Foregrounding in Rudyard Kipling and W.H. Davies’s Selected Poems

	Al-Noor Journal for Humanities
	https://jnh.alnoor.edu.iq/
Foregrounding in Rudyard Kipling and W.H. Davies’s Selected Poems
F B Habash,
Dept. of English, College of Education for Humanities, University of Mosul, Mosul, Iraq
Article information			Abstract
Article history: Received 21, September, 2024 Revised   15 October, 2024 Accepted 28 October, 2024			This study is a critical attempt to investigate the patterns of foregrounding in Rudyard Kipling and W.H. Davies’s selected poems. Foregrounding employs act of expression to create language self-attention. It urges the literary language to compose reality; therefore, it exists mainly in the poetic language. The study aims to identify the function of foregrounding in the selected poems either the linguistic or literary ones. It is divided into three sections. The first section deals with the aesthetic and theoretical frameworks through shedding light on the theories of Theodor W. Adorno and Pierre Zima in the aesthetic framework, while the theoretical framework of this section concentrates on the theories of Roger Fowler, Michael Riffaterre, Roman Jakobson, and Geoffrey N. Leech respectively. The second section tackles the application of foregrounding in the selected poems of Rudyard Kipling and W.H. Davies’s. Rudyard Kipling’s poems are selected from the collection entitled The Jungle Book whereas W. H. Davies’s poem Leisure and others are selected from his collection Foliage: Various Poems. It investigates the appearance of deviation, foregrounding, parallelism, repetition, etc. in the studied poems. Finally, the third section of the study reaches to serious effect of foregrounding on reader’s mind and its impact on the literariness or poeticity of the poems through the patterns and functions used as operational functions for the poetic texts.
Keywords: Davies,  Deviation,  Foregrounding, Kipling, Parallelism, Repetition.
Correspondence: Mohammed Nihad Ahmed [email protected]
DOI: https://doi.org/10.69513/jnfh.v2.i2.a8 ©Authors, 2024, College of Education, Alnoor University. This is an open access article under the CC BY 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

 

 

 

الابراز الاسلوبي في قصائد مختارة للشاعرين روديارد غيبلنغ و و. ه. دافيز

 

فادي بطرس هباش

 

قسم اللغة الإنكليزية ، كلية التربية للعلوم الإنسانية ، جامعة الموصل، الموصل، العراق

 

 

المستخلص :

 هذه الدراسة محاولة نقدية في تقصي أنماط الابراز الاسلوبي في قصائد مختارة للشاعرين روديارد غيبلنغ و و. ه. دافيز. يوظف الابراز الاسلوبي فعل التعبير لاجل ابتكار الانتباه الذاتي الى اللغة. فهو يحث اللغة الأدبية على تشكيل الواقع. لذا، فهو يوجد في اللغة الشعرية بشكل رئيسي. تهدف الدراسة الحالية الى تشخيص وظيفة الابراز الاسلوبي في القصائد المختارة سواء اللغوية منها او الأدبية منها. فهي تقسم الى ثلاثة مباحث. يتعامل المبحث الأول مع الاطارين الجمالي والنظري من خلال تسليط الضوء على نظريتي ثيودور و. ادورنو وبيير زيما في الإطار الجمالي، بينما يركز الإطار النظري على نظريات روجر فاولر وميشيل ريفاتير ورومان ياكبسن وجيفري ليتش على التوالي. يتناول المبحث الثاني الجانب التطبيقي في دراسة الابراز الاسلوبي في القصائد المختارة للشاعرين روديارد غيبلنغ و و. ه. دافيز. قصائد روديارد غيبلنغ هي مختارة من مجموعته الشعرية الموسومة "كتاب الادغال" في حين ان قصائد و. ه. دافيز مختارة من مجموعته الشعرية الموسومة "أوراق الشجر: قصائد متنوعة" وقصيدة "الفراغ". تبحث الدراسة تمظهر الابراز الاسلوبي في تقانات الانزياح والتوازي والتكرار وغيرها من التقانات في القصائد المدروسة. وفي خاتمة المطاف, يتوصل المبحث الثالث في البحث الى التاثير الفعلي للابراز الاسلوبي في ذهن القاريء واثره في الماهية الأدبية والشعرية للقصائد المختارة من خلال الأنماط والوظائف المستخدمة بصورة عملياتية لاجل النصوص الشعرية.

الكلمات المفتاحية : الابراز الاسلوبي, الانزياح, التكرارالاسلوبي , التوازي, دافيز, غيبلنغ.

 

 

 

1.Introduction

     Foregrounding is one of the techniques that has been investigated in critical theories and postulates texts. It is essentially a language style delineated or projected to literary artistic purposes. It imparts in the reader a certain impression of perception through disrupting the ordinary language. Linguistically, the word “foregrounding” is the rendering of the Czech word aktualisace which means "to actualize". The term of foregrounding was referred to by the Russian Formalist Victor Shklovsky in his “Arts as Technique”. It was developed by another Russian Formalist, Jan Mukarovsky in his study of the poetic language. The two formalists determined the literariness of this language. Their formalist criticism analyzed the disruption of the ordinary language in the poetic text. In his “Standard Language and poetic Language”, Jan Mukarovsky posits that “The function of poetic language consists of the maximum foregrounding of the utterance… it is not used in the services of communication, but in order to place in the foreground the act of expression, the act of speech itself”. As an art, foregrounding determines revealing art not hiding it (1).

