Corpus Stylistics in Principles and Practice: A Stylistic Exploration of John Fowles' The Magus

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In this book, Yufang Ho compares the text style difference between the two versions of John Fowles' The Magus, exemplifying the methodological principles and analytic practices of the corpus stylistic approach. The Magus was first published in 1966 and was revised and republished by Fowles in 1977. Fowles' own comment on the second edition was that it was 'rather more than a stylistic revision.' The book explores how the revised version is linguistically different from the original, especially in terms of point of view (re) representation. The corpus stylistic approach adopted combines qualitative and quantitative comparison to confirm the overall text style difference. The analysis demonstrates that computer assisted methods can identify significant linguistic features which literary critics have not noticed and provide a more detailed descriptive basis for literary interpretation of (either edition) of the novel. This analysis of The Magus serves as a case study and exemplar of how corpus techniques may be used generally in the study of linguistics.

Reviews

This fascinating and well-researched corpus-based account of the relationship between the two editions of The Magus by John Fowles demonstrates the usefulness of corpus approaches to Stylistics, especially when insightfully combined with careful qualitative analysis. A "must read" for the serious stylistician.' -- Mick Short, Professor of English Language and Literature, Lancaster University, UK
This book successfully combines a set of complex techniques to complement traditional literary analysis and expose significant linguistic features or patterns within a corpus stylistic approach. YuFang writes in a very accessible style and clearly explains how text similarity, macroscopic linguistic comparison and metaphor extraction procedures can be used to systematically describe the revision of The Magus.' -- Paul Rayson, Director of UCREL and Lecturer in Computer Science, Lancaster University, UK
Offers an extremely detailed analysis of the extent, nature, and stylistic functions of the revisions to The Magus. * Literary and Linguistic Computing, Vol. 27, No. 4, 2012 *

Author Bio

Yufang Ho is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, Tzu Chi University, Taiwan.