PENULTIMATE DRAFT

(Please quote only from printed version that has appeared in:
The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Literature,
ed. by Noël Carroll and John Gibson,
New York/London: Routledge, 2016, pp. 195–204)
Literary Style1
Wolfgang Huemer



I Dimensions of “style”

It should come as a surprise that the notion of style is elusive: after all, style is often taken to
pertain to the surface (rather than the substance) of a (literary) work of art. The elements of style
should, thus, lie open before our eyes and be easy to discern. Moreover, we all seem to have a
clear intuitive understanding of style: we know that it is essential to the aesthetic dimension of a
work and makes it accessible for aesthetic appreciation, we are familiar with the idea that it allows
us to attribute a work to an author, a genre, a school, or a period, and might even think that it
reveals the artistic personality of the author. Yet we find that there is no universally accepted
definition of “style.” Moreover, the numerous definitions that have been proposed in the past
highlight very different aspects that often stand in contrast to one another, which shows that style
has many faces, is rich of different dimensions and performs a great variety of functions: it has
been characterized as a “dress of thought” that adorns a pre-existing content; as a choice between
alternative expressions; as a set of recurrent, individual or collective characteristics; as signature;
as an expression of the author’s personality; as a way of writing dictated by rules or an acquired
disposition to act on a set of rules; but also as a systematic violation of rules or deviation from a
norm; it is taken to be an expression of originality, to manifest a perspective or point of view, or to
foreground the possible uses of a medium and so to draw our attention to the workings of
language.
Etymologically the word “style” refers to manners of linguistic expression. It is derived from
the Latin “stilus” that stands for “a stake or pale, pointed instrument for writing, oral or written
style” (The Oxford English Dictionary 1989), but its meaning has broadened considerably.
Nowadays the term is used for characteristic features of groups, schools, genres, or periods in the
history of art, literature, music, or architecture, etc., for ways of producing works of art or other
artifacts, as in writing style or painting style, for styles of reasoning, ways of performing an action,
as in dance style or swimming style, or style of chess playing, for phenomena related to fashion,

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I would like to thank Daniel Steuer, Charles Altieri, Marco Santambrogio and Andrea Bianchi for comments on an
earlier draft of this paper.
personal outfit and lifestyle, as in hairstyle or dress style, for furniture or design, for ways of
conducting interpersonal relations as in leadership style, for specific formats, for manners,
procedures, or skilled production processes that are typical for an individual, an institution, or a
company, or etc.; sometimes it is used without any further qualification – when we say that
someone or something has style.
This short list shows that style is attributed to entities of very different ontological
categories – to persons, schools, periods, ways of doing something, complex patterns of behavior,
works of art and other artifacts, or social entities like companies and institutions.i All these entities
are in some way or another related to the performance of actions, which allows us to say that the
bearers of style are ways or manners of performing actions, the person or the group of persons
who perform the actions, or the objects created by them. In the case of literary works of art, the
kind of action that counts is not the actual process of writing – it is typically not relevant whether a
poem was written with a pencil, a pen, or a typewriter. It is rather “the nature of the choices or
decisions the author apparently made about how the work was to be” (Walton 1987, 84) that
determines the style. These choices, if relevant for the style, manifest themselves in the text. In
consequence, some philosophers suggest that we ought to focus primarily on the style of writing,
while others argue that it is the style of the writing, i.e. the stylistic features of the text, that
matters.
Despite the etymological origins of the word, most philosophical contributions on style are
not primarily focused on literary style – typically they are more likely to discuss pictorial style.
Moreover, the notion of style does not seem to play a central role in the contemporary debate in
the philosophy of literature, which is often more concerned with problems related to the notions
of truth and reference of propositions contained in fictional, literary texts, i.e., with problems
related to the philosophy of language, metaphysics, or epistemology, rather than with the role of
the poetic or aesthetic dimension of language. In the following pages I will focus on aspects that
have been – or should be – of particular interest for a philosophical discussion of literary style. I
am convinced that the philosophy of literature can only benefit from paying more attention to the
stylistic dimension of literature, for this would allow us not only to gain a new perspective on the
problems that are widely discussed, but also to pay due attention to aspects that are essential to
literature, but are nonetheless often overlooked in the current debate.