    On the other hand, Roger Fowler and Peter Childs conceive it in literature as “most readily identified with linguistic deviation: the violation of rules and conventions, by which a poet transcends the normal communicative resources of the language, and awakens readers, by freeing them from the grooves of cliché expression, to a new perceptivity. Poetic metaphor, a type of semantic deviation, is the most important instance of this type of foregrounding” (2). It is common to consider foregrounding as the center or the focal point and even the focus in itself. It is classified into three levels: grammatical, phonetic and semantic. The grammatical level compromises of inversion and ellipsis, the phonetic level contains alliteration and rhyme, while the semantic level is composed of metaphor and irony.

   The study aims at presenting the major linguistic and literary factors of arranging the suitable context of foregrounding to appear in the text to enhance surprise, focus, and emphasis in addition to its major function in poetry which is reinforcing meaning, style and the aesthetic appeal too. The purpose behind choosing this technique is to disclose the hidden aesthetic values that are achieved by means of deviation caused by foregrounding as a major technique. It involves many other hidden goals that are represented by the concealed or hidden messages in the poetic text itself which needs a tool for recoding or reading it correctly.

This study attempts to delve in the functions of foregrounding in the selected poems of Rudyard Kipling and W.H. Davies. It is accomplished on three levels of foregrounding: Phonetic, Syntactic, and Semantic. The functions that are dealt with are aesthetic function, the poetic function, the philosophical and the ideological Function. These levels and functions comprise the pivot of this study.

The scope of the study is confined to the investigation and interpretation of selected poems of Rudyard Kipling and W. H. Davies’s. Kipling selected poems are extracted from his collection entitled The Jungle Book. Whereas W. H. Davies’s selected poems are Leisure and others from his collection called Foliage: Various Poems.

   On the level of the framework, the study is confined to two frameworks: the artistic framework and the theoretical one. The artistic framework is composed of the theories of Theodor W. Adorno and Pierre Zima, while the theoretical one involves the theories of Roger Fowler, Michael Riffaterre, Roman Jakobson, and Geoffrey N. Leech, and Mick Short.

Theodor W. Adorno in his aesthetic theory perceives the concept of style as an inclusive factor responsible of transforming art into becoming language. He argues that the style is the essence of language in the art since it is occasionally obstacled due the harmonized particularization (3).  In spite of Adorno inability to distinguish between form and style but he explicates that they are ideologically distinct. He claims if the formed objects are able to raise the form’s content sediment then the form as a concept is able to formulate the art’s sharp (acute) antithesis in the empirical world where the art’s right existence is uncertain one. Adorno posits form from the Marxist point of view as a resistance force to the positivity of the bourgeois culture beside his exclusion of Lukács’ point of view that regards form importance as an overestimation in the modern art of barbaric conservative culture fond of calling to arms. For Adorno form meets with critique in which the artwork testifies or demonstrates to be self-critical one. This shows that form is radical and revolutionary (4).

   On the other hand, Adorno places style as bourgeois and conservative. He perceives style as drudged and deceitful one since it is bourgeois. He relates this to style conventions of bourgeois realism feature. In the modernist period matters related to style turned to be more complicated. The artwork appeared to be composed of ‘irreconcilable’ tensions. Thus, Adorno conceives the contradictory relationship between the modernist art and style. He ascribed style’s paradoxical centrality to high modernism in the dialectical idiom. He rejected the ‘unity of style’ and confirmed the ‘radical sovereignty’ or domination as the ‘immanent lawfulness of the individual artwork’. Modernism works as a resistance power to ‘styles’ in eloping and going back into its style. This entire negation of style obliges reciprocal dialectically into style. So, modernism stylistic self-consciousness operation leads into the generating transformation or moving from plural to singular, from styles to style. It is shortly a fight of rejecting the conventional, ‘bourgeois’ notions of style that modernism calls it ‘conflict’. Since Adorno described style as the quintessence technique of art’s language, and since it inescapably liquidates its language. Then, the consequence is ‘Pure’ style which is utopian and totalitarian; besides being a promise and a threat at the same time (4).

    Pierre Zima the French critic identified the concept of “ Ideological function” in order to reinforce the concept of emancipation in literature and ideology. Literature utilizes the linguistic signs from the social context to analyze the writing in general and the literature’s aspects in particular. The social context for Zima is manifested in the ordinary communicative language that configures the dominant ideology. Modern language witnesses a quick degradation, change in value as a problematic matter in the human civilization (5).

   Trudel in The End of Madeleine Ferron's Werewolves: From Metamorphosis to Metaphor explicates that Zima introduces the notions of “values” and “norms” in his work. These values reflect the preconstructed behaviors of the individuals or groups, their beliefs, their prejudices, their traditional or liberal spirit, etc. As for the “norms” or standards, they refer to the prescriptive aspects of values and the common rules which introduce society collectively. Therefore, the community can be jeopardized if one of its standards is not respected. Thus, values and norms constitute a sociological infrastructure in which individual consciousness and collective consciousness must coexist in it (6). Zima adopts Adorno’s aesthetic theory of liberty and socialist realism dogma. He views art in a higher antagonistic social position in comparison to society as it takes this position as an autonomous art. Instead of developing as specific qualified social norms and useful, it attacks society with the available facts of extremist convincing disapprove (5). Concerning the collective dimension matter of subject ideological discourse, Zima noticed that Subject acts do not pre-exist ideology. Instead ideology is pre-existing the Subject acts. Thus, Subject constitutes and identifies himself as a Subject under certain social values (7).

