Formalist & Feminist Stylistic Study of The Love Song of J.

Alfred
Prufrock and Soliloquy of a Misanthrope

Khurram Shahzad (Assistant Professor, UGS department)

National University of Modern Languages (NUML), Islamabad Campus

Ph.D (Linguistics)

Email: kslecturer@yahoo.com

Cell No: 0321-5231894

Dr Fouzia Janjua (Assistant Professor, department of English)

International Islamic Univerisity (IIUI), Islamabad

Email: gr8janjua@yahoo.com

1
Abstract

The present study attempts a stylistic analysis of the two poems: ‘The Love Song of Prufrock’ by T. S. Eliot and
‘Soliloquy of a Misanthrope’ by Ted Hughes with special reference to formalist & feminist stylistics. The researcher
has done the stylistic analysis of the poems taking into consideration Finch’s model (2003) that deals at three levels
of the text: the ‘micro’ level of the poem as form, the ‘intermediate’ level of the poem as discourse, and the ‘macro’
level which is known as a communicative event (Finch, 2003; p 211). At the first level, i.e., the form, the study
inquires the overall structure of the poems, i.e. the grammatical structure, phonological patterns and the semantics of
the text in order to find out different meanings of words such as similies, metaphors, personification, ambiguity,
anomaly, etc. These formal aspects of the poem lead up to the higher and broader aspect of the poem i.e. discourse.
The discursive and the communicative levels inquired in the following study are based on feminist model of the text
given in Sara Mills (1995). Keeping in mind Finch’s model and Mills ideology of feminism, the cohesive devices,
interpersonal relationships, deictics, context, and extra-textual aspects of the poem are explored in detail. At these
levels, the ideological and historical aspects of the poems, the author-reader relationship, the channel, the code, etc.
as elaborated by Jakobson (1958) are investigated. The textual analysis at three levels reveals that women have been
hyper-sexualized and objectified as a tool to be consumed and enjoyed by the male members of the society.

Key words: stylistics, femanism, commodification, sexual objects

2
Introduction

Stylistics is a linguistic study of style. In ‘stylistics’, the word ‘style’ is from literature and ‘tics’
is from linguistics. J. Mistrik cited in Thornborrow & Wareing (1998) clearly draws a boundary
between stylistic analysis and literary interpretation in his work on stylistics.

According to him, stylistic or text analysis is a procedure which aims at the linguistic means and
devices of a given text. However, the message, topic and content of the analyzed texts are not the
focus. On the contrary, literary interpretation is a process which applies exclusively to literary
texts. It aims at understanding and interpreting the topic, content and the message of a literary
work; it also aims at interpreting its literary qualities and the so called decoding of the author’s
signals by the recipient.

Stylistics is a method of textual interpretation; here, importance is given to language. Why

stylisticians give importance to language is because a variety of forms, patterns, deviances and
levels which compose linguistic structure are a significant guide to the function of the text. The
functional significance and relevance of the text as discourse acts in turn is a doorway to its
interpretation. Since linguistic features alone do not form the meaning of a text, the description
of these foregrounded linguistic features, however, prepare the ground for a stylistic
interpretation, and they help to elucidate how certain types of meanings are possible for the
stylistician. Stylistics promotes meta-linguistic reflections and discussions in order to reach
deeper processing and understanding (Hall, 2007, pp. 4-5).

As literature is the preferred object of stylistic study, it brings with it two important caveats.
Firstly, innovation and creativity are not the prerogative of literature alone, for one can find these
features in journalism, popular music and advertisement, and even in casual conversation (Fish,
1980). Secondly, techniques of stylistic analysis not only help in deriving understanding about
linguistic structure and function but also help in deriving insights about literary texts. Hence, the
question ‘What can stylistics tell us about literature?’ is always paralleled by an equally
important question ‘What can stylistics tell us about language?’ (Widdowson, 1975, p. 6).