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 II Style as choice

Style has been defined as choice. Where there is more than one way of performing an action or
achieving a certain goal, style consists in choosing to do so consistently in a specific manner. These
choices are particularly salient when someone opts for doing something in a manner that deviates
from the way it is usually done. In the case of literary style, linguistically oriented approaches
often focus on choices that manifest themselves in recurrent patterns of linguistic expressions on
a lexical, syntactic, phonological, or morphological level (cf. Havránek 1964, 4). According to this
view, specific linguistic patterns of expression can count as stylistic elements of a work or a body
of works when their frequency distributions in the respective works deviate, in a statistically
relevant sense, from that in language as a whole, which implies that style can be measured
empirically – an assumption that has led to the development of quantitative stylistics. When it
comes to the analysis of literary style, however, quantitative methods can easily seem insufficient
or reductive, for the style of literary works of art consists in choices not only at the level of the
linguistic material, but also in choices that determine “the way of deploying narrative structures,
portraying characters, and articulating points of view” (Eco 2005, 163).
This conception of style embraces two aspects that seem to stand in tension to one
another: originality and recurrence. A linguistic pattern or feature of a text can be individuated as
stylistic element only if it is the result of a deliberate choice to deviate from the ordinary way of
expressing or developing a certain point; style consists, in other words, in adopting new or unusual
ways of expression that stand out against the standard way of putting it. These ways of
expression, however, have to be recurrent features of the text or the body of texts, otherwise we
would not be able to identify them as stylistic elements that distinguish the work of a particular
author or period.
The definition of style as choice presupposes that one and the same goal can, in fact, be
achieved in more than one way. In the case of literary works of art this presupposes that the
medium, language, does actually offer a choice between different formulations that convey the
same literary meaning. A skilled author, so the idea, who sufficiently masters her medium, can
deliberately choose one from a number of different, synonymous ways of expressing the point she
wants to make – and she will choose the one that best fits her aesthetic conceptions, that best
display a specific point of view, or that best expresses her artistic personality. “The point is”, as
Arthur Danto has put it, “that the same substance may be variously stylistically embodied, and

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synonymous vehicles may have marked stylistic differences” (Danto 1981, 198). Accordingly, it has
been argued that “[s]ynonymy, in the widest sense of the term, lies at the root of the whole
problem of style” (Ullmann 1957, 6). This conception rests on the idea, however, that we can
separate the content of a literary work of art, what is said, from how it is said and that “[w]e may
… reserve the term style for this how, as what remains of a representation when we subtract its
content” (Danto 1981, 197). It, thus, invites a dichotomy between form and content of a work and
to the view that style pertains exclusively to the former, a perspective that is explicitly endorsed
by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Benn Warren in their characterization of the term style:

This term is usually used with reference to the poet’s manner of choosing, ordering, and arranging his words.
But, of course, when one asks on what grounds certain words are chosen and ordered, one is raising the
whole problem of form. Style, in its larger sense, is essentially the same thing as form. (Brooks and Warren
1950, 694)

This conception, as well as the implied distinction between form and content, is not without
problems, though. Particularly in the case of literary texts there seems to be a close connection
between form and content and it is all but clear that an author could have expressed the same
literary meaning with an alternative formulation that, in everyday standards, would pass as
synonymous. Style is more than a superficial ornament that could be replaced without altering the
essence of the work, it rather contributes to the meaning of a text, literary or not. Hemingway’s
preference for short sentences, for example, is more than an arbitrary choice and it is hard to
imagine that he could have told the same stories in complex and long-winded sentences. This
shows that “stylistic features,” as Monroe Beardsley has suggested,

Stylistic features and hence style in general, as consisting of stylistic features, are clearly connected with
meaning. Thus, texts that differ in style cannot, in my view, be synonymous; but if there are texts that differ
in linguistic form and yet are synonymous, I say that therefore they do not differ in style, for only differences
in form which make for differences in meaning can count as stylistic differences (Beardsley 1987, 220).

