Средства выразительности используемые автором для достижения юмористического эффекта Джером К. Джером "Три человека в лодке"

Contents

Introduction................................................................................................3
Chapter I
1.1.Distinctive Features of Literary Texts.....................................................6
1.2.Definition of Style..................................................................................7
1.3. Humorous Effect.................................................................................10
Chapter II
Use of Tropes in “Three Men in a Boat” and Humour..................................12
Conclusion..................................................................................................17
Bibliography................................................................................................18

Средства выразительности используемые автором для достижения юмористического эффекта Джером К. Джером "Три человека в лодке"

A range of various different styles of humour, or techniques for evoking humour or creating a humorous situation include:
Use of such figures of speech as enthymeme (a syllogism (a three-part deductive argument) with an unstated assumption which must be true for the premises to lead to the conclusion), zeugma (a figure of speech in which one word applies to two others in different senses of that word, and in some cases only logically applies to one of the other two words), hyperbole (intensification of a feature), understatement (a form of speech where a lesser expression is used than what would be expected), antithesis (a device bordering between stylistics and logic, the extremes being easily discernible though most of the cases are intermediate);
Word play by means of oxymoron (a figure of speech that combines two normally contradictory terms (e.g. "deafening silence")) and pun (a figure of speech which consists of a deliberate confusion of similar words or phrases for rhetorical effect, whether humorous or serious. It can rely on the assumed equivalency of multiple similar words (homonymy), of different shades of meaning of one word (polysemy), or of a literal meaning with a metaphor);
Use of comic sounds or inherently funny words with sounds that make them amusing in a language;
Use of jokes (short story or short series of words spoken or communicated with the intent of being laughed at),
Irony (a figure of speech (more precisely called verbal irony) in which there is a gap or incongruity between what a speaker or a writer says, and what is understood),
Sarcasm (sneering, jesting, or mocking a person, situation or thing), etc.
All these ways of providing humorous effect are quite often used altogether though with some variation of their significance in various humorous texts, of which “Three Men in a Boat” by Jerome K. Jerome seems to be a sort of masterpiece, which is quite often referred to in funny moments of life.
Chapter II
Use of Tropes in “Three Men in a Boat” and Humour
Enthymeme is used quite frequenly in the novel, where the first chapter gives absolutely irrelevant consequencies to a wide range of potential ilnesses:
“I came to typhoid fever - read the symptoms - discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it - wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus's Dance - found, as I expected, that I had that too, - began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically - read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright's disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee.”
George’s absolutely wrong argumentation shows incongruence of his quite uncommon mind:
“I must have been very weak at the time; because I know, after the first half-hour or so, I seemed to take no interest whatever in my food - an unusual thing for me - and I didn't want any cheese.”
These symptoms seemed to be desired by the character, who was not satisfied to be well. These symtoms he was dreaming of made him fight the imagined deseases:
“I made it a hundred and forty-seven to the minute. I tried to feel my heart. I could not feel my heart. It had stopped beating. I have since been induced to come to the opinion that it must have been there all the time, and must have been beating, but I cannot account for it. I patted myself all over my front, from what I call my waist up to my head, and I went a bit round each side, and a little way up the back. But I could not feel or hear anything. I tried to look at my tongue. I stuck it out as far as ever it would go, and I shut one eye, and tried to examine it with the other. I could only see the tip, and the only thing that I could gain from that was to feel more certain than before that I had scarlet fever.”
The hyperboles “It ( the heart) had stopped beating”, “I could not feel or hear anything” make the reader smile as the character would not stop his narration up to the end of the novel and reflect his irony over his own thoughts and actions.
Trying to be the doctor of himself the hero makes fun of an ordinary man’s fears and anxiety, as those silly ideas and actions make him “a happy, healthy man” miraculously.
To his surprise even his medical man confessing that “being only a chemist hampers him” does not show any signs of common sense and strengthens the author’s irony over absurd fears of human beings.
The prescription the doctor gives the protogonist does not deal with any medicines at all:
“1 lb. beefsteak, with 1 pt. bitter beer every 6 hours.
1 ten-mile walk every morning.
1 bed at 11 sharp every night.
And don't stuff up your head with things you don't understand.”
It makes ironic effect over the man’s desire to be serriously ill.
To describe his further sufferings the hero uses a pack of hyperboles and idioms reflecting his belief in being on the edge of the grave:
