Affective stylistics examines how a text affects the reader during the reading process, rather than viewing the text as a static object. It involves close analysis of the text, often word-by-word, to understand how it structures the reader's response moment to moment. While the text is the focus, affective stylistics sees meaning as arising from the reader's experience rather than being inherent to the text itself. It aims to study how the reader engages with the text and makes sense of it during the reading process.

2. Affective stylistics is derived
from analyzing further the notion
that a literary text is an event that
occurs in time—that comes into
being as it is read—rather than an
object that exists in space.

3. The text is examined closely,
often line by line or even word
by word, in order to understand
how (stylistics) it affects
(affective) the reader in the
process of reading.

4. Although there is thus a great deal of
focus on the text, which is why some
theorists consider this approach transactional
in nature, many practitioners of affective
stylistics do not consider the text an
objective, autonomous entity—it does not
have a fixed meaning independent of
readers—because the text consists of the
results it produces, and those results occur
within the reader.

5. For example, when Stanley Fish
describes how a text is structured, the
structure he describes is the structure of
the reader’s response as it occurs from
moment to moment, not the structure of
the text as we might assemble it—like
puzzle pieces all spread out at once
before us—after we’ve finished
reading.

6. Indeed, it is the “slow-
motion,” phrase-by-phrase
analysis of how the text
structures the reader’s
response for which affective
stylistics is perhaps best
known.

7. That Judas perished by hanging himself, there is
no certainty in Scripture: though in one place it
seems to affirm it, and by a doubtful word hath
given occasion to translate it; yet in another
place, in a more punctual description, it make it
improbable, and seems to overthrow it.
(“Literature” 71)

8. According to Fish, the question “What does this sentence
mean?” or “What does this sentence say?” yields little because the
sentence provides us with no facts with which we could answer the
question. Even if we notice that the sentence does say something—it
says that Scripture gives us no clear indication of whether or not Judas
hanged himself—his point is that the sentence tells us only that it is
unable to tell us anything. In contrast, he notes, the question “What
does the sentence do to the reader?” or “How does the reader of this
sentence make meaning?” yields something quite useful. What this
passage about Judas does, Fish notes, is move the reader from certainty
to uncertainty. The first clause, “that Judas perished by hanging
himself”(which, as most of us know, is a kind of shorthand for “the fact
that Judas perished by hanging himself”), is an assertion we accept as a
statement of fact.

9. Fish offers these three examples of the kinds of
endings the first clause leads us to expect.
1. That Judas perished by hanging himself is (an example for us all).
2. That Judas perished by hanging himself shows (how conscious he
was of the enormity of his sin).
3. That Judas perished by hanging himself should (give us pause).
(“Literature” 71)

10. These expectations narrow the possible meanings of the next three
words in the passage: “there is no.” At this point, the reader expects to see
“there is no doubt,” but is given instead “there is no certainty.”
Now the fact of Judas’ hanging himself, upon which our understanding
of the sentence has rested, becomes uncertain. Now the reader is involved in a
completely different kind of activity. As Fish puts it, “Rather than following an
argument along a well-lighted path (alight, after all, has gone out), [the reader]
is now looking for one” (“Literature”71). In such a situation, the reader will
tend to read on in hopes of finding clarification. But as we continue to read the
passage, our uncertainty only increases as we move back and forth between
words that seem to promise clarity—“place, ”“affirm,” “place,” “punctual,”
“overthrow”—and words that seem to with draw that promise: “though,”
“doubtful,” “yet,” “improbable,” “seems.” Uncertainty is further increased by
the excessive use of the pronoun It because, as the sentence progresses, the
reader has more and more difficulty figuring out what it refers to.

11. In addition to an analysis of the reading activities that structure
the reader’s response, other kinds of evidence are usually gathered to
further support the claim that the text is about the experience of reading.
For example, most practitioners of affective stylistics will cite the
responses of other readers—of other literary critics, for example—to
show that their own analyses of the reading activities provided by a
particular text are valid for readers other than just them-selves. A critic
might even cite an extreme divergence of critical opinion about the text
to support, for example, the contention that the text provides an
unsettling, decentering, or confusing reading experience. This wouldn’t
mean that the text is flawed but that by unsettling the reader it
demonstrates, say, the fact that interpretation of written texts, and
perhaps of the world, is a problematic endeavor from which we should
not expect to achieve certainty.

12. Thematic evidence from the text
itself is also usually provided to show
that the text is about the experience of
reading. For example, the reader-
response critic shows how the
experiences of characters and
descriptions of settings mirror the
reader’s experience reading the text.

13. As noted above, the textual evidence at this point is
thematic: the critic shows that the theme of the text is a
particular kind of reading experience, such as the
difficulties involved in reading, the processes involved in
making sense of the text, or the inevitability of
misreading. Although many practitioners of affective
stylistics believe that the text, as an independent object,
disappears in their analysis and becomes what it really
is—an experience that occurs within the reader—their use
of thematic evidence, as we’ve just seen, underscores the
important role played by the text in establishing what the
reader’s experience is.