Stylistic Analysis and Literary Interpretation In his work on (Slovak) stylistics J.

Mistrk draws clear boundaries between tylis tic analysis and literary interpretation (ibid., p. 31): e defines stylistic or text analysis as a procedure which aims at the linguistic eans and devices of a given text, the message, topic and content of analysed texts re not the focus. T he method of stylistic analysis can be equally applied to the study language u se in literary as well as non-literary texts. From this point of view literary interpretation is a process which applies exclu sively to literary texts, it aims at understanding and interpreting the topic, o ntent and the message of a literary work, its literary qualities and the so call ed ecoding of the author's signals by the recipient. In stylistic study a stylistician studies the style and method that an author us es in his artistic creation. It applies the amplification of linguistics to appr oach literary texts to identify the choices and ways a writer uses in weaving a text. It is always a matter of discussion what profit can be gained from linguis tic study. A literary work is built up on verbal structures and even a critic mu ch interested in social background and history of literature can scarcely procee d in his study without paying attention to the way in which words are organized. The literature depends on language though the reverse is not necessary just as childhood in absence of manhood may be possible but manhood without childhood is unthinkable. Every literary form is a combination of syntactic units. There may be language without literature but there can be no literature without language. --The main difference between literary and stylistic study is that while literar y criticism is an orgy of opinion, stylistic analysis is a submission to the wor k itself. Literary criticism starts with prefabricated judgments about the autho r. It provides no accurate description in support of ideas. Long quotations are offered but without proving their significance. The norm of comparison leads now here. Except this, literary studies are largely concerned with literary history, incidents of an authors personal life, sources of his inspiration, political, so cial and economic history of the age and only at the end arrived at the close co nsiderations of literary work itself. After having a sharp eye on a literary tex t, literary critic selects features from it to analyze it or to connect it to pa rticular genre or period. It involves explicit value judgments of an individual critic that may be quite different from another literary critic. The stylistic s tudy starts from a positive and identifiable point the precise verbal manifestat ion. Graham Hough comments that for a literary critic, the consideration of a wri ters language frequently comes as a sort of icing on the cake after every other a spect of his work has been dealt with. The claim of stylistics rests essentially on the proposition that the farthest ranges of a writers art, the depth of his e motional experience, and the heights of his spiritual insight are expressed only through an examination of his verbal art. (39) Stylistic study rescues from mere impressionism and subjectivity by being object ive in its orientation. It processes a less intuitive and impersonal method of i nterpreting a text than a literary critic, based on the language of the text a s cientific discipline. The concentration on linguistic method results in imperson al reproducible truth. At any time, a person can approach the text applying the identical stylistic procedure, or to arrive at the same results. A stylistic cri tic shows dissatisfaction with what Halliday calls amateur psychology, armchair p hilosophy or fictitious social history. (70) He argues against the philosophical level of how text should be analyzed and for what purpose. A text is an open ent ity; anyone can approach it without having an eye on the prospect and level of a nalysis criteria lined-up by critics or writer himself. His main concern is actu al verbal texture. The flying of imaginative world is checked and footing is alw ays on the grass root level. A literary critic aims to construct a model or searches a moral which explains a n individual text, while a stylistic critic points out the way language performs in any text. So, the interpretation offered by stylistic analysis is authentic because it is related to the facts of the texts, not to the judgement of general kind like Milton was a great poet and only next to Shakespeare. A stylistician

jots down the data of the texts (language) to analyze it on the basis of linguis tic categories and theories. A linguist would acknowledge that he should not pay preference to some categories at the cost of other because it would not lead to entirely objective purpose. He also stresses on the aesthetic proprieties of la nguage like rhythm, use of figures of speeches and so forth. Katie Wales opines, the goal of the most stylistics is not simply to describe the formal features of text for their own sake, but in order to show their functional significance for the interpretation of text; or in order to relate literary effects to linguisti c causes where these are felt to be relevant (453) Thus he would have to co-relate a ll the sections of stylistic devices to reach a cohesive interpretation of the t ext. Some critics object that evaluation of grammar in a text destroys its aesthetic level of viewing a text as a complete entity. But the question is raised Is real ly the acquisition of how something is manufactured entail to lose pleasure in i t? No, it does not happen every time. Imagine a well crafted ship and its adjoin ing parts. Would the knowledge of how all the parts are interconnected leads to the damage of its aesthetic pleasure? No, it enhances the enjoyment of viewing t he ship with the proper knowledge of its parts and their functions. Same happens with text it seems more enjoyable and intelligible with the acquisition of co-r elation of its manufacturing parts. The breaking down of text into component par ts provides opportunity to evolve each component on its own basic and its relati on with other components. It reveals how each sentence is weaved out so cleverly that its changing in position destroys the beauty and rhythm of a text. Leonard B. Meyer interprets: Style is a replication of patterning whether in human behaviour that results fro m a series of choices made within some sets of constraintsAn individuals style of speaking and writing for instance, results in large part from lexical, grammatic al and syntactical choices made within the constraints of the language and diale ct he has learned to use but does not himself create. (21) Thus, to make his investigations within the text, a stylistic critic has compreh ensive methodology and descriptive tools at his disposal. He moves through lexic al to grammatical to semantic realm of a literary text.