Essays in Modern Stylistics, first published in 1981, is a collection of essays in the application of modern linguistic theory to the study of literature. The essays reflect the development in stylistics away from programmic statements towards analysis of particular literary works and effects. This selection includes studies of the theory of stylistics, linguistic approaches to the poetry of John Keats, Wallace Stevens, E. E. Cummings, Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Blake, modern metrical theory and prose style. This title will be of interest to students of literary theory.

Acknowledgements; Part 1: Foreword; Part 2: General Theory; 1. The Role of Linguistics in a Theory of Poetry Paul Kiparsky 2. Literary Competence Jonathan Culler 3. Generative Grammar and Stylistic Analysis J. P. Thorne 4. What is stylistics and why are they saying such terrible things about it? Stanley E. Fish; Part 3: Approaches to Poetics; 5. Keats's 'To Autumn': Poetry as Process and Pattern Donald C. Freeman 6. Wallace Stevens: Form and Meaning in Four Poems Samuel Jay Keyser 7. Syntactic Deviation and Cohesion Irene R. Fairley 8. Constraints on Syntactic Rules and the Style of Shelley's 'Adonais': An Exercise in Stylistic Criticism Timothy R. Austin 9. The Self-Reflexive Artefact: The Function of Mimesis in an Approach to a Theory of Value for Literature E. L. Epstein; Part 4: Approaches to Metrics; 10. The Iambic Pentameter Morris Halle and Samuel Jay Keyser 11. Stress, Syntax and Meter Paul Kiparsky 12. Towards a Formal Poetics: Metrical Patterning in 'The Windhover' Charles T. Scott 13. A Generative Metrical Analysis of 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' Justine T. Stillings; Part 4: Approaches to Prose Style; 14. Linguistic Function and Literary Style: An Inquiry into the Language of William Golding's 'The Inheritors' M. A. K. Halliday 15. Speech, Literature and the Space between Mary Louise Pratt; Suggestions for Further Reading