Zima concentrates on the literary text’s sociology as a desired eclecticism of the work and the important value given to the author during interpretation or analyzing the literary text. In spite of going outside of the eclecticism line but Zima stayed faithful as a revolted person towards empirically enumerative sociological methods, and the Marxist theorists who concentrated on the bourgeois ideology criticism. The role of author in the sociological path of literature was shadowy and therefore Zima tries to facilitate for the reader the way of author’s thoughts. He attempts to explain the complicated relationship between text and ideology (5)

      The theoretical framework involves the theories of text that depart from modern linguistic. It is confined to the theories of the following theorists: Roger Fowler, Michael Riffaterre, Roman Jakobson and Geoffrey N. Leech and Mick Short. Their theories are applied to the study of foregrounding in Kipling’s and Davies’s selected poem.

   Roger Fowler’s concept of linguistic criticism is critically concerned with understanding the relation between language and social meaning existing in the text’s linguistic structure. This interactional relation between ideological and aesthetic element in a literary text is established on the two verities linguistic stylistics and literary stylistics. Fowler’s influence on Halliday was one of essential factor of constructing of the contemporary linguistic criticism. Halliday’s ‘transitivity’ supplies of the world view and the beliefs of the literary style which are not connected with ‘foregrounding’ that includes norms of deviation in spite of the most normal linguistic elements remains in their commonplace as the main constituents of literary structure (8).

      On the other hand, Roger Fowler’s “semiotic and phonetic” is concerned with the signs systematic grouping in languages or codes, as well as the signs social function. Semiotics is the study of literature through its manipulating of language; therefore it is the primary sign system in human culture that is further organized through different subsidiary codes including the generic conventions (2).

Fowler distinguished various relations between written and spoken language. He posits his own conception of literature according to the formal features as contrary to the spoken or colloquial conventions usages. This conception determines the relations between literary and non-literary forms of discourse. There is an odd between written and spoken realization of language of poetry and literature, literature and non-literature, written language and spoken language, common usage and literature, etc. Speech and writing comprise different means of transmission of message. The transmissions or substances (verbal or written) conform surface structure of language. Fowler places the substance as a linguistic category that deals with phonetics, or calligraphy, or typography. Another distinguished feature of the spoken and written substances are not translatable ones by means of changing their substances. Linguistic features are detected as deeper than the substance which is expressed in the untranslated samples of speech from written language. On the contrary, the written translation of informal conversation is a barrier in prose forms expectations. The purposes behind choosing the phonic or graphic substances are determined by formal and substantial differences. In spite of realization of poems in the form of written form but their reading is composed of spoken form. This realization causes a problem; the poem consists of reading utterance and committed to reading as a guarantee of permanence, whereas other poems have visual form as well. Therefore, there is a necessity for “implication of utterance” in the metrics study. The poetic text consists of two substantial realizations: phonic realization and graphic. Fowler’s aim of studying the two realizations is the identification of the phonic substance aspects as part of the poem besides relegating them for reading only. The various readings of the poem supply many phonic variations. Form vs. substance are also used in which form is an abstraction. It is very common using type and token to differentiate between linguistic unit (poem) and its realizations (9).

   Michael Riffaterre the French structuralist and semiotician demonstrates the concept “Structural Stylistics” which is derived from style and is allocated to the study of style. Stylistics is “the branch of linguistics that studies style, especially in works of literature” (Mc Arthur 1996) (10). Structural stylistics manipulates writings of group of theorists who endeavour to elucidate or explain inexplicable verbal communication of certain common-sense intuitions. In Riffaterre’s theory, the reader is perceived as an affective center in stylistics. Michael Riffaterre discovered the way of reader’s response to the texts’ language as an object of the analysis of style. He views it as the illusion that the text creates in the mind of the reader. This conception depicts stylistics as a message with an impression that is subjectively printed in the addressee’s mind without being an objective reality. It underlies that the literary style is exposed far away from the writer’s desire in order to overcome reader’s difficulties during communication with the writer’s message. The method of reader’s response to the communication function of the message depends on the literary experience, culture and even the individual peculiarities (11).  He coined the two terms superpoem, superreader, and ex cathedra: 'Knowledge Superpoem' is utilized for accounting the immensely complex phenomena that is disclosed by Jakobson, Levin and other linguist-critics. He formulated ‘Superreader’ notion in order to account the putative and very unreal presence that is responsible for accommodating these effects simultaneously. In addition, the ex-cathedra knowledge deals with the poet, the poem and their relation to a particular work from the point of view of the same poet and other writers (12).

Riffaterre differentiated between “stylistic facts” and “linguistic facts”. Stylistic facts function operates in the work of literature, this means the function or act of style is stressing whereas the function of language is expressing. According to him, majority of ordinary discourse types are oriented in the direction of the communication message with revealing a high incident of predictable verbal forms. Concerning the written work with a literary intent, the artist tends to convey message and his attitude towards it. The text’s verbal forms are selected carefully with using number of unpredictable elements for the purpose of preserving and controlling the reader’s attention. This is a reminiscence of Prague school conviction that relates a work with the esthetic intent which is featured by foregrounding for some sections of its language, along with the prominence of verbal forms that brings attention to them. The work’s “stylistic facts” lurks in the unpredictable linguistic elements of the local contexts. Babb delineates that “a contention which in effect redefines the idea of deviation from the norm that turns up so frequently in stylistic criticism.” (13). The objective isolation of the unpredictable elements determines for the analyst to collect the responses as many readers as he can.  Those responses are responsible for identifying the “stylistic facts” that should be taken in consideration before proceeding in the interpretation by the analyst (Ibid).

Michael Riffaterre conceives reading of poems throughout the ‘semiotic transfer’ as two systems of working which are: the mimetic and the poetic. The mimetic system deals with the prior readings which are unpoetically referential. They contain difficulties or ‘ungrammaticalities and the solution of which demands code-switching from mimesis to poetic semiosis proper. The second system demands motivation of all other relationships, it is an outcome production of the transformed ‘matrix’ that is a unifying node of significance and it is differently encoded in text or intertext (2).

