The Art of Styling Sentences is a grammar book giving the basic designs of 20 sentences. I don't suggest you read it from beginning to end, but rather use it as a reference to identify sentence types. There is some overlap between this book and Lanham's Analyzing Prose, but Lanham identifies various styles (e.g. running and periodic; hypotactic and paratactic) while this book describes the grammatical structure of particular sentences. To start, leaf through the book and review the 20 sentence types, in boxes on the right hand pages. Pick a passage from the first pages of Lolita and do a close reading using sentence types and stylistic distinctions. How does Nabokov use style and sentence craft to create a certain effect, emphasize certain information, create a mood, maintain a voice? Feel free, in your close reading, to comment on diction, juxtaposition of words, repetition of sounds. Alternate assignment: rewrite the passage you've picked as a single, cumulative sentence with more than two levels. That is, translate Nabokov into Faulkner.
No comments:
Post a Comment