In Stylistics Richard Bradford provides a definitive introductory guide to modern critical ideas on literary style and stylistics. The book includes examples of poems, plays and novels from Shakespeare to the present day. This comprehensive and accessible guidebook for undergraduates explains the terminology of literary form, considers the role of stylistics in twentieth-century criticism, and shows, with worked examples, how literary style has evolved since the sixteenth century. This book falls into three sections: Part I follows the discipline of stylistics from classical rhetoric to poststructuralism; Part II looks at the relationship between literary style and its historical context; Part III considers the relationships between style and gender, and between style and evaluative judgement.