As for Roman Jakobson, he formulated the concept of “Poetic function” in his study of language. He pinpointed six communicative functions that correspond with six verbal effective communication factors. The communicative functions are listed in his “Linguistics and Poetics”: the referential, the poetic, the emotive, the conative, the phatic, and the metalingual (metalinguistic or reflexivity). On the other hand, the six verbal effective communication factors involve context, message, sender, receiver, channel, and code. Jakobson stipulates the relation between the poetic function and the message as follows: “The poetic function is not the sole function of verbal art but only its dominant, determining function, whereas in all other verbal activities it acts as a subsidiary, accessory constituent. This function, by promoting the palpability of signs, deepens the fundamental dichotomy of signs and objects” (14). This complex and reciprocal relation of the poetic function occurred through the equivalence between the axis of selection and the axis of combination can be epitomized in the following diagram (Jakobson 1987, 71):

 

CONTEXT

Referential function

3rd person/ epic poem

MIMETIC / HISTORIAL UNIVERSE

     

ADDRESSER-------------------MESSAGE-------------- ADDRESSEE

   Emotive function          Poetic function                    Conative function

                                       1st person lyric                                                          

                                       2nd person/exhortative

EXPRESSIVE  ARTIST                                AFFECTIVE/PRAGMATIC

                                         (WORK ITSELF)

                                                 

                                              

                                          CONTACT

                                        Phatic function

                                                  

                                             CODE                                                     

Metalingual function                                   (Jakobson: 1960) (14)

 

Roman Jakobson conceptualized the object of literary work as “literariness”. He postulates that “the truth value” of a work lurks in its “extralinguistic entities” in such he “exceed[ed] the bounds of poetics and of linguistics in general” through moving towards this level. It indicates that the creative literature acts as a substitute for an objective scholarly analysis of the verbal art by means of imposing the critics’ tastes and opinions (15). Also, he is considered a pioneer of Linguistic formalism; as he manipulates the linguistic features of Metaphor and Metonymy which came as a reaction to the mental disorder called aphasia. Foregrounding originally comes from visual arts and focuses on figures and events existing in front or ‘foreground’ of the picture, while the ‘background’ of the picture stays unsubjected to man’s conscious side. Foregrounding position lies in the place of making the whole work appear complicated and interrelated one. Therefore, it is compared to Jakobson’s notion of ‘dominant’ (15). Jakobson develops foregrounding by introducing the concept of the “dominant” which he places as “‘the focusing components of a work of art: it rules, determines, and transforms the remaining components’. The dominant gives a work its Gestalt (q.v.), its organic unity; thus, bringing about the unified whole of a work” (1). Thus, this literary theory or poetics is governed by the non-literary system. Accordingly, the elements of system including plot, syntax, etc. remain the same while the function of these elements may change (15).

On the other hand, Geoffrey N. Leech and Mick Short studied foregrounding departing from their stylistic theory of the literary text. They pinpointed a graphological structure as a way which differentiates the poetic form from the prose form. It is determined by the ordinary use of syntax but it turns more expressive when the writers make a graphological structure through choosing an unconventional use of syntax.   

Geoffrey N. Leech concentrates on “deviation” and “repetition” as main aesthetic communication principle (Leech 2013) (16). For Leech, foregrounding is artistically motivated deviation. In Stylistics, it is important to understand the relation among three concepts: deviance, prominence, and foregrounding as it is shown in this figure:

 

Literary                           psychological                                      statistical

RELEVANCE    →          PROMINANCE     →                       DEVIANCE

 

(Foregrounding) (Leech and Short 2007) (17).

This scheme posits that the function of the deviance is supporting various hypotheses about style since all the instances are the same in the arrows' direction and not in the opposite direction which hold it while the statistics approves nothing in its alone (17).

As a concept, Deviation is important in the study of style and in order to remain stylistically distinctive a specific feature of language should be deviated from certain an absolute norm of comparison. Statistic deviation is seen a quantitative measure which traces the linguistic differences between domain and a relative norm of phonemes frequency, letters, and frequent words. While the determinate deviation is non-quantitative and the norm appears as the language system compound of rules and categories in time the deviation takes the form of discrepancy between language system and the text. Determinate deviation violates the rules or constraints of language code and it is very common in the study of literary style and poetry in particular (Leech 2013) (16). The direct relation of the prominence (the psychological) and the deviance (the function of textual frequency) expresses the reasonable feature that reveals a sense of the usual or unusual or the noticeable in language that is constructed throughout the life experience of linguistic use. This enables in affirming it with reasonable trust and without resort to other methods (Leech and Short 2007) (17).

On the other hand, repetition is a clear feature for Leech in which he categorized into: grammatical and lexical repetition, structural repetition, formal repetition, semantic repletion, expressive repetition, and asyntactic repetition The distinction between schemes and tropes through a linguistic reinterpretation requires categorizing schemes as foregrounded repetitions of expression while tropes are categorized foregrounded irregularities of content. The different types of schemes are similar to figures of speech such as anaphora and antithesis (17). The grammatical and lexical repetition produces cohesion in the passage through reinforcing (17). Formal repetition indicates repeating utilization of expression such as morpheme, lexical item, proper noun, phrase etc. which has been already mentioned in the text (18). Structural repletion implies the parallelisms of the occurrence of the identified expressions as variable elements of determiner, noun phrase, etc. The parallelism form does not affect the foreground relation between the parallel words and phrases that fill the variable positions (17). Expressive repetition is a type of aesthetic counterbalance to the elegant variation. It is expressive because it reinforces emotive heightening the repeated meaning (17).  Semantic repetition is reduced by substitution and ellipsis (Ibid, 198). Asyntactic repetition contains a purely rhetorical value (Ibid, 199).

