According to Professor Kukharenko V.A., hyperbole is a stylistic device in which emphasis is achieved through deliberate exaggeration. The feelings and emotions of the speaker are so ruffled that he resorts in his speech to intensifying the quantitative or the qualitative aspects of the mentioned object.21

According to Prof. Sosnovskaya V.B., hyperbole (overstatement) as the word itself suggests is an expression of an idea in an exceedingly exaggerate language. The supra-average cases of overstatement are characteristic of an obviously emotional, if not altogether impassioned, manner of representation.22

V.V.Vinogradov, developing Gorki’s statement that “Geniune art enjoys the right to exaggerate”, state that hyperbole is the law of art which brings the existing phenomena of life, diffused as they are, to the point of maximum clarity and conciseness.23

So, hyperbole is aimed at exaggerating quantity or quality. It is a deliberate exaggeration. In hyperbole there is transference of meaning as there is discrepancy with objective reality. The words are no used in their direct sense.

e.g. “I wish I had known it was your birthday, Lady

Windermere, I would have covered the whole street in

front of your house with flowers for you to walk”. (p.

24)

“I have never loved anyone in the world but you”.

(p.34)

In order to depict the degree of the love of his character Wilde resorts to the use of these hyperboles. I think that the most important function of hyperbole is the emotional expressiveness.

e.g. “I have met hundreds of good women”. (p.71)

“You have seen me with it a hundred times”. (p.303)

In these hyperboles Wilde uses the exaggeration of the quantitative aspect. They make their way not on the direct meaning, but on the great emotional influence. But literary hyperbole is not the simple speech figure. It is one of the most important means of building up the plot of the text, the imagery and expressiveness. It is the transmission of the author’s thought.

e.g. “I never can believe a word you say!.” (p.49)

“He talks the whole time”. (p.115)

“Well, you have been eating them all the time”. (p.284)

In the literary sense hyperbole is the important means of expressive speech. Sometimes they are not perceived in their direct meaning, but they at once create the pathetic and comic effect, as in the above-mentioned examples. In general, literature has a constant necessity in the artistic exaggeration of reflection of the world.

e.g. “I would do anything in the world to ensure

Gwendolen’s happiness”. (p.284)

“But now that I see you, I feel that nothing in the

whole world would induce me to live under the same

roof as Lord Windermere”. (p.61)

Hyperbole may be also called the means of artistic characterisation. Hyperbole is a device which sharpens the reader’s ability to make a logical assessment of the utterance. In order to create his hyperboles Wilde uses such words as “hundreds”, “thousands”, “all the time”, “nothing in the world”, etc. Wilde’s hyperboles bring the brightness, expressiveness and the emotional colour of the language. Hyperbole is like a magnifying glass; it helps to observe in details the phenomena of life, in its realities and contradictions.

METONYMY

In these four plays we can also observe some metonymies.

According to Prof. Galperin I.R., metonymy is based on a different type of relation between the dictionary and contextual meanings, a relation based not on identification, but on some kind of association connecting the two concepts which these meanings represent.24

According to Prof. Sosnovskaya V.B., units of poetic speech called metonymy are also based upon analogy. But in them there is an objectively existing relationship between the object named and the object implied.25

According to Prof. Kukharenko V.A., metonymy also becomes instrumental in enriching the vocabulary of the language and it is based on contiguity (nearness) of objects or phenomena.26

So, according to these three definitions, we can say that metonymy is a transference of meaning based on a logical or physical connection between things. In metonymy a thing is described by its action, its function or by some significant features. It is one of the means of forming the new meanings of words in the language.

e.g. “…a thing more tragic than all the tears the world has

ever shed”. (p. 65)

“She was stern to me, but she taught me what the

world is forgetting, the difference that there is between

what is right and what is wrong”. (p. 26)

“Do you think seriously that women who have

committed what the world calls a fault should never be

forgiven?” (p.27)

In these three examples we can see the same metonymy, that is used by the same word “world”. Here the author means the people who love in the world. Here we also can see that container is used instead of the thing contained: “world” instead of “people”. We can observe the same situation on the following example:

e.g. “The whole London knows it”. (p.32)

The author means people living in London, but not the city as itself. Through