FOREGROUNDING ROMANTIC VISION: DEVIATION ANDPARALLELISM IN WORDSWORTH'S "I WANDERED LONELY AS ACLOUD

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.