2.Foregrounding in Rudyard Kipling and W.H. Davies’s Selected Poems

     Foregrounding in Rudyard Kipling and W.H. Davies’s Selected Poems has certain patterns: alienation, figurative speech, repetition, and graphological structure. The central theme of the selected poems for this study revolves around the deterioration of moral and spiritual values in the western world. The two poets employ the technique of animal characters to portray this deteriorated world. These animals’ characters narrate the actions of the stories in the poems. They perform the role of narrators.

The works of the poets Rudyard Kipling and W.H. Davies share the same features presenting animal characters into their poetry through the form of songs. The narration presented through the animals’ voice is an alienation technique. These poems or songs are fecund with various types of foregrounding. All the selected poems depict unusual, strange and aesthetic visual arts.

2.1. Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book

     contains various patterns of foregrounding and exposes animals that are talking about their experience and reflect their sufferings and agonies. These characters are portrayed in the images of snakes, wolves, bear, tiger, mongoose, grasshopper, elephants, horses, mules, camels, and beasts. The unfamiliar feature in these animals is perceived in their names in addition to their own point of view. The snake “Kaa” and the panther “Bagheera” are introduced as narrators who narrate their stories very aesthetically and innovatively. The story is set in India during the British colonial rule. Khalaf claims that the Colonialism as a concept is such a broad one which exceeds nations, countries, and economic to take the form of force that is represented by injustice, inequality and inhumanity (2024:92). The style of third person narration is adopted in order to present the opinions of many characters at the same time.

    Most of the poems are composed in the form of songs and even the poet makes an allusion to the ancient Indian myths as seen in the poem “Shiv and Grasshopper” which is about the god Shiva. The poem "Parade Song of the Camp Animals," reinforces suffering of the animals that are existent in camp animals within groups. In "Darzee's Chant," the Tailorbird’s fledgling sings in honor of Rikki-tikki-tavi who saves him from the two cobras Nag and Nagaina by killing them along with killing the poisonous snake named Karait and saving the human family as well. The Tailorbird’s Darzee never finishes the song because of the humbleness of the mongoose’s Rikki-tikki-tavi who interrupts him. "Road-Song of the Bandar-Log," reveals the lawless and easily distracted the Monkey People who are in general represented by Baloo. On the other hand, “Kaa's Hunting" depicts teaching Mowgli a human-baby; the Law of the Jungle, languages of the animals and the Strangers' Hunting Call, by Baloo and Bagheera. Finally, the song "Hunting-Song of the Seeonee Pack." shows the wolves’ mentality during the hunt and their movement as a pack (Course Hero. "The Jungle Book Study Guide." Course Hero. 4 May 2017. Web. 18 Mar. 2023. https://www.coursehero. com/lit/The-Jungle-Book/) (19).

 “Shiv and Grasshopper” is a lullaby song that has religious and mythical allusions or referentiality in its context. It indicates a folklore text of the story “Toomai of the Elephants” in which the god Shiva distributes creatures to its place besides affording its food as well. However, the goddess Parbati hides the Grasshopper in her bosom in order to deceive her husband god Shiva:

So she tricked him, Shiva the Preserver.

Mahadeo!  Mahadeo!  Turn and see.

Tall are the camels, heavy are the kine,

 But this was Least of Little Things, O little son of mine! (20)

   Mahatma Gandhi’s most famous and outstanding statement around the world providing place for every individual is reflected in these words “The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed”. The speaker in the poem talks about the concept of homoeostasis that requires equality. The idea of equality and balance in the distribution of food and fortune among all creatures is exited in the principles of nature but unfortunately, those with power and authority due their greediness controls the resources and manage everything according to their avarice to cause poverty, inequality, combat, enslavement, endowing very few to those in urgent need as if they are doing favour and being thanked ironically. It is noticed the repetition of “Mahadeo!” that refers to Hindu god Shiv. Also, there is deviation in the content of the lines where Shiva stands for one of the Hindu trinities and he is described as destroyer, which is contradictory with the previous lines as “the Preserver”. Shiva holds the responsibility of creation, protection and transforming the universe as a supreme god. He is represented as blue skinned hermit with animals’ skin clothes and terrified hair. The Hindu trinity is composed of Brahma as the Creator whereas Vishnu is the Preserver, and Shiva represents the Judge (Tola, https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/gods-of-the-hindu-trinity-representation-in-art/) (21). The relation of power strategy is exposed in the gods’ opposing well composed of weakness and power, rich and poor, happy and sad:

   When the dole was ended, laughingly she said,

Master, of a million mouths, is not one unfed?"

Laughing, Shiv made answer, "All have had their part,

Even he, the little one, hidden 'neath thy heart."

From her breast she plucked it, Parbati the thief,

Saw the Least of Little Things gnawed a new-grown leaf!

   Saw and feared and wondered, making prayer to Shiv,

Who hath surely given meat to all that live.  (20)

In spite of Parbati being a goddess, but she is unable to distinguish and appreciate the power of the god Shiva as an essence of Being. This is an excuse for human beings who failed to acquire   through ignoring nature’s lessons and insist on the continuity of the natural disasters and calamities as a result for asking for more and more (“Shiv and Grasshopper”. https://springingtiger.wordpress.com/2016/07/09/shiv-and-the-grasshopper/ ) (22).