According to Beardsley, thus, style does make a genuine contribution to the content of a literary
work of art, which implies that a choice between two textual features that does not have an
impact on the content of the work, cannot be conceived as style.
Moreover, there is a second line of reasoning that suggests that style and content are
closely related: choices that regard the content of a text can – and often have – become stylistic
elements. We are all familiar with the idea that the style of some literary periods or authors
manifests itself not only in choices regarding the linguistic structure or the form of a text, but also
in their themes. It can be a question of style, for example, whether an author reports a person’s

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sudden transformation into a large, insect-like creature, denounces the bleak living conditions
among the British working class, indulges in detailed descriptions of wild nature and untouched
landscapes, or depicts the stream of a person’s thoughts and feelings. In short, “some notable
features of style are features of the matter rather than the manner of the saying. In more ways
than one, subject is involved in style” (Goodman 1975, 799).


III Style as signature

Style has been defined as signature. Some stylistic features are so typical for a specific period, a
movement, or an individual author that they allow for the attribution of the work; “in general
stylistic properties help answer the questions: who? when? where?” (Goodman 1975, 807). In
consequence, the interest in style is sometimes driven by taxonomic purposes: a detailed
description of stylistic elements used by a certain author or in a specific period allows not only to
gain a better understanding of the work of the author or the period, respectively, but also to set it
apart from works that pertain to other periods or have been written by other authors (of the same
or another period). In other disciplines, in particular in literary studies and linguistics, this aspect
has resulted in the attempt to compile as complete a list as possible of all textual features that
have been used, in a specific period or by a specific author, as stylistic features – or even to
compile a comprehensive list of all textual features that can become stylistic features. Most
philosophers, on the other hand – who typically are more interested in the nature of style than in
providing a taxonomy of literary movements or periods – insist that it is impossible in principle to
compile a complete catalogue or give a comprehensive taxonomy of stylemes, i.e. of those
features that may become used as elementary stylistic features by any author: every feature of a
text can, in principle, become a stylistic feature (cf., for example, Goodman 1975, 807; Robinson
1984, 148; Lang 1987).
The conception of style as signature rests on the idea that in each period some
formulations or linguistic variants are more common than in others and that each author uses
language in her own particular way. In consequence, works that display these textual features can
be recognized as pertaining to a specific period or the oeuvre of a specific author. Other authors,
or authors from different periods, may use the same stylistic features when they try to come up
with a parody or produce a counterfeit. In pictorial art, forgers often do not deceive by faithfully

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reproducing an already existing work of art. They rather produce a new painting in the style of,
say, a great master with the intention to make it pass as a hitherto unknown original of the
imitated artist, as it was the case with van Meegeren’s fake Vermeers. In literature, where the
work in question is not a unique physical object, but an easily reproducible type, forgery is not a
topic. Here, the imitation of style is typically used in parody, where the stylistic features are often
exaggerated for humorous or satirical ends (for a more detailed discussion of parody and forgery,
cf. (Lamarque 2010, 144ff.).
A very literal understanding of the signature conception has led to the view that style is
something like a “thumbprint” that allows to identify the author of any kind of text, literary or not,
on the basis of her individual way of using language. As a consequence, stylistic analyses of
linguistic idiosyncrasies are sometimes employed to attribute texts that have been published
anonymously or under a nom de plume to their actual author. Based on a computer-assisted
analysis it could be revealed, for example, that the crime novel The Cukoo’s Calling, which was
published under the name of Robert Galbraith, was actually written by J.K. Rowling. The program
compared the novel with other texts by Rowling, focusing on four variables: word-length
distribution; the uses of common words like “the” and “of”; recurring word pairings and groups of
four adjacent characters, words, or part of words (for further details, cf. (Kolowich 2013)). Based
on this analysis it was possible to individuate stylistic markers in the text that distinguish J.K.
Rowling’s way of writing. Combined with other pieces of circumstantial evidence, her authorship
could so be confirmed.
This example illustrates very well the success of computer-assisted stylometric analyses
and their usefulness to forensic linguistics. It does raise the question, however, whether all kinds
of particularities in an author’s use of language really qualify as stylistic elements of a given text. I
do not want to deny that it is possible to use common words like “the” and “of” (or any of the
other criteria used by the program) in a manner that qualifies them as stylistic elements; I do want
to suggest, however, that the elevated frequency of the occurrence of these specific phenomena
is not sufficient to consider them stylistic elements. There is a fundamental difference between
the idiosyncrasies in an author’s use of language and elements that are characteristic for her
literary style. Like thumbprints, the former are typically arbitrary by-products of sub-personal
processes, i.e. processes that are not conscious, but rather concern “mechanic” aspects of the
writing process. Moreover, they are likely to be displayed by all texts, literary or not, written by
the same person – or else they could not count as the author’s thumbprint in the first place.

