The document discusses the meaning and use of the term "style" in literary criticism. It explores how style has multiple meanings and can refer to an author's individual expression, the quality of expression, or a universal significance conveyed through personal expression. The document also examines how critics often confuse or use these different meanings of style interchangeably. It emphasizes that a writer's true style emerges from their unique emotions, perceptions and mode of experiencing the world.

1. Meaning of Style
• The critic is preoccupied by an ideal of definition
• If a critic cannot determine the sense in which
critical terms are used he can try to determine and
distinguish the senses in which they are used
• So the confusion is more
• Term of criticism- to have two easily separable &
distinct meanings- though they are irreconcilable
• Pluralism
• Ex: Decandence- commonest terms of abuse in
criticism

2. Meaning of Style
• Decandence- A historical term- disintegration of a
society- a period of transition between one social
structure, one social idea and another
• Decandence- A Literary term- metaphorical- a
period of literature – a visible transition between
one ideal to another
• During 18th century there was literary decadence
in Europe
• A critic has to use it in this way, but he uses it in a
limbo sense
• Uses it indiscriminately to the literature produced
in a social decadence

3. Meaning of Style
• Applies it to the literature which depicts a life
which has some of the qualities of social
decadence
• 100 other nuances are crowded into a word
• Even though critics are watchful in the suggestion
of their language the word will be found used in a
fashion that a literary decadence accompanies a
social decadence
• The endeavour to clear up the meanings of a
word would carry us into region where all the
riddles and literary aesthetics lie in wait like so
many sphinxes for the unwary traveller.

4. Definition of Style
• Famous definitions of style- compare
• Buffon -“the style is the man.”
• Analytical definition of Henri Byle- metaphysics
• Style means- thought should produce the effect
• If we investigate style it would inevitably cover the
whole of literary aesthetics and the theory of literary
criticism
• There are many problems for a literary critic in
considering the way in which the word ‘style’ is used- 3
ways
• 1. Couldn’t mistake the style- Good/Appropriate style
• 2. No style
• 3. Writer has style- Absolute style

5. Meaning of Style
• 1. Good/Appropriate style
• Style: personal idiosyncrasy of expression
• Through this we can recognize a writer- individuality
• Best way to distinguish them by guessing the authorship of
passages
• Easy to guess- Dr.Johnson, Gibbon, Meredith & Henry James
• Hard to guess- Tourner, Webster, Beaumont, Fletcher
• Shakespeare- A subtlety of harmony, a swift superabundance
of metaphor- which his contemporaries could not even touch
• When a writer speaks as in his own voice or as the essayist or
critic, first look into the turn of his thought, then to his phrase
• In drama or novel first we will read the phrase then thought
• So style is included in recognizing a man’s writing

6. Meaning of Style
• Peculiar style which is undeniable- Shakespeare, Meredith,
Bacon, Lyly, Henry James, Dr.Johnson, HG Wells
• If we say that a writer has no style is to condemn him
• It demands more skill and learning
2. No style
• Style- Technique of expression
• The power of lucid exposition of a sequence of intellectual
ideas
• Philosopher or an essayist- he has good ideas but a bad
style
• Novelist or a poet- don’t have ideas but perceptions,
intuitions, emotional convictions
• Proof of their true perceptions is that the writer is able to
convey his ideas to the audience
• Style cannot be good or bad

7. Meaning of Style
• Novel or a poem that is well conceived but badly written is
a chimera
• If a story is or a poem is really well conceived it is immune
from the danger of being badly written
• To conceive a work of creative literature is to conceive it in
its particularity
• Aristotle's wisdom of plots- unity of time, place and action
• An argument – concerned with ideas in the logical sense
which may be expounded with economy or waste
• Style of this kind - taught by the old school of rhetoric-
rules for writing poetry
• But reputed writers never followed all these rules
• Eg. Shakespeare always overrode grammar for potent
dramatic reasons

