Analysis Of Child By Sylvia Plath
In this essay I will discuss the various forms of syntactic foregrounding used in the given poems and how each contributes to emphasising the metaphorical information.
According to Oliphant (2010:19) accentuation is a form of foregrounding that accentuates figurative and metaphorical information in a poetic text by means of syntactical deviation or from extra-patterning. One device that can be used to achieve accentuation is displacement or deviation. “Child” by Sylvia Plath is a poem written from the perspective of a mother who is directly addressing her baby, as we see in the use of “Your clear eye” She contradicts the feelings of unambiguous love for her baby and the desires she has for him to see a beautiful world filled with positive experiences and opportunities with her sombre reality. Accentuation is evident in the last stanza. The first line shows deviation from conventional grammar, by starting with a negative expression, “not”. The poet’s negative feelings are then carried on to the next two lines. The grammatically incorrect usage of “troublous” also foregrounds the mother’s expression of wringing her hands. This suggests that she is feeling anxious or distressed.
Another device of accentuation is repetition of words or phrases. This can be seen in “Women and Children First” by Ingrid de Kok. De Kok describes with a twist of irony how women and children are not only the first to be helped during a crisis, but also the first to be abused and hurt, especially in
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