The Analysis of The Happy Prince Based on Corpus

zwwx@overseaen.comISSN 1009- -5039htp:/www. overseaen.comOverseas English海外英语Tel:+86 -551- 6569081165690812The Analysis of The Happy Prince Based on CorpusLI Hui .(Sanmenxia Polytechnic, Sanmenxia 472000, China)Abstract:As a new and rising discipline, Corpus Linguistics can be applied in the field of literary criticism to analyze literary text.Analyzing“The Happy Prince” witten by the famous British writer Oscar Wilde with corpus can help reveal how the plot, por-traits of people and the thetorical devices express the theme of the story.Key words: Corpus Linguistics; Oscar Wilde; theme; potraits of people; thetorical devices中图分类号:1106文献标识码:A文章编 号: 1009- 5039(2014)18 -0177-021 Introductionta are processed inSPSS 13.0.Corpus Linguisties has been a new scholarly enterprise with 3 The Theme of the Happy Princethe compilation and analysis of corpora stored in computerized da-According to data analyzing, the first four content words in thetabases over the last three decades.. It is one of the sources of evi-Happy Prince are he, swallow, said and Prince in terms of the fre-dences for improving descriptions of the structure and use of lan-quency in the corpus of the Happy Prince. The W ordlist and someguages, and for various applications, including the processing ofnatural language by machine and understanding how to learn or1) uby on the table beside the woman's thimble. Then he flewteach a language.gently round the bed, fanning the boy's foOscar Wilde was born in Dublin, one of the most famous of2) y flapping his wings. But at last he knew that he was goingIrish expatriates. He attended Magdalen College, Oxford where he to die.acquired fame for his prize- winning poem“Ravenna”(1878) and3) w," said the Prince, "do as I command you." So he pluckedbecame known as the most favored student of John Rushin. As theout the Prince's other eye, and dartedleader of the“art-for -art' s sake”school of aesthetics, he was asso-4) in. Then he flew back and told the Prince what he hadciated with his famous symbols: a peacock feather, sunflower, blueseen. "I am covered with fine gold," saichina, and long hair and velveteen breeches. His first acclaimedThrough Wordlist analyzing, we can conclude that the firstplay was Lady Windermere' s Fan in 1892. 1893 fllowed A Wom- most frequently used word is“he”and the second is“sallw" andan of No Importance. In 1895 his last two plays An Ideal Husbandprince”The relationship between the prince and the swallow isand The Importance of Being Earnest appeared. All his plays,master to servant, because the prince is merely a statue, and his de-packed with paradoxes and wilty sayings, are proof of their author sires can only be realized by the means of the swallow,' s actions.as a playwright of skill and subtle humor. Oscar Wilde died in Par-The swallow is the spokesman of the prince and the messenger andis on 30 November, 1900.executioner of the prince' s wills. So we can conclude that the swal-In recent years, with the wide application of computers tomany fields, Corpus Linguistics, a new and rising discipline, hasFrom the contextual collocation related to “swallow” andbeen developing at a high speed. The writer of this paper, based on“he", we may get a clear outline of the story: (1) At dusk the litlethe world- famous fairy tale “The Happy Prince" by Oscar Wilde,swallow wanted to spend the cold night under the statue of