8. Meaning of Style
• Absolute style
• Style – a complete fusion of the personal and the
universal
• Marlowe – bombastic, farcical and had style
• Not even Shakespeare could write like Marlowe
• When we say that Marlowe had style we refer to the
quality which transcends all personal idiosyncrasy
• Writer’s personality is evident in his greatest
passages
• Style is the complete realization of a universal
significance in a personal and particular expression

9. Duty of a critic
• Critic- creative artist
• Critic should make clear by his context the sense in which
he is using the word
• Duty- convey the intellectual and emotional impression in
the work created
• If not his work become jejune & unsubstantial
• Critic – creative writer tries to create in his reader the
peculiar emotion aroused in him by a work of literature
• The general terms which he uses may have a particular
colour and quality
• Eg: a critic has been successful in communicating a sense
of the majestical, symphonic effect of Milton’s
Aeropagitica- he goes on to talk of its style & defines the
meaning of the word.

10. Meaning of Style
• Perfect critic- does not exist & never has existed
• Critics sometimes succeeds and fails at others
• Fail more than they succeed
• When they fail they use the general terms as a prop
to give an appearance of weight and authority
instead of giving a content
• Problems of critic- confusing the meaning of the
word style
• The word slips from one sense into another
• 1. Sense of idiosyncrasy – literary merit of an author
• 2. Lucid exposition of intellectual argument, innocent
of all distracting metaphor, words reduced to
minimum, creates an illusion of life- excellence of a
writer

11. Meaning of Style
• Flat style- aristocratic virtue of its own -whatever
might be the subject – to be vivid
• Few writers who have deficiency in their own
creative vitality, fear the contempt of the superior
writers embrace this style
• Such writers become parochial
• They achieve success in their lifetime and will be
forgotten after their death
• Style is an applied ornament and had its origin in the
tradition of the schools of Rhetoric in Europe
• Professors of Rhetoric teaches about expounding an
argument or arrange a pleading

12. Meaning of Style
• Classification of rhetorical devices were formal and
extravagant
• They taught with their cumbersome paraphernalia
• Recommended to use ornaments, logical structure
• Even though their theories were not fantastic it
persisted and prevailed
• In England the rhetorical tradition has completely
disappeared
• There are many popular delusions about style
• Style can be used intelligibly in three different senses
• When an attribute attains to the dignity of having
several meanings it begins to take a life on its own
• Style has begun to enjoy this independent existence

13. Meaning of Style
• Commanding use of Metaphor
• Metaphor if seen by the prosaic eye or analyzed
by a mind does tend to look like an ornament
• Like how a jewel is sewn upon a fabric, a
metaphor is added to a narrative
• If we remove the jewel the fabric is durable
• Metaphor is also used in the same way
• Old writers took a childish delight in incrusting
their language with ornamental metaphor
• Which has a quaint fascination for a modern
reader

14. Meaning of Style
• From being an ornament it has little to do with the
act of comparison
• Creative literature of the highest kind is not
amenable to this logical analysis
• Eg. In Shakespeare’s writing we can watch the
gradual overriding of the act of comparison
• Metaphor becomes almost a mode of apprehension
• In Shakespeare’s works metaphors tumble over one
another not creating confusion but constant
illumination
• Hence, metaphor is the unique expression of a
writer’s individual vision

15. Meaning of Style
• Metaphor gives no support to the superstition that
style is a kind of ornament
• But the superstition is stubborn
• In all the definitions of style the emphasis infallibly
falls on what we may call the organic nature of style
• Buffon’s definition- Style is the man himself
• It is the writer’s way of seeing things
• Flaubert- style is the writer’s way of thinking or
seeing
• Tchehov (refer pg 13)
• These definitions of style are in any sense not final

16. Meaning of Style
• Criticism at any rate is bound to scrutinize the means
by which the man himself, his manner of seeing, or
his superb feeling is expressed in language
• They all stress on the immediate nature of style
• The source of style is to be found in a strong and
decisive original emotion- writer’s personal
idiosyncrasy
• An individual way of feeling & seeing will compel an
individual way of using language
• A true style must therefore be unique
• It also depends on whether it is a genuine individual
feeling or not

