Style in Narrative: Aspects of an Affective-Cognitive Stylistics (Cognition and Poetics)

Literary style is something many people talk about, but few could define. Yet it is crucial for our response to narrative art. Style can facilitate or obscure the events of a story or the motivations of a character, enhance the aesthetic appeal of a narrative or complicate its emotional impact, and even inflect the political or ethical implications of a work. It is precisely this complex operation of style that Patrick Colm Hogan explains in Style in Narrative . Drawing on recent psychological research, this book proposes a new and clear definition of style and provides a systematic theoretical account of style in relation to cognitive and affective science. Hogan's definition stresses that style varies by both scope, or the range of text or texts that may share a style, and level, the components of an individual work that might involve a shared style. The book uses rich examples from literature, film, and graphic fiction, including analysis of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Shakespeare's canon, William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying , and Art Spiegelman's Maus , as well as visual analysis of films by Robert Rodriguez, Deepa Mehta, Eric Rohmer, M.F.Husain, Yasujiro Ozu, and Chuan Lu. Through these studies Hogan identifies stylistic concerns common across mediums as well as the most consequential stylistic differences between them. Bringing together three often separated mediums within a coherent framework, Style in Narrative makes an important contribution to and necessary intervention in the field of stylistics. "Style has often been understood both too broadly and too narrowly. In consequence, it has not defined a psychologically coherent area of study. In the opening chapter, Hogan first defines style so as to make possible a consistent and systematic theoretical account of the topic in relation to cognitive and affective science. Hogan illustrates the main points of the first, theoretical chapter by reference to several works, prominently Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. Subsequent chapters in Part I focus on some under-researched aspects of literary style. Specifically, the second chapter explores the level of story construction for the scope of an authorial canon, treating Shakespeare. The third chapter turns to verbal narration in a single work, Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. Part II, on film style, begins with a theoretical chapter on film style. It turns, in chapter 5, to the perceptual interface in the genre of "painterly" films (films that draw on stylistic features of other visual arts), examining works by Rodriguez, Mehta, Rohmer, and Husain. The sixth chapter treats the level of plot in the postwar films of Ozu. The remaining film chapter turns to visual narration in a single work, Lu's Nanjing! Nanjing! The third part comprises a single chapter. It addresses theoretical and interpretive issues bearing on style in graphic fiction, with a focus on Spiegelman's Maus. An Afterword touches briefly on some possible implications of stylistic analysis for political critique"-- Provided by publisher Cover Series Style in Narrative Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Cognitive and Affective Stylistics PART I: Literature 1. Literary Style 2. Story Structure: Shakespeare and the Integration of Genres 3. Verbal Narration: Ambiguities of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying PART II: Film 4. Film Style 5. Perceptual Interface and Painterly Cinema: Three Minutes of Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City 6. Emplotment: Ellipsis and Excess in Yasujiro Ozu’s Postwar Films 7. Visual Narration: Embodiment and Point of View in Lu Chuan’s Nanjing! Nanjing! PART III: Graphic Narrative 8. Stylistic Choices in Graphic Narrative: Particularity and Its Functions in Art Spiegelman’s Maus Afterword—​Keep Stylistics Great: A Note on Politics and the Analysis of Style Works Cited Notes Index Drawing on recent psychological research, this book proposes a new and clear definition of "style" and provides a systematic theoretical account of style in relation to cognitive and affective science. Patrick Hogan uses rich examples from literature, film, and graphic fiction to explain the narrative, thematic, and emotional functions of style in narrative.