Foregrounding: A Stylistic Reading Of John Donne’s Poetry

John Donne, an idiographic poet in Elizabethan period, is named the initiator ofmetaphysical poetry. This thesis attempts to study the stylistic art of John Donne’s poetry interms of the theory of foregrounding. Donne never walks steadily and rhythmically withothers in his era. Instead, he intends to make great effort to walk away rfom the inherentpractices. The theory of foregrounding,which can be safely borrowed in order to analyze JohnDonne’s distinction and his poetry’s derivation and over-regularity, will be the majortherotical basis in this thesis. The following three chapters will be concluded in this thesis:Chapter One explores the foregrounding effect in narrative tactics. Three aspects of thenarrative tactics are mainly embodied in this chapter.The first two parts of this chapter are therepresentatives of deirvation and the last part is the example of another perspective offoregrounding~over-regularity, all of which are contained under the theory offoregrounding,Chapter Two examines how Donne’s poetry reveals foregrounding in theperspective of rhetorical techniques. Metaphorical, symbolistic and paardoxical effect offoregounding will be devoted as the three parts of this chapter. Chapter Three will be devotedto a study of Donne’s foregrounding in poetic devices. Lexical deviation in literature refersonly to neologisms or the coinage of the new words, which can therefore be called"nonce-formati"on. Three parts also will be included in this chapter: non-literariness, comicuse of puns and irregular punctuations and stanzas.