On ‘On Familiar Style’
-----William Hazlitt
淡人生Ⅰ.Life of the author
William Hazlitt was born at Maidstone, in England, in 1778. He is one of the reprentatives of Romantic criticism, and as an essayist, he ranks high in English literature. Under the education of his father who is a man of radical view and strong character, Hazlitt early determined to grow up to ‘speak the truth’. At fifteen, Hazlitt became a free-thinker and then plunged into philosophical studies. In 1799, in order to make a living, he took up the study of painting. It was not until 1813, at the age of 36, that he began his main literary career, contributing art criticism, dramatic criticism and miscellaneous essay to various periodicals, lecturing on Shakespeare and other English poets, and becoming a master of the familiar essay.
Hazlitt married twice but both marriages ended in paration. He died at fifty in 1830. “All hi
s life, he remained loyal to the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity.”(Liu Bingshan, 1983)
Ⅱ大货车简笔画. Summary
Writing a familiar style is writing naturally without affectation, but with propriety and simplicity. It requires more precision and purity of expression than any other styles.
A familiar style utterly rejects not only all unmeaning pomp, but also all low, cant phras, and loo, unconnected, slipshod allusions. All provincial or bye-phra should be avoided as well as the words that the writer invents for his own u and convenience. What kind of word could writers u is the best word in common u and the true idiom of the language. In addition, sometimes the slang phra also can be ud with putting it in italics as a licen of expression, and taking advantage of sprinkling of acknowledged archaisms is not amiss.
怎么找实习
Another key point of writing a familiar or a truly style is how to pick out the exactly very w
ord the preferableness of which is scarcely perceptible but decisive, out of the words equally common, equally intelligible, with nearly equal pretensions. Surely, the first word that is not always the best. What the writer should do first is to get a fresh and lively conception of the subject he has to write about, and then according to the enlightment by conception, it is not difficult to choo a most proper word of universal force and applicability which exactly fits the writer’s thought.
Unlike the familiar style, it is easy to write a gaudy style—the rever of the familiar, without idea. With many “tall, opaque words”, this florid style is magniloquent, taking advantage of the spangled veil to conceal its hollow thinking, which makes the essay extremely bad.
In a word, in writing essay, it is claimed to take advantage of the familiar style instead of the gaudy style, unless you are as excellent as Mr. Lame.
Ⅲ. Comments
1.The method of tting forth one’s views.
1衬衫袖口In writing this essay, Hazlitt lays down a topic—advocating the familiar style, and then expands upon it by pilling up intimate obrvations and vivid examples, expresd in a “literary colloquial English”, namely, expresd in a quence of forthright and relatively uncomplicated ntences. However, this essay is relatively planless in structure. It accumulates instead of developing and it does not round to a conclusion, but simply stops. (Liu Bingshan, 1983)
销售激励2Though the topic of this essay is “On Familiar Style”, Hazlitt us about two-fifth of the length of this piece to criticize the rever of the familiar style—早上正能量朋友圈the gaudy style. Here, Hazlitt takes advantage of the counterevidence to make his argument more powerful and convincing by contrast. That is to say, the aim of criticizing the rever of the argument is to better expound and prai his argument.
2.Figures of speech.
When expounding the argument, the author is always resorted to vivid metaphor or simile to arou readers’ imagination. For example,
Metaphor: “I hate to e a load of bandboxes go along the street, and I hate to e a parcel of big words without anything in them.”
Simile: “I conceive that words are like money, not the wor for being common, but that it is the stamp of custom alone that gives them circulation or value.”阴虚火旺怎么调理
What is worth mentioning is that Hazlitt’s metaphor or simile is not always expresd only by a word such as “like”, or by a simple ntence, but he also often does so by drawing a scene (Huang Yuanshen, 1997). For example, to write a familiar style is just like to speak in a common conversation which is determined by the habitual associations between n and sound, and can only hit by entering into the author’s meaning, thus the writer must find the proper words and style to express himlf by fixing his thoughts on the subject he has to write about.
