Citation: Liman Amsami ALKALI & Alhaji Modu TIJJANI (2021). Effect of Foregrounding in Literary Writing: A Textual Analysis of Parallelism in Some Selected Poems. Yobe Journal of Language, Literature and Culture (YOJOLLAC), Vol. 9, Issue 1. Department of African Languages and Linguistics, Yobe State University, Damaturu, Nigeria. ISSN 2449-0660
EFFECT OF
FOREGROUNDING IN LITERARY WRITING: A TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF PARALLELISM IN SOME
SELECTED POEMS
Liman Amsami ALKALI
Alhaji Modu TIJJANI
Abstract
This
paper examines the effect of foregrounding in literary writing, trying to
identify the importance of parallelism. The theoretical framework within which
the paper operates is the Victor Shklovsky’s defamiliarization theory of
formalism. The researcher adopts the methodology of content based analysis by
examining some selected poems. The study reveals that foregrounding sharpens
readers’ vision and understanding of events, feelings, circumstances and ideas
and makes work of art eye catching, forceful and presentable. Parallelism in
literary writing on the other hand, uses the same idea to appeal to the reader
or make something memorable but with much grander intention. It also conveys
message of morality and emphasize ideas.
Keywords: foregrounding, parallelism, defamiliarization, automatization and
deautomatization.
1.0
Introduction
Foregrounding
is a literary concept borrowed from Russian Formalism and developed by
Formalist Jan Mukarovsky who called it actualisace, which has been
translated in English as foregrounding. Foregrounding
is a technique within literary devices whereby the author creates
‘defamiliarization’ through linguistic tool called ‘dislocation’ that calls
readers’ attention about the strangeness of the world or the perception of the
world portrayed or depicted in the literary work (Wales, 2001, p. 89).
Mukarovsky
(1964, p. 30) posits that literature is a process of ‘strange making’ whereby
the world or a perspective is presented in a manner that separates it from real
life experience through literary devices that manipulate variables to set
literary experience apart from real experience, thus making it strange or
unfamiliar. This stands in stark contrast to classical theory stating that
literature reflects real life experience of the world and how it operates. The
purpose of foregrounding according to Leech and Short (2007) is to sharpen
readers’ vision and understanding of the event, feelings, circumstances and
concepts that the author wants to point out in the hope of giving the readers
new clarity, epiphany or motivation. The favored techniques for creating
foregrounding are patterns such as repetitions, tone, metaphor, diction and
parallelism (Leech and Short, 2007, p. 241).
Foregrounding
is the mother of literature. It marks a line of distinguishing between ordinary
text and literature. Foregrounding is a charm, attraction, beauty and a means
of strengthening the literature. Foregrounding brings things into light and
makes work of art eye catching, forceful and presentable. Foregrounding in
literature and Stylistics refer to a prominent interest that a reader might
assign to something in a text during the process of reading. Such prominence is
resultant from a special use of some devices located in the text itself.
Foregrounding may also refer to analytical tool used to evaluate texts and show
their literary, historical and cultural significance (Leech and Short, 2007, p.
48).
Halliday
(2014) posits that foregrounding is the functional theory of language as the
branch of knowledge that deals with literary or linguistic style. Foregrounding
according to Halliday (2014) is achieved in language by introducing
phonological extra-regularity using rhyme, rhythm, metre, alliteration and
assonance. The application of these literary devices help in identifying
parallelism with its repetitive quality in appealing to the readers’ minds.
2.0
Foregrounding Theory
The
notion of foregrounding comes originally from the visual arts and refers to
those elements of a work of art that stand out in some way from the norm. The
theory was seen as a means of explaining the differences between poetic and
everyday language. The root of this theory goes back to the Greek Antiquity,
specifically to the great philosopher Aristotle who emphasized the use of
devices and their importance. Van Peer and Hakemulder (2006) assert
that the term refers to the specific linguistic devices: deviation and
parallelism that are used in literary texts in a functional and condensed way.
Thus, foregrounding started basically as a theory in the Greek philosophy.
Later on, Russian formalists and Czech structuralists emphasized its importance
in literature.
3.0 The
Effect of Foregrounding in Literary Work
Foregrounding
in literary writing refers to the range of stylistic effects that occur in
literature whether at the phonetic level (alliteration and rhyme), the
grammatical level (inversion and ellipsis) or the semantic level (metaphor and
irony). Mukarovsky (1964) points out that foregrounding may occur in normal
everyday language such as spoken discourse or journalistic prose, but it occurs
at random with no systematic design. In literary text however, foregrounding is
structured. It tends to be both systematic and hierarchical, that is, similar
features may occur such as a pattern of assonance or related group of metaphors
and one set of feature will dominate the other. A phenomenon that Jacobson
(1987) termed ‘the dominant’. With everyday language, Mukarovsky (1964) argues
that communication is the primary purpose and foregrounding structures are
normally not involved. But in literature, the purpose of foregrounding is to
disrupt such everyday communication. He further explains that foregrounding is
the opposite of automatization, that is, deautomatization of an act. The more
an act is automatized, the less it is consciously executed; the more it is
foregrounded, the more completely conscious does it became. Automatization
schematizes an event, while foregrounding means the violation of the scheme.
