A Quantitative Approach to Thomas Hardy's Prose Style

Patrick M. Hartwell

doi:10.2307/356554

College Composition and Communication May 1970

A Quantitative Approach to Thomas Hardy's Prose Style

Patrick M. Hartwell

Abstract

advantages and limitations of informal and unsophisticated word-counts as a tool in the of prose. My subject is the prose style of a novelist, Thomas Hardy. But I am less concerned with Hardy's style as such than with drawing some general conclusions from the discussion, to suggest that word-counts are useful in two ways. First, they do what they are supposed to do: they make evidence precise and specific, and thus provide verifiable links between text and theory. And second, they help the critic to do what they in themselves cannot do: that is, in addition to verifying what we already know, word-counts serve by their limitations as ways of discovery, as ways of finding out things we did hot know before. My experience, then, underscores Josephine Miles's view that analysis works to support and invite intuition.... It does not create, invent, imagine, lead to values; but given values, it clarifies and discerns, helping us to understand the relation between what

Journal: College Composition and Communication
Published: 1970-05-01
DOI: 10.2307/356554
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Open Access: Closed
Topics: voice and style
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A Quantitative Approach to Thomas Hardy's Prose Style

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