Trauma of Kashmir in the Confluence of Form and Content: A Literary Study of Selected Poems from The Country Without a Post Office

Abstract

The research attempts to unearth the enunciation of meaning in the coalescence of form and content, and moreover, it investigates how the chaos has aptly been depicted in the amalgamation of different forms of poetry: villanelle, canzone and sestina. This infusion of form and content entails literary stylistics as its theoretical framework. Literary stylistics primarily deals with, on the one hand, surface level meaning and on the other hand, it deals with the underlying meaning of the literary text. Following the model suggested by Carter (1979), the selected poems are examined on four major levels as i) grammatical ii) Lexico-semantic, iii) form and iv) context. This study finds that the poetic forms, having been inextricably interwoven with the content, display traumatized characters reeling while grappling with the unceasing calamities. This amalgamation of different forms has aptly served the purpose of embodying the message of ominous happenings that have brought about the transformation of a paradise into a living picture of hell.