Furthermore, many literary critical circles believe that a stylistician is a dull old grammarian who
just spends too much time on counting and recounting of noun phrases and verb phrases in a
piece of literary text, and this makes the basis of his understanding and insight. This is,

3
nevertheless, an erroneous perception about the stylistician and his methodology, and it
originates from a limited perception of how stylistic analysis works. No doubt, noun phrases and
verb phrases cannot be neglected in stylistics, and particularly when they are counted for
quantitative analysis, but one should know that the range of modern linguistics is much broader
and stylistics, resultantly, follows the suit (Bradford, 1997, p. 113). All aspects of a writer’s
workmanship are relevant and significant in stylistic analysis of a text. Not only are stylisticians
interested in the formal aspects of a text but also in language as a function of texts in context.
Moreover, they acknowledge that socio-cultural background of the text is very important in
comprehending the ‘meaning’ of the text (Mills, 1995). Thus, literary stylistics is more
concerned with providing “the basis for fuller understanding, appreciation and interpretation of
avowedly literary and author-centred texts. The general impulse is to draw eclectically on
linguistic insights and to use them in the service of what is generally claimed to be fuller
interpretation of language effects than is possible without the benefit of linguistics” (Carter &
Simpson 1989, p. 7).

Feminist Stylistics

It is difficult to define feminism exactly, for there exist various forms of feminism. Most of the
feminists believe that women, in general, are maltreated and are subjected to institutional and
personal discrimination. They are also of the view that society has been organized to work for the
benefit of men rather than women, and is, in fact, patriarchal and phallogocentric. It implies that
men and women are treated differently in the society (Mills, 1995). Another issue that feminist
like Judith Butler (1990) maintain is that of construction and representation of women in literary
texts, and how certain views of women are favoured at the expense of others. Thus feminists are
committed to changing the social structure of society in such a way as to make it less tyrannical
to women and to men for that matter (Tyson, 2006, p. 115).

Wales (1997, p. 171) elaborates the major theoretical bases of feminist criticism saying that one
chain of people investigates the comprehension of literature (predominantly written by men)
through the experience of reading as a woman, and questions the supposed ‘objectivity’ or
‘neutrality’ and ‘universality’ of the written discourse. Another, she observes, “queries the
evaluative procedures which have established a canon of literary works where ‘minor’
writers are predominantly women writers”. She concludes this by saying: another strand probes

4
the frequently misogynistic images of women in the literary works themselves. Cixous
(1975) cited in Mills (1995) and other French critics have exposed the strong phallocentric
bias of the influential psychoanalytical theory of Freud, whereas some other feminist critics
have also identified what they refer to as the phallocentric or patriarchal bias of much of
mainstream (‘malestream’ in the words of Mills) writing (Kristeva, 1986). They see this as a
challenge which feminism must take up. Furthermore, Feminist stylisticians have other
questions, for example, they give less importance to the artistic function of language and look for
the other aspects of language as it is clear that there are regularities in representations across a
range of different texts. Feminist stylistics is concerned with the general emphasis of formal
aspects of language as outlined by Leech and Short (2007), rather they look how authors have
chosen certain ways to construct the representation of women, and how certain effects are
achieved through language.

Stylistic approaches help to interpret literary texts in a precise manner where the topic, mode and
channel of discourse, socio-cultural and linguistic context and underlying ideology work together
to create meaning. Taking all these things into account, the researcher employes Finch’s model
(2003, p. 211), which aid to elaborate and carry out stylistic analysis at three different levels. The
first one, known as micro-level analysis, helps to investigate the linguistic forms of the text; the
second one, which is known as intermediate level deals with the discourse dimension of the text;
and the third one which is known as macro-level analysis helps to inquire about the text at
communicative situation level. The model is given in the diagram below.

Macro-level – communicative situation

Intermediate-level – language as discourse

Micro-level – language as form

Adopted from Finch (2007, p. 211)

Brief Introduction of the Poems

5
Prufrock is a modernist poem which was published in 1915 in Poetry magazine. Its author is T.S.
Eliot who wrote most of “Prufrock” before the start of World War I. At that time, Britain was
considered the most modern country in the world. The poem is set in a big, dirty city. The
speaker of the poem is a very unhappy man who not only is afraid of living but also is bored all
the time. “Prufrock” is a dramatic monologue and in it the speaker who is talking is a fictional
creation, and his intended audience is fictional, too. He is talking to the woman he loves, and
about whom we know very little except for the stray detail about shawls and hairy arms.

