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Moon and Sixpence

The passage under analysis belongs to belles-lettres styles. The aim of belles-
lettres is not to prove but to suggest different interpretations. The belles-lettres
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 thing or phenomena.
4. A peculiar individual selection of vocabulary and syntax, a kind of lexical and
syntactical idiosyncrasy.
5. The introduction of the typical features of colloquial language to a full degree
(in plays) or a lesser one (in emotive prose) or a slight degree, if any (in poems).
The belles-lettres style is individual in essence. This is one of its most distinctive
properties.
William Somerset Maugham (18741965) has become universally recognized as
a master in the modern world of arts and letters. He has triumphed as a dramatist,
his novels have been read by untold numbers of people, and he has produced some
of the finest short stories in modern literature. The Circle, Our Betters, The
Constant Wife, The Letter are among his better known dramas, that are still
seen on stage and screen. One result of his journey was his book called The Moon
and the Sixpence. Besides the three important novels already mentioned (Of
Human Bondage, The Moon and Sixpence and The Razors Edge), the
following could also be listed among Maughams best works: Cakes and Ale
(1930), Theatre (1930), The Summing Up (1938), Essays on Literature
(1954) and, certainly, many of his short stories. As the name of Somerset
Maugham is connected with critical realism in the English literature of the first
decades of the present century, there is a need of mentioning one of the most
famous representatives of this very period.
Eugne Henri Paul Gauguin (7 June 1848 8 May 1903) was a French Post-
Impressionist artist who was not well appreciated until after his death. Gauguins
art became popular after his death; partially from the efforts of art dealer Ambroise
Vollard who organized exhibitions of his work late in his career, as well as
assisting in organizing two important posthumous exhibitions in Paris. He was an
important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker,
ceramist, and writer.
The first thing to remember about the paragraph is that it is a unit, concerned not
with a group of topics but with one topic only. The second thing to remember is
that a paragraph must take the reader somewhere, and take him a fairly direct
route.
The physical paragraph consists of two conceptual paragraphs. The first
conceptual paragraph deals with an episode when a little child comes to the
delicatessen shop and it was empty not only of customers but of attendants as well.
The child was remained alone.
One is able to say that principle of incomplete representation is brilliantly of
well-manifested in the first paragraph.
The action takes place in the delicatessen store.
The text is organized in the first person singular.
The exposition is the necessary preliminaries to the action in which the time or
subject is presented or opened out. It casts light on the circumstances or on the
setting and time of action proceeding the conflict.
Description is the art of translating perceptions into words. All description
thus involves two elements: the object - that which is seen or heard and the
observer he who sees or hears it. According to which predominates, description
is of two basic types: objective and impressionistic.
Objective description is factual account; the writer regards himself as a kind of
camera, recording and reproducing, though in words, a true picture. He becomes
much like the scientist, rigorously excluding from his opinions and emotions.
Usually objective description is written impersonally.
Impressionistic description is very different, it doesnt seek to inform but to
arouse emotion. Thus the communication of feeling is the primary purpose of
impressionistic description. The process begins in the writer. Only when the writer
has understood his own mood can he communicate that mood to his readers.
What the reader thinks and feels will depend upon how the author allows him or
her to see what is going on. The author is controlling the readers viewpoint.
Various kinds of narration help him to do so.
The way authors relate events to readers is called narration. Novelists use
different way of telling their stories: they use different characters to tell the stories
(narrators) and present the events from different angles.
A work of creative prose is never homogeneous as to the form and essence of
the information it carries. Both very much depend on the viewpoint of the
addresser, as the author and his personages may offer different angles of perception
of the same object. Naturally, it is the author who organizes this effect of
polyphony, but we, the readers, while reading the text, identify various views with
various personages, not attributing them directly to the writer. The latter's views
and emotions are most explicitly expressed in the author's speech.
Lets have a closer look at the principles of poetic structure cohesion which
underline the present text. Its a common knowledge that any literary text is based
on 3 principles of poetic structure cohesion. They are: Principle of incomplete
representation, Principle of analogy and contrast and Principle of recurrence.
On the level of macro-components Principle of analogy is realized through the
opposition of images of Strickland vs. of Cohen. This opposition is accounted for
by the fact that there are different kinds of understanding within people in one
country. At the beginning of the presenting images it should be noticed that these
two worlds are completely different. It may be argued due to the metaphor blue
leaves that shows this difference because that another world of artists can be
opened and read only by special and unique people.
Depicting the image of Strickland the author makes use of SDs of metaphors. The
metaphor a man of consequence is used by author to mark out a person with some
special qualities, who is absolutely from another world.

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