 "Parade-Song of the Camp Animals" is categorized into six parts in which each part handles specific type of animals, these animals include elephants, horses, mules, and camels which are used in carrying supplies, dragging cannons, horses of cavalier, mules and camels for guns. The animal characters in this poem express their argument on life through singing; the poem is fecund with literary devices along with using verse and prose as a style (John McGivering and Philip Holberton 2011, N.pag). The most unfamiliar thing is that the animals are portrayed as speakers who recount their advantages and role throughout history. The elephants have favour on the leaders, soldiers and officers during the wars:

ELEPHANTS OF THE GUN TEAMS

 We lent to Alexander the strength of Hercules,

 The wisdom of our foreheads, the cunning of our knees;

 We bowed our necks to service: they ne'er were loosed again, --

 Make way there--way for the ten-foot teams

Of the Forty-Pounder train!  (20)

The scene of elephants recalls the sounds of battlefields and the British Grenadier marching along with the drums beating. Alexander is one of the great ancient conquerors, leaders, generals and kings. The elephants are described metaphorically as “ten-foot teams”, “Forty-Pounder” stands for the big gun firing and “team” is column of animals that are used to carry goods and necessary war logistic materials. This poem implies ideological and political signs within it; Kipling was known to be a representative of Queen in the meeting with Abdul Rahman (Amir of Afghanistan) from March and April 1885. His poetry reflects the colonial tendency and the use of animals in his poetry contains a codified message of endurance and submission of other nations and its people. It is not strange to find lines and even phrases of his poetry echoing the national or military anthems (2). 

The mules manipulate prose style in speaking luck to the sergeant and express their joy in helping the humans in the fight. This section “Screw-Gun” implies the dismantled small guns which are carried on the pack of animals during travelling in the most dangerous mountains passages with no roads. Kipling intends echoing of the fourth line “Oh, it's our delight on a mountain height, with a leg or two to / spare!” signify defiance and bravery of animals in their journey. The following lines connote this challenge and bravery: 

SCREW-GUN MULES

 As me and my companions were scrambling up a hill,

 The path was lost in rolling stones, but we went forward still;

For we can wriggle and climb, my lads, and turn up everywhere,

Oh, it's our delight on a mountain height, with a leg or two to

spare!

Good luck to every sergeant, then, that lets us pick our road;

Bad luck to all the driver-men that cannot pack a load:

For we can wriggle and climb, my lads, and turn up everywhere,

Oh, it's our delight on a mountain height, with a leg or two to

spare! (20)

Antithesis is employed in Kipling’s use of two contradictory phrases as autonomies “Good luck …/ Bad luck …”. It refers to “The Lincolnshire Poacher” or “The Poachers” which are composed of the 10th Regiment of Foot, the Royal Lincolnshire Regiment and 2nd Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment. The animals are depicted as very sure-footed creatures who read the path through their steps and more accurate than man as the mules utter “pick our road”. Moreover, the animals are habituated to store the balance of the packs on their backs and secure it as well. The famous English folklore of “The Lincolnshire Poacher” is heard echoing throughout the poem as the characters are marching zealously along with the use of flute to create a challenging atmosphere (23).

In addition to that, the poem "Darzee's Chant" narrates, through singing, the story of the mongoose called Rikki-tikki who takes care of snakes in the garden when furious fight occurs between mongoose and two snakes in the English family garden in the Indian province called Segowlee. Darzee was crying on its little baby who fell from the tree and was eaten by a snake called Nag. The images of the animal mongoose, snakes, tailobird and its victimized baby are imagined in the mind of the reader or listener visually along with the feeling of disgusting and terror that accompany the action as well. Al – Khashab conceives terror as a great fear which is resulted from the political, religious, or evens the ideological threatening or violence (2023:37).    

Sing to your fledglings again,

Mother, oh lift up your head!

Evil that plagued us is slain,

Death in the garden lies dead.

Terror that hid in the roses is impotent--flung on the dung-hill

  and dead!

Who has delivered us, who?

Tell me his nest and his name.

Rikki, the valiant, the true,

Tikki, with eyeballs of flame,

Rikk-tikki-tikki, the ivory-fanged, the hunter with eyeballs of flame! (20).

   This singing poem contains many symbols including Nag which symbolizes the gift of Hindu god Brahm and at the same time it symbolizes the Independent India. It represents a pure Indian national emblem. It foreshadows India without fear, superstitions, safe of dangers. On the contrary, the mongoose Rikki-tikki represents all the previously mentioned ones. The British attempt to combine the India mythology with ignorance, depicting the native Indian as dark, savage, and culturally degraded. Nag while recounts the story of offering shield and protect to god Brahm a from the heat of sun while eating the tailbird’s baby (Litcharts.com.https://www.litcharts.com/lit/rikki-tikki-tavi/symbols/nag-s-hood).

"Road-Song of the Bandar-Log" tells the story of the Monkey people “Brand-Log” who think in their uniqueness as smart, perfect and wonderful creatures. They talk about their hands and their tails which became like the cupid’s arrows. They claim that jungle people are jealous of them because of their ability to behave and speak like humans. These apes or monkeys act carelessly as they do not abide law and even do not own any ideals to follow (Course Hero  https://www.coursehero.com/lit/The-Jungle-Book/chapter-4-summary/). (19) The poetic lines underlie the impotency of the Monkeys community and meaningless life too. They imply their chantic life. They express nihilistic views of life. Thus, this poetic text performs a philosophical function: it designates the meaninglessness and purposelessness of human life.

Here we sit in a branchy row,

Thinking of beautiful things we know;

Dreaming of deeds that we mean to do,

All complete, in a minute or two—

Something noble and wise and good,

Done by merely wishing we could.

….

Then join our leaping lines that scumfish through the

pines,

That rocket by where, light and high, the wild grape

swings.

