Author: Patrick Colm Hogan

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2020-11-26

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0197539572

"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"--