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LITERARY STYLISTICS

DEFINITION:

Since the 1950s the term stylistics has been applied to critical
literary stylistics as the objective analyses or scientific procedures which
undertake to replace the standard analysis of texts with an objective
analysis of the style of literary texts. Literary stylistics is, therefore, the
objective analyses of the style of literary texts. It originates from the
concerns of Formalists and Structuralists who insist on the formal
properties of literary texts. Style is understood by the distinction between
what is said and how it is said or between the content and the form of a
text. The content is often denoted as information, message, and
propositional meaning, while the style is defined as variations in the
presentation of the information that serve to alter its aesthetic quality or
the reader’s emotional response.

Often, the stylistic process is expanded to include the concepts of

modern linguistics used to identify the stylistic features or “formal
properties” which distinguish a particular work, an author, a literary
tradition, or an era. These features may be phonological (patterns of
speech sounds, and rime/rhyme) or syntactic (type of sentence
structures). Sometimes the stylistic enterprise stops with the qualitative
or quantitative determination, or “finger printing” of the style of a single
text or class of texts. Often however the analyst tries also to relate
distinctive stylistic features to traits in an author’s psyche’s or to an
author’s ways of perceiving the world and organizing experience.

In the mid 1960s, proponents greatly expanded the conception and

scope of their inquiry by defining stylistics as “the study of the use of
language as a medium of literary expression”. By this definition, stylistics
is expanded so as to incorporate, most of the concerns of both traditional
literary criticism and traditional rhetoric; it’s distinction from earlier
pursuits is that it insists on the need to be objective by focusing on the
text itself and by setting out to discover the “Rules” governing the
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process by which linguistic elements and patterns in a text accomplish

their meaning and literary effects.

POINT OF VIEW

Refers to the way a story gets told -- the mode (or modes) established by
the author by means of which the reader is presented the characters,
dialogue, action, setting, and events which constitute the narrative in
fiction. The question of point of view has always been a practical concern
for novelists, and there have been several observations on the matter in
critical writing since the emergence of the modern novel in the 18 th
century.

Authors have developed many different ways to present a story

and many single works exhibits a diversity of methods. The most
prominent are:

1. THIRD PERSON’S POINT OF VIEW

a. THE OMNISCIENT POINT OF VIEW: This is a common term for the

many and varied works of fiction written in accord with the convention
that the narrator knows everything that needs to be known about the
agents, actions and events, and has privileged access to the character’s
thoughts, feelings, and motives. The narrator is free to move at will in
time and place, to shift from character to character, and to report their
speech, doings, and states of consciousness.

Within this mode, the “intrusive narrator” is one who not only
reports, but also comments on and evaluates the actions and motives of
the characters, and sometimes expresses personal views about human
life in general. Most works are written with the assumption that the
omniscient narrator’s reports and judgments are taken as “authoritative”
by the reader and so serve to establish what counts as the true facts and
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values within the fictional world. This is the fashion in which many of the
great novelists have written, Henry Fielding, Jane Austen, Charles
Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Leo Tolstoy.

On the other hand the omniscient narrator may chose to be “un-

intrusive” (impersonal or objective) whereby the narrator for the most part
describes, reports of shows the action in dramatic scenes without
introducing his own comments or judgments. More radical instances of
un-intrusive narrator occur when the narrator gives up the privilege of
access to inner feelings and motives. Ernest Hemingway’s “A Clean Well
Lighted Place” is a good example.

b. THE LIMITED OMNISCIENT POINT OF VIEW: The (narrator) tells the

story in the third person, but stays inside the confines of what is
perceived, thought, remembered, and felt by a single character/or at
most by very few characters) within the story. Henry James described
such a selected character as his “focus”, or “mirror” or “center of
consciousness”. In works that employ this narrative mode, all the events
and actions are represented as they unfold before, and filter to the
reader through the particular perceptions, awareness, and responses of
only one character. Later writers developed this into the “Stream-of-
Consciousness” technique.

