stylistic analysis Stylistic analysis of When You Are Old当你年老时文体学分析.doc

stylistic analysis Stylistic analysis of When You Are Old当你年老时文体学分析 When You Are Old (1893) William Butler Yeats When you are old and gray and full of sleep And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true; But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face. And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead, And hid his face amid a crowd of stars. 当你老了，白发苍苍，睡意沉沉， 倦坐在炉边，取下这本书来， 慢慢读着，追梦当年的眼神 那柔美的神采与深幽的晕影。 多少人爱过你青春的片影， 爱过你的美貌，出于虚伪或真情， 唯独一人爱你那朝圣者的灵魂， 爱你哀戚的脸上岁月的留痕。 1 在炉栅边，你弯下了腰， 低语着，带着浅浅的伤感， 爱情是怎样逝去，又怎样步上群山， 将面庞藏在了繁星之间。 Stylistic Analysis I. The first level 1. Phonological features A. Sound repetition Slowly, soft (line 3) glad, grace (line 5) Down, glowing, how, mountains ? rhyming scheme: a-b-b-a C. Tempo: slow 2. Graphological features Capitalization of “Love” Function: Through the use of the capital “L” in “love” Yeats has once again injected himself in the poem without the use of the word “I”. II. The second level 1. Grammatical features The use of enjambment 2. Lexical features A. Lexical reiteration Repetition of “And” in Stanza 1 for six times Function: ?slow down the tempo, as the speaker imagines his love is an old woman. ? gliding Repetition of “loved” in Stanza 2 for five times. Function: The five “loved” brighten the tone of the second stanza, and reveals the speaker’s relationship with the subject. B. General wording inclination In the whole poem, the poem always uses words with soft sound, to create a picture of an old person, such as words begin with 搒? and words containing vowels, which are always soft. III. The third level Semantic features 2 1. Cohesive devices: the use of 揂nd?in Stanza 1 for six times (polysyndeton) 2. Rhetori