"Buffalo Bill's" by E E Cummings: A Stylistic Approach

This paper examines e e cummings’ poem “Buffalo Bill’s” against the backdrop of modern stylistics. The analysis begins with a brief outline of stylistics and the various types of stylistics, and then goes on to explore the linguistic nuances the poet has stylistically created in the said poem. The type of stylistics employed here combines the critical insights tempered by modern and postmodern critical approaches and the linguistic evidences discovered in the text, in order to enhance the appreciation of the poem, more with an eye on the special uses of the language by the poet, subtly embedded in the poem. It shows how the graphological, phonological, and syntactic foregroundings reflect the very nature and character of the American legendary personality Buffalo Bill. This poem is a creative artifact embodying his thrilling adventures through the different phases of his life and career. The linguistic manipulator, cummings, has consciously worked such devices into the poem so that the poem is structurally the story of a complete life, the life of Bill.