Contributing Authors Include I. A. Richards, Richard M. Dorson, C. F. Voegelin And Others.

Over a period of over forty years, Geoffrey Leech has made notable contributions to the field of literary stylistics, using the interplay between linguistic form and literary function as a key to the ‘mystery’ of how a text comes to be invested with artistic potential. In this book, seven earlier papers and articles, read previously only by a restricted audience, have been brought together with four new chapters, the whole volume showing a continuity of approach across a period when all too often literary and linguistic studies have appeared to drift further apart. Leech sets the concept of ‘foregrounding’ (also known as defamiliarization) at the heart of the interplay between form and interpretation. Through practical and insightful examination of how poems, plays and prose works produce special meaning, he counteracts the ‘flight from the text’ that has characterized thinking about language and literature in the last thirty years, when the response of the reader, rather than the characteristics and meaning potential of the text itself, have been given undue prominence. The book provides an enlightening analysis of well-known (as well as less well-known) texts of great writers of the past, including Keats, Shelley, Samuel Johnson, Shaw, Dylan Thomas, and Virginia Woolf.

We are living in a time of rapid radical social change. In New Accents each volume in the series will seek to encourage rather than resist the process of change, to stretch rather than reinforce the boundaries that currently define literature and its academic study. This book offers a new focus on various connected topics in the treatment of style as a human phenomenon, and especially the style of literary artefacts. The subject of style is of intense and continuing interest, and the bibliography in the field of literary style alone is enormous. The essays that follow are therefore an attempt to contribute to the literature of a continuing study.

Inspired by Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose, Mick Short's classic introduction to stylistics, Language and Style represents the state-of-the-art in literary stylistics and encompasses the full breadth of current research in the discipline. Written by leading scholars in the field, chapters cover a variety of methodological and analytical approaches, from traditional qualitative analysis to more recent developments in cognitive and corpus stylistics. Addressing the three, key literary genres of poetry, drama and narrative, Language and Style is divided into carefully balanced sections. Based on original research, each chapter demonstrates a particular analytic technique and explains how this might be applied to a text from one of the literary genres. Framed by helpful introductory material covering the foundational principles of stylistics, the chapters act as practical exemplars of how to carry out stylistic analysis. Comprehensive and engaging, this invaluable resource is essential reading for anyone interested in stylistics.

An introduction to the study of style in language, offering practical advice on how to stylistically analyse texts.

Patterns in Languageaddresses the real needs of students in modular systems who may not have a background either in traditional literature or in linguistic theory. This student-friendly textbook uses the principles of linguistic analysis to investigate the aesthetic use of language in literary (and non-literary) texts. Written in straightforward, accessible language with imaginative examples and humour, it shows how linguistic knowledge can enhance and enrich the analysis of texts. The authors borrow from traditional stylistics but focus primarily on the recurring linguistic patterns which are used by writers of poetry, fiction and drama. Textual examples include canonical literature and modern literary texts, as well as references to popular fiction, television and the language of advertising. Tasks, including textual analysis, are provided at every stage, and sample answers are also included.