Thus, in literature, the act of communication becomes secondary. This does not
mean that literature has no communicative functions; rather, foregrounding
enables literature to present meanings with an intricacy and complexity that
ordinary language does not normally allow.
Shklovsky
(1965) had offered a similar account of the effects of style. He argues that
stylistic devices do more than conveying familiar meanings:
The
function of the literary image is not to make us perceive meanings but to
create a special perception of the object-it creates a vision of the object
instead of serving as a means for knowing it. The purpose of art is to impart
the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The
technique of art is to make objects unfamiliar, to make forms difficult, and to
increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of
perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged.
In this
view, the immediate effect of foregrounding is to make strange (ostranenie) to
achieve defamiliarization. Erlich (1981) shows continuity with the earlier
works of Mukarovsky (1964) and Shklovsky (1965) by describing the power of
foregrounding in similar term. He explains that writers achieve to identify the
work of art through a literary technique known as defamiliarization in which
the process of writing itself focused on more than any particular plotline.
Such violation triggers the reader’s feelings and requires much more time to
understand and process the text which in turn forces the reader to focus on the
way the text is written more than the content.
4.0
Theoretical Framework
This
paper employs Victor Shklovsky’s (1965) defamiliarization theory.
Defamiliarization is the literary technique of depicting to the readers’ things
that are common to them to look unfamiliar or strange so as to enhance
perception and beautify the description. The term defamiliarization was first
coined by Shklovsky in 1917 in his essay: Art as Technique. Shklovsky
invented the term as a means to distinguish poetic from practical language on
the basis of the former’s perceptibility. Defamiliarization can be achieved
through parallelism. Parallelism refers to using elements in sentences that are
grammatically similar or identical in structure, sound, meaning or metre (Leech
and Short, 2007:176). This technique adds symmetry, effectiveness and balance
to the written piece. Parallelism is a device used to make moments in
literature memorable and alluring. It is a literary device in which parts of
the sentence are grammatically the same or are similar in construction. It can
be a word, a phrase or an entire sentence repeated.
5.0 The
Significance of Parallelism
Parallelism
has been an important literary device for cultures of oral story telling from
around the world. Many different poetic traditions such as Nahuatl in Mexico,
Navajo in the United States, Toda in India and parts of Indonesia, Finland,
Turkey and Mongolia use parallelism (Leech and Short, 2007, p. 179). The use of
parallel structures in speech or writing allows speakers and writers to
maintain a consistency within their work and create a balanced flow of ideas.
Moreover, it can be employed as a tool for persuasion as well because of the
repetition it uses. Parallelism is considered a great persuasive tool. Its
repetitive quality makes the sentence or sentences symmetrical and therefore
very memorable for the reader to process because they sense a pattern and know
what to expect. A popular example is the famous translated line from Julius
Caesar ‘I came, I saw, I conquered’. Each phrase begins with ‘I’ plus a verb.
It not only sounds appealing but the repetition makes the quote stand out in
the readers’ mind. Parallelism in literature uses the same idea to appeal to
the reader or make something memorable but with a much grander intention. In
literature, parallelism is used to convey messages of morality and emphasize
ideas. It is very common in proverbs from all around the world. A proverb is a
popular expression that is used to reveal a human truth or experience. Here are
some examples of common English proverbs with short explanations as to how they
are parallel:
1.0 What you
see is what you get (the ‘what you’ plus a short verb is repeated).
2.0 When the
going gets tough, the tough gets going (the ‘going gets tough’ phrase is
repeated so that it sounds similar and yet, by flipping around the order of the
words, the meaning changes).
3.0 Nothing
ventures, nothing gained (the ‘nothing’ plus a verb is repeated).
Apart
from proverbs, parallelism exists in texts. Here are some examples of
parallelism in texts:
1. In the
famous speech of Martin Luther King Jr., the phrase ‘I have a dream’ was
repeated often and is an example of parallelism.
2. ‘My
fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do
for your country’. John F. Kennedy.
3. ‘I don’t
want to live on in my work. I want to live on in my apartment’. Woody Allen.
4. ‘Today’s
students can put dope in their veins or hope in their brains. If they can
conceive it and believe it, they can achieve it they must know it is not their
aptitude but their attitude that will determine their altitude’. Jesse Jackson.
5. ‘For the
end of the theoretical sciences is truth, but the end of a practical science is
performance’. Aristotle.
These
different sentences and blocks of text show how parallelism works and how it
can be used as a useful literary tool. Again, there are many famous quotes that
also show parallelism. Among them are:
6. ‘If
you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy,
practice compassion’. Dalai Lama.
7. ‘We
make living by what we get; we make a life by what we give’. Winston Churchill.
8. ‘Be
who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and
those who matter don’t mind’. Bernard M. Baruch.