17. Meaning of Style
• A style must be individual because it is an individual
mode of feeling
• Some styles are more peculiar than others because
the writer’s feeling is different from the normal one
• The emotional experiences he is seeking to convey
are outside the ordinary range of human experience
• Must be inspired by some act- false idiosyncrasy
• Not only youths but grown up writers also when the
original writing fails them fall a prey to this
• The test of a true idiosyncrasy of style is necessary
and inevitable
• This testing requires sensitiveness and patience

18. Meaning of Style
• A false idiosyncrasy which has no true emotion
behind is dismissed by criticism
• Sometimes originality of style is also marked false-
becoz it’s unfamiliar
• Critics refuse to submit themselves to a new work of
literature
• No patience to listen to a deeper style
• This lack of patience- delay in recognizing the most
splendid piece of English prose Doughty’s Travels In
Arabia Deserta- 32 years
• Apt eg for idiosyncrasy of style, masterpiece of prose,
archaic language, inevitable expression of feeling,
harmony of writer’s temper, etc
• But critics casually criticize it as artificial

19. Meaning of Style
• Artificiality of style- artificiality is in reality a triumph
of art
• Charles Lamb, Mr.Doughty, Milton are artificial
• Artificiality is a term to be used with the utmost
circumspection in the analysis of literary style
• The term which separates the artificiality of style is
the natural language of an original and unfamiliar
mode of feeling
• All good styles are achieved by artifice
• Style is the direct expression of an individual mode of
experience
• Refer pg 17

20. Meaning of Style
• Every original genius has to create the taste by
which he is approved
• Coleridge and Wordsworth- manipulate the
language
• Wordsworth’s later poetry may serve as an example
of a barren idiosyncrasy of style
• It may present the appearance of luxuriant growth
• It may be nurtured by curious and elusive emotions
• A writer’s impulse is derived from his delight in
contemplating the formal beauty of the intricate
design he is engaged in constructing
• This is not mere idiosyncrasy but an hypertrophy of
style

21. Psychology of style
• Style- central concept of the nature of a writer’s
activity
• Origin of true style- mode of emotional or
intellectual experience which is peculiar to each
individual writer
• True idiosyncrasy
• False idiosyncrasy
• Conception of originating emotion- mode of
experience
• Originating emotion was a prime factor in the
genesis of a lyrical poem- occasion can be an
object or an incident in the real world

22. Psychology of style
• Poet’s perturbing emotion is lifted above the plane of
a sensational reaction by employing rhythm and
meter
• Therefore poem is the result of this reassertion of
conscious control over the poet’s disturbed emotions
• Each word will be relevant to the originating emotion
and relevant to the logical meaning of the poem
• Rhythm of the poem will be concordant
• Eg. Mr.Hardy’s A Broken Appointment
• Language of emotional expression- more direct &
simple
• Figures of speech
• Simple metaphor

23. Psychology of style
• Rhythm should be appropriate to the emotion
• Lyric poetry- medium for the expression of personal
emotion
• What of the literature that is impersonal?- Drama or novel
• Ex: Shakespeare’s plays- deliberately chose his theme
• Emotional disturbance was self provoked and complicated
• Poet’s mind- incidents and emotions produce deeper and
precise impressions than they do upon ordinary man
• Impressions reinforce each other- becomes a coherent
emotional nucleus in an artist who gains mature
achievement
• Emotional nucleus- leads to speculative thought

24. Psychology of style
• Literary artists speculative thought is predominantly
emotional which is symbolized through objects
• Thus, his vivid perceptions, with their emotional
accompaniments emerges a sense of the quality of
life as a whole
• Mathew Arnold- highest kind of poetry- ‘Criticism of
life’- metaphorical concept
• Creative writer does not criticize life - criticism is an
intellectual activity
• Ex. Highest kind of poetry- Shakespeare’s quote “we
are such stuff as dreams are made on: and our little
life is rounded with a sleep”

25. Psychology of style
• Quality of the great writer:
• A great writer does not really come to conclusions
about life
• Emotions reinforce one another- gradually forms in
him a habit of emotion
• Certain kinds of objects & incidents impress him with
a peculiar significance
• This is emotional bias or predisposition termed as
“mode of experience”- Writer’s mysterious
accumulation of past emotions
• Mature writer- miracle of giving universal
significance to the emotions
• Wordsworth- Preface to the Second edition of Lyrical
Ballads- throws light on the psychology of the writer

