Stylistic analysis
(Foregrounding) of E.E. Cummings “In the Rain”
Abstract
This work aims at studying the distinctive
style of E.E Cummings poetry in his poem “In The Rain”. The stylistic study of
a poet’s work helps to indentify and trace a his inclination and style of work.
In this research, linguistic aspects of the poem are discussed with the
technique of foregrounding. The poem is fore grounded in respect to deviations
and parallelisms. The poem is also fore grounded on graph logical, syntactical,
grammatical, lexical, phonological and semantic levels. These levels are very
helpful in finding out the love theme of the poem and are being discussed here
in this piece of research.
Introduction
Stylistics is the study of style in
texts. The way a text is being written and organized is being discussed in the
waste field of stylistic. Stylistics is a branch of applied linguistics and it
focuses on the figures, tropes, and other rhetorical devices used to provide
variety and distinctness to someone’s writing.
As Leech puts it, “style is the way in
which something is spoken, written or performed‖”. Style is the usage of words
choices and the way a writer uses them in order to achieve a certain aim and
goal through his or her writing. Style is being defined as the selection of
words from a huge linguistic vocabulary. Style covers spoken and written,
literary and nonliterary kinds of language but it is specifically concerned with
the literary texts. So it is the way that a writer uses to deliver his message.
Principles of
Stylistics
There are certain rules and principles almost
in every discipline that are being used to define the areas of that particular
discipline. In stylistics too there is a
yardstick to evaluate the linguistic features of a literary text. There are
mainly three principles for the stylistic analysis of a text.
1)
Foregrounding 2) Norms
3) Deviations
Foregrounding is the antonym of back
grounding. In back grounding technique, we explore and identify those features
of the txt that are hidden and unidentified. This technique is very much closer
to Critical Discourse Analysis. In contrast to that, Foregrounding is the study
of the apparent and vivid features of the text. By this technique, we tend to
identify the underlined and highlighted features of a text. In Halliday’s
language, it is called ‘Prominence’. This is further consisted of two
techniques: Parallel Foregrounding and Deviational Foregrounding.
Parallelism is the analysis of revised alike
patterns in a text. Deviation is the violation of evident design of the text.
THE POEM
The poem ‘In the rain’ is written by
Edward Estlin Cummings, famously known as E.E. Cummings, was an American poet
who is well known for his unique poetic style. His writing style is very much
unconventional and different than other writer’s, especially in poetry. For
example, he used the lowercase letters in his name to make it distinguished
from others.
Deviations play a crucial part in the
theme of a poem, and Cummings’ poetry is full of them. For example His
capitalization is not a something very traditional. He never used it in the
start of sentence and when he used it, it gives extra meanings to the poem.
Furthermore, he never capitalized “I”
that falls under the category of grammatical deviation but, it also
demonstrates that one’s ‘self’ is not always very important. He proclaims the
notion to his readers that one should escape his self’ and think about the
others too. He did not use punctuation marks in their conventional way. But
they are used very unconventionally in his poems. He never uses sentence
markers and that is also a deviation of generally accepted norms of English
language.
FOREGROUNDING “IN THE RAIN”
The poem is being analyzed using the
technique of foregrounding.
The features of the poem “In the Rain”
by E.E Cummings are being traced on these six levels of Stylistic Analysis:
1) Graphological level. 2) Grammatical level. 3)
Syntactic level. 4) Lexical level. 5) Phonological level. 6) Semantic level.
1) Graphological
Level
“It refers to the whole
writing system: punctuation and paragraphing as well as spacing”. Graphological
levels play a major role in the analysis of the text. They carry “pragmatic
force” as an important factor in a text. Graphology is very important in
understanding of a text.
The poem is divided into
six stanzas in which four stanzas of the poem consist of four lines and one is
of two lines. The patterns of lines are very fiddly. The length of all the
lines is not the same and is different. There is an awkward spacing in the poem.
Punctuations are used to divide sentences or phrases e.g. full stops, commas,
semi-colon, colon, exclamation mark, apostrophe, parenthesis and brackets etc.
But there is only one full stop in the whole poem. There are two commas in the
whole poem; also, the title of the poem is in lower case which is a deviation.
There is no
capitalization in the beginning of the sentence, not even one capital word is
there in the whole poem. The paragraph spacing is very much awkward. “I” the
personal pronoun is used twice in the poem and it is used in lower case which
is also a deviation.
Grammatical Level
There is no
capitalization in the beginning of the sentences of the poem. The sentences
aren’t ending with a full stop and there is no sentence marker being used. Only
one full stop is observed in the whole poem. No punctuation is there except two
commas that are used in the whole poem. The personal pronoun “I” is being used
in lower cases throughout the poem.
The line patterns are not
in accordance to the language norms, they are rather unusual. Line spacing is
very awkward. Paragraph spacing also violates language norms and is used very
awkwardly. The whole sentence structure is some kind of deviation forms the
normal rules and norms of the grammar.
Lexical level:
The theme of the poem is
being fore grounded by the use of vocabulary.
For example there are love epithets that represent the love theme of the
poem:
“Think of you”, “the holy
city which is your face”,
“your eyes half-
thrush
half-angel and your drowsy
lips where float flowers of kiss”
Phonological Level:
Phonological level deals with the
pattern of sound used in a text. Lets discuss the poem on phonological for
grounding level
Rhyme Scheme: the rhyme scheme of the
poem is absent. Consonance is found in
the poem. For example in stanza one, “sunset” and “sit” are consonance sounds.
In stanza two, “streets” and “smiles” are consonance sounds. Similarly, in the last
stanza, “Song”, “soul,” “single” and
“Star” are all the consonance sounds. Example of Repetition is also found in the
poem. There is a repetition of the line, “think of you” in the poem.
Alliteration: There are various
examples of alliteration. For example: ‘Float flowers’, ‘single star’ ‘song
soul’.
Semantic Level
This poem is fore grounded on the level
of semantic because it has many semantic parallelisms and deviations. There are
various examples of metaphor “In the Rain”:
“the holy
city which is your face”
these lines are also the example of metaphor.
“ Your little cheeks the
streets”
Of smiles
Another example of metaphor is in third
stanza:
“your eyes half-
Thrush half angel”
Metaphors of ‘city’ and ‘street’ are not
usually used in poetry to relate the ‘beauty of mistress’. But Cummings does
this and giving a very unique touch to his poems. Thrush is a singing bird he
puts the word ‘half’ with it and makes a new word which is used as a metaphor
to relate the beauty of her beloved’s eye. Similarly, ‘half- angel’ is used to
describe the beauty of her lips. The beloved’s hair is related with the
metaphor of ‘pirouette’ which is also very unusual because ‘pirouette’ is a
part of dance.
Hyperbole
Hyperbole is used by E.E Cummings to overstate
the beauty of his beloved. He calls the eyes of her mistress as ‘half-angel and
half thrush’.
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