From Expression to Simulation: Hyperreality and Typographic Performativity in E.E. Cummings’s Poetry

Abstract

This study examines the typographic performativity in e.e. cummings’s poetry, where visual linguistic display produces a simulated reality, reflective of a self-referential sign system. The study aims to demonstrate that modern language has evolved from a medium of expression to a simulated sign system, where representation does not imitate external reality rather creates an aesthetically and linguistically controlled image. The objective of the study is to examine how visual arrangement and grammatical deviations in e.e. cummings’s selected poems function as self-referential linguistic signs that supplant reality through its modified copy thus produces a hyperreal effect. By using Jean Baudrillard’s book, Simulacra and Simulation, as a theoretical framework, this study argues that in the post-war period, the relationship between reality and language has shifted dynamically from experimental and experiential to curated and simulative. Thus, the research gap lies in moving beyond the modernist critique of stable language to the postmodern linguistic construction of hyperreal. This study is significant for understanding the role of verbal signs and codes in the contemporary world that is increasingly shaped by the regimes of simulations such as artificial intelligence, cybernetic systems and digital humanities.