Interactive Methods of Teaching Foreign Languages
Contents 1. Introduction…………………………………………………………2 2. E.E. Cummings’s biography………………………………………...3 3. Stylistic innovations…………………………………………………8 4. Conclusion…………………………………………………………...15
Introduction
My course paper consists of the biography of Cummings and his stylistic innovations. Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to liberal, indulgent parents who from early on encouraged him to develop his creative gifts. While at Harvard, where his father had taught before becoming a Unitarian minister, he delivered a daring commencement address on modernist artistic innovations, thus announcing the direction his own work would take. Cummings expressed ideas through new grammatical usage: he employed verbs as nouns, and other locutions as new linguistic creations (for example, "wherelings, whenlings / daughters of ifbut offspring of hopefear / sons of unless and children of almost/ never shall guess"). He indiilged in free play with punctuation and capitalization. Lowercase letters were the rule; capitals were used only for special emphasis; punctuation marks were omitted for ambiguous statement; others were introduced for jarring effects. His use of the lowercase letter "i" not only became a well-known means of self-referance in his work, but also reflected a role that he created for himself: he was the underling, the unnoticed dreamer, the downtrodden one, the child in the man; yet by asserting his individuality in this way, he thrust himself forward and established a memorable persona. Modern art gets much less explanation than it deserves. The artist is too busy pioneering, the intransigent critic, too busy fighting his own battles. Nor does any explanation come from the critics of the older school. They have a fear of tasting anything which they cannot recognize at a glance, they refuse to understand anything which is disturbingly new. But since they are house-broken only in their own traditions and would inevitably make a mess of themselves if
Introduction
My course paper consists of the biography of Cummings and his stylistic innovations. Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to liberal, indulgent parents who from early on encouraged him to develop his creative gifts. While at Harvard, where his father had taught before becoming a Unitarian minister, he delivered a daring commencement address on modernist artistic innovations, thus announcing the direction his own work would take. Cummings expressed ideas through new grammatical usage: he employed verbs as nouns, and other locutions as new linguistic creations (for example, "wherelings, whenlings / daughters of ifbut offspring of hopefear / sons of unless and children of almost/ never shall guess"). He indiilged in free play with punctuation and capitalization. Lowercase letters were the rule; capitals were used only for special emphasis; punctuation marks were omitted for ambiguous statement; others were introduced for jarring effects. His use of the lowercase letter "i" not only became a well-known means of self-referance in his work, but also reflected a role that he created for himself: he was the underling, the unnoticed dreamer, the downtrodden one, the child in the man; yet by asserting his individuality in this way, he thrust himself forward and established a memorable persona. Modern art gets much less explanation than it deserves. The artist is too busy pioneering, the intransigent critic, too busy fighting his own battles. Nor does any explanation come from the critics of the older school. They have a fear of tasting anything which they cannot recognize at a glance, they refuse to understand anything which is disturbingly new. But since they are house-broken only in their own traditions and would inevitably make a mess of themselves if
Bibliography: 1. http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/cummings/cummings_life.htm 2. http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/cummings/reviews.htm 3. Norman Friedman- E. E. Cummings, the art of his poetry, Johns Hopkins Press, 1967 4. Norman Friedman- E. E. Cummings: a collection of critical essays, Prentice-Hall, 1972