There are
different forms of parallelism in literature. One common form is called
Antithesis. When two opposing ideas are put together in a parallel construction
it is referred to as antithesis. By doing this, the writer emphasizes their
opposition. A particular example appears at the beginning of Charles Dicken’s
novel A Tale of Two Cities:
It was
the best of times; it was the worst of times, It was the age of wisdom; it was
the age of foolishness, It was the epoch of belief; it was the epoch of
incredulity, It was the season of light; it was the season of darkness, It was
the spring of hope; it was the winter of despair, We had everything before us;
we had nothing before us.
This
sentence employs multiple uses of parallelism and specifically, of Antithetical
repetitions. Dickens writes and contradicts ideas in the same grammatically
constructed phrase ‘it was’. He contrasts best and worst, wisdom and
foolishness, light and darkness. By doing this, the reader can get a sense of
the duality of the novel in its struggle for balance between good and bad.
Parallelism creates a flow that makes it clear to read despite its length. Its
rhythmic syntactical pattern also makes it memorable and appealing for the
reader.
5.1
Analysis of Parallelism in Some Selected Poems
John
Donne contrasts ideas of being good and ill, love and hate in his poem Community in
parallel structure to emphasize the fact we love good because it is always good
and we hate bad because it is always bad:
Good we
must love, and must hate ill. For ill is ill and good, good still But there are
things in difference. Which we may neither hate nor love But one, and then
another prove. As we shall find our fancy bent
William
Blake, in his poem The Tyger employs parallelism:
What the
hammer? What the chain? In what furnace was the brain? What the anvil? What
dread grasp? Dave its deadly terror clasp
The poet
starts each sentence in the above poem with ‘what’ which creates a beautiful
rhythm.
Edgar
Allen Poem used parallelism in many of his poems including this Annabel
Lee:
I was a
child and she was a child. In the kingdom by the sea, But we loved with a love
that was more than love. I and Annabel Lee With a love that winged seraphs
heaven converted her and me
The first
line of the stanza contains the epistrophic repetition of ‘was a child’. As
parallelism, this serves to show that both the speaker and Annabel Lee were
young when they first fell in love, but their youth did not negate the depth of
their love. Instead, as Poe writes ‘we loved with a love that was more than
love’ later parallel by ‘with a love that the winged seraphs of heavens. The
parallelism in this stanza creates rhythm and gives deeper meaning to the love
that he and Annabel Lee shared.
Li- Young
Lee’s poem From Blossom has many instances of parallelism:
From the
laden boughs from hands, from sweet fellowship in the bins Comes nectar at the
roadside, succulent peaches we devour, dusty and all Comes the familiar dust
summer, dust we eat. O, to take what we love inside To carry within us an
orchard, to eat, not only the skin but the shade Not only the sugar but the
days to hold the first in our hands, adore it Then bite into the road jubilance
of peaches.
This
lovely poem has many instances of repetition. There is parallelism in the first
line indicating where the peaches have come from: from laden boughs,
from hands, from sweet fellowship in the bin. The connection of these
images shows that the peaches are not just the work of nature, but also the
work of humans picking them and providing them at the roadside stands. Lee goes
on to provide parallelism in the next line with similar structured lines: not
only the skin, but the shade, not only the sugar but the days. In the
lines, he gives credit to all the elements that have formed these pieces of
fruit.
Goldsmith,
in his poem The Deserted Village has also used parallelism: ill
fares the land, to hasting ill a prey where wealth accumulates, and men decay.
The basic idea being dealt by the poet is that an increase in wealth leads to a
decrease in human qualities. The grammatical parallel in the lines effectively
brings out the irony of the statement. The opposition between ‘wealth
accumulates’ and ‘men decay’ and the consequent irony is effectively brought
about the use of grammatical parallelism.
6.0
Conclusion
The study
of this paper reveals that foregrounding is a powerful theory that has started
in the Greek philosophy developed by the Russian and the Czech theorists, and
flourished in the current century. The theory is based on the breaking of rules
and norms by applying literary device called parallelism, yielding aesthetic
experience in the mind of the reader. The study further examines that
parallelism is the use of components in a sentence that are grammatically the
same or similar in their construction, sound, meaning or metre. Parallelism can
be found in literary works as well as in ordinary conversations.
References
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V. (1981). Russian formalism: History doctrine. Yale
University Press.
Halliday,
M.A.K. (2014). Introduction to functional grammar (4th ed.).Matthiessen
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Jacobson,
R. (1987). Language in literature. Harvard University Press.
Leech, G.
and Short, M. (2007). Style in fiction: A linguistic introduction of
English fictional prose. Longman.
Mukarovsky,
J. (1964). Standard language and poetic language. Journal of Prague School
on Aesthetics, Literary structure and Style. Vol 4 (2). 17-30.
Shklovsky,
V. (1965). Arts as technique: Four essays on Russian Formalists
Criticism. University of Nebraska Press.
Van, P.
and Hakemulder, M. (2006). The stylistic theory of foregrounding: A
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