26. Psychology of style
• “All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful
emotions… by a man who being possessed of more than
usual organic sensibility… for our continued influences of
feeling are modified and directed by our thoughts…”
• Wordsworth seems to lay greater stress on the part played
by thought in the development of Poetic consciousness
• The thoughts in the mind of a great poet are chiefly the
residue of rememberedemotions
• Discursive (ideas) thinking- determines the writer’s
spiritual background
• Ex. Philosophic poets- H.G.Wells, Lucretius, Dante
Philosophic novelists- Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Thomas Hardy

27. Psychology of style
• Personality of the poet and emotion expressed in
the poem are different
• Often misunderstoodas writer’s attitude
• Writer’s philosophy determines his mode of
experience and gives unity to his work as a whole
• Lucretius used the philosophy of Epicurus and
Dante- Aristoteliancosmogony
• They used the intellectual system as a scaffolding
upon which to build an emotional structure
• Jonathan Swift used intellect not to reach logical
conclusions but to satirize the social condition

28. Psychology of style
• Selection of Plot:
• Poet- vivid emotions- refined into complex attitude
of life
• His emotional bias confirmed into mode of
experience, chooses a plot
• Aristotle gave importance to the choice of plot
• Different ways to choose a plot:
• 1.If author has to make his living through his writing-
he will choose a plot that suits the taste of the age.
Eg. Shakespeare during his time was active
• 2. If the writer was a free agent, his choice of plot
will be subtler and more serious

29. Psychology of style
• Baudelaire’s definition of plot:
• Plot is “the deep significance of life reveals itself in
entirety”. ‘Life’ means universe of the writer’s experience
• ‘Deep significance’- emotional quality regarding an object
or incident which has made a profound impression on the
poet’s mind
• This quality can be discerned in the sensitiveness of the
creative writer
• Mature writer- who is a free agent will select the plot- will
be in harmony with this quality (deep significance)
• Plot is an incident of life- can be taken from history, legend,
everyday life or writer’s imagination
• Frenchman tabulated the plots of every work of literature
and discovered that there are 36 different plots

30. Psychology of style
• Realistic and Romantic/Imaginative writing:
• There is no difference b/w the two
• Realistic- plot from everyday life
• Romantic- imagined from purely ideal world
• The great Realistic writer must be romantic and vice
versa
• Both use their harmonized experience to guide them
in selecting a congruous ( harmonious) plot
• Ex. Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Chaucer, Swift, keats,
Goethe etc
• Ex. of plot- significance of human life into the story
of a woman’s love for a man
• Ex- Chaucer’s Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare’s
Antony and Cleopatra

31. Psychology of style
• Great works of objective literature is referred back
to a peculiar originating emotion
• Emotion- infinitely complex- expressing such
emotions was the aim of the writer
• Writer selects appropriate means to communicate
such complex emotions
• Criticism- transpose emotions into intellectual
conceptions
• Criticism should refer to the original work which he
is trying to elucidate
• Critic must define the essential quality of his author
• Critic is in immediate contact b/w the writer’s
quality and the reader’s mind

32. Psychology of style
• Critic must have an apprehensionof the unique
and essential quality of his author
• Critic is a miniature creative artist
• Critic searches for some incident in the work of
art which fits the complex mode of experience
• Critic searches for quotes which perfectly
condenses the whole universe of experience into
a number of lines
• Critic is like a prism. Work has a whole spectrum
of emotions. Suddenly prism concentrateson an
intense pure light- the quotation

33. Psychology of style
• Recognizing greatest heights of style:
• Literature of genius has to create its own taste
• Keats was not recognized as a classic writer when
he was alive
• Readers and critics promoted him into a classic
writer
• Critic will not understand the significance of the
work in its first reading. He will apprehend the
significance of the work when he has worked his
way into the creative centre of the work
• Only then the critic is in a position to make positive
declarations about its style

