function or operation of these forms in a literary context. The whole issue of what
is precisely involved in this is very complex and stylisticians are as involved as others
in debates over what goes on in the process and over how particular interpretative
facts can be established in a verifiable way. These issues cannot be addressed directly
here although one perspective is offered in the next section; the following comments
therefore carry the danger that they are based on assumptions which have not been
made particularly explicit.
One of the ‘equations’ that can be made in relation to ‘Off Course’ is between the
omission of verbs and an impression of weightlessness and suspension in which
objects appear to be located in a free-floating relationship with each other and with the
space surrounding them. The absence of verbal groups in the poem equates with and
produces a sensation of a weightless, suspended condition of outer space where objects
float about according to laws different from those which normally pertain.
Another central point [. . .] is the way in which the text shifts ‘off-course’, so to
speak, at line [15]. From about line [10] to the end of the text no new headwords
or modifiers are introduced. The same features recur but in different combinations
resulting initially in something of a loss of identity of the objects concerned. But
from line [15] the collocations of modifier and headwords become increasingly
random or even incompatible. So the connections in our ‘inventory’ between object
and its attribute/classificatory label seemingly get more and more arbitrary and void.
The typographical ‘arrangement’ of the text means that at the end we are left in
an unpunctuated, unending space of free floating connections where the mind
perceiving these features in this ‘stream-of-consciousness-like’ progression is appar-
ently as disconnected and ‘off-course’ as the objects themselves. What was previously
an embodiment of a disorientation in gravity-free conditions has now become a more
profound dislocation. Where for the most part the lines up to line [15] represent a
clear and definite, even if constantly changing, categorisation of things, the remaining
lines succeed only in embodying the sense of a world and/or mind shifting out of
control.
COMPARATIVE TEXTOLOGY
Texts are usually compared on the basis of related or contrasting themes; and there
is little doubt that particular features of a text are placed in sharper relief through a
process of comparison. A further dimension can be added by comparing texts which
are constructionally and formalistically related. A stylistic examination of a text can
provide a systematic and principled basis for grading texts for comparison or for
further analysis. These texts can then be progressively introduced to students on the
basis of their linguistic accessibility.
Literary stylistic work can be enhanced by such comparison as can be seen from
a comparison of ‘Off Course’ with texts which have finite verbs deleted and/or exist
as strings of nominal groups. Among the most interesting ‘juxtapositions’ are: Louis
MacNeice, ‘Morning Song’; George Herbert, ‘Prayer’; Theodore Roethke, ‘Child on
Top of a Greenhouse’; Ezra Pound, ‘In a Station of the Metro’ [see unit C3 – P.S.].
Prose passages organised in this way include the opening to Dickens’s
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