Deviant Forms And Spiritual Expression

Based on stylistic and psycholinguistic theory, especially the deviation and language comprehension theory, this thesis explored the reason why E.E.Cummings uses so many deviant forms and the subject of his poetry combined with the historical and literary background. Under then circumstances, historically and literarily, Cummings can not but find a new way to depict the modern world, to express his own internal world as well as people`s so that he can draw attention to his poetry and to himself. Only if it is done, he could outstrip his predecessors and contemporaries. This thesis gives 10 types of deviation: lexical deviation, mainly nonce formation, phonological deviation, grammatical deviation, graphological deviation, semantic deviation, dialectal deviation, deviation of register, deviation of historical period, loan words deviation and morphological deviation in E.E.Cummings`s poetry. Besides G . N. Leech`s 8 types, this thesis gives another two types: loan words deviation and morphological deviation. Each type of deviation is analyzed through examples of E.E.Cummings`s poems. Deviant forms are not just for the sake of deviation, it is closely related to the author's spiritual expression. With regard to the subject of E.E.Cummings`s poetry, generally speaking, there are three aspects: love, man, and freedom of transcendence. Cummings had the advantage of a favored son in a cultured family, so his love is first to his parents. Next to it , is the love to nature, which occupies One-fifth of his poetry. Poems concerned with love between men and women accounts for one-fourth. As for man, Cummings cares about man`s life firstly, he satires the distortion of humanity, loss of individuality, and ascribes them to modern society, and ideology`s conflict. E. E. Cummings` freedom is a kind of transcendent freedom, of course, his verbal freedom included. Transcendence means freedom from limitation, freedom from doubt, anxiety and ambivalence . To be different, his individuality requires a voluntary renunciation of some degree of individual liberty.