Abstract:This article outlines a systematic theory of style that aims to combine "social formalism" with narratology. Beginning with a reading of a little-known essay by Raymond Williams on the history of English novelistic prose, the article argues that Williams's insights into the social preconditions of modern style can be suggestively combined with Mikhail M. Bakhtin's theory of the inherent multiplicity of novelistic discourse and Richard Walsh's pragmatic theory of narrative "voice" to produce a core definition o… Show more
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