FOREGROUNDING ROMANTIC VISION: DEVIATION AND PARALLELISM IN WORDSWORTH'S "I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD

Abstract

This study uses Geoffrey Leech and Mick Short’s analytical framework of foregrounding in their work Style in Fiction (1981, 2007) to do a stylistic analysis of William Wordsworth’s famous romantic poem, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” (1807). This analysis identifies two major devices of stylistics, deviation (breaking the linguistic norms to create effect) and parallelism (repetition of linguistic structures to create stress). This analysis studies four linguistic levels (phonological, morphological, semantic, and graphological) of parallelism and foregrounding. This study uses Leech and Short's framework of deviation to analyze how Wordsworth uses four levels of deviation in his poem, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” to create artistic effect and enhance meaning. This study uses a qualitative research design to analyze the whole text of the poem on the basis of four levels of deviation and parallelism. This paper identifiesphonological, morphological, semantic, and graphological parallelism used by Wordsworth in all four stanzas of the poem. This study also describes that Wordsworth uses deviation and parallelism not to enhance the beauty and music of the poem, but he describes how nature heals the sorrows andattracts the human mind to its beauty. This paper also combines four linguistic levels in a single analysis of this poem by using Leechian Stylistic Analysis, which shows a research gap in existing studies.