Rhetorical and Stylistic analysis of English Translations of ‘Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam’

Abstract

This research deals with the stylistic analysis of English translation of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. It tells how modern stylistic elements can be used in revival of old literature to make it attractive and famous. In addition, how an old literature can compete with the modern literature in terms of creative language use. Fitzgerald use different techniques in his translations to make poetry interesting and periphrastic. The study was exploratory in design and random sample of 40 English translated stanzas of Omar Khyam poetry were taken to undergo content and stylistic analysis of the text. Fitzgerald mainly uses deviation and parallelism in his poetry and it makes great turnout to make his work publically famous and attractive. Different types of deviation and parallelism are used in to invoke the poetical rhetoric of the text. However, it has also been found that the translated version of the poetry does not correlate with the poetical rhetoric of the original text by Omar Khayam. The study strongly recommends pursuing further research in this domain to compare the source and translated texts of the poetry.