Deviation: A Stylistic Analysis Of Blake's Poetry-Songs Of Innocence And Of Experience

As one of the most important branches in linguistics, modern stylistics, which appeared in the 1960s as an independent discipline, is receiving increasing attention across the field, thus there have appeared quite a few important concepts and theories, among which deviation is one of the major notions. Deviation is a device frequently adopted by writers of literary works to attract the reader's attention, and to differentiate themselves from other writers.William Blake, one of the greatest poets in British Romantic Age, is well known for his simple verse with embedded bareness of his emotions. However, those seemingly simple words and expressions were by no means simple with regard to the meanings and implications they convey, and some of them frequently and greatly deviated from the normal use of language. Former researches have been generally done within the scope of literary criticism, that is, most of them deal with the theme and symbolistic effects of his poems, while the linguistic characteristics are rarely discussed.The current study is a tentative analysis of the style of Blake's great poetry collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience. This thesis focuses on the linguistic phenomenon of deviation that appears on different levels of the poem, both externally and internally, with a view to revealing the unique linguistic characteristics and style rooted in Blake's poems, especially the short poems he wrote in his early years.Chapter One introduces the content and the structure of this thesis, and points out the purpose and significance of the current study. Chapter Two briefs the theoretical backgrounds of the study and the related theories of deviation put forward over the years, and clarifies the theories adopted by this thesis. Chapter Three to Five are devoted to exploring the cases of deviation appearing in Blake's collection on six different levels, namely sound (Chapter Three), metre (Chapter Three), lexis (Chapter Four), syntax (Chapter Four), meaning (Chapter Five), and context (Chapter Five), and discuss at length the significance of these phenomena together with their esthetic functions. Chapter Six is the conclusion.According to the findings of this thesis, Blake is skilled in demonstrating his beliefs and viewpoints powerfully by integrating metaphorical devices, symbols, ironic tones and/or irrational situations into seemingly plain and straightforward expressions rather than using highly-deviated words and grammars to achieve this purpose; in other words, Blake seeks to draw on semantic and contextual deviations rather than structural ones in composition, and thus shows his creativity and exceptionality especially in this respect.