Use of hyperboles in literary texts

In order to teach the stylistics of certain language, it is not enough to use only the materials of the stylistics course, but also it is necessary to include literature. It will be effective for students to read literary texts and analize them individually. Finding examples of stylistic devices in these texts will give students opportunity to learn them easily.

It is very important to know the rules of language of functional styles in the development of a culture of speech, solving translation problems, writing scientific papers.

Stylistic devices have already been studied during centuries. One of the most used one among these stylistic devices is hyperbole. Hyperboles can be met in literary texts and everyday spoken language.

Hyperbole is used when the author tries to underline something by exaggerating it. In other words hyperbole has the role of exaggeration of events, power, size and importance of something.

The term hyperbole has a long history going back to Aristotle, and features throughout the historiography of rhetoric. In Smith’s Mysterie of Rhetorique Unvaild, for example, hyperbole is defined as: ‘‘when the trope is exceedingly enlarged, or when the change of signification is very high and lofty, or when in advancing or repressing one speaks much more than is precisely true, yea above all belief’’. [4]

As it is already said, main subject of the hyperbole is exaggeration. So the information which is used as the subject of the hyperbole can be not true, but this information is just used to exaggerate something, to underline its importance. Let’s show the role of hyperbole by one sentence: «I said you forty times to clean your room» , so as it is said in sentence it may be not true that he said it forty times, but by this way (by using exaggeration) he means the importance of cleanliness of the room.

Hyperboles are widely used in belles-lettres styles, the style used by literary writers. From the ancient times Aristotle used hyperbole and paid attention to this style as it is more productive in influencing the reader.

Reading literary works from English literature we also meet hyperboles used by British writers. For instance the most flamboyant of the English Romantic poets, George Gordon, Lord Byron also used hyperbole in his poems. He created heroes in his poems, also could describe events using stylistic devices.

«The river nobly foams and flows,

The charm of this enchanted ground, And all its thousand turns disclose Some fresher beauty varying round» [1 ]

Carolling the beauty of the nature he uses hyperbole by saying «thousand turns». He uses here exaggeration to convey the emotionality to the reader which is one of the main functions of the hyperbole.

Such type of exaggeration also can be met in these lines by Robert Burns (A Red, Red Rose):

And I will love thee still, my dear,

Till the seas gang dry.

Till the seas gang dry, my dear,

And the rocks melt with the sun; [2]

Here in order to show perpetuity of the love, he uses logically unreal hyperboles: «till the seas gang dry» and «the rocks melt with the sun». It is masterpiece by Robert Burns in which he focuses on power of the love by using hyperboles.

Hyperboles show sentence more colorful. Such hyperbole is used by Harper Lee in her work of «To Kill a Mockingbird»: «A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County» [3] – by using exaggeration in the sentence she describes the place where people live. Here, writer underlines the boring and slow lifestyle.

Also, we meet hyperboles in the works of W.Shakespeare. Let’s give example from «Romeo and Juliette»: « There is no world without Verona walls, but torture, hell itself » [5]. Shakespeare underlines how Rome misses Juliette. Hyperbole play great role not only in literature, but also in rhetoric. Many famous politicians use hyperbole to influence their audience, and there we understand how it is important in speech.