The Arguable Stylistic Layers in Critical Stylistics of Short Story and Novel

Mohammad Taghi Bahar is the initiator of historical stylistics in Iran by publishing “Tarikhe Tatavor e Nasre Farsi” (the Evolution of Farsi Pose) (1331/1952), and his manner has been followed so far. To exit the recession with which Farsi prose stylistics is afflicted, one of the solutions suggested in this article is applying the new branches of stylistics and retrieval of the suitable tools for analyzing Persian texts. To reach this goal, we will consider critical stylistics as one of the new branches, and specifically discuss the arguable stylistic layers in the critical stylistics of short story and novel. The basic question processed in this study is that what stylistic variables could be discussed in critical investigating of short story and novel styles, which leads to discovering the ideologies and power relations in the texts. To answer the question, we will consider studying story and novel in textual and narrative macro-layers by analyzing focalization; the level of persistence of focalization and the facets of focalization (perceptual facet: time, order, duration, frequency, and space; an overall and eye-bird’s view or a partial and close-up view, cognitive and ideological facets), and lexical, syntactic, pragmatic and rhetorical micro-layers in relation with its external layer (situational context). The aim will be applying the new branches of stylistics in studying Farsi literature texts; many of the stylistic criteria and features discussed in this article could be applied in studying the style of other branches of narrative literature, e. g. myth, fiction, allegory and romance.