Repetition: A Mirror Of Trauma In The Select Poems Of Maya Angelou

Abstract

Language and style represent the poet’s usage of words: his/her choice of words, structure of the sentence and its arrangement, and rhetorical devices to develop an atmosphere, images and meaning in a text. Language refers to the unique way of writing of a poet and style describes how an author outpours the ideas, events and objects. This study analyses the language and style in Angelou’s select poems and focuses on the literary device “Repetition” in Angelou’s poems and reveals how it helps the researcher to bring out Angelou’s inner turmoil. In this study, the researcher has chosen ten poems of Maya Angelou. The selected poems are They Went Home, No Loser, No Weeper, When I Think About Myself, The Mothering Blackness, In a Time, Letter to an Aspiring Junkie, Pickin Em Up and Laying Em Down, Poor Girl, Alone, and Elegy. The researcher analyzes the literary devices and narrative styles of the poems to unveil the elements of trauma in the poems of Maya Angelou. The research design of this study is descriptive qualitative method.