A STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF “THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT

Shaukat Khan, Sumaira Jehanzeb, Irfan Ullah, & Muhammad IrfanA Stylistic Analysis of “The Rime of The Ancient Mariner”language and literature, linguistics andliterary criticism, language andlinguistics, and of literature and literarycriticism. Therefore, its status is that of asubject-subject connector, disciplinediscipline connector and subjectdiscipline connector (Widdowson, 1975,pp. 3-4).Foregrounding essentially involvescreating an effect of “standing out” fromthe surroundings (Jeffries & McIntyre,2010, p. 31) because that is howsomeone’s concentration can be trappedand attention can be fully grasped. This“standing out” effect is produced inliterature often by means of deviationfrom some established norm becausethat is how it is produced elsewhere. Forexample, if an NGO worker wears herbridal dress to work or if an army officergoes to a wedding-feast with his militaryuniform on then both would certainlystand out from the rest because it hasbecome almost a set norm to be dressedformally at workplaces and to be dressedin pompous civil clothes at weddingparties, and the two would havedeviated from the respective norms.Quite similarly, some segments of a(literary) text stand out from the rest bybeing deviant in one way or the other.And, what is meant by deviation in thiscontext is “the occurrence of unexpectedirregularity in language” which iscapable of evoking surprise in the reader(Jeffries & McIntyre, 2010, p. 31).If the deviance in a certain text isdetectable by contrasting a few segmentsof the text to their general co-text thenthe deviation is internal in its nature as ithas resulted from “the violation of anorm set up by the text itself” (Van Peer,1986, p. 22).The researcher was able to view avery small yet significant part of thecorpus of literature produced on theissues whose understanding wasfinding out what aesthetic experience orperception of reality the poem [or anyother literary composition, for thatmatter] is attempting to convey”(Widdowson, 1975, p. 5). Nevertheless,unlike a literary critic, he does not attainhis goal by relying largely on extratextual evidence or his own intuitivefaculty; rather, his means are of linguisticnature. And, it is the very nature of hismeans which renders his approach moresystematic and graspable than that of aliterary critic.A person working in the field ofstylistics can be described as someonewho takes the route outlined bylinguistic flagstones to reach the destinyset by the literary critic. While, stylisticscan be described as a language-orientedspecialty which “attempts to characterizeliterary writing as discourse and so tomediate between the linguist’s treatmentof literature primarily as text and theliterary critic’s treatment of it primarilyas messages” (Widdowson, 1975, p. 5).The very name of stylistics is suggestiveof the fact that it is an interdisciplinarydomain where, the elsewhere diverseconsidered disciplines, literary criticismand linguistics are found confluent. Theinitial component, “style”, of its namecreates some mental association betweenit and literary criticism because it is, andhas always been, a major concern ofliterary criticism to appraise the style ofliterary products; whereas, the finalcomponent, “-istics” of its name isshared by “linguistics” so it binds thetwo together (Widdowson, 1975, p. 3). Itcannot be justly denied that, at thepresent, stylistics cannot have anindependent existence in the vast sea ofknowledge and inquiry; rather, it orientitself as a linking rope for the planks ofsome fully autonomous disciplines andthe subjects derived from them. In thisregard, it is majorly a juncture of40

