CRITICAL STYLISTIC STUDY OF MERISM IN EDNA'S "INTERIM" POEM

Abstract

This study examines the use of merism in relation to the analytical tools that influence Jeffries' framework (2010) of critical stylistic analysis in "interim" poem . The poem was authored by Edna St. Vincent Millay and selected as an example for the present study. Several experts investigate merism as a prominent technique in literary scripts. Nevertheless, there is no work that addresses this issue from a critical stylistic standpoint. Critical Stylistics (CS) has emerged as a response to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) due to the latter's lack of adequate analytical tools. While CDA provides overarching frameworks for identifying the impact that texts might have, stylistics offers specific tools for uncovering the aesthetic influence and pleasurable techniques that texts create. The study aims to address the following inquiries: 1. How does the use of merism in the interim poem align with the linguistic tools that influence Jeffries's framework (2010)? 2. Which toolbox does Edna St. Vincent Millay mostly apply to create merism? 3. How much do the language realizations in the chosen poem represent the toolkits available? 4. What are the poet's ideologies towards merism?. Hence, the objective of the present investigation is to identify the language strategies deployed by the poet to depict merism and determine the toolkit that is most and least frequently employed. The additional objective is to recognize the verbal cues that indicate the toolkits and concealed ideologies associated with merism.