By the rubbish in our wake, and the noble noise we

make,

Be sure, be sure, we're going to do some splendid

things! (20)

These monkeys appear filthy and useless creatures. They have nothing to do but scatter the garbage everywhere. They have no leader; therefore, they are introduced without any persistence to do. They do not do anything except play with their tails all the time. Ironically, these animals are proud of their tails and they compare them to the cupid’s arrow (Course Hero.  https://www.coursehero.com/lit/The-Jungle-Book/chapter-4-summary/ ).  (19)

 “Kaa's Hunting" is regarded as the core of The Jungle Book stories for it relies on the events between the giant python Kaa, the panther Bagheera, Baloo and the child Mowgli. The human child Mowgli can speak animals’ languages and uses it during his communication with them. When he was attacked by the monkeys, the snake Kaa dances in a sinuous and hypnotic way. This dance represents the colonialist mockery and avidity. It attracts its victims through such complaisant rituals of happiness into their irresistible deadly fate.

His spots are the joy of the Leopard: his horns are the Buffalo's pride.

Be clean, for the strength of the hunter is known by the gloss of his hide.

If ye find that the Bullock can toss you, or the heavy-browed Sambhur can gore;

Ye need not stop work to inform us: we knew it ten seasons before.

Oppress not the cubs of the stranger, but hail them as Sister and Brother,

For though they are little and fubsy, it may be the Bear is their mother.

"There is none like to me!" says the Cub in the pride of his earliest kill;

But the jungle is large and the Cub he is small. Let him think and be still. (20).

Kipling employs personification in this poem, especially when comparing the “Leopard, “Buffalo”, “Bullock”, “Cub”, “hail them to Sister and Brother”, etc. Mowgli symbolizes the outsider to the world of jungle because he is a human being Kipling presented. Baloo a bear whose speech represents the colonial view towards places which are rich with their natural resources and at the same time expresses lack of intellect and foresight. Bagheera another animal character signifies prisoner who is captured and controlled by humans at the same time. Kaa is ornamented with beautiful colours and polished skin. Kaa and Mowgli are friends after Kaa saved Mowgli from monkeys and she even killed dog.  

The last poem or song entitled "Hunting-Song of the Seeonee Pack" narrates the story of a pack of wolves during haunting deer. The haunting process is accomplished carefully through four steps: watching the deer, informing the wolves, haunting the deer and removing any trace or evidence of their haunting behind. It symbolically portrayed a crime scene. It symbolized a criminal action acted by human creatures:

As the dawn was breaking the Wolf Pack yelled

Once, twice and again!

Feet in the jungle that leave no mark!

Eyes that can see in the dark—the dark!

Tongue—give tongue to it! Hark! O hark!

Once, twice and again! (20)

 This scene demonstrates that the wolves are controlled by a sense of law, arrangement and obedience. The strength of wolves’ lies in their working as one group otherwise they are going to diminish and confront annihilation. The wolves show respect to the haunt’s through consuming it entirely. They as well as Mowlgi adopting the instructions keep the pack functional, healthy and organized in spite of the violence act (Course Hero https://www.coursehero.com/lit/The-Jungle-Book/chapter-2-summary/ ) (19). The repetitions in the previous lines has two types: the repetition of word and the repletion of the whole phrase like the repletion of words “tongue” and hark!” and the repetition of the phrase repletion occurred in the phrase “Once, twice and again!”. 

2.2. W. H. Davies’s Leisure and Foliage:

Various Poems dye and paint his poetry with animal’s images. He entails a flourishing and vividly aesthetic portrait of birds in the nest upon the trees’ boughs in “Sweet Birds, I come”. While in the “Hidden Love”, the speaker is talking about the destiny or the fortune of the bird which is parallel to the fate of the “blighted leaves drooped to the ground” (24). In “Sweet Birds, I come”, the speaker is a bird character who is astonished of his enslavement through directing or asking questions that begins with “why”.

Why should I slave

       For finer dress

Or ornaments;

       Will flowers smile less

For rags than silk?

       Are birds less dumb

For tramp than squire?

      Sweet birds, I come. (24).

On the linguistic level, the poem is disruptive in its word order. The poet placed words randomly in order to impart in the readers mind a sense of disorder or chaos to comprehend the condition of fiasco and meaningless or deteriorated life of the bird in its cage. The bird is created free to enjoy the pleasure of nature and life and not to be encaged to entertain man through looking at it. The whole section contains the verbs that connotatively refer to enslavement of the bird, “slave”, “tramp”, “squire” and “come” at the end of the poem. The sequential order of these four verbs indicates the continuity of the action of enslavement of the innocent birds. On the other hand, the bird is described in perplexity state as unable to spread its wings and enjoys the beauty of nature. The geographical order of these verbs performs a poetic function of the stanza. It manifests the word properties that are implicit in the words themselves. Umberto Eco, the Italian poststructuralist critic and writer confirms that “the reader must actualize not only those semantic properties explicitly manifested in the text, but also those implicit in its lexemes- its words individually considered- and relevant to the work” (Eco: 1979,23).

The bird that now

       On bush and tree,

Near leaves so green

       Looks down to see

Flowers looking up--

      He either sings

In ecstasy

     Or claps his wings.  (24)

In the semantic level, this stanza antithetically refers to two images of nature: the bird and the flowers. It signifies the impossibility of the bird to look down, and the flower’s ability to look up and witness the miserable condition of the imprisoned bird that lost its freedom. The bird and the flowers are metaphorically presented. They are attributed human proprieties. The personal pronouns “He and his” are used figuratively here. Even the musicality of the sounds is characterized by its acuteness and sharpness to reflect a kind of danger and roughness. This effect is fulfilled with the excessive use of (s) sound in words “looks”, “see”, “sings”, and “ecstasy”. It produces an aesthetic function that supports the poeticity of the poem. The signification of the two images of bird and flower and the musical effect of the recurrent sounds in the stanza perform the communicative function of transmitting the ideas of freedom and enslavement in the human realm. They communicate two contradictory ideas.

