next line. The first impression is that this is some kind of prose, and not verse, but this impression is immediately contradicted by the feeling that there is a definite metrical scheme and pattern of rhyming.
The rhythmic pattern of the verse leads us to anticipate a certain semantic structure; but when the device of enjambment is used, what we anticipate is brought into conflict with what we actually find, that is, what is actually materialized.
The Stanza
We have defined rhythm as more or less regular alternations of simi­lar units. Of the units of verse rhythm the following have been named: the syllable, the foot, the line and finally the stanza.-
The stanza is the largest unit in verse. It is composed of a number of lines having a definite measure and rhyming system which is repeated throughout the poem.
The stanza is generally built up on definite principles with regard to the number of lines, the character of the metre and the rhyming pattern.
There are many widely recognized stanza patterns in English poetry, but we shall name only the following.
1) The heroic couplet iambic pentameters with the rhyming pattern aa.
.The heroic couplet was later mostly used in elevated forms of poetry, in epics and odes. Alexander Pope used the heroic couplet in his "The Rape of the Lock" with a satirical purpose,* that of parodying the epic. Here are two couplets from this poem:
"Then flashed the living lightning from her eyes, and screams of horror rent the affrighted skies. Not louder shrieks to pitying heaven are cast, When husbands or when lapdogs" breathe their last;"
2) The next model of stanza which enjoyed popularity was the Spenserian stanza, named after Edmund Spencer... The rhyming scheme is ababbcbcc.
3)The stanza named ottava rima has also been popular in English poetry . It is composed of 8 iambic pentameters, the rhyming scheme being abababcc "With all its sinful doings, I must say, (a)
4) A looser form of stanza is the ballad tanza.I’t’s rhyming scheme is abcb
In some of the variants of the ballad stanza the rhyming scheme is abab, that is the stanza becomes a typical quatrain.
5) One of the most popular stanza , which bears the name of stanza only conventionally , is sonnet
The English sonnet is composed of fourteen iambic pentameters with the following rhyming scheme: ababcdcdefefgg, that is, three quatrains with cross rhymes and a couplet at the end. The Italian sonnet was composed of two quatrains with a framing rhyme abba. These two quatrains formed the о с t a v e. It was followed by a se s t e tie, i.e. six .lines divided into two tercets, i.e. three line units with cde rhyming in each, or variants, namely, cdcdcd or cdedce and others.
Free Verse and Accented Verse
Verse remains classical if it retains its metrical scheme.There are, however, types of verse which are not classical. The one most popular is what is called "vers libre" which is the French term for free verse.The term 'free verse' is used rather loosely by different writers; so much so that what is known as accented or stressed verse is also sometimes in­cluded.
Here we shall use the term 'free verse' to refer only to those varieties of verse which are characterized by: 1) a combination of various metrical feet in the liner 2) absence of equilinearity and 3) stanzas of varying length. Rhyme, however, is generally retained. Hence the term 'free verse' is limited in this work to verse in which there is a more or less regular combination of different metrical feet, different lengths of line and different lengths of stanza.
Here the odd lines are tetrameters in which there are combinations 'of iambic and anapaestic metres. The even lines are either diameters or trimeters of iambic and anapaestic metre. So the metre is not homoge­neous within the lines; the lines are of different lengths and the stanzas have different numbers of lines: Jiie first one has twelve lines, the second eighteen, and the third fourteen. The remaining stanzas also vary in length. The number of syllables in each line also varies. The first line has nine syllables, the second—six, the third—nine, the fourth—five, the fifth-eleven, the sixth—six, the seventh—nine, the eighth—seven, the ninth—nine, the tenth—eight, the eleventh—ten, the twelfth—eight.
Classical English verse, free verse and the accented verse which we are about to discuss, all enjoy equal rights from the aesthetic point of view and none of these types of verse has any ascendancy over the others. Accented verse is a type of verse in which only the num­ber of stresses in the line is taken into consideration. This type of poetry can hardly be called verse from a purely structural point of view; it is that kind of tonic verse which, by neglecting almost all the laws of verse building, has gradually run into prose.
Verse cannot do away with its formal aspects and remain verse. There­fore the extreme type of accented verse just given ceases to be verse as such. If has become what is sometimes called poetic prose.