thewith the aid of corpus tries to reveal how the plot, portraits of peo-prince; (2) Upon the prince’s instruction the lttle swallow broughtple and the rhetorical devices can help express the theme of the sto-the ruby out of the prince ’s sword- hilt to the poor woman seam-ry.stress and her sick son; (3) The lttle swallow helped the prince to2 Methodologybring a sapphire -one of the prince' s eyes to a young needy stu-In order to find the answers to the questions raised in this pa-dent; (4) The ltte swallow helped the prince to bring another sap-per, the Wordmith and SPSS are used aprarilr The three phie anober one of lhe prince s eyes l0 a ltle poor mach-gir;tools, W ordlist, Concord and Key W ords are used, and all of the da-().The ltle swallow picked off the fine gold on the prince and中国煤化工MYHCNMHG收稿日期:2014-03-10修回日期:2014-04-20作者简介:李慧(1970-),女,河南孟津人,三门峡职业技术学院讲师,硕士研究生,研究方向为英语教育。本栏目责任编辑:王力中外文学文化研究 1772014年09月Overseas English海外英语brought them to the poor people in the city:; (6)-The poor litle swal-Like:1)gazed at the wonderful statue. "He looks just like an angel"low was frozen to death in the snow at the foo of the statue of theshabby prince; (7). The leaden heart of the statue had snapped2) down to the water's edge to drink. They have eyes likenight in two at the death of the poor litle sallw. These plots tllgreen beryls, and their roar is louder than tus readers the theme of the story- -the lofty qualties of being readyAs:to help the people in need from the prince and the lte swallow.1) han a red rose, and the sapphire shall be as blue as thegreat sea." "In the square below," said4 Portraits of People2)h gold- fsh in their beaks; of the Sphinx, who is as old as1)u always." "No, litle Swallow," said the poor Prince, "youthe world iself, and lives in the desermust go away to Egypt." "I will stLel's have a look at the uses of like and as in the story. Tode-2)up at the statue: "Dear me! how shabby the Happy Princepict the hands of the Egyptian king, Oscar xpressed this way "Tikelooks!" he said. "How shabby indeed!" erwithered leaves"; as for the eyes of the lion that came to drink by3)1, it was a mark of disrespe." But the Happy Princethe water, he described like this "Ilike green beryls' ;“the sapphirelooked so sad that the litle Swallow was sshall be as blue as the great sea."; “Ilong icicles like crystal dag-In this fairy tale, Osear Wilde tok great pains to depict thegers hung down from the eaves". On the contrary, in order to depictportraits of people. On one hand , he achieved this by way of de- the cold and chilly winter in the norther Europe, Oscar describedscribing portraits. Such as: he tried to sing high praise for the loftylike this: "long icicles like crystal daggers hung down from thequality of generosity of the prince by deseribing the shabby imageeaves", which further spolighted the chilly and miserable condi-after the prince ofering the poor people his diamonds, at the sametions of the poor people, thus making the swallow' s deteminationtime he thought highly of the spirit of slfishness of the prince byto help the prince ofer aids to the needly with the chance of flyingdescription of the poor and miserable airs of the poor before they to Egypt for shelter from the chilly winter stand out more clearly.got their help and aids from the prince, thus disclosing the exploita-Than:tion and opression from the capitalism; On the other hand OscarWilde, by means of psychological