FIGURATIVE TROPES AND THEIR THEMATIC IMPLICATIONS IN WILFRED OWEN'S "DULCE ET DECORUM EST"

The purpose of the present paper is to offer a formalistic reading of Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et DocorumEst," one of the most renowned poems associated with "War Poetry," to observe what literary devices and formal features the poet has used to express his intended meanings or to evoke a certain feeling in the reader. The central questions of the present study are: What figures of speech or structural and formal qualities has Owen used in his "Dulce et Utile Est," how, and to what effect? After giving a brief prefatory digest on Owen's career as a poet and "War Poetry," in a line-by-line analysis, the researcher examines the metrical patterns and rhyme schemes of the poem as well as its various literary devices and relates each of its structural, formal, and figurative elements to a particular theme or motif. The article shows that in his "Dulce et Utile Est," Owen has deliberately and efficiently made us of such tropes as allusion, imagery, alliteration, irony, simile, metaphor, understatement, and apostrophe, as well as metrical and stanzaic inconsistency, to harmonisesound with sense and form with meaning and to articulate his strong anti-war sentiments.