Assessment Of The Prose Style In The Essay 'I Came. I Saw. I Spun.' By Jason Karpf

What is Style in Literature?

Question:

Discuss about the Stylistics in Krapf for Expressive and Referential.

In the field of literature, style refers to that element of literature which describes the processes in which the author utilizes and plays with his words. It deals with the structure and arrangement of sentences, the figurative use of language. In the essay that follows, an attempt is made to conduct an assessment of the style of the prose piece “I Came. I Saw. I Spun” by Jason Karpf. The essay looks into the style and diction used in the document in discussion.

The style of a document helps sharpen both the expressive and the referential meanings of the writing. The elements analyzed during attempting a stylistic analysis of a provided document are the compositional organization of the document on the whole, developments of paragraphs, structure and rhythm of the sentences, punctuation and diction used by the writer (Wales; Litosseliti).

All the elements dealt with in the study of style work in combination to establish the concepts of meaning, mood and imagery of a given text. The main function of the style of a text is to help in characterizing the speaker. The writer of the concerned text is termed good or bad on the basis of his usage of associations or connotations to distinguish the concerned character from the other characters in the piece of literature (Toolan). The style of the document concerned with the tone of the text. It conveys the judgement made by the author on the character. The frequent usage of the linguistic choices helps them to be wide ranged thereby aiding the writer to express unique feelings and thoughts in a more precise manner.

In the given document, “I Came. I Saw. I Spun” by Jason Krapf, is found the use of the literal style of writing (Karpf, 18-19). In this document, is discussed the history of the well-known Roman dictator, Julius Caesar. The document is written using a lucid language to describe the ascent of the political and military career of Julius Caesar. The article focusses on the ways and methods use by the Roman emperor to gain the highest post in the Roman government, the post of the dictator of Rome. The emperor claimed popularity among the Roman citizens and used this very influence to climb northwards on the ladder of his political career. The document discusses the fact that the path followed by Caesar to attain the position of the supreme position of the Roman Empire.

The Study of Style in Literature

According to the famous novelist Mark Twain, the writer should choose his words very carefully so as to present the reader with the correct expression for his feelings. Words may be interpreted in a number of ways and thus can be said to control the tone of the writing. The words and their synonyms may be used in a variety of contexts and may hold different meanings in different contexts (Singh; Konurbaev 67-75). The effect of a single word may be positive, neutral or negative based on the context in which the word is used. The given passage uses the dogmatic style of writing and contains words that bring out the positive tone of the writing. The mood of writing in the given document to be discussed is serious. The document deals with a part of the history of the Roman Empire when the Empire was under the dictatorship of Julius Caesar. The matters dealt in this assignment are factual and historical.

The paragraphs in the document in discussion is sequentially arranged. The passage in discussion has well-defined and chronologically arranged paragraphs. The writer had maintained the chronology of events while narrating the life events of the Roman dictator. The sentences of the passage are characterized by the log sentences. The writer uses parallelism to maintain the rhythmicity of the sentences. The passage describes the policies that the dictator had adopted in order to gain the acceptance of the masses of Roman citizens. The author draws a parallel between the ways used by Caesar to gain the throne of Rome and those used by the military heroes to claim the post of the president of America for Dwight Eisenhower from Andrew Jackson. The words used in the composition are generally polysyllabic and thereby ensures the retention of the formal tone all throughout the passage. The style of the author may also depend on the use of punctuations. In the passage in discussion, the punctuations used emphasize on the historical and political aspects of the concerned topic of discussion in the passage.

Therefore, in conclusion to the above, it may be said that style is the resultant of the linguistic choices made by the writer. The analysis of the use of a language of a writer for a clear and sorted effect and purpose may be defined as the study of the diction of a language. This study of the use of language is inclusive of the word choice and the figures of speech.

References

Karpf, Jason. "I came. I saw. I spun." Military History 24.10 (2008): 18-19.

Konurbaev, Marklen E. "Neutrality in Language vs Neutrality in Speech." The Style and Timbre of English Speech and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2016. 67-75.

Litosseliti, Lia. Research methods in linguistics. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017.

Singh, Raj K?shor. "Humour, irony and satire in literature." Internat?onal Journal of English and Literature (IJEL) 3.4 (2012): 65-72.

Toolan, Michael, ed. Language, text and context: essays in stylistics. Routledge, 2016.

Wales, Katie. A dictionary of stylistics. Routledge, 2014.