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A linguistic guide to English poetry
116
REVIEWS
ideas and among the various contributors, which augurs well for the future of such studies in the Soviet Union.
University of Toronto
R.D.a. THOMSON
Geoffrey N. Leech, A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry. London, Longman, 1969. xvi + 240 pp. This is an elementary textbook on stylistics intended for use by beginning undergraduates. Published four years ago, it remains, I believe, the only book of its kind. More advanced students are well served by several anthologies (Chatman and Levin, Essays on the Language of Literature [1967]; Freeman, Linguistics and Literary Style [1970]) and symposia (Sebeok, Style in Language [1960]; Chatman, Literary Style: A Symposium [1971]), but Dr Leech's book is the only full-length exposition of the linguistic conventions of English poetry addressed t o a relatively uninitiated audience. This book reflects the pragmatic, texture-conscious, mode of linguistic stylistics typical of England and America in the early and mid-1960s rather than the now more widely known theoretical and structural poetics of continental Europe. Its antecedents, the sources of its framework, are the time-honoured tradition of rhetoric, the New Criticism in its international, less polemic style, and neo-Firthian linguistics. The reader is shielded from technical and theoretical complications associated with these schools: some will feel that this protection has resulted in a lack of sophistication, superficiality in the way certain ideas are treated, but it must be remembered that the book is addressed to elementary students. In my opinion Leech was wise to skirt the theoretical difficulties of modern poetics: his book avoids being intimidating, and should forestall some of the familiar prejudices of literary critics against the alleged jargonizing and theoretical barrenness of 'linguistic stylistics'. Following up his earlier paper ("Linguistics and the Figures of Rhetoric", in: Fowler, Essays on Style and Language [1966]), Leech aims to encourage students to construct 'a descriptive rhetoric' (3-5). He seeks to provide linguistic explanations for the traditional terms and concepts of rhetoric and thereby to make them accessible to, and analytically useful to, the modern reader of poetry. Chapters 1-4 are essentially preliminary to this enterprise, comprising brief general discussions of various relationships between poetic language and other uses of language
REVIEWS
117
archaism, conformity and creativity, deviation, foregrounding. The remainder of the book (73ff.) adapts traditional literary and rhetorical topics, reinterpreting them according to the linguistic model. Aspects of literary language discussed include parallelism, sound-patterning, metre, paradox and related semantic incongruities, metaphor, irony, context and content ambiguity. In Samuel Levin's terms, the organising categories of the book are the CONVEr~TIONSof poetry rather than its LANGUAGE.Leech's poetics is essentially traditional: there is no attempt to erect a new scheme based on the categories of linguistics. Undoubtedly this decision will make the book more accessible and sympathetic to teachers and students of literature than it might otherwise have been. The practical usefulness of this textbook is further guaranteed by a rich provision of illustration and analysis. Leech consistently furnishes concrete exemplification of the rhetorical devices which he discusses, and each chapter is accompanied by specimens for additional discussion and analysis. One might perhaps wish that the examples were less well-worn, more startling: it seems that Leech commits himself to a rather conventional perspective on the history and character of English poetry along with a traditional account of rhetoric. With a more adventurous choice of examples, the book could have been much more exciting. However, Leech protects his readers from discomfiture- and, considering the readiness of literary people to become alarmed at the imagined ogre of linguistics, perhaps the careful avoidance of 'edge', of controversy, was a politic decision.
University of East Anglia
ROGERFOWLER
REVIEWS
ideas and among the various contributors, which augurs well for the future of such studies in the Soviet Union.
University of Toronto
R.D.a. THOMSON
Geoffrey N. Leech, A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry. London, Longman, 1969. xvi + 240 pp. This is an elementary textbook on stylistics intended for use by beginning undergraduates. Published four years ago, it remains, I believe, the only book of its kind. More advanced students are well served by several anthologies (Chatman and Levin, Essays on the Language of Literature [1967]; Freeman, Linguistics and Literary Style [1970]) and symposia (Sebeok, Style in Language [1960]; Chatman, Literary Style: A Symposium [1971]), but Dr Leech's book is the only full-length exposition of the linguistic conventions of English poetry addressed t o a relatively uninitiated audience. This book reflects the pragmatic, texture-conscious, mode of linguistic stylistics typical of England and America in the early and mid-1960s rather than the now more widely known theoretical and structural poetics of continental Europe. Its antecedents, the sources of its framework, are the time-honoured tradition of rhetoric, the New Criticism in its international, less polemic style, and neo-Firthian linguistics. The reader is shielded from technical and theoretical complications associated with these schools: some will feel that this protection has resulted in a lack of sophistication, superficiality in the way certain ideas are treated, but it must be remembered that the book is addressed to elementary students. In my opinion Leech was wise to skirt the theoretical difficulties of modern poetics: his book avoids being intimidating, and should forestall some of the familiar prejudices of literary critics against the alleged jargonizing and theoretical barrenness of 'linguistic stylistics'. Following up his earlier paper ("Linguistics and the Figures of Rhetoric", in: Fowler, Essays on Style and Language [1966]), Leech aims to encourage students to construct 'a descriptive rhetoric' (3-5). He seeks to provide linguistic explanations for the traditional terms and concepts of rhetoric and thereby to make them accessible to, and analytically useful to, the modern reader of poetry. Chapters 1-4 are essentially preliminary to this enterprise, comprising brief general discussions of various relationships between poetic language and other uses of language
REVIEWS
117
archaism, conformity and creativity, deviation, foregrounding. The remainder of the book (73ff.) adapts traditional literary and rhetorical topics, reinterpreting them according to the linguistic model. Aspects of literary language discussed include parallelism, sound-patterning, metre, paradox and related semantic incongruities, metaphor, irony, context and content ambiguity. In Samuel Levin's terms, the organising categories of the book are the CONVEr~TIONSof poetry rather than its LANGUAGE.Leech's poetics is essentially traditional: there is no attempt to erect a new scheme based on the categories of linguistics. Undoubtedly this decision will make the book more accessible and sympathetic to teachers and students of literature than it might otherwise have been. The practical usefulness of this textbook is further guaranteed by a rich provision of illustration and analysis. Leech consistently furnishes concrete exemplification of the rhetorical devices which he discusses, and each chapter is accompanied by specimens for additional discussion and analysis. One might perhaps wish that the examples were less well-worn, more startling: it seems that Leech commits himself to a rather conventional perspective on the history and character of English poetry along with a traditional account of rhetoric. With a more adventurous choice of examples, the book could have been much more exciting. However, Leech protects his readers from discomfiture- and, considering the readiness of literary people to become alarmed at the imagined ogre of linguistics, perhaps the careful avoidance of 'edge', of controversy, was a politic decision.
University of East Anglia
ROGERFOWLER