Deviation in E. E. Cummings’ poetry: The research of foregrounding

Abstract

Following the introduction of the ideas of Russian Formalists and Prague Structuralists, the foregrounding theory appeared as a new paradigm, based on linguistic models that claimed to provide insight into poetic technique and gain a grasp of the effects generated by this technique in the readers. Thus the article focuses on the analysis of stylistic tools to create the foregrounding effect by means of linguistic parallelism and deviation and their components in the traditional and non-traditional poems by E. E. Cummings. The famous American twentieth century poet, essayist, playwright and painter, he is famous for his very special style of writing, unusual break of lexical, morphological, phonological and syntactic rules. The poetic innovations were created as he skilfully used various types of foregrounding in his poems. E. E. Cummings illustrated all types and aspects of foregrounding that are ever possible, demonstrated their effect on the readers and therefore attracted scholarly attention. By means of it he has contributed the possibility for further development of the foregrounding theory. Hence, in this article the authors offer the outline of theoretical background of foregrounding research as they systematize different approaches to research in the area during last two centuries. On a practical note, the article details the issue of linguistic deviation as a way to create the foregrounding effect and influence the readers’ perception of the poem. The authors hold that deviation can occur at different language levels: morphological, phonological, syntactic, grammatical and lexical. In E. E. Cummings’s poems deviation is demonstrated at all possible language levels in order to emphasize particular information, to bring reader’s attention to a certain fact and it is a powerful tool to generate an effect on readers.