2. FIRST PERSON’S POINT OF VIEW:

This mode, limits the matter of the narrative to what the 1 st person
narrator knows, experiences, infers, or can find out by talking to other
characters. The author sort of disappears into one character who tells
the story in the first person. This character can be a minor or major
character, a protagonist or observer, and it makes considerable
difference whether the protagonist tells the story or someone else tells
it.
The first person point of view shares the advantages and
limitations of the limited omniscient point of view. It offers, sometimes,
an immediacy and reality, since we get the story from a participant,
the author as intermediary being eliminated. It offers no opportunity
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however for direct interpretation by the author, and there is the

constant danger that the narrator may be made to transcend his
knowledge of powers.

3. THE OBJECTIVE POINT OF VIEW: the narrator disappears into a

kind of roving camera. This camera goes everywhere but can only
record what is seen and heard. It cannot comment, interpret, or
enter into a character’s mind. Also called the Dramatic Point of
View, readers are like spectators in the theatre watching a play.
They see what the characters say and do but must infer what they
think or feel and what they are like. Authors are not there to
explain. Most stories written in this mode are essentially in the form
of dialogue. See Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills like white elephants”.

DEMONSTRATIONS

The omniscient point of view

Weary in every limb, the ant tugged over the snow a piece of corn he
had stored up last summer. It would taste mighty good at dinner
tonight.
A grasshopper, cold and hungry, looked on. Finally he could bear it
no longer. “Please, friend ant, may I have a bite?”
“What were you doing last summer?” Asked the ant. He looked the
grasshopper up and down. He knew its kind.
“I sang from dawn till dark”, replied the grasshopper, happily unaware
of what was coming next.
“Well”, said the ant, hardly bothering to conceal his contempt, “Since
you sang all summer, you can dance all winter”.
HE WHO IDLES WHEN HE’S YOUNG WILL HAVE NOTHING WHEN
HE IS OLD

The Limited Omniscient Point of View

Weary in every limb, the ant tugged over the snow a piece of corn he
had stored up last summer. It would taste mighty good at dinner tonight.
It was then that he noticed the grasshopper, looking cold and pinched.
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“Please, friend ant, may I have a bite of your corn?” asked the
grasshopper.

He looked the grasshopper up and down. “What were you doing all last
summer?” he asked. He knew its kind.

“I sang from dawn till dark”, replied the grasshopper.

“Well,” said the ant, hardly bothering to conceal his contempt, “since you
sang all summer, you can dance all winter”.

The First Person Point of View

Cold and weary, I watched the ant tugging over the snow a piece of corn
he had stored up last summer. My feelers twitched, I was conscious of a
tic in my left leg. Finally I could bear no longer. “Please, friend ant”, I
asked, “may I have a bite of corn?”

He looked me up and down. “What were you doing all last summer?” he
asked, rather too smugly it seemed to me.

“I sang from dawn till dark”, I said innocently, remembering the happy
times.

“Well”, he said with a piggish sneer, “since you sang all summer, you can
dance all winter”.

PLOT IN FICTION

Plot is the sequence of incidents or events of which a story is composed.

When recounted by itself, it bears about the same relationship to a story
that a map does to a journey. It may include what a character says or
thinks, as well as what he does, but it leaves out description and analysis
and concentrates ordinarily on major happenings.

The excitement and meaningfulness of a story arises from some

sort of CONFLICT -- a clash of actions, ideas, desires, or wills. The main
character may be pitted against some other person or group of persons
(man against man); he may be in conflict with some external force –
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physical nature, society, or “fate” (man against environment); or he may

be in conflict with some element in his own nature (man against himself).
The conflict may be physical, mental, moral, and emotional or a
compound of all. The central character in the conflict, whether he is a
sympathetic or unsympathetic person is referred to as the
PROTAGONIST, the forces arrayed against him, whether people, things,
conventions, or traits of his own character, are the ANTAGONIST. In
some stories the conflict is clear-cut and easily identifiable. In others it is
multiple, various and subtle.

SUSPENSE is another important element in a story. It makes

readers eager to know what is coming up next; it impels them to read on.
Suspense is greatest when the reader’s curiosity is combined with
anxiety about the fate of some sympathetic character. The forms of
suspense range from crude to subtle and may concern not only actions
but psychological considerations and moral issues. Two common
devices of achieving suspense are to introduce an element of “mystery” –
an unusual set of circumstances for which the readers crave an
explanation or to place the protagonist in a DILEMMA –a position in
which he or she must choose between two courses of action, both
undesirable. However, suspense should be used in a way that keeps the
reader interested in the story and not by withholding vital information.

