Language and Style THE NEW ACCENT SERIES General Editor: Terence Hawkes Alternative Shakespeares 1, ed. John Drakakis Alternative Shakespeares 2, ed. Terence Hawkes Post-Colonial Shakespeares, ed. Ania Loomba and Martin Orkin Re-Reading English, ed. Peter Widdowson Rewriting English, Janet Batsleer, Tony Davies, R. O’Rourke, Chris Weedon English and Englishness, B. Doyle Linguistics and the Novel, Roger Fowler Language and Style, E. L. Epstein The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama, Keir Elam Structuralism and Semiotics, Terence Hawkes Superstructuralism, Richard Harland Deconstruction ed. 2, Christopher Norris Formalism and Marxism, Tony Bennett Critical Practice, Catherine Belsey Dialogism, Michael Holquist Dialogue and Difference: English for the Nineties, ed. Peter Brooker/Peter Humm Literature, Politics and Theory, ed. F. Barker, P. Hulme, M. Iversen, D. Loxley Popular Fictions: Essays in Literature and History, ed. Peter Humm, Paul Stigant, Peter Widdowson Criticism in Society, ed. lmre Salusinszky Fantasy, Rosemary Jackson Science Fiction: Its Criticism and Teaching, Patrick Parrinder Sexual Fiction, Maurice Charney Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction, Patricia Waugh Telling Stories: A Theoretical Analysis of Narrative Fiction, Steven Cohan and Linda Shires Poetry as Discourse, Anthony Easthope The Politics of Postmodernism, Linda Hutcheon Subculture, ed. 2, Dick Hebdige Reading Television, John Fiske and John Hartley Orality and Literacy, Walter J. Ong Adult Comics, An Introduction, Roger Sabin The Unusable Past, Russell J. Reising The Empire Writes Back, Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin Translation Studies ed. 2, Susan Bassnett Studying British Cultures, Susan Bassnett Literature and Propaganda, A. P. Foulkes Reception Theory, Robert C. Holub Psychoanalytic Criticism, Elizabeth Wright The Return of the Reader, Elizabeth Freund Sexual/Textual Politics, Toril Moi Making a Difference, ed. Gayle Green and Coppélia Kahn AVAILABLE AS A COMPLETE SET: ISBN 0-415-29116-X E. L. Epstein Language and Style R0U Routledge TIED Taylor & Francis Group G E LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 1978 by Routledge This edition first published 2003 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX 14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group Transferred to Digital Printing 2007 © 1978, 2003 E. L. Epstein All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-415-29123-2 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-30019-3 (set) Publisher's Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent Printed and bound by CPI Antony Rowe, Eastbourne For Tegwen This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS General Editor's Preface ix Introduction xi I STYLE AS PERCEPTIVE STRATEGY I 2 TYPES OF LINGUISTIC CRITICISM 12 The game principle 3 PLAYING THE LITERATURE GAME : A PUBLIC AND COLLECTIVE NORM 22 Public and private games The public game I: the sound patterns of poetry The public game II: intonation The public game III: syntax 4 THE PRIVATE GAME : PORTRAITS OF THE ARTIST 64 5 CONCLUDING COMMENTS 79 Notes 81 Bibliographical note 88 Index 91 This page intentionally left blank GENERAL EDITOR'S PREFACE T is easy to see that we are living in a time of rapid and I radical social change. It is much less easy to grasp the fact that such change will inevitably affect the nature of those academic disciplines that both reflect our society and help to shape it. Yet this is nowhere more apparent than in the central field of what may, in general terms, be called literary studies. Here, among large numbers of students at all levels of education, the erosion of the assumptions and presup- positions that support the literary disciplines in their con- ventional form has proved fundamental. Modes and cate- gories inherited from the past no longer seem to fit the reality experienced by a new generation. New Accents is intended as a positive response to the initiative offered by such a situation. Each volume in the series will seek to encourage rather than resist the process of change, to stretch rather than reinforce the boundaries that currently define literature and its academic study. Some important areas of interest will obviously be those in which an initial impetus seems to come from linguistics.