Techniques Of Visual Arts In E.E. Cummings' Complete Poems

Edward Estlin Cummings (1865-1939), has remained a symbol for the pioneering spirit of modern poetic practice because of his unusual typography, odd spellings and deliberate grammatical tricks. He is recognized as an avant-garde in his idiosyncratic poetic expression—especially in terms of typography and the visual effects of his poems.Thus, the current thesis, taking visual theory written by a French visual artist J. J. Droucio-Mayer as the theoretic perspective, expounds how Cummings adopts techniques of visual arts in his poems to achieve aesthetic effect of an organic whole. Based on the detailed and profound textual study of Complete Poems, the thesis explores the ways in which Cummings fuses visual arts into his literary creation in composing his poems to strengthen visual artistic power of his poems.The first chapter deals with calligraphic artistry in Cummings' Complete Poems in which poems "la", "silence", "mOOn Over tOwns mOOn" are fully discussed. It exposes that Cummings, by means of creative line expression, white space, deviation; offers a most multi-semantic imagination to the readers. The second chapter focuses on painterly property in Cummings' Complete Poems with an aim to explore how Cummings conveys his personal ideas and emotional response through the spread of colors and the creation of unique forms. It consists of the expression of complementary color scheme, analogous color scheme, icon, overlapping and kinesthesia. The third chapter explores cinematographic quality in his poems, including montage, deep-focus shot and visual images to express how Cummings borrows techniques from cinematography to endow his works with a strong visual effect as well as cohesion, antithesis, association and suspense.All the unique articulation Cummings adopts, especially the visual presentation of poems on the printed page, not only enriches picture surfaces but also increases the connotative and associative values of his poems. Meanwhile, his experimentation and openness enlarge poems' possibilities for expression and communication.