Connected closely to the element of suspense in a story is the

element of SURPRISE. If we know ahead of time exactly what is going to
happen in a story and why, there can be no suspense; as long as we do
not know, whatever happens comes with an element of surprise. Good
writers bring surprise by being true to the reality of the story and by
making sure that it enhances the meaning of the story. If the surprise is
brought about as a result of an improbable coincidence or an unlikely
series of coincidences, it weakens the strength of the story.

ARTISTIC UNITY is essential to a good plot. There must be

nothing in the story that is irrelevant, that does not contribute to the total
meaning, nothing that is there only for its own sake. Good writers
exercise vigorous selection: they include nothing that does not advance
the central intention of the story. The incidents and episodes should be
placed in the most effective order, which is not necessarily the
chronological order, and should make a logical progression.
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CHANCE cannot be barred from fiction, anymore than it can be barred

from life. Chance involves the occurrence of an event that has no
apparent cause in antecedent events or in the predisposition of
character. Closely connected to chance is COINCIDENCE: the chance
occurrence of two events having a peculiar correspondence. Writers use
chance and coincidence to help propel the plot and pass across the
message. However, an author should not use an improbable chance to
affect a resolution to a story.

Plot is important in fiction, for what it reveals. The analysis of a

story through its central conflict is likely to be especially fruitful for it
rapidly takes us to what is truly at issue in the story. Plot can however,
never yield meaning by itself. In any good story, plot is inextricably linked
to character and total meaning.

CHARACTER

Fiction offers an unparalleled opportunity to observe human nature in all

its complexity and multiplicity. It enables us to know and understand
people as we might not do in real life. In most respects we can know
fictional characters even better than we know real people. This is so
because we are enabled to observe them in situations that are always
significant and that serve to bring forth their character as the ordinary
situations in life only occasionally do. We can view their lives in a way
that is impossible for us in ordinary life. Authors can tell us exactly what
happens to a character and the mental processes within his mind. In real
life we can only guess the character of people we meet, we cannot
penetrate their minds. We can know people in fiction more thoroughly
then we know them in real life, and by knowing fictional characters we
can understand people in real life better than we otherwise could. What
is more, fictional characters help us know even ourselves.
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Authors may present their characters DIRECTLY OR

INDIRECTLY. In DIRECT PRESENTATION, they tell us straight out, by
exposition or analysis, what the characters are like or have someone in
the story tell us what they are like. In INDIRECT PRESENTATION the
authors show us the characters in action and we infer what they are like
from what they think or say or do.

Characters are either “flat” or “round”. Flat characters are

characterized by one or two traits; they can be summed up in a
sentence. Round characters are complex and many-sided; they might
require an essay for full analysis. A good writer chooses the kind of
characters that would satisfy his/her purpose. Most minor characters are
flat characters, since they only help in propelling the story.

Another important kind of character is the “Foil Character”: a minor

character whose situation or actions parallel those of a major character,
and thus by contrast sets or illuminates the major character; most often
the contrast is complementary to the major character.

A special kind of Flat Character is the “Stock Character” – the

stereotyped figure who has occurred so often in fiction that his nature is
immediately known. However, this type features mostly in inferior,
popular fiction.

All fictional characters may be classified as static or developing.

The static character is the same sort of person at the end of the story as
at the beginning. The developing character undergoes a permanent
change in some aspect of his personality or outlook. The change may be
a large or a small one, for better or for worse.

SYMBOL AND IRONY

Most writers compress their stories, they say as much as possible as

briefly as possible. Good writers achieve compression by exercising rigid
selectivity. They choose the details and incidents that contribute most to
the meaning they require. As far as they can, they choose details that
are multi-valued; that serve a variety of purposes at once. Writers employ
symbol and irony as technique for getting compression in their work.
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Both of them increase the explosive force of stories, and both demand
awareness and maturity on the part of the reader.

A Literary Symbol is something that means more than what it is. It

can be an object, a person, a situation, an action or some other item that
has a literal meaning in the story but suggests or represents other
meanings as well. A very simple illustration can be found in name
symbolism. In stories authors sometimes choose names for their
characters that serve not only to label them but also to suggest
something about them.

