The Routledge Dictionary of Literary Terms

234 Syntax
space-time ordering of abstract elements
of meaning. And syntax is a major influence
on STYLE: the way meanings are concretized,
through syntax, affects the way
an audience responds to those meanings.
One property of syntax is its capacity
to provide different word-orders for the
same meaning. Even though word-order
is not strictly ‘significant’, it is nevertheless
valuable and potent because it can
determine the sequence in which a reader
apprehends the elements of the complex
structure of meanings embodied in a sentence.
For example, the second and fifth
words of the sentence She put the book
down form one single meaning
(cf. deposit) but are, because of the wordorder,
experienced discontinuously. The
meaning of put must be incomplete, provisional,
until the sentence is completed
by down. This interrupted or delayed perception
of meaning does not occur when
we listen to the synonymous sentence She
put down the book. Meaning is the same,
but the mode of experiencing meaning is
importantly different, because of the difference
in syntax. Here, the meaning of
put is immediately completed by down,
there is no suspense, and no subsequent
part of the sentence disturbs the firmly
apprehended meaning’ (‘deposit’). A different
kind of syntactic influence on the
reader’s reception of meaning is illustrated
by the sentence She put down the
rebellion. It is obvious, once one has read
the whole sentence, that put down does
not mean ‘deposit’ but ‘subdue’. But this
fact is obvious only after one has taken in
the whole of the sentence (unless one
guesses from context). In the temporal
experience of reading, or listening, this
figurative meaning for put down is supplied
retrospectively, the basic, physical
meaning being assumed first. Here the
temporal sequence of mental operations
demanded by the syntactic order is the
reverse of that required for the processing
of meaning. The ways in which syntax
determines, assists or even impedes the
reader’s apprehension of meaning are
manifold.
To proceed to a literary example, the
indirect and interrupted first sentence of
Henry James’s novel The Ambassadors –
‘Strether’s first question, when he reached
the hotel, was about his friend’ – appropriately
gives one time to wonder what
this question is to be, sets up the tone of
tentative enquiry which characterizes the
whole narrative. (See Ian Watt’s important
paper in Essays in Criticism, vol. 10,
1960.) Syntax can be mimetic; as the following
lines from Paradise Lost demonstrate,
the contrast between action and
guile is imitated in first direct, then
contorted, syntax:
My sentence is for open war. Of wiles,
More unexpert, I boast not: them
let those
Contrive who need, or when they
need; not now.
Because syntax is inevitable and, in
a sense, imperceptible, critics may fail to
attend to its power. But as Winifred
Nowottny observes, we should not regard
syntax as merely ‘ “a harmless, necessary
drudge” holding open the door while the
pageantry of words sweeps through’ (The
Language Poets Use, vol. 10, 1962). We
must recognize that syntax exercises a
continuous and inexorable control over
our apprehension of literary meaning and
structure – and that its influence is not
limited to the spectacular grammatical
games of Pope or Browning or
Cummings.
The importance of syntax is acknowledged
by the French pedagogic tradition
of explication de texte. In Anglo-
American criticism. Donald Davie’s
Articulate Energy (1955) is a brilliant