英美诗歌选读-comings

2.Foregrounding in Poetry

The term „foregrounding‟ is borrowed by stylisticians from art criticism, which distinguishes between the foreground and the background of a painting. The theory of foregrounding is probably the most important theory within Stylistic Analysis, and foregrounding analysis is arguably the most important part of the stylistic analysis in poetry.
3.1 Graphological Deviation

The most striking in this poem is perhaps the fact that there ise which runs over the whole poem. that only one clause runs over the whole poem. This may show that poet intends the poem to be read as a whole and places emphasis on the unity of the discourse. The important effect created is the arousal of the reader‟s expectation and interest. This is because when the reader reads the first line, he gets a sense of incompleteness and, therefore would like to read on to find out „what‟ is said. Taking a close look at the whole poem, we find that every line of the poem, in fact, creates a pulling-forward effect, though there may be differences in the degrees of strength.

3.According to the context, the nonce-formation balloonman is the compounding of the words balloon and man which implies several meaning: 1) the man who sells balloons; 2) the man looks like a mixture of balloons and man because there are a lot of balloons in his hands and over his head; 3) balloonman is the symbol of spring. Balloons grant a profound impression of happiness and joy. Goatfooted/ balloonMan makes readers to associate it with Greek god Pan-Half-man, half-goat. Pan, God of music and play, is the symbol of spring. The capitalization of “Man” in balloonman emphasizes that the man selling balloons is PanGod of spring.

The Function: 1.The unusual compounds that Cummings invents are suggestive of a “child‟s language”: hence, mud-luscious (pleasant muddy) and puddlewonderful (= pleasant puddly). mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful evoke the joyful scenery-the children playing happily on the muddy ground after spring rain.
Leech’s Theory on Foregrounding

Foregrounding is realized by linguistic deviation and linguistic parallelism. Foregrounding
Deviation Parallelism


Foregrounding

Deviation
Overregularity

Phonology Graphology lexicon Grammar Meaning Realization Form Language Figure 2 The Realization of Foregrounding Semantics





10. when the world is puddle-wonderful 11. the queer 12. old balloonman whistles 13. far and wee 14. and bettyandisbel come dancing 15. from hop-scotch and jump-rope and 16. it's 17. spring 18. and 19. the 20. goat-footed 21. balloonMan whistles 22. far 23. and 24. wee

2.Secondly, the names are merged into one another; eddieandbill(＝eddie and bill =Eddie and Bill) and bettyandisbel (betty and isbele=Elizabeth and lsabela). eddie and bill come running(=Eddie and Bill come running). eddie and bill are the names of two little boys which have several levels of meaning: (1)the decapitalization of the names demonstrates the boys are very little; (2) eddie and bill are merged into one word eddieandbill renders the cubic impression – the boys are running hand in hand. The effect here is to render the hustle, bustle, and speed of the children as they come running to the summons of the whistle.
3. Analysis of Cummings’ poem “in Just-”


1. in Just2. spring when the world is mud3. luscious the little 4. lame balloonman 5. whistles far and wee 6. and eddieandbill come 7. running from marbles and 8. piracies and it's 9. spring
3.2 Lexical Deviation

What may strike us is the compound nouns goat-footed, mud-luscious , puddle-wonderful, balloonman, eddieandbill, bettyandisbel are „nonce-formations‟ (the words the literary writer invents).

Figure 1 The Realization of Foregrounding (Leech)

Leech divides deviation into eight types: lexical deviation, grammatical deviation, phonological deviation, graphological deviation, semantic deviation, dialectal deviation, deviation of register and deviation of historical period. Now we construct a new pattern of the realization of foregrounding.
Chapter Nine Appreciation of E.E. Cummings Poetry from the Perspective of Foregrounding
1. Introduction to Cummings 2.Foregrounding in Poetry 3. Analysis of Cummings‟ poem “in Just-” 4.Analysis of “anyone lived in a pretty how town”