Style
Although most of the work is a paraphrase of the biblical Book of Jonah, the poet has expanded upon the text in many places. The chief characteristics of his expansions are a colloquial tone, esp. in Jonah’s prayers and his conversations with God, and the concrete descriptions which are used throughout. The homilist is creative, which Jonah's monologues and descriptions of the storm and belly of the whale unveil the poet's improvisation and colorful retelling of story, such as the manner how Jonah floats into the whale's mouth "like a mote going through the church door" (268 ). This is meant as the antithesis of its example. Jonah is the impatient, which makes for a perfect "what not to do" example to include the poet's story. Furthermore, the author changes perspective "with an eye toward the psychological motives of God, as well as Jonah" (Szarmach,568). This humanizes God, which would not have been a known theological concept in the 14th century, distinguishing this poem from the others.
Read more about this topic: Patience (poem)
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“As the style of Faulkner grew out of his rage—out of the impotence of his rage—the style of Hemingway grew out of the depth and nuance of his disenchantment.”
—Wright Morris (b. 1910)
“One man’s style must not be the rule of another’s.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)
“The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenice—although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)