More important than name symbolism is the symbolic use of

objects and actions. In some stories these symbols will fit so naturally
into the literal context that their symbolic value will not at first be apparent
except to a skillful reader. In other stories – usually stories with less
realistic surface – they will be so central and so obvious that they will
demand symbolical interpretation if the story is to yield meaning. In the
first kind of story the symbols reinforce and add to the meaning. In the
second kind they carry meaning.

The ability to interpret symbols is mandatory for a full

understanding of literature. Beginning readers should be alert for
symbolical meanings but should observe the following cautions:

1. The story itself must furnish the clue that a detail is to be taken
symbolically. Most symbols are given greater emphasis by writers.
Symbols nearly always signal their existence by emphasis,
repetition and position. In the absence of such signals, we should
be reluctant to identify an idea as symbolical.
2. The meaning of a literary symbol must be established and
supported by the entire context of the story. The symbol has its
meaning in the story, not outside it.
3. To be called a symbol, an item must suggest meaning different in
kind from its literal meaning: a symbol is something more
representative of a class or type.
4. A symbol may have more than one meaning. It may suggest a
cluster of meaning. At its most effective a symbol is like a many-
faceted jewel; it flashes different colors when turned to the light.
This is not to say that it can mean anything we want it to: the area
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of possible meanings is always controlled by the context.

Nevertheless, this possibility of complex meaning, plus
concreteness and emotional power, gives the symbol its peculiar
compressive value.

IRONY
Irony is a term with a range of meanings, all of them involving
some sort of discrepancy or incongruity. It is a contrast in which
one term of the contrast in some way mocks the other term. It is
not to be confused with sarcasm, however, which is language
designed to cause pain. The writer uses irony to suggest the
complexity of experience, to furnish indirectly an evaluation of the
material, and at the same time to achieve compression. Six kinds
of irony may be distinguished:

1. VERBAL IRONY: This is the simplest and, for the writer, the least
important kind. It is a figure of speech in which the opposite is said
from what is intended. The discrepancy is between what said is
and what is meant. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice opens: “It is
a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession
of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” Part of the ironic
implication is that a single woman is in want of a rich husband.
2. DRAMATIC IRONY: Here, the contrast is between what the
character says and what the reader knows to be true. It involves a
situation in a play or narrative in which the audience share with the
author knowledge of present or future circumstances of which a
character is ignorant; in that situation, the character unknowingly
acts in a way we recognize to be grossly inappropriate to the actual
circumstances, or expects the opposite of what we know fate holds
in store. Greek tragedies made frequent use of this device.
Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex is a very complex instance of dramatic
irony, for the King engages in a hunt for the incestuous father
murderer who has brought a plague upon Thebes. The subject of
the hunt turns out in a dramatic way to be the king himself.
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3. IRONY OF SITUATION: This is usually the most important kind for

the storywriter. It involves the discrepancy is between appearance
and reality, or between expectation and fulfillment, or between
what is and what would seem appropriate.

4. COSMIC IRONY (IRONY OF FATE): this kind of irony is attributed

to literary works in which a deity, or fate, is represented as though
deliberately manipulating events so as to lead the protagonist to
false hopes, only to frustrate and mock them. In Thomas Hardy’s
The Mayor of Casterbridge, Farfrae comes just in time to save
Henchard from calamity but soon outsmarts and replaces him as
the mayor.

5. SOCRATIC IRONY: this form takes its name from the fact that, as
he is represented in Plato’s Dialogues 4 th century BC, the Greek
philosopher Socrates usually dissembles by assuming a pose of
ignorance, an eagerness to be instructed, and a modest readiness
to entertain opinion opposed to others; although these, upon his
continued questioning, always turn out to be ill-grounded or to lead
to absurd conclusions. Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn is a good example of sustained Socratic irony.

In all these examples, irony enables the author to gain power with
economy. Like symbolism, irony makes it possible to suggest meanings
without stating them. Simply by juxtaposing two discordant facts in the
right situation, the writer can start a current of meaning flowing between
them as between the two poles of an electric battery. Irony helps the
writer to present things for us to interpret, rather than describing them.
The ironic contrast generates meaning.

