Richard Bradford provides a definitive introductory guide to modern critical ideas on literary style and stylistics.

It will provide students with a basic grasp of stylistics and literary analysis. This comprehensive and accessible guidebook for undergraduates examines:

• the terminology of literary form
• how literary style has evolved since the sixteenth century
• the role of stylistics in twentieth century criticism
• the discipline of stylistics from classical rhetoric to post-structuralism
• the relationship between literary style and its historical context
• style and gender
• examples of poems, plays and novels from Shakespeare to the present day