- extracts (paraphrased and re-arranged) from a paper on paralellism - paper: - title: The Art of Balance - subtitle: A Corpus-assisted Stylistic Analysis of Woolfian PARALLELISM in "To the Lighthouse" - by: Mingzhu Z - date: 2012 - source: [PDF](https://web.archive.org/web/20130619030324/http://revistas.um.es/ijes/article/download/161741/141171) Virginia Woolf's "to the lighthouse" has 796 balance structures (instances of parallelism) # Define Parallelism Parallelism refers to the pairings or groupings of elements which form an equivalence relation either structurally or semantically. The equivalences can be established along different dimensions of language: phonological, lexical, syntactic, and semantic levels, etc. This study only focuses on lexical, syntactic and semantic parallelism. Lexical parallelism in the present study refers to different schemes of lexical repetition, or the repetition of lexical items. The most attractive thing about parallelism is getting variation out of regularity. # 9 types of lexical repetition ## Initial-final (epanalepsis) - Choose, dearests, choose, ## Initial and final (symploce) - **He** braced **himself**. - **He** clenched **himself**. ## Initial (anaphora) - {It is} putting cabbages in water. - {It is} roasting meat till it is like leather. - {It is} cutting off the delicious skins of vegetables. ## Middle (Medial) - ...in {her little} grey dress, with {her little} puckered face, and {her little} Chinese eyes. ## Final (epistrophe) - And his habit of talking {aloud}, or saying poetry {aloud}, was growing on him... ## Final-initial (anadiplosis) - In sympathy {she looked at Rose}. {She looked at Rose} sitting... ## Crossing pattern (chiasmus) - She would never know him. - He would never know her. ## Total immediate repetition (epizeuxis) - He walked up the drive, Lights, light, lights... ## Total extended repetition (tautotes) - whose bursting would flood her with **delight**, - she had known **happiness**, - exquisite **happiness**, - intense **happiness** ... - in her eyes and waves of pure **delight** raced - over the floor of her mind and she felt, - It is enough! It is enough! # Syntactic parallelism Syntactic parallelism pairs and groups of elements have: structural equivalence at the same level of grammatical hierarchy ## grammatical levels involve sentence level, main-clause level, sub-clause level, and words and phrases level (as indicated in the following examples). ## Sentence parallelism - ...that was what she was thinking, - this was what she was doing... ## Main-clause parallelism - ..she would never for a single second - regret her decision, - evade difficulties, - or slur over duties. ## Sub-clause parallelism - As summer neared, - as the evenings lengthened, - there came to... ## Phrase parallelism - Once in the middle of the night - with a roar, - with a rupture, - as after a centuries... ## Word parallelism - ...able only to go on - watching, - asking, - wondering. # Semantic parallelism Woolf uses Semantic parallelism to define the texture Semantic parallelism makes parings or groupings of elements seem parallel in meaning. # similarity of meaning - **Synonymy** repeats with synonyms: She was outraged, indignant. - examples from Virginia woolf: - Crystallize and transfix, candid and pure, fading and falling, suddenly and unexpectedly obscured and concealed, checked and chilled, dried and shrunk. Dried and shrunk, wild and fierce, bitter and black, swoop and fall, outraged and anguished, quizzically and whimsically, shattered and shivered, plotting and persevering. Exaltation and sublimity, burning and illuminating, fountain and spray, barren and bare, lavished and spent, steel and adamant, foraging and picnicking, shrink and diminish, distilled and filtered, cooler and quieter, praised and valued, fitted and fight, # opposition of meaning - **Antithesis** parallels antonyms (puts contrasting ideas in a balanced structure): that vastness and this tininess - examples from Virginia woolf: - **Adverb**:up and down,in and out,here and there,now and then - **NOUN**: this and that, one thing and another, rich and poor, joys and sorrows, yes and no, high and low, humps and hollows, wages and spendings, employment and unemployment, a croak and a song, Kings and Queens, subject and object, men and women, reds and blues, boys and girls, brothers and sisters, father and mother, the strangest and the most exhilarating, severity and humor - **ADJECTIVE**: open and shut (2), red and ermine, venerable and laughable, pitiable and distasteful - **VERB**: shut and spread # Paralleled adverbial modifiers Woolf structures much with parallel adverbial modifiers to modify / define the verb, to provide information about time, place, manner, condition, purpose, reason and the result of the mental verbs, They are the most economical way to extend a simple sentence without transforming itself into a complex one. They result in right-branching sentences which mirror the streams of inner thinking. ## Parallel ING Participles - An '-ing' participle bears characteristics of adjective and verb - 'ing' often present continuous tense, denotes simultaneity and emphasizes “being this moment”.