LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 22:5 May 2022
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

Celebrate India!
Unity in Diversity!!

HOME PAGE

Click Here for Back Issues of Language in India - From 2001

BOOKS FOR YOU TO READ AND DOWNLOAD FREE!

REFERENCE MATERIALS

BACK ISSUES

  • E-mail your articles and book-length reports in Microsoft Word to languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.

  • PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES GIVEN IN HOME PAGE IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE LIST OF CONTENTS.

  • Your articles and book-length reports should be written following the APA, MLA, LSA, or IJDL Stylesheet.

  • The Editorial Board has the right to accept, reject, or suggest modifications to the articles submitted for publication, and to make suitable stylistic adjustments. High quality, academic integrity, ethics and morals are expected from the authors and discussants.

Copyright © 2022
M. S. Thirumalai

Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
11249 Oregon Circle
Bloomington, MN 55438
USA
Custom Search

A Stylistic Analysis of Tagore’s Gitanjali

Bablu Ray

Abstract

The research paper attempts to achieve stylistic analysis of Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali which is a world famous Indian classical text. The text includes the collection of 103 poems selected and translated by Tagore himself from his various Bengali books of poetry. The reason for analyzing this particular text is that this is one of the texts for which the poet Rabindranath Tagore received Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. Further, this text being one of the classical texts of India needs to be analyzed linguistically. Therefore, the text gets analyzed at various levels of stylistic analysis namely phonological, lexical and morphological, syntactic, semantic and graphological. The each level of analysis explores different stylistic devices as employed in the poems through which the poet conveys the meaning of the poem more effectively to the readers. The identification and analysis of stylistic devices help us understand the literal and figurative meanings of the poems. The use of several stylistic devices like alliteration, assonance, consonance, parallelism, reduplication, simile, personification, capitalization etc. at various levels of stylistic analysis have significantly contributed to the expressions of spiritual meanings as well as to the poetic structures of the text.

Keywords: Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali, Style, Stylistics, Stylistic Analysis.

1. Introduction

Stylistics is the branch of linguistics which is primarily associated with studying style in literary texts. According to Widdowson (1975: 3), “stylistics is the study of literary discourse from linguistic orientation”. Stylistics analysis is related with identifying and analyzing style in poetry but it can be also applied to identifying and analyzing style in prose and fiction. Sometimes, style studies have been also attempted to analyse non-literary texts like advertisements. However, the focal point of stylistics is to study style. Style, specifically in linguistics, refers to the kind of language use through which the poet or writer expresses their message emphatically to the readers.

In this regard, Cuddon (2013: 688) says that “style is the characteristic or manner of expression in prose or verse; how a particular writer says things”. Thus, when we study style, we basically attempt to analyze the language used in a particular literary text. It is also to be noted that analyzing language of the particular text involves analyzing the structural patterns of the language. Moreover, language use in literary texts may vary depending upon the theme and the message to be conveyed by the literary scholars. Therefore, each text differs in language use from each other. Further, the different patterns of language use make the text unique from others having its own style.

The language use in the literary texts depends also upon the poet or writer’s style features such as choice of words; his/her sentence constructions and use of figurative language and other style features.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Bablu Ray
Assistant Professor
Department of Linguistics
Doctor Harisingh Gour Vishwavidyalaya Sagar, Madhya Pradesh, India
babluray@gmail.com
Custom Search
  • Click Here to Go to Creative Writing Section

  • Send your articles
    as an attachment
    to your e-mail to
    languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.
  • Please ensure that your name, academic degrees, institutional affiliation and institutional address, and your e-mail address are all given in the first page of your article. Also include a declaration that your article or work submitted for publication in LANGUAGE IN INDIA is an original work by you and that you have duly acknowledged the work or works of others you used in writing your articles, etc. Remember that by maintaining academic integrity we not only do the right thing but also help the growth, development and recognition of Indian/South Asian scholarship.