The Importance Of Foregrounding In Poetry

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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. And it is realized through linguistic deviation and linguistic parallelism.This paper aims at exploring the aspects foregrounding inE.E.Cummings' " Love is a place" and Lord Alfred Tennyson's " Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white." In his essay "Language In Literature: Style And Foregrounding,"Eyal Segal says "stylistics is viewed as a crucial bridge discipline between linguistics and literary…show more content…
The ends of the lines have a mimetic role. The shape of the poem may depict a world that has its ups and downs. (The word "curled" supports this explanation). However, the enjambment hastens these normal shifts.Besides, thetypography of the poems resembles a cardiography.The "&" symbol is salient. It is a means not only to link what seems to resist linking , but also to serve as temporal indicator; if rotated, it represents infinity. Moreover,Theabsence of punctuation marks with the exception of parentheses pertains the sense of rashness and excitement of the poet, just like his speaker, in expressing himselfspontaneously without any restraints.You get to feel how it affects you as well if you read it aloud.This in turn describes the mood of the speaker as if he is gullible to talk about love to infinity.Yet, who else but lovers (and politicians) talk rapidly, seemingly nonsense and always have more to…show more content…
It includes the repetition of structurally equivalent units such as phonemes (in phonology) and Clauses( in grammar). With the use of parallelism, the poet limits himself to the selection of the same pattern.Even though parallel, each unit keeps an identity through contrast elements. For its significance, parallelism is connected with rhetorical emphasis and memorability(Leech, 67). It adds to the pleasure of reading a literary text, especially poetry. In this framework, the following poem by Lord Alfred Tennyson can be interpreted on the basis of repeated similar structure in terms of syntactic parallelism, internal rhyme, end-rhyme and
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