34. Psychology of style
• Process of creating objective literature
• Highest style is the combination of
maximum personality with maximum impersonality
Concentration of peculiar Projection of personal emotion
& personal emotion into the created thing
• Dangers of talking about style:
1. Vague generalization
2. Talking about the accidents & avoiding essentials
• Style is an individual mode of experience
• Style can be more or less significant & universal in expressing the
whole of our human universe

35. Psychology of style
• Style is the very pinnacle of the pyramid of art
• Style is the supreme achievement
• It is the vital principle of all that is enduring in literature
• Ex. Shakespeare’s lines from Antony & Cleopatra
• Analysis: Subtlety of orchestration of emotion
• Cleopatra- begins with a grand style fitting a queen
• Intimate emotion- ‘Husband I come’
• Simile- dramatically perfect for essential process of emotional
changes
• “the stroke of death is as lover’s pinch which hurts and is
desired”
• Jealousy of passionate love:
• ‘If she first meet the curled Antony, He’ll make demand of her,
and spend that kiss Which is my heaven to have’- curled- simple
adjective & eg. of true style

36. Psychology of style
• Dramatic metaphor-in a moment of time consummates the
passion of love with a heart- rending irony
• “Dost thou not see my baby at my breast, that sucks the
muse asleep?”
• Absolute intimacy of love and death
• “As sweet as balm as soft as air, as gentle. O Antony!”
• Cleopatra- Dignity of queen to intimacy of a lover
• Chairman- lifts her to the status of a queen
• Style is perfect and complex concentrated into a single
phrase
• Metaphor and simile both are crucial & simple
• Simile- “the stroke of death…. Desired”
• Metaphor- “dost…. Muse sleep”

37. Psychology of style
• Shakespeare deliberately opened the passage in grand
style- which is appropriatein a moment of dramatic
emotion
• Technique is passing from the grand royal style &
status to pure woman
• Grand style is maintained by the Chairman
• Eg: Chairman calls Cleopatra as ‘O Eastern Star’
• Shakespeare makes the language completely adequate
to the emotion & keeps it simple
• Brings death the outward & visible sign of the scene
under the sovereignty of love – spiritual grace
• Shakespeare uses the actual language of emotion
triumphantly & deliberately
• Shakespeare is the highest genius & finest style

38. • Coleridge- Biographia Literaria says that the poet
become original genius- when predominant passion
is modified by associated thoughts or images
• The personal writer- writer who gave immediate
expression to his own mode of experience
• Coleridge considers personal writer as superior to
the objective writer
• Coleridge himself was a personal poet
• Coleridge- Table Talk says that “Elegy is the form of
poetry natural to the reflective mind”
• Sorrow and love- main theme of elegy
• Coleridge- the elegy is the exact opposite of the
Homeric epic, in which all is purely external &
objective & the poet is a mere voice
Psychology of style

39. • Coleridge’s idea that an objective poet is a mere
voice cannot be accepted
• Objective writer creates the plot, incidents,
characters and conceals his identity which is a
superior quality in a writer
• The efforts to keep one’s personality in the
background-is a splendid effort even for a writer
of genius
• Keats- objectivity, his command over language
makes him a higher order poet
Psychology of style

40. • Arnold- “criticism of life” refers to selecting examples from
highest poetic lines that gives utterance to general
judgement about life
• Objective literature conceived in a greater simplicity &
satisfies a less complex mode of experience in the writer
• Ex. Chaucer’s Troilus & Cressida- perfection of style
• Description of an incident is precise- puts a clear picture
before your eyes- essential for a good style
• Two qualities of Chaucer:
• 1.Sureness of Psychology concentrated into the incident.
Ex. Reveals with clarity the characters of both Cressida and
Pandarus
• The emotion & knowledge conveyed are as delicate as a
thread of gold
Psychology of style

41. Psychology of style
• 2. The sense we derive from this simple objective
description of the author’s individuality
• Conclusion:
• Without the perfection of style it is impossible
for a writer to express the emotion with
coherence
• Emotion + Expression = fine writing (style)