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Stylistic elements, on the other hand, are typically carefully chosen and contribute to the literary
meaning and the aesthetic dimension of a text; and while it is true that they are not always the
result of a conscious choice by the author, it is also true that unlike non-stylistic features, they do
“interrelate with the structural or integrative principles of the artist’s work” (Wollheim 1987, 198).
This suggests that even if it is true that style enables us to attribute works to periods or authors, it
is also true that not every feature of a text that allows for such an attribution is also a stylistic
feature. It takes more to characterize style.


IV Style as expression of the author’s personality

For Wollheim, the conception of style as signature is characteristic for merely taxonomic
conceptions of style, which he contrasts with a generative conception that understands style as the
product of a process and is, in his view, more adequate to capture the phenomenon in question.
He pairs this distinction with the distinction between general and individual style. The former,
which subdivides in universal style, historical or period style, and school style, is closely related to
the taxonomic conception. Individual style, on the other hand, is of particular interest in the
generative conception. Both general and individual style consist in an acquired disposition to act
according to a specific, rule-governed scheme. Individual style, however, is something that cannot
be learned, but is formed by the artist. Forming an individual style does not consist in acquiring or
imitating an already existing convention – in this way one could, at best, come to work in a style,
but not to have a style – but rather in developing and internalizing specific ways of performing the
particular actions that are relevant to the creation of works of art. Wollheim, thus, rejects
formalistic approaches that identify style with formal elements of a (static) work. According to his
view, individual style has a psychological reality: “the difference that having a style makes is a
difference in the mind of a painter” (Wollheim 1995, 41).
In a series of articles, Jenefer Robinson has adapted Wollheim’s approach, which was
developed in the context of pictorial style, to literary style. She pays much attention to the fact
that when reading a literary work of art we often seem to recognize some of the author’s
personality traits in the way she writes. Literary style, she suggests, is not merely a formal feature
of the work, but rather a

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 way of doing certain things, such as describing or characterizing a setting, delineating character, treating or
presenting a theme, and commenting on the action. Moreover, the writer’s way of describing, delineating,
commenting and so on is typically an expression of (some features of) her personality, character, mind or
sensibility. (Robinson 1985, 230)

The humorous and compassionate way in which James describes Strether’s bewilderment, she
continues, “expresses the writers own humorous yet compassionate attitude”, very much like
“Jane Austen’s ironic way of describing social pretensions expresses her ironic attitude to social
pretensions” (Robinson 1985, 230). When it comes to explain how we can individuate the
elements of a text that can count as elements of individual style she argues:

something is an element of individual style only if it is consistently used by a writer in a work in such a way as
to express personality and character traits, interests, attitudes, qualities of mind, etc. unique to the (implied)
author of that work. (Robinson 1984, 148)