description, depicted the joy and red rose, and the sapphire shall be as bluehappiness the poor people showed after they got their blesings2)s lttle better than a beggr!" "ittle better than a beggr,"from the prince, thus making the theme of this fairy tale stand out,said the Town Councilors.that is, the spirit of selishness contribution from the prince.Hyperbole device was employed by the author to reveal the ap-In the course of image description, Wilde adopted s0 manypearances and desires of the prince and embodly the lfty quality ofcolor adjcive. We can see that the adectveses used to depict theselfishness contribution of the prince. To give readers a virvid imageprince are all derogatory terms, such as shabby, poor, sad, dull,of the prince afer he gave away his eyes and gold leaves, he wasgray, beggar and so0 on. As is clear before the eyes of readers, thedepicted like this "Iitle better than a beggar' , because for theonce gilded happy prince became no longer beautiful or happy. prince his personal appearance was that important, what was moreWhere did the eause lie? Because he has been living in his' 'cozyimportant was the warmth and safety of the mass people. In thisnet”and free from any worries and anxieties and no one can have away the desire of the prince was clearly dancing before readers,better life than he ever did. However, after his death, his statue was that is, he put people's interests above all and he considered peo-erected high above the city, thus providing him with the chance tople' s agonies the severest agony.witness the untold dificultiese and trouble amongst the poor massLeaf:people, so much so that he felt the least happy. Then he made up1)new god," said the Prince, "you must take it of, leatf byhis mind to do the ltle he could to ofer his help to the most need-leaf, and give it to my poor;, the livingaed ones. He asked the ltle swallw to pick off his diamonds, his2)ill the Happy Prince loked quite dull and grey. Lceaf aftereyes and even his gold leaves to bring them to those cold and hun-leaf of the fne gold he brought to thegry people, leaving himself loking every inch a poor beggar. UntilOscar sceeded employing palelismn device to emphasizeall that was done, the prince onceagain felt he was really happy,the fact that the prince gave中his fine gold leaf after leaf with thebecause the joy from the poor is the true joy of the prince, thus theaim of helping the poor while he himself ended up nothing but alofty quality of caring for the people of the prince is vividly put onshabby statue. The use of prallelismn, on one hand, emphasize thethe paper before readers, which in turn deepens the theme of thesheer truth that the prince' s ugly appearance at last was resultedstory- -Only the prince who has devoted all his self to his people isfrom his lofty personal qualiy; on the other hand, this strengtheneda rally happy prince.the writing tonharmonized the rhythm and spotlighted the special5 Rhetorical Deviceswriting style of th中国煤化工Swallow:To help make the theme of the story more stand out, Oscarl)e quite bliTYHC N M H Gitle Swallow," saidWilde pplied various rhetorical devices, such as smile, hyperbole,the Prince, "do as I command you."repetition, prallelismn, antithesis etc. Vivid images molded by him(下转第182页)left a deep and lingering impression on readers.本栏目责任编辑:王力178 /中勁舞学化研究1Overseas English海外英语2014年09月婚后的斯嘉丽并没有像弗兰克所想的那样,把心思花在家时机发财致富,对事得心应手,对人逢场作戏,如鱼得水，自由庭和家人身上。