This poem is a dramatic monologue which reveals gradually about the person who is speaking.
In the beginning, Prufrock is a slightly creepy-crawly person; he wants to take a walk. However,
we come to know about his personal appearance, his love for fashion and desire for food. He also
wants to be a pair of crab claws. The impression that he wants to give to us is exactly the
opposite of the one as we move on reading the poem. He pretends to be a good decision maker, a
well-dressed person, a person who seizes opportunity whenever it comes; contrarily, he is a big
hoax.

On the other hand, Soliloquy of a Misanthrope is included in the collection of poems, The Hawk
in the Rain, written by Ted Hughes. It was published in 1957. Soliloquy is a literary form of
discourse in which a character talks to himself, and in this way, he reveals his thoughts though
there is no addressee in it (Abrams, 1998) . Misanthrope is one who does not like humanity at all.
This poem seems to focus on the erotic relationship between the poet and his beloved or women
in general.

Analysis of the Poems

The researcher would like to investigate firstly the use of words made by the poets in the poems.
Later, he would analyze the other poetic effects which contributed to the overall meanings of the
poems.

Formal Structure – Syntax, Semantics and Phonology

The poem Prufrock’s form is a dramatic monologue preponderantly. However, when we look at it
closely, we find the poet is experimenting with all types of meters and forms such as: there are
rhyming couplets; for example,

Let us go then, you and I,

6
 When the evening is spead out against the sky

and we also find the rhyming couplet about the women and Michelangelo repeated time and
again in the poem.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

The poet’s use of this old-fashioned form seems that he is poking fun at Prufrock. As we know
that this use of rhyming couplet is called “heroic”, Prufrock, on the other hand, is anything but
heroic. The other verses of the poem do not rhyme and look more or less like free verse, but there
is internal rhyme in the poem such as ‘decisions’ and ‘revisions’ etc. Moreover, there is no
regular meter in the poem. Sometimes, we do find a couple of lines of blank verse, which have
no rhyme, but they contain a regular meter. This regular meter falls in the catagory of
pentameter, carrying unstreesed syllable followed by streesed one, i.e.

I SHOULD have BEEN a PAIR of RAG-ged CLAWS.

The Soliloquy of a Misanthrope, on the other hand, consists of three stanzas of four lines each.
There is no rhyme scheme in the poem; there is no internal rhyme, nor any assonance, nor
consonance.

In both the poems, there are no examples of typographic foregrounding. The researcher does not
find any significant departures from the typographic norms of English poetry though sometimes
the lenght of the lines varies and is particularly so in Prufrock.

There exist open class and closed class words in both the poems. Majority of the meanings are
carried by open class words, whereas link between open class words is created with closed class
words like “a, an, this, that, in, on, at”, etc. The tables below display how open class words are
distributed throughout the poems. The first table contains the words of Prufrock and the second
one represents the results of Soliloquy of a Misanthrope.

nouns verbs adjectives adverbs

evening (4) minute go (2) say half-deserted firmly (2)

sky decisions is (2) have gone muttering peacefully

7
patient mornings etherized watched restless

table (2) afternoons (2) to lead rises cheap

streats (5) spoons ask have been sawdust

retreats fall make (2) scuttling orster

night eyes (2) come (2) sleeps tedious

hotels phrase rubs (2) smoothed insidious

restaurants wall licked malingers overwhelming

shells days fall stretched yellow (2)

arguments ways falls have window (2)

intent arms slipped to force october

question (3) lamplight made wept curled

visit dress seeing fasted hundred (2)

room (3) shawl (2) was prayed bald

women (3) dusk fell have seen thin (2)

michelangelo pipes will be (4) hold moning

fog windows (3) slides was (2) rich

poems (3) sleeves rubbing to have bitten modest

muzzle claws to prepare to have sequeezed simple

tongue seas to meet/meet to roll coffee

smoke (3) floors (3) to murder to say dying

corners fingers create am (2) formulated (2)

pools cakes lift come back butt

drains ices drop to tell braceleted

back (2) strenght wonder settling white

chimneys moment (2) dare (3) is (2) bare

terrace crisis to turn back would have been light

8
leap head descend been brown (2)