She avoids a version of what Gombrich has called the “physiognomic fallacy” (Gombrich 1998,
160), i.e. the (false) assumption that there is a necessary connection between an author’s
personality and her way of writing, by conceding that the personality that emerges from the
individual style of a work is not that of the actual, but that of the implied author, i.e., “the author
as she seems to be from the evidence of the work” (Robinson 1985, 234). I do have the
impression, however, that due to its strong psychologistic tendencies, her approach risks to invite
a confusion of these two levels: if style is a “way of doing things” it seems natural to identify the
personality that emerges from the text’s elements of individual style with the person who did the
actual writing, i.e., the actual, not the implied, author. If, on the other hand, an author can make
emerge a personality different from her own because she “more or less consciously ‘puts on’ or
‘adopts’ a persona to tell ‘her’ story” (Robinson 1985, 235), then her doing so is the result of a
(more or less conscious) choice. This entails, however, that the very personality of the implied
author is a stylistic feature of the text, and cannot, thus, be an explanation of style. Moreover, on
Robinson’s account this result would lead to an unwanted iteration; the text’s individual style
would count as an expression of the implied author’s personality which, in turn, would have to be
conceived as an expression of the actual author’s personality.
Robinson’s conception of style moves the discussion from an aesthetic to a psychological
level. This move is not unproblematic, however. Even if we grant that stylistic elements allow us to
get in touch with the (implied) author’s personality, it is not at all clear to me why this encounter
should have any relevance from an aesthetic point of view, nor why the reader should care about
an encounter of this kind in the first place. Style, it seems to me, is not merely an arbitrary feature

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of literary works of art, it is rather a decisive element when it comes to characterize the nature of
literature. The emergence of an (implied) author’s personality traits, on the other hand, seems
quite secondary in many works. Moreover, we seem to relate to stylistic features of a text in a way
that is quite different from the way in which we relate to someone’s personality or character. In
the latter case we take a stance that is characterized along the dimensions of empathy, affinity,
rapport, respect, aversion, antipathy, or similar. When paying attention to the stylistic elements of
a text, on the other hand, we typically do so in the spirit of aesthetic appreciation. For this reason
one can easily find oneself intrigued by the style of a specific work, even though one feels aversion
for or does not care at all about the personality of the author, implied or actual, which suggests
that interest in style and interest in the author’s personality are two quite distinct phenomena.
A less psychologistic perspective on the relation between style and personality was
proposed by Arthur Danto, who argues that style is an expression of an artistic personality that
emerges from the complete body of her work. A work of art not only represents a specific content,
it also displays, according to Danto, the way in which the artists sees the world. In Rembrandt’s
portrait of Hendrijke, he suggests, “we do not simply see that naked woman sitting on a rock, as
voyeurs stealing a glimpse through an aperture. We see her as she is seen with love by virtue of a
representation magically embedded in the work” (Danto 1981, 207). The painting not only
represents Hendrijke, it does so in a way that enables the spectator to see how Rembrandt saw
her – which does not, of course, entail that the spectator has to see her in the same way. Since
according to Danto we are “systems of representations, ways of seeing the world” (Danto 1981,
204), recognizing the way in which an artist sees the world means getting in touch with her
personality: “learning to recognize a style is not a simple taxonomic exercise. Learning to
recognize a style is like learning to recognize a person’s touch or his character” (Danto 1981, 207).
Danto’s conception leads to an unexpected consequence, however: if style is to be equated
with “those qualities … that are the man himself” (Danto 1981, 207), one and the same artist
cannot possibly produce two works in different styles. There are, of course, cases where an artist
appears to have changed style from one period to another. These cases, however, rest on an
erroneous identification of stylistic features in at least one of the two periods. The question of
which feature of a work of art counts as a stylistic feature cannot be determined by studying a
single work in isolation, one rather needs to take the artist’s entire oeuvre into consideration.
According to Danto, “style is a history, and a narrative of that history is a kind of artistic biography
in which we trace not so much the emergence but the increasing perspicuity with which the style

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becomes visible in the work” (Danto 1991, 208). In consequence, if we approach the work of an
artist from a historical perspective, we can discern stylistic features in the early work that
otherwise would have been occluded “by surrounding noises in the artworld” (Danto 1991, 208).
Danto, in short, does not suggest that single stylistic features express aspects of the artist’s
personality, but rather that a perspective that takes into account the artist’s (artistic) biography
enables us to recognize the style of his work.


