Holding emotional and linguistic rulers up to the poetry of Robert Frost.
The words in a large and representative sample of Robert Frost's poetry were compared with information in several data bases which provided estimates of the poetry's pleasantness, arousal, emotionality, imagery, and linguistic complexity. Findings confirmed that Frost's poetry was linguistically simple and emotionally restrained in comparison to that of his cohort. They also highlighted the increasing variability in Frost's poetry across time and its decreasing imagery. Frost's poetry was more restrained than that of his male cohort but similar to the poetry of his female cohort in its linguistic simplicity. Frost's acknowledged death poems were in fact quite pleasant and passive in emotional tone.
Whissell
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Psychology Department, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.
D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology; D004644:Emotions; D005197:Famous Persons; D005260:Female; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D011037:Poetry as Topic / Q000266:history