The ideas of freedom versus enslavement are conveyed through the selection of the words denoting freedom and enslavement: bird, free, captured, and dumb. The deviant use of these words is related to their psychological prominence within the reader’s mind. It motivates the aesthetic communication with him/ her. The metaphorical relationship among the words reinforces the signification of the two contradictory ideas. The unordinary language of the stanza imparts in the readers a sense of the bird’s freedom. It imparts in the readers a sense of the bird’s belongingness to the natural world: 

The bird of Fortune sings when free,

But captured, soon grows dumb; and we,

To hear his fast-declining powers,

Must soon forget that he is ours. (24)

   The bird is seen a bearer of fortune but unluckily he was captured and kept silent and his singing melody was missed because it mused the listeners every day and every morning as well. Then, metaphor is utilized to compare capturing the bird to be “Like blighted leaves drooped to the ground,” (24).  Also, two more birds are compared to “parrot” and “dove” to signify male and female yet, their destiny was death “The parrot, though he mocked the dove, / Died when she died, and proved his love.” (ibid). This unordinary sentence “Died when she died” implies the continuity cycle of love and death for the two lovers or birds in which death is life and renewal of their everlasting and permanent love as it is emphasized in the sentence by the speaker’s words that confirms in “and proved his love”. The figurative use of the words that denote enjoyment expresses the meaning of the renewal of life. The unfamiliar language of these words imparts in the readers a sensation of life of rejoices; it gives the impression of renewal life. The poetic text produced by this unordinary language has its aesthetic function that is acted by the deviant use of linguistic units in the poem:

When merry springtime comes, we hear

How all things into love must stir;

How birds would rather sing than eat,

How joyful sheep would rather bleat:

And daffodils nod heads of gold,

And dance in April's sparkling cold. (Ibid)

A syntactic repetition of phrase is seen in Davies’ “Leisure”. It is seen in the graphological order of the phrase “No time to”. This repeated phrase has literary relevance to the reader’s psychological prominence. Its special order at the beginning of the poetic lines attracts the reader’s reception: to its significance. The repeated phrase emphasizes the lack of time to enjoy the beauty of natural scenes in the countryside in the modern age. It implicates the disappearance of romantic sense in the countryside. Besides, this poem is featured by its unfamiliar linguistic order; it lacks the syntactic structure that every English sentence has. The graphological ordering of the words expresses a fragmented, disruptive language which is devoid of sense. This fragmented, disruptive language connotatively refers to a meaningless world. In this sense, the poetic text that includes the repeated phrase and the unfamiliar language has both a poetic function and a philosophical one.  The repetition of the phrase “No time to” and the fragmented, unordinary language reinforce the poeticity of the poetic text and convey the idea of futility of meaninglessness of life in the modern age.

No time to stand beneath the boughs,

And stare as long as sheep and cows:

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance:

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began?      (24)

These lines show the manipulation of various types of figures of speech along with fragmentation as if the words are unrelated to each other “time, boughs, stare, sheep, cow”. On the other hand, the speaker refers to squirrels which conceal the nuts inside the grass. The nature depiction is a wonderful, mesmeric and enchanted one with stars ornaments the skies during night in a very magical scene. Then, he compares the beauty of nature to the beauty of the woman; he manipulates metaphor and personification at the same time to achieve his goal in such comparison. The speaker attempts to depict an aesthetic lively picture of a naked foot beautiful woman dancing as if she is celebrating but unfortunately all these beautiful pictures are combined to the modern man shortness of time and to the modern man indulge in the destruction of nature and its beauty through the phrase “No time to”. The negation phrase “No time to” is graphologically related to the verbs “stand”, see”, “turn”, “wait”, etc. (26).

On the syntactic level, the last two lines form a reply to the previous question in which the speaker attempts to argue his pessimistic orientation towards nature represented by the woman’s smile. In this way, the poet intends to achieve the cycle structure of the poem in which the ending of the poem is just the beginning. In these lines, he returns to the very early beginning through adopting “exactly the same rhymes give the ending a rhetorical effectiveness…” (CREW 7). In general, the poem’s concluding couplet communicates an intellectual message addressed to all humans as a rejection of the modern life and its negative aspects. They act a philosophical function through the poet’s pessimistic vision of nature in the modern age. They manipulate a nihilistic view of the negative manifestations of modern life.

 

3. 3. Conclusion

   Foregrounding in Rudyard Kipling and W.H. Davies’s selected poems is characterized by certain patterns: alienation, figurative speech, repetition, and graphological structure. They operate in the poetic texts within three levels: the phonetic level, the syntactic level, and the semantic one. The poetic texts perform four functions through the patterns of foregrounding; such as the poetic function, the aesthetic function, the philosophical function, and the ideological function. Certain patterns achieve interrelated functions like the poetic-aesthetic function and the ideological-philosophical function. Foregrounding achieves its perceptual effect on the reader in the poems. It imparts a certain impression or sensation in the reader’s mind. Its patterns support the thematic element of the poems. They also enhance or reinforce the poeticity of these poems through the musicality and figurative meanings produced by the functions of these patterns of foregrounding. Besides, their philosophical function considerably helps to crystalize the reader’s view of the modern age. Conclusively, foregrounding in Kipling and Davies’ selected poems achieves its effect on the reader’s mind and contributes to the literariness or poeticity of the poems through their patterns and the functions produced by their operation in the poetic

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