ENGLISH REVIEW: Journal of English EducationVol. 5, Issue 1, December 2016ISSN EEAccording to Bradford (1997), “themost basic and enduring definition ofpoetry is that the poem, unlike any otherassembly of words, supplements the useof grammar and syntax with anothersystem of organization: the poetic line”.It explains that “the poetic line drawsupon the same linguistic raw materialsas the sentence but deploys and uses thisin a different way” (p. 15).Widdowson (1992) asserts thatpoetry “outlives and transcends theoccasion of its composition, and transfersits significance in some way to strangersin another time and place” (p. 4). Then, itexplains that poetry “is expressive ofsome elusive reality outside the confinesof what is conventional[ and for expressing such anunconventional reality,] we need tomould ordinary language and logic intoa different shape. We need to disruptconventional patterns of thought andexpression and reformulate them intopatterns which follow differentprinciples of order” (p. 5).Widdowson (1975) says, “Thelanguage [of a poem] is organized into apattern of recurring sounds, structuresand meanings which are not determinedby the phonology, syntax or semantics ofthe language code which provides itwith its basic resources” (p. 36).Verdonk (2002) ascribes thefollowing features to the language ofpoetry: “Its meaning is often ambiguousand elusive; it may flout theconventional rules of grammar; it has apeculiar sound structure; it is spatiallyarranged in metrical lines and stanzas; itoften reveals foregrounded patterns inits sounds, vocabulary, grammar, orsyntax, and last but not the least itfrequently contains indirect references toother texts” (p. 6).Freeborn (1996) mentions: “Versehas been called a heightened form ofprerequisite to the carrying out of thisstudy. A brief review of such issues ispresented for better organization andease of reference.Verdonk (2002) describes thereader’s special response to theforegrounded parts of a text in thefollowing words: “In making a stylisticanalysis we are not so much focused onevery form and structure in a text, as onthose which stand out in it. Suchconspicuous elements hold a promise ofstylistic relevance and thereby rouse thereader’s interest or emotions. In stylisticsthis psychological effect is calledforegrounding” (p. 6).Jeffries & McIntyre (2010) states:“Essentially, foregrounding theorysuggests that in any text some sounds,words, phrases and/or clauses may beso different from what surrounds them,or from some perceived ‘norm’ in thelanguage generally, that they are set intorelief by this difference and moreprominent as a result. [ .] Poetryis the genre that most clearly exemplifiesthis feature” (p. 31).Van Peer (1986) informs the readerthat “in the case of a deviation a writermakes a choice outside a range of choicespermitted by the language system, whilein the case of parallelism the writerrepeatedly makes the same selection.These are opposite processes,complementing each other.Widdowson (1975) accounts for thefact that literary texts are intelligibledespite containing so many deviantforms by saying, “linguistic deviationsdo not occur randomly in a literary workbut pattern in with other linguisticfeatures, both regular and irregular toform a whole. They are understood,therefore, not in isolation with referenceonly to the linguistic system, or code, butalso with reference to the context inwhich they appear” (p. 27).41

Shaukat Khan, Sumaira Jehanzeb, Irfan Ullah, & Muhammad IrfanA Stylistic Analysis of “The Rime of The Ancient Mariner”uses of the language so as to make clearby contrast how the system is used inconventional forms of communication.At the same time, of course a comparisonwith other kinds of discourse will revealwhat it is that is peculiar to literary usesof English” (p. 80).Sinclair (2004, p. 51) has made thefollowing assertion, as cited in Jeffries &McIntyre (2010, p. 3): “No systematicapparatus can claim to describe alanguage if it does not embrace theliterature also; and not as a freakishdevelopment, but as a naturalspecialization of categories which arerequired in other parts of the descriptivesystem”.ordinary language, in the sense that itdoes nothing that is not done in ordinarylanguage, but what it does isforegrounded and focused on for its ownsake. So, natural rhythms are made oreregular, and ‘sound effects’ likealliteration, assonance and rhyme, whichoccur in ordinary language but usuallyin a random way, are made a deliberatepart of the sound pattern” (p. 152).Wolosky (2001) defines poetrywith respect to the language it generallyemploys as follows: “Poetry is languagein which every component element—word and word order, sound and pause,image and echo—is significant,significant in that every element pointstoward or stands for furtherrelationships among and beyondthemselves. Poetry is language thatmeans more. Its elements are figures,and poetry itself is a language of figures,in which each component can potentiallyopen toward new meaning, levels,dimensions, connections, orresonances.[ .] No word is idleor accidental” (p. 3).Simpson (1997) says, “[providedthat stylistics] examines literarydiscourse against the totality ofdiscourse, stylistics is essentially acomparative method of study. Theassumption behind this is that a betterunderstanding of literarycommunication can be reached only if itis viewed as contiguous with otherdiscourses. It is pointless therefore tofocus on literature in a restricted‘cellular’ fashion whereby it is cut adriftfrom other contexts of language” (p. 7).Widdowson (1975) expresses therelation between the literary and thenon-literary uses of language in thefollowing words: “The manner in whichthe resources of the language system areused in the fashioning of unique literarymessages can be compared with otherMETHODThe findings are both qualitativeand quantitative owing to the nature ofthe study. Techniques used for theanalysis of the data are simply derivedfrom the fundamental principles ofGeneral Linguistics as outlined in Yule(1985). And, a relatively higherinterpretive value for the deviant parts ofthe text has been assumed during theanalysis. Well-acclaimed dictionaries likeAdvance Oxford Dictionary (revisededn.7) and Chambers Essential EnglishDictionary (1995) have been used toassign semantic features and lexical rolesto words. Unusual collocations havebeen specified by presenting the lexicalstring containing them in the shape ofCloze Procedure text as suggested inSimpson (1997, PP. 84-85).The study is descriptive in itsnature. This study is intended to showhow, at least, a good preliminaryunderstanding of “The Rime of theAncient Mariner” can develop if alanguage-oriented bottom-up approachis adopted for its analysis whichpresupposes a relatively greaterinterpretive potential for those segments42