V Style distinguishes

The conceptions we have discussed so far give different answers to the question of where to
locate style: some identify it with features of a given text, while others suggest that it depends on
the actions performed by the author in the process of writing. In consequence, the respective
theories highlight either the taxonomic function of style or the psychological dimension. Both aim
at establishing objective criteria for attributing style to a work or a way of writing, respectively,
which suggests that they use the notion of style primarily in its descriptive sense.
It is important to note, however, that very much like the notion of literature, also the
notion of style can be used both in a descriptive and in an honorific sense. To say of a work that it
has style means to recognize that there is an aesthetic quality to it; similarly, to say that a writer
has style suggests that she has found a form of expression that distinguishes her and makes her
stand out. When attributing style, thus, we do more than just describing an objective feature of a
work or of a way of writing: we formulate an evaluative judgment that individuates a
distinguishing feature. This very fact suggests that style plays an essential role for the aesthetic
dimension of a text; it is constitutive for what linguists of the Prague school have called the poetic
function of language.ii Some acts of verbal communication, they suggest, not only describe a
situation, express an emotion, or engage the addressee directly, but also (or even dominantly)
direct the attention towards the medium of expression. The poetic function “renders the structure
of the linguistic sign the center of attention, whereas [other functions of language] are oriented
toward extralinguistic instances and goals exceeding the linguistic sign” (Mukařovský 1977, 68).
Bringing aesthetics back into our reflections on style can also throw light on the latter’s
main function, i.e., to invite to a shift of attention from what is said in a text and how it is said to
what is thereby shown. The aesthetically relevant aspects of a work of art draw attention to the

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medium of the work; in the case of literature they foreground language. This does not mean,
however, that the aesthetic dimension of a text foregrounds merely the selection and
arrangement of the linguistic material: aesthetically relevant aspects of a literary work of art can
unfold along many different dimensions, there are no natural boundaries to an author’s creativity.
Any choice an author makes in the manipulation of the medium that results in an objective and
recognizable feature of the text can become aesthetically relevant, no matter whether it consists
in choices regarding the syntactic level, in adopting a specific narrative perspective, in the kinds of
person that are described or in the way this is done, in the choice of the topic, the expression of a
certain feeling, the way the plot unfolds, the length of the text, or even in the use of non-linguistic
elements.
Any feature of a text, I want to suggest, that can be discerned as the result of an
aesthetically relevant choice by the author is a stylistic feature. There is no simple or mechanic
way of distinguishing these features from mere idiosyncrasies in the author’s use of language or
other arbitrary by-products of the writing-process. Since the stylistic features of a text contribute
to the literary meaning of the work, they can be individuated only relative to an interpretation of
the work.
The thesis that style foregrounds the possible uses of the medium – and literary style, thus,
foregrounds the possible uses of language – must not be understood in a reductive manner,
however, as drawing our attention to some formal system of symbols. Language is not merely a
means of communication, it also plays an essential role in the mental life of all adult human
beings. The structure of most of our mental episodes is determined by language – which becomes
evident by the fact that the content of all propositional attitudes, i.e., all our knowledge, beliefs,
desires, etc., has propositional structure. Moreover, language plays a central role in our
conceptions of ourselves and of our social and physical environment. The way language is used,
thus, displays and at the same time forms the way we conceive the world around us. By
foregrounding specific of all possible uses of language, literary style can direct our attention to any
aspect of our mental life that involves language. It can so display the limits of entrenched ways of
conceiving a specific aspect of our lifeworld or present alternative ways of conceiving them.iii
Moreover, the very fact that style has been taken as expression of individuality brings to
the fore an interesting aspect about the human condition. If our conceptions of ourselves and our
social and physical environments depend essentially on language, i.e., on a system that is
governed by social rules, having such conceptions presupposes that one conforms to the rules that

