Year: 1970
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This investigation of Whitman's style traces the development of Whitman's literary language in the various editions of Leaves of Grass.Prom a linguistic point sf view style is a complex of phonological, syntactic, and semantic features, observations on which need to be translated into concrete verifiable facts.For this study, such an approach to style raised two initial problems: that of scope--having to cover too large a body of materials-and that of method.The second problem was easily enough solved by limiting my topic mainly to syntax, which seems to be the more readily observed and measured of the three levels of linguistic description, and by borrowing some of Louis T. Milic's methods of quantitative-structural description of Jonathan Swift's style.The method of sampling, which was consistently used by Milic, likewise solved the first problem of deducing the common features of a given ~populati~n.~Thus applying the-methods mainly of structural linguistics and elementary statistics, this study describes syntactic features of Whitman's poems in their unrevised form, that is, as they first appeared in the several editions.Traditional notation of syntax was also iii
Source: Summit (Simon Fraser University)
Author: Georgina Rivera Castaner
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2141745541