ENGLISH REVIEW: Journal of English EducationVol. 5, Issue 1, December 2016ISSN EEprepositional phrase, ‘The Rime’ and ‘theAncient Mariner’. Now, if the latter nounphrase is set for a cloze procedure test byreplacing its head noun ‘Mariner’ by anempty slot as followsThe Ancient .then the respondents having anaverage knowledge of Englishlanguage are likely to come up withcombinations like the following ones:o The Ancient Timeso The Ancient Civilizationo The Ancient Ruinso The Ancient Cityo The Ancient Hillso The Ancient Monumentso The Ancient Pyramidso The Ancient Greekso The Ancient Philosopherbecause ‘ancient’ is usually used eitherfor describing non-human entities whichbelong to or have been existent since theremote past, or for describing humanentities which existed in the remote pastand have become extinct long ago.However, in the title, it collocates withthe word ‘Mariner’ which does not referto a human entity which existed anddied out in the remote past but to a manwho is alive in the deictic world of thepoem. This unusual collocation conjuresup the bizarre image of a man who hasoutlived many generations. Thus, thisinstance of lexical deviation charges thecharacter of the Mariner with someelement of supernaturalism and preparesthe reader to anticipate somesupernatural activity in the poem.The poem was published duringthe eighteenth century while the headnoun ‘Rime’ in the first noun phrase ofits title conforms to Middle Englishorthographic conventions or, to putsimply, has an archaic spelling for theModern English word ‘rhyme’, which isused to refer to a ‘rhymed verse’. Thisgraphological deviation on theof the ballad’s text which stand out in thelinguistic foreground, by the virtue ofbeing deviant, than those segmentswhich lay in the background byconforming to ordinary language usage.A fine analysis of the style of aliterary text can lead to someunderstanding of its overall content,especially if the analyst carefully directshis moves along the lines laid by theinstances of foregrounding in the text.The three major aims during the courseof the study were: to show the specialinterpretive capacity of the elements ofthe poem which are internally orexternally deviant to the poem’s text onthe lexical level, to bring out theinterpretive potential of the semanticallydeviant units in the poem’s text, to pointout the contribution of the typographicaldeviations in the encoding of the poem’sunique message.A method of stylistic analysiseclectically derived from the examplestylistic analyses presented inWiddowson (1975) and Simpson (1997)has been adopted as the research tool.Textual data has been collected. Onlythose parts of the poem’s text served asthe data which either violate anyabsolute or relative selection restrictionrule, or depart from the establishedtypographical norms. To put italternatively, the data collected for thisstudy comprises of lexically,semantically and graphologicallydeviant linguistic forms.RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONAn understanding of the titleought to be developed as precursory tothe understanding of the whole poembecause the title sets the frame orconceptual confines for the interpretationof the poem which it tags. The title of thechosen poem contains two noun phrases,the latter of which is embedded in a43

