STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF LORD BYRON’S POEM: “SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY”

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the hidden meaning of the poem. Every piece of literature has two meanings i.e. surface meaning and hidden meaning. The aim of this research is to find out the hidden meaning of the poem. Through the meaning, the poem can be discussed in a much better way. For this reason, the researcher focusses on the stylistic analysis of the poem. The reason of this study is to discover the hidden meaning that are used in the poem. This research also aimed at identifying the language features used in the poem. The researcher applied qualitative method and the source of data is secondary. The data of this research is taken from various books, journals and online websites. The poem was analysed at 4 different levels: phonological level, graphological level, grammatical level and semantic level. At phonological level, the researcher finds out the segmental and suprasegmental sound features like assonance, consonance, alliteration, rhyme scheme and tone of the poem that highlight important words. At graphological level, the researcher finds out the contractions and punctuation marks that are used to separate phrases and lines in the poem. At grammatical level, tenses, sentence types and parts of speech are identified. At semantic level, various literal and rhetorical devices are identified that carry poem’s meaning. These four language features are linked to each other to deliver the meaning of the poem. From these four language features, semantic features contribute the most in constructing the meaning.