Contemporary Stylistics

Provides a clear introduction to the key terms and frameworks in cognitive poetics and stylistics

How do texts create meaning? How do we arrive at our textual interpretations? Why do we become ‘lost in a book’ or feel deep emotion in response to a literary character? Through close attention to the way texts are written and the language they use, as well as what we know about the human mind, Contemporary Stylistics provides readers with the tools to begin answering these questions. In doing so, it introduces the theoretical principles and practical frameworks of stylistics and cognitive poetics, supplying the practical skills to analyse your own responses to literary texts. Including innovative activities for students and with case studies of work by writers like Dylan Thomas, EL James and Kazuo Ishiguro, this is a detailed analysis of contemporary stylistics that offers both historical contextualization of the discipline and points towards its possible future direction.

• Introduces the key terms for each contemporary stylistic framework
• Outlines the foundations of the discipline and addresses cutting-edge developments such as reader response research, corpus methods, multimodality and reader emotion
• Contains practical analyses, innovative exercises for students, and further reading suggestions in each chapter
• Addresses the recent attention to multimodal and digital literature and research into empiricism and emotion
• Each topic is explored through original analyses of a wide range of texts, including poetry, prose, dialogue, song lyrics, political discourse, and linguistic transcripts

There are stylistic and cognitive poetic analyses through the book. The key case studies include:

• The Canal – Lee Rourke (2010)
• ‘Zang Tumb Tumb’ by Marinetti (1914)
• ‘River in Spate’ by Louis MacNeice
• Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas (1954)
• ‘Space Sonnet & Polyfilla’ by Edwin Morgan (1977)
• ‘In Defense of Our Overgrown Garden’ by Matthea Harvey (2000)
• House of Cards
• What is the What by Dave Eggers (2006)
• Ash Wednesday by Ethan Hawke (2002)
• Fresh Meat
• Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James (2012)
• ‘Received Pronunciation’ by Sally Goldsmith (2012)
• ‘The house is not the same since you left’ by Henry Normal (1993)
• The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee (2014)
• My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Stroud (2016)
• How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid (2013)
• The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)
• The One Ronnie
• The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (2015)
• ‘I Am The Song’ by Charles Causley
• ‘Hypothetical’ by Maria Taylor
• ‘This is the Poem in which I Have Not Left You’ by Julia Copus (2012)
• 13, rue Thérèse by Elena Mauli Shapiro (2011)
• Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff (2015)
• Karen by Blast Theory (2015)
• ‘Blood Story’ by Melvin Burgess