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:
“On the first days, like a piece of music that one will later be mad about, but that one does not yet distinguish, that which I was to love so much in [Bergotte’s] style was not yet clear to me. I could not put down the novel that I was reading, but I thought that I was only interested in the subject, as in the first moments of love when one goes every day to see a woman at some gathering, or some pastime, by the amusements to which one believes to be attracted.”
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“The difference between style and taste is never easy to define, but style tends to be centered on the social, and taste upon the individual. Style then works along axes of similarity to identify group membership, to relate to the social order; taste works within style to differentiate and construct the individual. Style speaks about social factors such as class, age, and other more flexible, less definable social formations; taste talks of the individual inflection of the social.”
—John Fiske (b. 1939)
“The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time. It pays off slowly, your agent will sneer at it, your publisher will misunderstand it, and it will take people you have never heard of to convince them by slow degrees that the writer who puts his individual mark on the way he writes will always pay off.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)