The belle-letters style

According to Galperin, this is a generic term for 3 substyles: ●the lng of poetry; ●emotive prose (the lng of fiction); ●the lng of the drama. The common features of the substyles are the following:

1. The aesthetico-cognitive function (aims at the cognitive process, which secures the gradual unfolding of the idea to the reader and at the same time calls forth a feeling of pleasure and satisfaction which a reader experiences because he is able to penetrate into the author's idea and to form his own conclusions).

2. Definite linguistic features:

· Genuine, not trite, imagery, achieved by purely linguistic devices.

· The use of words in different meanings, greatly influenced by the lexical environment.

· A vocabulary which will reflect to a certain degree the author's personal evaluation of things or phenomena.

· A peculiar individual selection of vocabulary and syntax.

· The introduction of the typical features of colloquial lng to a full degree (drama), to a lesser degree (in prose), to a slight degree (poetry).

1. The lng of poetry is characterized by its orderly form, which is based mainly on the rhythmic and phonetic arrangement of the utterances. The rhythmic aspect calls forth syntactic and semantic peculiarities. There are certain restrictions which result in brevity of expression, epigram-like utterances and fresh, unexpected imagery. Syntactically this brevity is shown in elliptical sentences, in detached constructions, in inversion.

2. Emotive prose shares the same common features, but these features are correlated differently than in poetry. The imagery is not so rich as in poetry; the percentage of words with contextual meaning is not so high. Emotive prose features the combination of the literary variant of the lng, both in words and in syntax, with the colloquial variant. But the colloquial lng in the belles-lettres style is not a simple reproduction of the natural speech, it has undergone changes introduced by the writer and has been made "literature-like". In emotive prose there are always two forms of communication present - monologue (the writer's speech) and dialogue (the speech of the characters). Emotive prose allows the use of elements from other styles as well. But all these styles undergo a kind of transformation under the influence of emotive prose. Passages written in other styles may be viewed only as interpolations and not as constituents of the style.

3. Lng of the drama is entirely dialogue. The author's speech is almost entirely excluded except for the playwright's remarks and stage directions. But the lng of the characters is not the exact reproduction of the norms of colloquial lng. Any variety of the belles-lettres style will use the norms of the literary lng of the given period. The lng of plays is always stylized, it strives to retain the modus of literary English.

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