Introduction
There
is no doubt in the fact that linguistics as an independent field and
discipline, is rapidly growing day by day. Its rapid growth as an independent
field of study and its accurate application to the literary study and criticism
has opened new perspectives in the field of criticism especially in the
twentieth century.
According
to the dictionary definition of Stylistics, it means “the science of literary
style” and “the art of forming good style in writing”
Stylistics,
as a scientific discipline, not only critically analyze the text for the
purpose of its understanding, but also scrutinizes and identifies different
aspects of the language used and make it easy for the readers to fully
understand and interpret it. This feature of stylistics brings it closer to
practical criticism. Stylistics plays an important role in the reader response
theory and reception theory as well. There would hardly be any field of
critical approach where stylistics won’t have an impact on that field or a role
to play there.
Apart
from Linguistic tools of modern criticism and linguistic insights, Stylistics
also gives an objective analysis of the text and provides with useful and
meaningful insights about the language used in that text.
With
these characteristics of objective analysis, linguistics makes it possible for
us to fully interpret a text using stylistic devices and techniques, in order
to enjoy any literature. This way, the importance of stylistics cannot be
ignored by any student or academia.
Now
as it is clear to us that the linguistic analysis of the language of literature
is stylistics. The term ‘style’ is somehow misleading for many. As the word
‘style’ was attributed once with the language varieties, for example religious
language, academic language, legal language, etc. but now, both these varieties
are called registers. Also, both have somehow gained a specialized, but narrow
employment of linguistics which is being applied to literature. So the importance of stylistics in literary
texts is many folded and cannot be ignored at all.
Introduction to the poet:
Edward
Estlin Cummings, usually written as e e Cummings, was an American poet,
essayist, painter, author, and playwright. He born in October 14, 1894, in
Massachusetts, United States and died at September 3, 1962. He has written more
than a hundred books. His famous works are ‘The Enormous Room’, ‘Tulips and
Chimneys, and his ‘selected poems’.
e
e Cummings was truly believed to be the representative of the American modern
experimental poets. e e Cummings is widely known for his own unique style of writing
and manipulating the language for his own sake. Some critics have remarked
about Cummings’ style that “chewing the conventional rhymes and syntactic
structure of poems and even rejecting to transfer information and emotion in
the way of conventional printing. In other words, He has his own method of
writing poetry and has special peculiarities in handling language in his own
way”.
Text of the poem:
maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)
and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and
milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;
and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and
may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.
For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea
Linguistic
Analysis of the poem:
If
we look at the Rhyme Scheme of the poem, we see that it is like this
AABCDDEFGGHH
Furthermore
there is a breakdown of the particular Rhyme Scheme of the poem between the
lines (3-4) and 9(7-8) of the poem. Also, a kind of parallelism is being found
between the lines (3-7) and (4-8) of the poem. These lines are ending with
(troubles, and---bubbles, and).
Now the poem has been analyzed in
the following lines using the foregrounding techniques:
1. Analysis at the Phonological
level:
As
it seems that the poem’s Rhyme is of nursery level as it is written for the
children, so the use of alliterations are widely found in the poem.
Alliteration is used for the purpose of rhythm and music. The following are
used in the poems:
1. maggie
and milly and moggy and may
2. so
sweetly
3. stranded
star
4. five
languid fingers
5. blowing
bubbles
6. a
smooth round stone
The
examples of rhyme, end rhyme, and internal rhyme are there at the phonological
level:
(may-day),
(stone-alone), me-sea) etc.
The
basic foot that is being used in this foot is Iamb, along with some changes and
variations
The patterns of the stress and
unstressed syllables are of ‘ictus’ (/) and ‘remiss’(x) style
/ x
/
x / x
/
maggie and milly and moggy and may
The
repetition of ‘and’ is due to the production of a typical rhyme scheme usually
found in the children’s poems. 1-2-9-3
is the number of syllables line wise.
The
same number of syllables in almost every line has helped to form the rhyme of
the poem, making the poem an outstanding nursery rhyme poem, suited for
children.
2. Analysis at the Morphological
level:
The
vocabulary used in the poem has been taken mostly used in the language of the
children. The words are selected from the day to day use of the children. For
example the words that is of more attraction to the kids or the jargons that
are mostly related to children’s games and toys etc. the purpose of using such
words is to evoke a certain phenomenon which is mostly related to the word of
children. For example these following words create a certain kind of realm that
is related to children.
“Beach – sea – stranded – star – shell – sing –
horrible thing – round stone – bubbles – blowing- Sang-not remember troubles,
befriended- chased.”
Similarly
the repetition of the word ‘and’ in the first line of the poem distinguishes
the four characters and also creates some sort of separate realms for these
characters; hence it also groups them in a certain way. Where those specific
words are creating an atmosphere say a beach where the kids are playing and
helping each other simultaneously.
3. Analysis at the Syntactic level:
The
graph logical deviation is there in line 11 “like a you or me”, (personal
pronouns are the head of noun phrases), and similarly there is a deviation in
the line “As small as a world and as long as alone” where the word ‘alone’ is
used for the sake of comparison. Also, there is a dislocation in the line
“Whose rays five languid fingers were”. Also it is worth noticing that some of
these lines are embedded in the parenthesis, like (to play one day) etc, or the
use of indefinite article ‘a’ as a modifier in the line “like a you or me” as
to mean “a you or a me”.
Examples
of parallel structure in the poem are:
1.
maggie discovered a shell S.V.O
2.
milly befriended a stranded star S.V.O
3.
we loose
S.V
4.
we find
S.V
4. Analysis at the Graphological
level:
One
of the most important aspects of Cummings’ poetry is the aspect of
Capitalization. Although he is famous for his deviant form of writing poetry,
hence he does so by violation most of the structure of capitalization and
punctuations. He simply does not care for the capitalization of certain words
like he writes proper nouns (including his own name) in all small letters, or
putting or even not putting a single punctuation even if needed. Here in this
poem too, he has neglected the need of capitalizing the proper nouns like
maggie, molly, milly etc and didn’t start his sentences with a capital letter.
So
these and other untold aspects of the poem, like the use of figurative language
etc, were some of aspects of linguistics used by the poet in the poem that were
analyzed in most easy way, in order to fully grasp the linguistic notions used
in the poem and to understand the poem lucidly.
