Stylistic Analysis of E. E. Cummings’ Poetry

Abstract

Stylistics is a composite outlook on the nature of literary works. The poetry of Cummings has a rich texture for stylistic analysis. In his poetry, certain linguistic features like cohesion, diction, grammar and style determine meaning. His poems are foregrounded, defamiliarized and deautomatized. The present research studies ten selected poems of Cummings from stylistic perspective. It examines how Cummings consciously plays with sound to meaning in phonological, morphological syntactic and semantic levels defamiliarizing the habitual perceptions of the readers. Since Cummings follows the styles of choice and idiosyncrasy,the research analyses the way Cummings activates poetic violence on ordinary deconstructing the norms of standard language and verse tradition.