- - Woolf mostly aligns –ing participles in pairs or triples. - Woolf often parallels physical actions and mental behaviors - looking(physical) and thinking(mental) - knitting(physical) and wondering(mental) ### examples - How long, she asked, **creaking** and groaning on her knees and under the bed, **dusting** the board, how long shall it endure? - surround her where she sat **knitting**, **talking**, **sitting** silent in the window alone… - How childlike, how absurd she was, **sitting** up there with all her beauty opened again in her, **talking** about the skins of vegetables. - They would say nothing, only look at him now and then and then where he sat with his legs twisted, **frowning and fidgeting**, and **pishing and pshawing and muttering** things to himself, and **waiting** impatiently for a breeze. - **Looking** along his beam she added to it her different ray, thinking **that** she was unquestionably the loveliest of people. - And she waited a little, **knitting**, **wondering**, and slowly those words… - Almost one might imagine them, as they entered the drawing-room **questioning** and **wondering**, toying **with** the flap of hanging wall-paper, **asking**, would it hang much longer, when would it fall? - Was she wrong in this, she asked herself, **reviewing** her conduct for the past week or two, and **wondering** if she had indeed put any pressure upon Minta… ## Parallel prepositional phrases Preposition indicate the relationship between objects mentioned in a sentence. - Her eyes had been going **in and out** - **among** the curves and shadows of the fruit, - **among** the rich purples of the lowland grapes, - then **over** the horny ridge of the shell, - putting a yellow **against** a purple, - a curved shape **against** a round shape, - **without** knowing why - She looked blankly at the canvas, **with** its uncompromising white stare; **from** the canvas to the garden. - The boat was leaning, the water was sliced sharply and fell away **in** green cascades, **in** bubbles, **in** cataracts. Cam looked down **into** the foam, **into** the sea with **all** its treasure in it… # Appositional structures Apposition is the juxtaposition of two or more units, normally without a conjunction Woolf used appositional structures to define the noun and to specify a relationship where the second appositive is adding details to its antecedent - 5 semantic types of apposition - synonymous - specifying - generalizing - replacing appositions - “a mix of coordination and apposition”. The antecedents lead the reader in a ‘forward’ motion to the upcoming details especially these: pronoun antecedent types: personal (it, he, they), with unspecified and indeterminate meaning (something), noun antecedent types: with more general senses (qualities), with indefinite articles (a sight) information is given from indeterminacy to determinacy, from general to specific, the development gives a sense of a process of thinking. ## examples - **It** annoyed her, **this phrase-making**, and she said to him... - **It** came over her too now—the **emotion**, the **vibration of love**. - **He** seemed to be rather cocksure, **this young man...** - **They** were exactly fighting. **Joseph and Mary were fighting.** - **It** was something quite apart from everything else, something they were hoarding up to laugh over in their own room. - There was in Lily a **thread of something**; a flare of something; something of her own which Mrs Ramsay liked very much, but of which she would not, she feared. - He wanted **something**—**wanted the thing he always found it difficult to give him**; he wanted her to tell him that she loved him. - **Qualities** that would have saved a ship’s company exposed on a broiling sea with six biscuits and a flask of water—**endurance and justice, foresight, devotion, skill...** - She looked out of the window **at a sight** which always amused her—the **rooks trying to decide which tree to settle on.**