斯嘉丽涉足商界,和男人一样做生意。她曾亲自 在。同时他又不择手段、不恪守规则,他离经叛道嘲笑权身经历了那种吃不饱、穿不暖的苦难日子,她要做人上人,仅凭威,不受道德准则束缚。他把南方人的虚伪看的很透彻,并利弗兰克的那种生意观念,他们仅能填饱肚子而已,而过不上人用他们发财。但他内心深处也热爱宁静,向往真正的道德,在上人的日子。她再也不想回到那种刻骨铭心的贫苦日子,她要- -个动乱落后的时代,他顺应潮流,成为社会的强者。斯嘉丽赚钱,很多很多的钱,至于多少数目,她自己也不知道。为了有是一位具有现代女性意识的新女性,敢爱敢恨，勇于冲破礼教一种安全感,斯嘉丽采取一-切可以带来丰厚利润的手段来经营的束缚,大胆向男权世界挑战的坚强女性,实际上是对19世纪她的锯木厂。没有人和她同行,她独自一人赶车去锯木厂;为美国社会中传统女性的叛逆,更是对男权社会道德模式的和一了获取更多的利润,她非法雇佣犯人;为了更多的利润，她把钱种挑战。同时向我们展现了斯嘉丽独立的人格、自由的精神、作抵押贷款。斯嘉丽明白:婚姻只能让她暂时过上安稳的日坚强的性格和现实的人生态度身处逆境而不甘沉沦的精神、子,一切还得靠自己。顽强的生活能力对爱情的执着追求和为爱情做出牺牲的善良3战后的第三次婚姻:爱与归属的需要斯嘉丽在社会大动荡时期的一系列行为超越了社会对女马斯洛认为“归属与爱的需要,是指个人渴望得到家庭、性的定位,表现了自我意识的张扬,同时，也体现了她对个体生团体朋友、同事的关怀爱护理解,是对友情、信任、温暖、愛情命价值的尊重和珍惜,体现了经济社会中人的价值和美国独立的需要。这种需要是难以察悟,无法度量的。”战争所带来的创伤已经慢慢的愈合,斯嘉丽不必在为了生自由精神的真正内涵,展现了耀眼的女性风采,展现了女性的计而奔波,她需要一个爱的归宿,此时的瑞德满足了她对爱和勇气和魄力。尽管经历了三次失败的婚姻,但她始终坚信:归属的需要,尽管在她内心深处,她依然念念不忘艾希礼,但这“After all, tomorrow is another day!”丝毫不影响她和瑞德结婚。斯嘉丽在嫁给瑞德之前就已经爱参考文献:上了他。斯嘉丽对瑞德的依赖,也许她自己并没有认识到这种[1] Margaret Mitchell.Gone With the W ind[M].World Book Pub-感情的存在,但它的确存在。在塔拉遇到危机时,斯嘉丽第一lishing.2001.个想到的是瑞德;在媚兰生产是,她脑海中只有瑞德。这些都[2]玛格丽特.米切尔飘(全译本)M].上海:上海译文出版社,以一种潜意识存在于斯嘉丽的心底。甚至在最后瑞德离他而1991.去时,她告诉自已: "Tara! Home! I'll go home, and I'll thinkof [3] 亚伯拉罕●马斯洛著许金声等译动机与人格(第三版)M]北some way to get him back! After all, tomorrow is another day!"之前京:中国人民大学出版社,2007:19-29.经历的两次婚姻,甚至包括她曾经对艾希礼的爱都没有如此强[4]钱世凤.马斯洛需要层次理论与《红楼梦》人物解读[J].沈阳师烈，所以和瑞德的婚姻显示了斯嘉丽对家庭生活的需要和渴范大学学报:社会科学版.2010(1).望。斯嘉丽和瑞德有惊人的相似之处:瑞德是一位英俊潇洒、[5]董卫平生活中的强者,乱世中的英雄一- <飘》 女主人公郝思放荡不羁的南方贵族。他目标明确、眼光独特、精明干练、抓住嘉性格分析[J].长治学院学报,2011(6).(上接第178页)the story, yet a scientifie and thorough analysis based on the disci-2) eye. You would be quite blind then." "Swallow, Swallow, lit- pline of Corpus Linguistics is bound to lead you to a deeper andtle Swallow," said the Prince, "do asmore thorough understanding of the charm and excellence of thisBesides, repetition device was employed by the author. By the world-famous author and his fairy tales.repeated calling of swallow, the author succeeded expressing theReferences:strong desire of the prince to long for the litle swallow to save themass poor, which deepened the impressions of the readers, thus[1] Graeme Kennedy. An Introduction to Corpus Linguistics[M].Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press,2000.arousing public interest.At last the writer employed antithesis device to give readers a[2] Yang Horizon.An Introduction to Corpus Linguistics[M].Shang-hai:Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press,2002.sharp contrast between the chilly winter and the warm heart of thelttle swallow, thus depicting the common excellent qualities of[3] Raby Peter.The Cambridge Companion To Oscar W ilde[M].Shanghai:Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press,2001.both the prince and the litle swallow and making the theme of thefairy tale more clear and fixed- to share the woes of the poor and[4] Y ang Jianmei.Concordance of The Cop and Anthem[J].Journalof Sichuan Foreign Studies University 2002(3);:56- -59.help them heart and soul.[5] Sinclair,John.Corpus Concordance Collocation[ M].Shanghai:6 ConclusionShanghai Ford| 中国煤化工1999Based on the above paper, we may draw a conclusion: the ap- [6] Li Wenzhong:TYHCNMHG'of Corpus in For-plication of CorpusI inguistics to) the analysis (lteraryteign LanguagForeign Studiesveal the expressing means and theme of a work. As a reader youUniversity ,2001(2):20- -25.might have read The Happy Prince , you might have a good idea of本栏目责任编辑:王力