A Stylistic Analysis of William Blake’s Poem
“The Tyger”
Abstract: William Blake’s The Tyger is considered one of his best poems for its marvelous u of illusion and symbols and its musical beauty. In the thesis, the author attempts to make a stylistic analysis of this poem, and the analys will focus on the phonological, graphological, lexical, syntactical and mantical levels of the poem.
Key words: William Blake; the Tyger; stylistic
Introduction
William Blake, poet, painter, and visionary, was considered by many one the forerunners of British Romanticism, who most poems are concerned with creation and full of romantic elements. Among his works, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience are two famous ones. The Tyger, one poem in Songs of Experience, has been described by one critic as Blake’s most fully developed art --- a process using small revelations leading to greater disc
overies through profound u of symbol.
Born into a time when the society was experiencing great changes---the Industrial Revolution, Blake was amazed and astonished the creation as well as the destruction the power of the revolution can bring. In this poem, by bringing forth the central image the tiger and describe both the tiger and the creation of the tiger, Blake pos many questions without answering them, leaving the readers to think.
In order to get his ideas across, Blake us many unique techniques in this poem to get the effect of foregrounding if considered under the term of stylistics. So in the following part of the thesis, we will deal with the stylistic features in details at four levels: phonological, graphological, lexical and mantic respectively.
. At the Phonological Level
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In this poem, William Blake adopted the trochaic tetrameter in the whole poem so as to i
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By deliberately making the stress sounds fall into the more important words, Blake express the power and strength of the tiger, and adds to the musical beauty when reading it.
Rhyme
The rhythmical sounds in this poem is achieved by the u of regular end rhymes,which is prented by the rhyme pattern aabb ccdd eeff gghh iijj aabb, and such figures of speech as alliteration and repetition.
Every two lines have the same end rhyme(bright/night, eye/symmetry, skies/eyes ) and most of the rhymes are masculine rhymes(bright/night, art/heart, e/thee), which strengthen the image of the tiger with an overwhelming momentum; repetition is ud for the subject discusd(Tyger! Tyger ) and also the first stanza and the last one are identical so that readers can feel the power of the beast from the very beginning; Blake also employs alliteration abundantly(burning bright, what wings, distant deeps, began to beat, dare its deadly terror clasp, frame thy fearful symmetry ), among which many stops such as /b/ /d/ /t/ /p/ are ud to imitate the sound of the hammer, thus paint a vivid image in front of the reader of the making of the tiger, also give them a hint of the destructive force of the beast.
time of day. At the Graphological Level
Format
The whole poem contains six stanzas and each stanze is a quatrain, adding that the first stanza and the last one are identical, so the poem has a beauty of uniformity in the term
of the form. Also the repetition of the stanzas makes the theme profound.
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Punctuation
Through the unconventional u of punctuation, particularly the question mark, Blake in this poem us twelve whats(what dread hand? And what dread feet? ) to po questions to create an atmosphere of mystery, giving the image of the tiger a mysterious and religious color. The exclamations ud to address the tiger(Tyger! Tyger! ) help to emphasize the urgency of the question.
Capitalization
In the whole poem, except the first word of each line and the beginning of a ntence, there is still one word capitalized(Lamb in line 20 ), which probably is the intertextuality with Blake’s another poet The Lamb. By the contrast between the tiger and the lamb, Blake emphasizes the strength and the dark power of the former, also by pointing out that both the powerful tiger and the weak lamb are created by the some God, Blake express the divine power of the Creator.
.At the Lexical Level
Poetic and archaic words
Many poetic words are employed by Blake to make the poem elegant and poetic(deeps, aspire, art, symmetry), also the words some times are chon according to the end rhyme.Archaic words can be found in the poem(tyger/tiger, dread/dreadful, thy/your,thine/yours, thee/you ).minus怎么读
Short and powerful words
Words to show strength and speed (frame, aspire, ize, clasp, make, twist) ,words to show the process of making the tiger (hammer, chain, furnace, anvil) and words to describe the fire (fire, bright, burn) are ud not only to express the power of the tiger but also to create the scene of making the tiger so as to emphasize the even greater power of the Creator.
容颜的意思>www lashou com. At the Semantic Level
Symbolism
Some words in this poem bore symbolic meanings. The tiger (the central image in the poem) is considered by many as reprenting the dark shadow of the human soul. This is the beastly part of ourlves that we would prefer to keep only in our dreams at night. Night(line 2 ) in Blake's poetry often ems to suggest this sort of dream time. The forests(line 2 ) might reprent the wild landscape of our imagination under the influence of this beast. The heart (line 10) reprents not only the biological engine of the tiger, but perhaps its passion for living.