Shaukat Khan, Sumaira Jehanzeb, Irfan Ullah, & Muhammad IrfanA Stylistic Analysis of “The Rime of The Ancient Mariner”deviation. However, when viewed at thelevel of discourse, it becomes an iconicrepresentation of the magnitude andeffect of the entity which it refers to. Thisinstance of foregrounding may also leavethe impression on the reader’s mind thatthe storm would have broken asabruptly in the deictic world of the seavoyagers as these block letters show upin the poem’s text. In line 42, thepredicative adjectives ‘tyrannous’ and‘strong’ occur to post-modify ‘the stormblast’. And, in the two lines whichimmediately follow line 42, the stormblast assumes the lexical role of agent forspiteful actions like striking struck andchasing chased which essentiallyrequire their agent to be / animate/. Itis also to be noted here that humanbeings (the mariners), referred to by theplural objective pronoun ‘us’ in line 44,become the theme for these actions. Thelines are stated below for reference:Was tyrannous and strong: -------------l.42He struck with his o’ertaking wings, -------------------------- l.43And chased us south along. ----------- l.44Now, the three words ‘tyrannous’,‘struck’ and ‘chased’ do not only sharethe semantic feature / animate/, whichmake these utterances in which theyoccur semantically odd, but they alsohave in common two other features:/ might/ and / offence/ or/ opposition/. So, the triad of thesesemantically foregrounded lines suggestthat the Nature’s agency—the storm—isnot only infused with an animated spiritbut is also powerful or mighty enough toshow antagonistic tendencies towardsman. Thus, this instance offoregrounding induces the element ofNature’s determinism in the poem’snarrative. Nature’s antagonism towardsman is reinforced by referring to thestorm as a ‘foe’ in line 47.diachronic plane of English, coupledwith the use of the attributive adjective‘ancient’, having the semantic features/ temporal/ and / remoteness/, in thesucceeding noun phrase, defines thechronological climate of the poem andsets its events in the remote past. Thismight have been done by the poet as adistancing technique to increase theplausibility of the action of the poem forthe readers.The graphological deviationforegrounds the word ‘rime’ so it invitesthe reader to dig out for an even deepermeaning, or perhaps for a dual meaning.Actually, ‘rime’ if taken as a ModernEnglish word, means ‘hoar frost’.Reconciling the meanings of the twodiachronic homonyms conveys the senseof a rhymed verse which containsfrequent references to frostiness. So, thisis how a single foregrounded wordforeshadows the thermal imagery of thepoem.The personal pronouns ‘he’ and‘she’ are exclusively reserved for thirdperson gender-specified entities inconventional modes of language.However, in the poem, these pronounsare frequently used to refer to nonhuman natural entities like the Sun, theMoon and the Storm. The first instanceof such unconventional use appears inline26:The Sun came up upon the left------- l.25Out of the sea came he ------------l.26This semantic deviation builds anaura of animation or vitality around thenatural elements and prepares the readerto watch them, at least, at par withhuman beings. In line 41, the whole nounphrase ‘storm blast’ appears in uppercase:And, now the STORM-BLAST came, andhe -------------------------l.41If viewed at the textual level, it canbe clearly identified as a typographical44

ENGLISH REVIEW: Journal of English EducationVol. 5, Issue 1, December N 2301-7554At the very end of Part I of the poem, thenoun ‘albatross’ occurs in bold typeface:I shot the ALBATROSS. ------------------------l.82This typographical deviationmarks the climax of the poem andsuggests that the albatross is the entityaround which the plot of the poemrevolves.The poem is saturated withreferences to Natural elements andforces till its very end but, keeping inmind the delimitations of the study, onlythe few lexically, semantically orgraphologically deviant references toNature have been discussed here.The action ‘hold’ requires itsinstrument to have the feature / grip/.However, after releasing the weddingguest’s hand from the grasp of his ownhand, the Mariner held him with hiseyes, which obviously refer to a /-grip/entity. And, the mentioning of the twoactions in succession reinforces the ideathat his eyes could hold something justas his hands could.Eftsoons his hand dropt he. ----------1.l2He holds him with his glittering eye-- --------------------l.13This instance of semantic deviationis evocative of the enchanting powersthat the Mariner possessed and, thus, itgives him his quasi-supernaturalidentity.In line 193, the description of the femalemember of the grotesque crew is givenas:The Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH wasshe ----------------------l.193A tension is created between thewords ‘life’ and ‘death’ in the name ofthe woman typed in block letters by theinsertion of two hyphens on both sidesof a linking preposition. This graphicaltension suggests whom the weird ladywrecks will be caught up in the tensionbetween life and death. In other words,the person whom the lady victimizeswould be set in suspense from life anddeath, both. The word ‘nightmare’ in thisline is hyphenated. The splitting of theword prepares the ground for someinter-textual reference. The Mare is afemale evil supernatural character in theGermanic folklore that sets out at nightfor all sorts of malicious deeds. So, theword Night-mare, owing to itsgraphological deviation, is capable ofconveying dual meaning. The first andthe more obvious meaning is that thelady’s appearance was nightmarishwhereas the second possible meaning isthat she was malevolent andsupernatural like the Mare in Germanicfolklores.If the pair of line 55 and line 56 isadapted for a cloze procedure test asfo

A Stylistic Analysis of “The Rime of The Ancient Mariner” finding out what aesthetic experience or perception of reality the poem [or any other literary composition, for that matter] is attempting to convey” (Widdowson, 1975, p. 5). Nevertheless, unlike a literary critic, he does not attain his goal by relying largely on extra-