The Aesthetic Use of Syntax: Studies on the Syntax of the Poetry of E. E. Cummings

On the theoretical level, this dissertation develops, illustrates, and documents an 11-point typology of syntactic aesthetic effects which provides a working theoretical model for the study of the aesthetic use of syntax. Following Leech and Nowottny, it is argued that these effects represent the various ways authors and speakers use syntax to "particularize" (perceptually, emotively, and conceptually) the informational content of a text of discourse--these effects being the syntactic realizations of more general aesthetic effects (i.e., iconicity, focus, emphasis, pace, tension, surprise, ambiguity, development, parallelism, transcendence, and stance) which can also be produced at other levels of linguistic structure (phonetic, orthographic, morphological, or semantic) or by other aspects of literary form (e.g., poetic line, metrical structure, or narrative perspective).

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Linguistics

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2014

Author dc:creator

• Cureton, Richard Dozier

• Language, Linguistics

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(UMI)AAI8108475

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/66713