Types and Functions of Repetition in the Works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft

Abstract

Introduction. Issues of the author’s writing style, means and methods of constructing an individual author’s artistic picture of the world have always been in the focus of attention of researchers. The object of this paper is H. P. Lovecraft’s stories, which are part of horror literature. The subject of the paper is repetition, which plays a special role in a literary text as a means of artistic expression. Conducting research is relevant for several reasons, like interest in the consideration of the functional aspects of the literary text as a whole, or to H. P. Lovecraft’s works in particular, as the horror genre of literature is one of the most popular in modern society. The purpose of this study is to identify the most productive types of repetitions and their pragmatic functions in the H. P. Lovecraft’s stories.Methodology and sources. General methods of this research are functional analysis of repetitions, supplemented by the quantitative method. Repetitions used in the stories are separated and analyzed based on their following functions: pragmatic focus, emotivity and rhythmization. The material of the study was the following works of the author: “Dagon”, “Beyond the Wall of Sleep’”, “The Music of Erich Zann”, “The Other Gods”, “The Hound”, “The Rats in the Walls”, “The Call of Cthulhu”, “The Descendant”, “The Dunwich Horror”.Results and discussion. Repetition is a significant element of H.P. Lovecraft’s writing style. In the analyzed works, repetitions are presented in various types: simple verbatim repetitions (contact and remote), anadiplosis, epanalepsis, synonymous, syntactic (lexical and syntactic parallelism). Lexico-semantic analysis of repetitions showed that the most frequent units in H.P. Lovecraft’s stories are such lexemes as “old” (125), “night” (95), “great” (85), “strange” (62), “gods” (48), “horror” (48). Their use can be attributed to the author’s desire to create a sense of "cosmic fear", to highlight the themes of ancient and hidden evil with “divine” forces. Functional analysis has shown that repetitions are most often used to highlight the most important elements of the text (pragmatic focus), convey the emotional states of the characters, create an appropriate emotional atmosphere (horror, fear), as well as rhythmic organization and stylistic imitation of religious discourse.Conclusion. Repetition as a stylistic figure is an important technique of pragmatic focusing and a significant element of the H.P. Lovecraft’s writing style, emerging in various structural variations and performing many functions.