time (10) platter talking (2) mean narrow

faces prophet will (2) threw shirt

works matter (2) is growing throwing ragged

days footman asserted turning silent

hands snicker are (2) will do tired

plate cups / teacups disturb to swell bald

hundred (2) marmalade will reserve start great

indicisions porcelain have known (6) advise eternal

visions talk have measured grow (2) afraid

revisions (3) smile known shall wear (2) overwhelming

toast ball dying part sprinkled

tee (3) dead presume (3) to eat magic

stair pillow (3) fix walk easy

hair (5) head pinned have heard deferential

spot, girls lantern wriggling singing glad

chin, voice screen begin think politic

pin (2) sunset to spit will sing cautios

universe (2) dooryard downed combing meticulous

nectie, water novels, sea lie blows high

coat (2) skirts, wind wrap have lingered ridiculous

attendant prince drown wake old

tool, beach fool, wave sprawling digress flannel

progress trousers (2) red

Table:1

nouns verbs adjectives adverbs

9
gravestone am church heartily

flowers got old round

tower to stare every

teeth gritting crude

chill shall praise

floor look

acquaintance showing

complacency confessing

smirk shall thank

bone lying

man grimace

mouth

attitude

shire

god

women

committments

flesh

spite

vanity

10
 Table: 2

It can be observed from the tables above that both the poems are mostly comprised of nouns and
verbs. In the first table that represents Prufrock poem, almost all the nouns are concrete, i.e.
physical objects are reffered to through them. Only a few nouns like ‘visions’, ‘intent’,
‘progress’, etc. fall in the category of abstract nouns. They are related to human beings, and are
given in plurals. They are there to create the relationship between man and woman. Women are
foregrounded and ‘Michelangelo’ is also foregrounded along with the women.

If we look at the second table, again we see most of the nouns are concrete and only ‘God’ and
‘committments’ fall in the category of abstract nouns. Here again women are foregrounded by
mentioning ‘women’ and ‘old acquaintance’. However, this time Ted Hughes also foregrounds
‘God’ by calling upon Him to help him in fulfilling his sexual desires.

If we look at the tables, we see that the verbs used in both the poems create a sense of
immediacy. They not only contribute to our comprehension of the message but also help in our
understanding that how the addresser is addressing the addressee. The verbs used in both the
poems are mixture of finite and infinte classess. The use of present simple and progressive tenses
display the ongoing nature of action. They contribute to the idea that ‘women’ as objects or
commodities are indispensible for men. They are sexually objectified and are to be utilized for
the pleasure principle. They must be used and consumed for the fulfilment of man’s erotic
desires. The adverbs used in both the poems also convey a sense of excitement, inevitability and
speedness. In Prufrock, directive verbs like “come, go, make, drop, turn back, say”, etc. are
employed to address the other person.

11
There exist no unusual words in both the poems that we sometimes come across in other poems,
like in E.E.Comming. In Prufrock, we come across repetition, but we do not find it in Soliloquy
of a Misanthrope.

The researcher also finds similes in the Prufrok such as:

Let us go then, you and I,

While the evening is spread out against the sky,

Like a patient etherized upon a table … (1-3)

Here one can see that a beautiful image of evening is compared to “a patient etherized upon a
table”. Figuratively speaking, the image is a very striking one as the evening which is
symbolized as the end of the day is compared to the patient who seems to be at the end of his
life. Moreover, the poet has also made use of personification and metaphor such as:

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels (6)

To have squeezed the universe into a ball (92)

However, the researcher does not find any example of personification or simile in the “Soliloquy
of a Misanthrope” though metaphor is found in it like,

As I look round at old acquaintance there,

Complacency from the smirk of every man,

And every attitude showing its bone,

And every mouth confessing its crude shire;

Leech (1969) is of the view that reaction to disorientation and surprise is brought about by
deviation from the expected patterns of linguistic behavior. According to him, rules of grammar
are to be broken in poetry, for freedom from language rules has been granted in verse (17 –23).
This gives the poet a chance to squeeze his/her language into a pre-determined mould of
versification. Another type of deviation can be neologism or invention of new words. As far as
‘Solioquy’ of Hughes is concerned, the researcher does not find any sort of deviation in it.
However, deviation and parallelism are found in Prufrok such as,

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
12
 The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes, (15-16)

Syntactic parallelism is also found in Hughes’ Soliloquy of a Misanthrope, i.e.

