Rhetorical Devices In Shakespeare's Sonnets

The sonnet is a poem of 14 lines of iambic pentameter with a rigid rime-scheme .William Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets in his life. The Shakespearean sonnet, shining like a bright star in the sky of the European literature, has been capturing the eyes and hearts of the people all over the world. Many scholars, critics, researchers and translators have devoted themselves to the study of the sonnets all their lives. Fruitful studies, researches, explorations, investigations, translations together with analyses have been springing up ever since the publication. However, although so many achievements have emerged one after another, an overall study of the rhetorical operations on the 154 sonnets in view of phonetic, lexical and syntactic devices is still waiting to be accomplished.Research conducted in the previous years has thrown light on the ideological contents including the theme, the characters, the rhymes, etc., in the sonnets, but few comprehensive and statistical studies on the rhetorical devices that occur in these sonnets have been carried out. This thesis, then, will make an attempt to start an overall research study on the rhetoric in respect to the phonetic, lexical and syntactic devices employed in Shakespeare's sonnets.This thesis consists of seven parts: an introduction, a conclusion and five chapters. The introduction first gives a main survey of Shakespeare's life and career and his sonnets including the origin, the rhyme-scheme, the rhetorical devices employed in his language and the influence of his sonnets on literature and the world. This part also presents the research background of the sonnets written by William Shakespeare, including the achievements made so far, the main issues involved in the research and the purpose of writing this thesis for the appreciation of the rhetorical devices in the sonnets.The general literature review investigates into the relevant studies on Shakespeare's sonnets in two aspects: One is the overseas study of Shakespeare's sonnets, introducing some fruitful achievements obtained by some scholars, researchers and critics, especially the theme of love, the principal characters, the sequence and some famous sonnets like Sonnet 18 and Sonnet 66. The other is about domestic study which deals with another kind of love and the human nature reflected in the sonnets. At the end of the literature review is a small conclusion that summarizes the literature review and points out the limitation of the previous studies.The theoretical basis is presented to provide the basic theories of the English rhetoric in three aspects: One is the phonetic devices containing rhyme, alliteration, assonance, consonance, onomatopoeia, stress, metre, etc. Another is the lexical devices involving simile, metaphor, metonymy, personification, euphemism, irony, pun, transferred epithet, oxymoron, hyperbole, etc. The other is the syntactic devices such as the rhetorical question, parallelism, couplet, polysyndeton, apostrophe, exclamation, etc. The definitions of all kinds are exhibited here to lay a theoretical foundation for the sonnets to be discussed in the following chapters.Phonetic devices including rhyme, alliteration, assonance, consonance and elision, are discussed in the third part of the thesis. Sentences taken from the sonnets are given as examples to support each definition. In dealing with rhymes, the whole poems are shown to exemplify all kinds of rhyme-schemes. In displaying alliteration, assonance and consonance, different forms are categorized in detail according to the sentence structure. At the end of this part, a table is presented to give a clear exhibition of the occurrence rate of each of the phonetic devices employed in the 154 sonnets, with a general analysis following the table.The discussion addressed on the lexical devices including simile, metaphor, metonymy, personification, euphemism, irony, pun, transferred epithet, oxymoron, hyperbole and poetical archaic words is presented in the fourth part Based on the previous definitions, sentences taken from the sonnets and even whole poems are given as examples. Some comments on the effect of the rhetorical devices follow the examples. At the end of this chapter, a table is charted to give a clear exhibition of the occurrence rate of each of the lexical devices employed in the 154 sonnets, along with a general discussion on the findings.This thesis also tries, in its fifth part, to investigate into the sonnets and find out the syntactic devices employed in Shakespeare's 154 sonnets. So far, six kinds of syntactic devices have been recognized and presented by means of showing examples taken from the 154 sonnets with immature analyses or comments following below. At the end of this part, a table is shown to give a clear exhibition of the occurrence rate of each of the syntactic devices employed in the 154 sonnets. A general analysis follows the table, with relevance to the occurrences.The last part is the conclusion. In the conclusion, the whole thesis is summarized with the main contents, especially the combination of the basic theories in the English rhetoric with Shakespeare's 154 sonnets. At the end of the conclusion, the author will express his limitations and suggestions in writing this thesis.Despite the unavoidable limitations of it, the attempted way of the present study is assumed to shed some light on the rhetorical appreciation of Shakespeare's sonnets and other literary works in theory and practice. Meanwhile, it is supposed to offer some implications for the further research of this field in the future. However, this thesis is just a superficial investigation of the appreciation of the rhetorical devices in the sonnets written by Shakespeare. It is only an attempt to be made and is open to discussion and improvement.