2. EMOTIVE PROSE
The substyle of emotive prose has the same common features as have been pointed out for the belles-letteres style in general; but all these fea­tures are correlated differently in emotive' prose. The imagery is not so rich as it is in poetry; the percentage of words with contextual meaning is not so high as in poetry; the idiosyncrasy of the author is not so clearly discernible. Apart from metre and rhyme, what most of all distinguishes emotive prose from the poetic style is the combination of the literary variant of the language, both in words and syntax, with the colloquial variant. It would perhaps be more exact to define this as a combination of the spoken and written varieties of the language, inasmuch as there are always two forms of communication present — monologue (the writer's speech) and dialogue (the speech of the characters).
The language of the writer conforms or is expected to conform to the literary norms of the given period in the development of the English literary language. The language of the hero of a novel, or of a story will in the main be chosen in order to characterize the man himself.
Emotive prose allows the use of elements from other styles as well. Thus we find elements of the newspaper style ;the official style ; the style of scientific prose .
Emotive prose as a separate form of imaginative literature, that is fiction, came into being rather late in the history of the English literary language.
Emotive prose actually began to assume a life of its own in the sec­ond half of the 15th century when romances and chronicles describing the life and adventures of semi-legendary kings and knights hegan to appear.
With the coming of the s i x t e e n t h century, which .inci,yen" tally heralded a great advance in all spheres of English social life, English emotive prose progressed rapidly. Numerous translations from Latin and Greek period. Translations from modern languages, of Italian and French romances in particular, also began to influence the stylistic norms of emotive prose.
This passage shows the prolixity of what came to be called the e u-phuistic style1 with its illustrations built on semantic parallelism and the much-favoured device of mythological allusions; with its carefully chosen vocabulary, its refinement and grace.
The seventeenth century saw a considerable develop­ment in emotive prose. It was an epoch of great political and religious strife, and much that was written had a publicistic aim. The decline in drama due to the closing of the theatres by the Puritans in 1648 may also have had its effect in stimulating the development of emotive prose.
In this excerpt the main peculiarities of the style of emotive prose of the puritan trend strand out clearly. Simplicity in choice of words and in syntax is the predominant feature of the language of this type of emo­tive prose. The speech of the characters is mainly shaped in the form of indirect discourse.
So there is a kind of mixture of two substyles, emotive prose and dra­ma. However, when incursions of direct speech are short, they are given within the author's narrative.15
Eighteenth century emotive prose when compared to that of the seventeenth is, in its most essential, leading features, character­ized by the predominance of the third trend. This third trend, which may justly, be called realistic, is not the further» development of the puritan tendencies described above, although, doubtless, these tendencies bore some relevance to its typical features. The motto of this trend may be expressed by the phrase "call a spade a spade
Nineteenth century emotive prose can already be regarded as a substyle of the belles-letteres language style complete in its most fundamental properties as they are described at the beginning of this chapter.
Present-day emotive prose is to a large extent characterized by the breaking-up of traditional syntactical designs of the preceding periods. Not only detached construction, but also fragmentation of syntactical models, peculiar, unexpected ways of combining sentences, especially the gap-sentence link and other modern syntactical patterns, are freely introduced into present-day emotive prose. Its advance is so rapid that it is only possible to view it in the gross.
3. LANGUAGE OF THE DRAMA
The third subdivision of the belles-letteres style is the language of plays. The first thing to be said about the parameters of this, variety of belles-letteres is that, unlike poetry, which, except for bal­lads, in essence excludes direct speech and therefore dialogue, and unlike emotive prose, which is a combination of monologue (the author's speech) and dialogue (the speech of the characters), the language of plays is entirely dialogue. The author's speech is almost entirely excluded ex­cept for the playwright's remarks and stage directions, significant toughly they may be.
The colloquial language of the 16th century, therefore, enjoyed an almost unrestrained freedom and this partly found its expression in the lively dialogue of plays. The general trends in the developing literary language were also reflected in the wide use of biblical and mythological allusions, evocative of Renaissance traditions, as well as in the abundant use of compound epithets, which can also be ascribed to the influence of the great Greek and Latin epics.
It is unnecessary to point out the rhythmical difference between these two passages. The iambic pentameter of the first and the arrhythmic-cal prose of the second are quite apparent.
Shakespeare also used prose as a stylistic device. The prose pas­sages in Shakespeare's plays are well known to any student of Elizabeth­an drama.Shakespeare used prose in passages of repartee between minor char­acters, particularly in his comedies; in "The Taming of the Shrew" and "Twelfth Night", for instance, and also in the historical plays "Hen­ry IV" (Part I, Part II) and "Henry V." In some places there are prose monologues bearing the characteristic features of rhythmical prose with its parallel constructions, repetitions, etc. As an example we may take Falstaff's monologue addressed to the young Prince Henry in "Hen­ry IV" (Part I, Act II, P. 4).