Sending my flowers up to stare at the church-tower,

Gritting my teeth in the chill from the church-floor,

The poet makes a clever use of language by using plural morpheme ‘-s’ with the lexical items of
‘street’, ‘retreat’, ‘night’, ‘hotel’, ‘restaurant’ and ‘oyster-shell’, etc in Prufrock. This planned
recurrence of this inflectional morpheme ‘s’ is so well contrived that the poet creates the intended
stylistic effects.

Sound patterning

As far as the sound patterning of the poem, Prufrock, is concerned, we find a perfect metaphor
for the sound. In lines (13 – 22), we find the cat-like fog that pads around the city in endless
circles. Here, the lines are very much cat-like; they keep on circling round Prufrock without ever
letting us see him head-on. In addition, the verses seem to be rubbing their ‘muzzle’ or ‘back’
against the real Prufrock, and we find it difficult to see them through a fog. Like the cat, the poet
is very agile, slips the poem in and out of blank verse, moves it from Prufrock to the “women
talking of Michelangelo” and back again, and very unperceptively he goes from rhymed to
unrhymed verses and vice versa.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

This circling pattern is not only evident but also vexing. The poet uses the refrains repeatedly
such as, “how should I presume?”, “there will be time”, “do I dare?” and “in the room the
women come and go”. It is very dizzying and circling, and this is how the poem goes on and on
and the motion continues.

13
The poem contains simple rhyme that we usually find in nursery songs. It not only creates a
foggy confusion in the readers but also distracts them from the ‘insidious’ intent of the speaker of
the dramatic monologue (line 9). The reader has to be careful while reading the following lines:

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse (lines 47-48).

The reader is led to an expectation, time for what?, but soon the next verse of the poem reverses
the expectations of the reader. Furthermore, we find internal rhymes, i.e. ‘decisions’ and
‘revisions’, and this hoodwinks the reader, for he has not been told what is decided and what is
reversed. On the contrary, Soliloquy of a Misanthrope though does not contain end rhyme yet it
has internal rhyme like alliteration such as: “chill from the church-floor”.

Discoursal and Communicational Analysis

The researchers also investigated the style of both the poems at these two levels. For the purpose,
the anaphoric and cataphoric references, deictic expressions, and cohesive devices were
investigated as they help in understanding the overall meanings of the poem.

Eliot makes use of a rhetorical figure known as symploce. It entails repetition which joins an
anaphra and an epistrophe in such a way that first and last word in a sentence or clause or phrase
is repeated in one or more successive sentences or clauses.

The yellow fog that rubs it back upon the window panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window panes (15-16)

However, the researchers did not find anything like that in the Soliloquy of a Misanthrope. Here,
the poet, Hughes repeats the words like ‘God’ and ‘Heartily’ twice, for he thinks that in his desire
to copulate with women God will help him heartily. Another literary use of metaphor is the
extended metaphor; the poet makes use of cataphoric reference and deictic items as well. He uses
an extended metaphor to describe fog, which is compared to a cat:

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

14
 Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And seeing it was a soft October night,

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

The shared properties of cats (the vehicle of the metaphor, to use I.A.Richards’s terminology)
and the fog (the tenor of the metaphor) are yellowness (if we are prepared to accept that cats may
be yellow!), playfulness, wrapping around things, pressing against glass, wriggling into corners,
moving silently and curling up to sleep. These are the grounds of the metaphor, which is
extended because the comparison works at more than one level: the fog shares more than one
quality with a cat. On the other hand, in Soliloquy of a Misanthrope, the researchers find deitic
expressions and anaphoric and homophoric references such as:

Whenever I am got under my gravestone,

Sending my flowers up to stare at the church-tower,

Gritting my teeth in the chill from the church-floor,

The underlined words above are the deictic expressions related to place; moreover, there are
anaphoric references like ‘I’ is used time and again in the text. The words like ‘its’ is used as
cataphoric reference and ‘women’ as homophoric reference. The word ‘there’ is also deictic
expression of place. Then the poet uses a long metaphor and displays his vengence that he wants
to take from the world, his friends and women in particular. He says that he will send his flowers
which will stare at the magnificence and grandeur of church towers. It is further intensified with
the ‘chill’ which he alludes to the church-floor. So much so that he goes on to say that he will see
all his acquaintances ‘gone’ there in the grave.