Revision Questions

1. In any four stories of your choice, show the differences between flat
and round characters.
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2. Discuss the concept of theme in any short story of your choice,

showing how the rest of the events tie in with the theme.

3. In your opinion, which point of view is likely to present a more

objective record of human experience?

4. Discuss the underlying symbol in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young

Goodman Brown” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” What parallels can you
draw between the stories?

5. How does the element of mystery heighten our sense of suspense and
surprise in Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”?

6. Irony is an effective tool of compression available to the writer.

Discuss the effectiveness of irony in any two works you have read.

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

This is a conspicuous departure from what users of a language

understand as the standard meaning of words, or, the standard order of
words, in order to achieve some special meaning or effect. Figures are
described as primarily poetic, but they are integral to the functioning of
language and indispensable to all modes of discourse. Figurative
language has been divided into two classes:

1. Figures of Thought or Tropes (meaning “turns” or “conversions”), in

which words or phrases are used in a way that effects a conspicuous
change in what we take to be the standard meaning. The standard,
meaning, as opposed to it’s meaning in the figurative use, is called the
literal meaning. Some of the most common tropes are: simile, metaphor,
synecdoche, personification etc.

i. The simile is a comparison between two distinctly different things

explicitly indicated by the word “like” or “as” e.g. “O my love’s like a red,
red rose”. Another example is from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime
of the Ancient Mariner” which specifies the feature “green” in which
icebergs are similar to emerald:

And ice, mast high, came floating by,

As green as emerald.
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ii. In a Metaphor, a word or expression that in the literal usage denotes

one kind of thing is applied to a distinctly different kind of thing, without
asserting a comparison. For example, if Burn had said “O my love is a
red, red rose” he would have uttered, technically speaking, a metaphor
not a simile. Below is a more complex metaphor is which Stephen
Spender describes the eye as it, perceives the landscape:

Eye, gazelle, delicate wanderer,

Drinker of horizon’s fluid line.

It should be noted that in these examples we can distinguish two

elements, the metaphorical term and the subject to which it is applied. In
a widely adopted usage, I.A Richards introduced the name “tenor” for the
subject (“my love”, “eye” in the example above) and the name “vehicle”
for the metaphorical term itself (“rose” for Burns, “gazelle”, wanderer” and
“drinker” for Spender).

In an implicit metaphor, the tenor is not itself specified, but only

implied. If one were to say while discussing someone’s death “That reed
was too frail to survive the storm of its sorrow”, the situational and verbal
context of the term “reed” indicates that it is the vehicle for an implicit
tenor, a human being, while the “storm” is the vehicle for an aspect of a
specified tenor, “sorrows”.

A DEAD METAPHOR: is one which, like “the leg of a table” or “the

heart of the matter”, has been used so long and become so common that
its users have ceased to be aware of the discrepancy between vehicle
and tenor.

Some tropes, sometimes classified as species of metaphors, have

their own names.

A Metonymy (Greek for “change of name”): In this case, the literal term
for one thing is applied to another with which it has become closely
associated because of a recurrent relationship in common experience.
Thus “the crown” or “the scepter” can be used to stand for the King, “the
collar” can be used to stand for the clergy, “the bench” can be used to
stand for the legal profession. “Shakespeare” can signify all
Shakespeare works e. g “I have read all of Shakespeare”.
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A Synecdoche (Greek word for “taking together”): here a part of

something is used to signify the whole, or the whole can be used to
signify a part. We use the expression “ten hands” to denote ten laborers
or ten work men, “a hundred sails” to denote a hundred ships. The
“beard” is used to signify males and “breasts” to signify females.

Personification: Another figure related to metaphor is personification, in

which either an inanimate object or in abstract concept is spoken of as
though it were endowed with life or with human attributes or feelings. A
famous example is in John Milton’s “Paradise Lost”, in which as Adam bit
into the fatal apple:

“Sky lowered, and muttering thunder, some sad drops

Wept at completing of the mortal sin”

2. Figures of Speech, or Rhetorical Figures, or Schemes (from the Greek

word “form”) in which the departure from standard usage is not primarily
in the meaning of the word but in the order or syntactical pattern of the
words. Figures of speech, rhetorical figures, or schemes consist of the
departure from what is experienced by competent users to be the
standard, or “literal”, use of language mainly in the arrangement of their
words to achieve special effects, and not, like metaphors and tropes, by
a radical change in the meaning of words themselves.