“What I suffer in that way no tongue can tell. From my earliest infancy I have been a martyr to it. As a boy, the disease hardly ever left me for a day. They did not know, then, that it was my liver. Medical science was in a far less advanced state than now, and they used to put it down to laziness.”
George does not believe in his chronic laziness at all, but thinks that some wicked creatures do exist with the only aim to make his and his friends’ lives difficult.
“Biggs's boy was the first to come round. Biggs is our greengrocer, and his chief talent lies in securing the services of the most abandoned and unprincipled errand-boys that civilisation has as yet produced.”
Oxymorons like “skulking little devil” do nothing but strengthen his incapability of valuing hih health conditions without any irrelevant fears:
“"Why, you skulking little devil, you," they would say, "get up and do something for your living, can't you?" - not knowing, of course, that I was ill.”
Another trope the author takes advantage of in providing humour is zeugma:
“For the next four days he lived a simple and blameless life on thin captain's biscuits (I mean that the biscuits were thin, not the captain) and soda-water; but, towards Saturday, he got uppish, and went in for weak tea and dry toast, and on Monday he was gorging himself on chicken broth. He left the ship on Tuesday, and as it steamed away from the landing-stage he gazed after it regretfully.”
Irony is used as a means of humour as well, even the characters themselves can be ironic when the weather does not seem to be the best.
“At one o'clock, the landlady would come in to ask if we weren't going out, as it seemed such a lovely day.
"No, no," we replied, with a knowing chuckle, "not we. WE don't mean to get wet - no, no."”
Puns are used to show that one can smile even in some gloomy situatons:
“The fine weather never came that summer. I expect that machine must have been referring to the following spring.”
Here what the character mean is not just the weather but fine weather, which in his opinion can be an event of some distant future or past that never coinside with the present moment.
Another example of pun is a “sweet woman” that can be interpreted as a sentimental, delightful, fallen in love or fragrant at the same time.
“George fancied that, if it had not been for the restraining influence of the sweet woman at his side, the young man might have given way to violent language.”
Quite an extraordinary pun is formed due to the use of as a sort of stronghold or citadel and a sort of boat that tows another one:
“Another example of the dangerous want of sympathy between tower and towed was witnessed by George and myself once up near Walton. It was where the tow-path shelves gently down into the water, and we were camping on the opposite bank, noticing things in general. By-and-by a small boat came in sight, towed through the water at a tremendous pace by a powerful barge horse, on which sat a very small boy.”
Antithesis is frequently used by Jerome so as to show a great contrast between the people’s expectations and their real experience and inability to challenge even petty hazards of everyday life.
"The river—with the sunlight flashing from its dancing wavelets, gilding gold the grey-green beech-trunks, glinting through the dark, cool wood paths, chasing shadows o'er the shallows, flinging diamonds from the mill-wheels, throwing kisses to the lilies, wantoning with the weir's white waters, silvering moss-grown walls and bridges, brightening every tiny townlet, making sweet each lane and meadow, lying tangled in the rushes, peeping, laughing, from each inlet, gleaming gay on many a far sail, making soft the air with glory—is a golden fairy stream.
But the river—chill and weary, with the ceaseless rain drops falling on its brown and sluggish waters, with the sound as of a woman, weeping low in some dark chamber, while the woods all dark and silent, shrouded in their mists of vapour, stand like ghosts upon the margin, silent ghosts with eyes reproachful like the ghosts of evil actions, like the ghosts of friends neglected—is a spirit-haunted water through the land of vain regrets."
The two paragraphs are made into one long span of thought by the signal But and the repetition of the word river after which in both cases a pause is indicated by a dash which suggests a different intonation pattern of the word river. The opposing members of the contrast are the 'sunlight flashing' —'ceaseless rain drops falling'; 'gilding gold the grey-green beech-trunks, glinting through the dark, cool wood paths'— 'the woods, all dark and silent, shrouded in their mists of vapour, stand like ghosts...'; 'golden fairy stream'—'spirit-haunted water'.
Still there are several things lacking to show a clear case of a stylistic device, viz. the words involved in the opposition do not display any additional nuance of meaning caused by being opposed one to another; there are no true parallel constructions except, perhaps, the general pattern of the two paragraphs, with all the descriptive parts placed between the grammatical subject and predicate, the two predicates serving as a kind of summing up, thus completing the contrast.
'The river... is a golden fairy stream.'—'But the river. .. is a spirit-haunted water through the land of vain regrets.' The contrast embodied in these two paragraphs is, however, akin to the stylistic device of antithesis.
A poetical passage is invariably followed by ludicrous scene. For example, the author expands on the beauties of the sunset on the river and concludes:
"But we didn't sail into the world of golden sunset: we went slap into that old punt where the gentlemen were fishing."
We have deliberate antithesis, which is a recognized form of humour.
A poetical passage is invariably followed by ludicrous scene. For example, the author expands on the beauties of the sunset on the river and concludes: