Emily Dickinson's The Brain-Is Wider Than The Sky

Foregrounding is a stylistic strategy and is when a “feature of the language of a text stands out in some way…yet contributes to the writer’s total meaning” (Cotrozzi, 2010, Page 21). This can be presented through deviation which is when an aspect of the text “deviates from the linguistic norm” or through parallelism which is when a part of the text is “brought to the fore” (Simpson, 2014, Page 51) with repetition of it features. Therefore the ‘norm’ is regarded as a “background against which features which are prominent because of their abnormality are placed in focus” (Leech, 2015, Page 30). The purpose of foregrounding is to draw attention to itself and allow readers to focus on “images, themes, characters…and feelings” in order for them to gain clarity thus “stimulating

I will demonstrate how these techniques are used and what effect the foregrounding has on the reader.

Phonological parallelism refers to the “repetition of sounds…in which alliteration, assonance and rhyme are recurrent elements” (Gnanasekaran, 2018, Page 38). Throughout the poem Dickinson uses an extended phonemic parallelism in terms of her rhyme scheme ABCB which encompasses a tetrameter/trimeter stance. This is evident in the first stanza with ‘side’ and ‘beside’, followed by ‘blue’ and ‘do’ in the second stanza and lastly ‘pound’ and ‘sound’ in the final stanza. Dickinson also uses additional rhymes such as ‘side by side’ in stanza one with a near rhyme of ‘wider’ and ‘side’. Additionally ‘Blue to Blue’ in stanza two followed by ‘Pound for Pound’ in the final stanza where she adds the rhyme ‘do’ which impressively repeats the rhyme scheme of the stanza beforehand. This represents a power ballad, originally used for songs, demonstrating her ability to allow the reader to easily follow the poem whilst consciously leaving lines one-three in each stanza exiled and more prominent than the rest. These include ‘sky,