ABSTRACT
This thesis first summarizes the predominating themes in Langston Hughes’ poetry, and points out that the model of “Black Poetry” Langston Hughes established is a gem of world literature and a very useful way to realize foregrounding in his poems. Then, it discusses the development of foregrounding theory and puts forward that there exists an interactive relationship between foregrounding and theme, that is, foregrounded features make the theme stand out while the theme determines what is really foregrounded. Finally, the thesis employs Yu Xueyong’s pattern of foregrounding to make a thorough study of the poem titled “Death in Yorkville”, one of the representative poems written by Langston Hughes in his later years.
Keywords：Langston Hughes; black poetry; foregrounding; theme
Contents
1. Introduction 1
1.1 Introduction to Langston Hughes 1
1.2 Purpose and significance of the thesis 1
1.3 Orgnization of the thesis 2
2. Literature review 3
2.1 Poetic Art 3
2.2 Themes 3
2.3 Artistic Outlook and Guiding Ideas in Creation 4
2.4 Stylistic Analysis 4
2.5 Comment on previous studies 5
3. Foregrounding theory and realization of foregrounding 6
3.1 Development of foregrounding theory 6
3.2 Realization of foregrounding 7
4. Analysis of Hughes’ Poem “Death in Yorkville” on Foregrounding 10
4.1 Themes of Langston Hughes’ poetry 10
4.2 Background information of “Death in Yorkville” 11
4.3 Deviation in “Death in Yorkville” 12
4.3.1 Punctuation 13
4.3.2 Capitalization 14
4.3.3 Grammatical Deviation 15
4.4 Overregularity 16
4.4.1 Phonological overregularity 16
4.4.2 Repetition 17
4.4.3 Parallelism 19
5. Conclusion 21
Acknowledgements 22
References 23
