Style: The Dress of Thought? Do you agree?

 

Style means manners of writing and speaking. But critics define style in different ways as style is the psychology of soul, style is man himself, style is the forceful expression of the writer’s personality, style is the expression of different kind of man’s moods and style is the dress of thought.

But the term style in literature is applied for the manner of linguistic expression in prose and or verse. It is how a speaker or writer says whatever he says. But according to traditional theories of rhetoric style is classified into three main levels: low, middle and grand style.

So grand style is the forceful expression of the writer’s personality, so we read Milton’s Paradise Lost and find its style is grand style. Grand style means judgment of diction, diction means choice of words. Further diction is judged through its syntax, sentence structure, figurative language, the pattern of rhythm and its components, sound, rhetorical aims and devices. As the text shows:

“What thou the field be lost

All is not lost, the unconquerable will

And study of revenge, immortal hate,

And courage never to submit or yield

And what is not else to be overcome”

Looking carefully at the above lines we may say that its style is simple but forceful and effective for the ears.  Its syntax is simple but full of musical sounds and all the lines fascinate the readers’ ears including the critics’ minds. See these lines:

“The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a Heaven of Hell, A Hell of Heaven

To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell

Better to reign in Hell, Than serve in Heaven”

In the given lines diction is forceful, fantastic and fine and is effective for each ear. Here Virgil says that poetry is as charming to our eyes as sleep to the weary. So Milton is considered the best classic due to his grand style In Milton’s verses we find every device that belongs to the classics. Another quality of Milton’s style is that he uses blank verses in the Paradise Lost but with so many cautions.

Actually the structure of Paradise Lost is of an epic poem. Therefore according to Horace and Aristotle blank verse are allowed to use in an epic poem but frivolity is never allowed. The laws of music in using blank verse are difficult but Milton uses them carefully. He adjusts the sound to the sense and the opening lines of the gates of Heaven catch the dullest ears:

“Heaven opens wide

Her ever-moving gates, her harmonious sounds

On which golden king moving”

Milton’s earlier critic Henry Walton says that he has never seen such a forceful style as of Milton before Milton. It is a peculiar characteristic of Milton’s style that he uses such words, which have double meanings. For this purpose, he uses Latin phrases that suggest one meaning for common man and other meaning for the critics and scholars. Another quality of Milton’s style is that the readers enjoy its syntax, diction, metaphors, sounds, full of music and harmony of thoughts, feelings and emotions,

“ Of man’s first disobedience and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world, and our woe

With the loss of Eden”

A deep study of Paradise Lost reveals that Milton emphasizes on the sounds, not on the verse, on the sounds, not the ideas. Therefore there is great force and vividness of expression and freshness of feelings In Milton than Tasso.

On the hand, English is less capable than Italian in imitating certain details of Latin syntax but Milton uses the Latin phrases carefully in an expressive way. A freely mixing of rising and falling stress is shifting the weight from place to place. For this he chooses musical words. He also uses abstract terms magnificently, but with concrete reality. See below:

“Bowing low,

His gray dissimulation, disappeared

In this air diffuse”

Critics say that he does not use decorative words, but effective words to create sublimity even the slightest stress and pause after each other word demands the readers’ attention.

He also uses technical terms as marshal terms, architectural and scientific terms, and biological terms… in Paradise Lost to make it effective. When blank verses were decaying

, Milton took it up and used in an expressive in Paradise Lost. Milton learnt the use of blank verse from the dramatist. Therefore Paradise Lost is full of dramatic elements. As the opening lines of the book:

“Involve thy aid to my adventurous song

Things unattempted yet in prose and rhyme

I may assert Eternal Providence

And justify the ways of God to men”

To sum up, Milton’s style is grand and its structure is sublime and its characters are universal and have a universal message how we can regain the Paradise lost by our parents disobeying God’s decree.  It is the point that Milton wants to convey to the readers in bolds words and we have to think about it seriously.