An Apostrophe is a direct and explicit address either to an absent

person or to an abstract or non-human entity. Often the effect is of high
formality, or else a sudden emotional impetus. Many odes are constituted
throughout in the mode of such an address to a listener who is not
literally able to listen. John Keats begins his “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
thus: “Thou still unravish’d bride quietness”- and directs the entirety of
the poem to the Urn and to figures represented on it.

Rhetorical questions consists of sentences in the grammatical form

of a question which are not asked in order to request information or to
invite a reply, but to achieve a greater expressive form then a direct
assertion. If we say: “isn’t it a shame” it functions as a more forceful
alternative to the assertion “It’s or shame”. The figure is always used in
persuasive discourse, and tends to impart an oratorical tone to an
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utterance, whether prose or verse. In Alexander Pope’s poem “The Rape

of Lock”, Thalestris asks Belinda.

Gods! Shall the ravisher display your hair,

While the fobs envy, and ladies stare!

She does not stay to answer, which she obviously thinks should be “NO!”

CHIASMUS: It is a pattern of crisscrossing a syntactic structure, whether

a noun or an adjective like in the example: “Empty his bottle, and his
girlfriend gone”, or of a reversal of normal syntax with similar effect, e.g.
A fop her passion, and her prize, a sot” reinforced by assonance.

In Yeats’ “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” (1919), the

Chiasmus consists in a reversal of the position of an entire phrase:

The years to come seemed a waste of breath,

A waste of breath the years behind

Shelley in his “Defense of Poetry” (1821) uses chiasmus in prose,

“Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest
and best minds”.

Anadiplosis: this is the repetition of the terminal word in a clause as the

start of the next one. For example:

Pleasure might cause her read; reading might cause her know;

Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain.

Anaphora: is the repetition of a word or phrase at the opening of

successive clauses e.g. “The Lord sitteth above the water floods. The
Lord remaineth King forever. The Lord shall give strength to his people.
The Lord shall give his people the blessing of peace”.

PARADOX: A paradox is a statement that seems on its face to be

logically contradictory or absurd, yet turns out to be interpretable in a way
that makes good sense. An example is the conclusion to John Donne’s
sonnet “Death, Be Not Proud”:
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One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

The paradox is used occasionally by almost all poets, but was a

persistent and central device in 17th metaphysical poetry.

If a paradoxical utterance conjoins two terms that in ordinary usage

are contraries it is called an Oxymoron. An example is Alfred Lord
Tennyson’s “O Death in Life, the days that are no more”. Statements like
“pleasing pains”, “I burn and freeze”, “loving hate” are all Oxymoron. It is
also a frequent figure in devotional prose and religious poetry as a way
of expressing the Christian mysteries, which transcend human sense and
logic so John Milton describes the appearance of God, in “Paradise
Lost”.

Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear

ALLUSION: is a passing reference, without explicit identification, to a

religious, literary or historical person, place or event, or another literary
work or passage. In W. B. Yeats’ “No second Troy”, the poet makes
allusion to the historical city of Troy by comparing Maude Gonne to
Helen of Troy:

Why, what could she have done, being what she is?

Was there another Troy for her to burn?

Most allusions serve to illustrate or expand upon a subject, but

some are used in order to undercut it ironically by the discrepancy
between the subject and the allusion. In T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”,
the speaker describes a woman at her modern dressing table: “The chair
she sat in, like a burnished throne, glowed on the marble ….” The ironic
allusion, achieved by reechoing Shakespeare’s phrasing, is to
Cleopatra’s magnificent barge in Anthony and Cleopatra:

The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne. Burn’d on the water.
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Enkvist, Nils Erik. Linguistic Stylistics. The Hague: Mouton, 1973.
Epstein, E. L. Language and Style. London: Methuen, 1978.
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Fowler, Roger. Linguistic Criticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
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Freeman, D. C. Essays in Modern Stylistics. London: Methuen, 1981.
Leech, Geoffrey, and Mick Short. Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English
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