Style and Sense(s)

This edited volume celebrates cutting-edge research in stylistics and, more specifically, recent work on sense and the senses. The title originated in the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA) 2022 conference and marks the 40th onsite event by showcasing some of the excellent papers delivered on that occasion. The selected chapters fall into 4 parts each of which gives pride of place to how style makes sense and how senses make style. The chapters follow research in neuroscience and sociocognition, investigate how body and mind are inextricably linked through embodied meaning; how emotions are both conveyed and perceived; and how impressions, thoughts and worldviews can be induced by a certain style. The apprehension of the senses is carried through a variety of theories (cognitive linguistics and stylistics, ecostylistics, phenomenology, simulation theory, enactivism, metaphor theory, Text World Theory) and is applied to various genres (poetry, novels, short stories, detectivefiction, restaurant reviews) and media (the oral vs written tradition, ekphrasis, and semiotic transfers). This book will be of interest to students and academics in stylistics, cognitive linguistics, discourse analysis, ecostylistics, and multimodality.

Chapter 1. Introduction: Enacting style and sense(s) (Linda Pillière and Sandrine Sorlin).- Part I 'The representation of sense and sense-making in fiction'.- Chapter 2. The representation of experience in modernist fiction (Violeta Sotirova).- Chapter 3. To make you hear, make you feel, make you see: representing sense-perceptions in narrative fiction (Michael Toolan).- Chapter 4. The sense of the sense of smell in Virginia Woolf's Flush (Stéphanie Béligon).- Part II 'Sensory details across genres'.- Chapter 5. "The Mt Everest of dining experiences": Multisensory style in restaurant reviews (Áine Dougherty & Craig Hamilton).- Chapter 6. "You see, but you do not observe" - Sensory manipulation and sense-making in the Sherlock Holmes detective stories (Catherine Emmott & Marc Alexander).- Part III 'Experiencing otherness'.- Chapter 7. Experiencing mind style: from iconicity to sensory simulation (LouiseNuttall).- Chapter 8. Painting a world before language using language: A cognitive stylistic analysis of synaesthetic metaphors in the imagery of Keki Daruwalla's "Before the Word" (Sreenidhi Sivakumar & Maitali Khanna).- Chapter 9. Remaking the sense(s) in Sumana Roy's How I Became a Tree: a stylistic analysis (Esterino Adami).- Part IV 'Senses through medium and semiotic systems'.- Chapter 10. "The sound must seem an echo to the sense": Experiencing oral and silent reading of poetry (Willie van Peer & Anna Chesnokova).- Chapter 11. Creative writing practice of ekphrastic intervention: a case study of literary responses to "A Blind Girl Reading" by Ejnar Nielsen (Polina Gavin).- Chapter 12. Putting some flesh on sensory language: an experiential approach to style (Jean-Rémi Lapaire).

Linda Pillière is Professor of English Language and Linguistics at Aix-Marseille Université, France.

Sandrine Sorlin is Professor of English Language and Linguistics at University Paul-Valéry - Montpellier 3, France.

This 307-page book is the outcome of what may originally sound like a paradox ... . each chapter is, in its own way, an invitation to take stock of an aesthetic experience which has, hopefully, much in store to help our bodies and senses resist the pressure of our hectic, overloaded lives in which we are so often compelled to keep reality and ourselves at bay. Surely that is what our fascination with style and stylistics ... . (Nathalie Vincent-Arnaud, Power Dynamics in Speculative Forms, Vol. 23 (1), 2025)

The book Style and Sense(s) is a monograph that unites research in sense theory and stylistics. Since sensory experience is one of the most important forms of experience in art, philosophy, and literature, its conceptualization within the scientific fields merits becoming the object of a monograph such as this. ... Each listed paper approaches its own topic in a clear and focused manner, with a high degree of scientific argumentation, extensive meticulousness, and reaching valuable conclusions that herald further perspectives. (Tin Lemac, Revista de Lenguas para fines específicos, June 30, 2024)