CONTENTS: I. THE THEORY OF FOREGROUNDING: THE STATE OF THE ART Formalism/ Structuralism/ Roman Jakobson/ Synthesis/ The Influence of Development in Linguistics/ The Analysis of Foregrounding in Literary. II. DESIGN OF VALIDATION PROCEDURES Statement of the Problem/ Test Instruments Used/ The Hypotheses/ Description of the Sample/ Procedures for Data Collection/ Treatment of the Data/ Design of Study and Procedure for Analysis/ The Pilot Test. III. ANALYSIS OF THE POEMS AND PREDICTIONS MADE Composition ofthe Text-Corpus/ General Method of Text Analysis/ Descriptive Analyses of Texts. IV. THE VALIDITY OF FOREGROUNDING Memorability/ Strikingness/ Importance/ Discussion Value/ Individuality/ Cohesion/ Repeated Exposure/ Sample Variety/ Familiarity with Theory, Literary Training/ Attituteds to Poetry. V. FURTHER REFINEMENTS: DESIGN OF INDUCTIVE PROCEDURES The Regression Analysis/ Evaluative Responses to Literature. VI. FOREGROUNDING IN TEXT AND READER RESPONSE The Analysis of the 'multiple choice' test/ The Analysis of the Semantic Differential Experiments/ The Regression Analysis. VII. GENERAL CONCLUSIONS AND OUTLOOK. BIBLIOGRAPHY.