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constitute language. At the same time it is true that we use language to express our individual
points of view. Charles Altieri has pointed at this tension, recalling a line of Wittgenstein’s thought:

Wittgenstein thus walks a very narrow line. He wants to call our attention to how the agent can be absorbed
within the conditions of thinking that may derive either from traditional practices or from a particular way of
engaging in a situation while also allowing room for our seeing the subject as defining certain aspects of
herself in this process. (Altieri 1989, 69)

This probably explains why style has been defined both as an acquired disposition to act on a set
of rules and as a systematic violation of rules. Many aspects of our adult life – especially the
philosophical relevant one’s – are situated in the tension between affirming one’s own
individuality and being part of a larger form of life, i.e., a community that is constituted by social
rules. The stylistic dimension of literary works of art can also be seen – among all the other
functions it performs – as an expression of this existential condition.
This suggests that a reflection of literary style can offer stimulating and fruitful impulses for
our philosophical conception of literature. It can not only shed a new light on questions that now
stand at the center of discussion, such as the question for the cognitive value of literature, the
paradox of fiction, the role of emotions in fictional, literary texts; most importantly, it allows to
bring back to the center of attention the aesthetic dimension of literature and thus to come back
to the very phenomenon that should interest philosophers of literature: literary works of art.


References:
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———. 1991. “Narrative and Style.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 49 (3): 201–9.
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Education, July 29.
Lamarque, Peter. 2010. Work and Object: Explorations in the Metaphysics of Art. Oxford/New
York: Oxford University Press.
Lang, Berel. 1987. “Looking for the Styleme.” In The Concept of Style, edited by Berel Lang, rev.
edition, 174–82. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press.
Mukařovský, Jan. 1977. “Two Studies of Poetic Designation.” In The Word and Verbal Art: Selected
Essays, translated by Peter Steiner and John Burbank, 65–80. New Haven: Yale University
Press.
Robinson, Jenefer M. 1984. “General and Individual Style in Literature.” The Journal of Aesthetics
and Art Criticism 43 (2): 147–58. doi:10.2307/429989.
———. 1985. “Style and Personality in the Literary Work.” The Philosophical Review 94 (2): 227–
47. doi:10.2307/2185429.
The Oxford English Dictionary. 1989. 2nd ed. Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press ; Oxford
University Press.
Ullmann, Stephen. 1957. Style in the French Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Walton, Kendall. 1987. “Style and the Products and Processes of Art.” In The Concept of Style,
edited by Berel Lang, rev. edition, 72–103. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press.
Wollheim, Richard. 1987. “Pictorial Style: Two Views.” In The Concept of Style, edited by Berel
Lang, rev. edition, 183–202. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press.
———. 1995. “Style in Painting.” In The Question of Style in Philosophy and the Arts, edited by
Caroline van Eck, James McAllister, and Renée van de Vall, 37–49. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

Suggested further readings:
Altieri, Charles. “Style as the Man: From Aesthetic to Speculative Philosophy.” In Analytic
Aesthetics, edited by Richard Shusterman, 59–84. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989.
Garvin, Paul L. 1964. A Prague School Reader on Esthetics, Literary Structure, and Style.
Washington: Georgetown University Press.
Leech, Geoffrey N. 2007. Style in Fiction: a Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose. 2nd
ed. New York: Pearson Longman.
Robinson, Jenefer M. “Style and Personality in the Literary Work.” The Philosophical Review 94,
no. 2 (April 1, 1985): 227–247.


i
Nelson Goodman has argued that also natural objects, when functioning as symbols, can have
style – he speaks of a sunrise in Mandalay style – a sunrise “expressing the suddenness of
thunder” (Goodman 1975, 808). For a critique of this view, cf. (Walton 1987, 73f), who insists that
style can be attributed only to artifacts or actions, but not to natural objects.
ii
For the distinction between poetic and other functions of language, cf., for example, (Jakobson
1960) or (Mukařovský 1977).

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iii
For an application of this argument to the role of literary form for the cognitive value of a work
cf. (Huemer 2007).

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