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Chapter 2. Chrysanthemums for Bill

On Lawrentian style and stylistics
  • Peter Stockwell
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Style, Rhetoric and Creativity in Language
This chapter is in the book Style, Rhetoric and Creativity in Language

Abstract

This chapter on a short story by D. H. Lawrence revisits a key stylistic account of the text by Bill Nash, which was criticised both specifically and as a general representation of stylistic practice. The chapter addresses those criticisms, differentiating those that are misplaced from those that might have had a reasonable basis. It claims that many of these older objections can be addressed by more recent innovations in the discipline, and in fact that Nash prefigured some later literary linguistics, though he lacked the tools to develop his solutions at the time. In this analysis, these innovations are drawn from the broadening of stylistics to encompass matters that would previously have been regarded as extra-linguistic, in the form of a cognitive poetics.

Abstract

This chapter on a short story by D. H. Lawrence revisits a key stylistic account of the text by Bill Nash, which was criticised both specifically and as a general representation of stylistic practice. The chapter addresses those criticisms, differentiating those that are misplaced from those that might have had a reasonable basis. It claims that many of these older objections can be addressed by more recent innovations in the discipline, and in fact that Nash prefigured some later literary linguistics, though he lacked the tools to develop his solutions at the time. In this analysis, these innovations are drawn from the broadening of stylistics to encompass matters that would previously have been regarded as extra-linguistic, in the form of a cognitive poetics.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents vii
  3. Acknowledgements ix
  4. Introduction 1
  5. An indicative list of publications by Walter Nash 9
  6. Chapter 1. “Warmth of thought” in Walter Nash’s prose and verse 11
  7. Chapter 2. Chrysanthemums for Bill 37
  8. Chapter 3. The doubling of design in Walter Nash’s Rhetoric 57
  9. Chapter 4. Riddling: The dominant rhetorical device in W. H. Auden’s “The Wanderer” 77
  10. Chapter 5. “My Shakespeare, rise” 85
  11. Chapter 6. Discourse presentation and point of view in “Cheating at Canasta” by William Trevor 101
  12. Chapter 7. Doing and teaching 113
  13. Chapter 8. Fact, fiction and French flights of fancy 127
  14. Chapter 9. Common Language 149
  15. Chapter 10. “Americans don’t do Irony” 171
  16. POEM
  17. Defunct Address 193
  18. Name index 195
  19. Subject index 199
https://doi.org/10.1075/lal.34.04sto

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents vii
  3. Acknowledgements ix
  4. Introduction 1
  5. An indicative list of publications by Walter Nash 9
  6. Chapter 1. “Warmth of thought” in Walter Nash’s prose and verse 11
  7. Chapter 2. Chrysanthemums for Bill 37
  8. Chapter 3. The doubling of design in Walter Nash’s Rhetoric 57
  9. Chapter 4. Riddling: The dominant rhetorical device in W. H. Auden’s “The Wanderer” 77
  10. Chapter 5. “My Shakespeare, rise” 85
  11. Chapter 6. Discourse presentation and point of view in “Cheating at Canasta” by William Trevor 101
  12. Chapter 7. Doing and teaching 113
  13. Chapter 8. Fact, fiction and French flights of fancy 127
  14. Chapter 9. Common Language 149
  15. Chapter 10. “Americans don’t do Irony” 171
  16. POEM
  17. Defunct Address 193
  18. Name index 195
  19. Subject index 199
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