An Analysis Of Foregrounding Features In Poems By Edgar Allan Poe

Foregrounding theory is an important theory in stylistics. Foregrounding means defamiliarizing people with the things which they are familiar with or numb to in the process of literary creation, thus to emphasize the main idea that the work intends to express. This kind of defamiliarizing technique is known as foregrounding. Foregrounding theory originates from painting, and it refers to the painter’s highlighting the intention of the art apart from its background in order to attract more attention from the audience. Foregrounding first appeared in Russian formalism. Later Prague School applied it into the study of liguistics. By now foregrounding theory has gradually become mature by means of the explanation and development of Leech, Halliday and many other linguists.Foregrounding phenomenon is most evident in poetry language, and it mainly represents the foregrounded features of the language in poetry through deviation and overregularity. Functions of poetry language are different from that in other practical literary forms, such as in technological language, legal language and so on, whose main functions are to communicate and to convey information, while the language itself does not easily attract the attention of the readers. However, the language in peotry plays a completely different role compared to it in practical literary form. In poetry, the poetic function or aesthetic function of language occupies the most important position but the practical function of language stays in a subordinate position. Language in the poetry is the essence of human language, for the reason that poets creatively use a language to write the wonderful poems in a limited space. Because of this, readers can be attracted into the beautiful scenery which is described in the poetry during the process of appreciation, and they will also get the feelings of aesthetic experience.This thesis analyzes the foregrounded features of some poems written by Allan Poe including the most notable materpieces like The Raven, The Bells, Annabel Lee and some other poems such as A Dream Within a Dream, Ulalume, To The Lake and so on. Allan Poe is a famous novelist, poet and literary critic. Although he became famous as a writer writing horror and mystery novels, his original dream was to become a poet. During his short lifetime, he had composed fifty poems and published four poetry anthologies. The language in Allan Poe’s poems is characterized with its musical quality and images. He is good at writing lyric poems and poems describing landscapes, through which he can express his emotions and show his ambition. Words in his poems are full of sadness, grief, and beautiful blues, which even make the readers astonished. Owing to this, his poems can be free of time, and widely celebrated by future generations.This thesis is divided into three parts. They are introduction, the main body, and conclusion respectively.The first part is introduction. In this part, there is an introduction of former studies of the compositions of Allan Poe, an brief description of stylistics and foregrounding theory, and the methods adopted to analyze the poetry of Allan Poe in this thesis.The second part is the main body, and is divided into three chapters. The first chapter explains foregrounding theory and its main manifestation modes in poetry---deviation and overregularity. As a special literary genre, the words, the meter, the rhythm, and even the whole poem are selected carefully and elaborately by the poet. The application of foregrounding theory in literary appreciation can meet the requirements of understanding and comprehension the literary works better. The second chapter introduces the linguistic deviation in the Allan Poe’s poems. Deviation mainly refers to those pragmatic approaches which are used to make the language in the poem deviate from the grammatical rules or common rules compared to the common language. It is often known as qualitative foregrounding. Deviation in the poetry includes phonological deviation, grammatical deviation, semantic deviation, and dialectical deviation, which detailed analyzed in this thesis. The third chapter describes overregularity in Allan Poe’s poems. On the contrary, overregularity refers to the situation that although the language in the poetry does not violate the language usage rules, it observes language rules too much or too little on some levels, and it belongs to quantitative foregrounding. This thesis discusses overregularity on the phnological and syntactical level.The last part is conclusion. In this part, there is a summarization of former analysis of the foregrounded features of the poems in this thesis, and the main idea of this thesis is pointed out. This thesis applies the theory of stylistics to analyze the foregrounded features in the poems written by Allan Poe. Compared with the former approaches which are used to analyze the compositions of Allan Poe, this thesis selects more than one poem of Allan Poe to analyze his poetry systematically. This offers a new different angle for the readers to comprehend the composition itself and know more about the writer. In addition, the analysis of deviation and overregularity of poetry language in this thesis can also help English teaching in the university and improve the ability of using English language.