Eliot is a modernist poet whereas Hughes is a post-modernist poet. Modernist and postmodernist
characteristics can be found in both the poets. Another theme that comes forward in stylistic
analysis is the degradation and objectification of women in both the poems. Prufrock who is
sexually impotent is desirous of having sex with women, but he does not have the guts to even
say it to women. Rather, he objectifies them as a thing whom one can utilize for the time being,

15
fulfills one’s erotic desires and goes away. Time and again, he mentions that “women come and
go, talking of Michelangelou”. It means that women are talking about men freely and doing their
job, but this Prufrock can only think and think and do nothing. Nevertheless, the women, in
general, are presented as if they were in this world to be fornicated and used for sexual pleasure
by men and nothing else.

Moreover, the close reading of the ‘Soliloquy of a Misanthrope’ also objectifies women, but here
the speaker is not impotent. He is a man who not only used women in his life time but also wants
to use them in the world hereafter. Thus, he goes a step ahead and believes that even after death
women are to be used and abused. So they are objectified even to the extent of next world where
men would be easily able to gratify themslves and enjoy the female objects by eroticizing and
consuming them.

Conclusion

Having used Finch’s model of stylistic discourse analysis at three different levels, the researchers
have compared and contrasted the two poems. Not only do the phonological, syntactic and
semantic aspects of both the poems are analyzed, but also the interpretation is done taking into
condisideration the discoursal and communicative situation as well. Therein, it is found out that
Eliot depicts female figures as sexual objects in the poem; however, their numbers and names are
not given. He times and again announces,

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

On the other hand, Hughes goes on to say:

To be lying beside women who grimace

Under the committments of their flesh,

In this way, the feminist stylistic discourse analysis helps to display the distaste, shock and
hostility of the poets against women. They exhibit a vitriolic masochism at female sexual energy,
and go on to treate and project women as objects of sexual satisfaction where their bodily parts
in particular are objectified and manifested. Nevertheless, overall both the poems contain various
formal aspects of style and are fantastic poems to read.

16
17
Bibliography

Abrams, M. H. (1993). A Glossary of Literary Terms (6th ed). New York: Harcourt Brace
College Publishers.

Bradford, R. (1997). Stylistics. London & New York: Routledge.

Carter, R & Simpson, P. (1989). Language, discourse and literature: an introductory reader in
discourse stylistics. USA: Taylor & Francis, Routledge.

Finch, G. (2003). How to study linguistics (2nd ed). London & New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Fish, S. (1980). Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Hall, G. (2007). Stylistics in second language contexts: A critical perspective. In G. Watson and
S. Zyngier (Eds.) Literature and stylistics for language learners: Theory and practice. London:
Palgrave, McMillan.

Judith, B. (1990). Gender trouble: tenth aniversary. Taylor & Francis, Routledge. USA.

Kristeva, J. (1986). The Kristeva Reader. In Tori1 Moi (Ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.

Leech, G & Short, M. Style in fiction (2nd ed). Pearson Education Limited 2007.

Leech, G. N. (1969). A linguistic guide to English poetry. Hong Kong. Longman Group UK Ltd

Mills, S. (1995). Feminist stylistics.

Richards, I. A. (1929). Practical criticism: a study of literary judgement. London. Kagan Paul.

Thornborrow, J & Wareing, S. (1998). Patterns in language. An introduction to language and

literary style. London & New York: Routledge.

Tyson, L. (2006). Critical theory today: A user-friendly guide. London & New York: Routledge.

Wales, K. (1997). A dictionary of stylistics. London: Longman.

Widdowson, G. H. (1975). Stylistics and the teaching of literature. London: Longman.

18