Milton's Word Mosaic Expressive Synthetic Syntax in 'Paradise Lost'.

摘要

This study seeks to revalue Milton's inversions of word order in Paradise Lost. Its focus is on syntax purely as word order; intraclausal, rather than interclausal, syntactical relationships; and contextual, rather than statistical, analysis. Its critical approach evaluates the poem's syntactical variations as they function in situ, not measured within or against an English "norm"; examines variations along a sentence's syntagmatic (horizontal word orders), rather than along its paradigmatic axis (vertical word substitutions); and derives its findings through contrasts between syntagmatic variations, rather than from a priori interpretations. Central to the study is an attempt to shift our metaphorical conceptions of Paradise Lost's inverted sentences away from a strictly analytical "line" of thought, or "stream" of speech, which devalues syntactical variations, towards a synthetic "word mosaic," which tolerates variations as modes for expressive content.;The study ends with speculations on the aural and visual dynamics of Milton's synthetic syntax, guidelines for a pragmatic guide to Paradise Lost for analytically trained readers, and a call for a conceptual syntagmatics to complement the current field of conceptual semantics.;The body of the study examines the poem's syntactical variations, first, from the perspective of linguistic Topicalisation; next, against the historical context of eighteenth-century analytical grammar, Latin synthetic pictorial syntax and Golden Lines, and Milton's own early translation of Horace's "Pyrrha Ode"; then, as a potential strategy for divine speech acts and accommodation; and finally, as a way to convey spatial, social, and psychological relationships within the poem.