This work defines the dramatic rationale of the Hamlet soliloquies in their dramatic contexts, thereby clarifying the tragic idea that organizes the play.

The Soliloquies in Hamlet: The Structural Design

Shakespeare's writing practice : literary' Shakespeare and the work of form

A popular interest in Shakespeare has been matched in recent years by an increasing number of computer-assisted analyses of the plays. Although not without their critics, corpus stylistic studies have offered scope and reliability in the study of literary texts, particularly through key word analyses. In this paper, I show how Wmatrix, a web-based corpus processing environment (Rayson, 2003, 2007), in conjunction with other corpus tools, can systematically extend such key analyses from words, to parts of speech and semantic fields. By so doing, a greater understanding of linguistic aspects of an author’s literary output may be achieved. This study is based on a key word, grammatical category and semantic field analysis of soliloquies and asides in 12 Shakespeare plays. An investigation of the linguistic characteristics of soliloquies/asides as opposed to dialogic speech reveals the overuse of the interjection O and words related to the body. Comparisons of soliloquies across genres tend to match intuitive assumptions. Finally, soliloquies written in the later period (1596-1606) tend to have a far greater proportion of ‘the (noun) of (noun phrase)’ structures. The paper ends by suggesting that more empirical work of this nature is needed to underpin qualitative literary judgements.

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Now I am alone:a corpus stylistic approach to Shakespearian soliloquies

Silence is a complex phenomenon and embodies diverse concepts. It is not speaking, so it seems the very opposite of language. However, a closer examination of words and speech reveals that silence can also convey various meanings and perform a range of functions. The rhetoric of silence, either lacking or having form, has meaning and function and serves the communication. Its functions and meanings vary according to the context, culture, setting, topic and interlocutors in communication. This study is concerned with the effects and implications of silence in Persian and English languages. It is also aimed to investigate the pragmatic aspect of silence in the literary works of the two languages regardless of their history. In so doing, some cases of silence were derived from the literary works of Zoya Pirzad (1952), a contemporary Persian novelist, and Shakespeare (1564-1616), the English playwright respectively as samples of Persian and English literature. Jacobson’s model of communication (1960) was used as the theoretical framework to identify the functions of cases of silence. The results showed two criteria, one is the cultural and the other is the contextual dependency of silence realization and interpretation which strongly support the pragmatic concept of silence in Persian and English languages. The culture and context specific nature of silence in the given languages is closely linked to such attitude towards the aspects of rhetoric of silence within

A Discourse Study of Rhetorical Silence in Persian and English Literature

In many soliloquies in Shakespeare's plays a character gives voice to two or more distinct emotions In some of these cases the emotions are merely different, while in other cases they are diametrically opposed In extreme cases the character gives voice to an emotional conflict that is tearing the character's mind apart In still other cases, the speaker gives voice to only one emotion, but another, unexpressed emotion of nearly equal, equal, or greater strength is nevertheless implied Many soliloquies depict characters engaged in the process of self-deception Characters frequently attempt to talk themselves into an emotion or convince themselves they are feeling an emotion when the context implies that they do not genuinely feel the emotion In all of these cases the character is of two minds and is engaged in a dialogue with him- or herself

The Soliloquies in Hamlet: The Structural Design

Citations

Shakespeare's writing practice : literary' Shakespeare and the work of form

Now I am alone:a corpus stylistic approach to Shakespearian soliloquies

A Discourse Study of Rhetorical Silence in Persian and English Literature

Dialogic Self-address in Shakespeare's Plays

Gertrude and Claudius : reverse-engineering Shakespeare

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