El Estilo Literario

by John Middleton Murry, Jorge Hernández Campos (Translator)

Los principales aspectos que presenta el problema del estilo, en sus relaciones con el escritor y con la obra de arte, son juzgadas por John Middleton Murry a fin de ofrecer un manual ordenado y útil para todo aquel que se interese por el fenómeno literario.

184 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1922

About the author

See also his son, John Middleton Murry Jr.

John Middleton Murry was an English writer. He was a prolific author, producing more than 60 books and thousands of essays and reviews on literature, social issues, politics, and religion during his lifetime. A prominent critic, Murry is best remembered for his association with Katherine Mansfield, whom he married in 1918 as her second husband, for his friendship with D. H. Lawrence and T. S. Eliot, and for his friendship (and brief affair) with Frieda Lawrence. Following Mansfield's death, Murry edited her work.

Murry was married four times: first to Katherine Mansfield in 1918; after her death in 1923 he arranged the publishing or republishing of her works. In 1924 he married Violet Le Maistre, in 1932 Ada Elizabeth Cockbaine, and in 1954 Mary Gamble. With his second wife, Violet Le Maistre, he had two children: a daughter, Katherine Middleton Murry who became a writer and published "Beloved Quixote: The Unknown Life of John Middleton Murry" in 1986, and a son, John Middleton Murry, Jr., who became a writer under the names of Colin Murry and Richard Cowper. There were also two children of the third marriage.

Reviews

[Sue · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a reprint of six lectures delivered in the school of English Literature in Oxford in 1921.

I hoped to learn something about style, because, as far as I know, I have none. Yet.

The book starts with a statement that there are at least three fairly distinctive meanings of style as they appear in these three sentences:

1.-“I know who wrote the article in last week’s Saturday Review – Mr. Saintsburry. You couldn’t mistake the style.”

In this example ‘style’ means that personal idiosyncrasy of expression by which we recognise a writer.

2- “Mr. Wilkinson’s ideas are interesting; but he must learn to write; at present he has no style.”

‘Style’ in this sense can only be properly applied to the exposition of intellectual ideas. In a sense – ‘he has good ideas, but a bad style.’

3- “You may call Marlowe bombastic; you may even call him farcical; but one quality outweighs his bombast, his savagery, and his farce – he has style.”

Marlowe’s style has a quality, which transcends all personal idiosyncrasy – a complete fusion of personal and universal.


Conclusion: style has these three meanings:
- personal idiosyncrasy
- technique of exposition and
- as the highest achievement.
-
So far so good, but this was as far as my understanding went.

I learned that you need an excellent knowledge of language to achieve excellent writing, but that, in my opinion is still ‘only’ excellent writing, not style. Below some more quotations:

"If the description of an incident is precise, if it really puts a clear picture before your eyes, with the economy that is essential if the outline is not to be blurred – then you have a good style."

"Style is a quality of language which communicates precisely emotions of thoughts, or a system of emotions or thoughts, peculiar to the author."

"In literature, thought is always the handmaid of emotion."

"In one way or another the whole literature consists in this communication of emotion."

I think I’ll accept the definition of style by Buffon:
“Style is the man himself,” and see what sort of man (woman) I am and what style I stumble upon.

[Henry Sturcke · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Middleton Murry, aged thirty-two, had already achieved prominence as a critic through editing a series of literary journals, most notably The Athenaeum, when he was invited to give six lectures at Oxford in the summer term 1921. They are reprinted here.
In the first lecture, appropriately enough, Murry grapples with the question of what we mean by style. Style, Murry asserts, is a term often used vaguely. He outlines three senses of the term. The most basic is the simple ability to marshal what you want to say in a way readers can follow. One with no sense of formulating a sentence or organizing a paragraph has no style, we say. Then there is style as idiosyncrasy (which Murry actually treats first). Show me one paragraph selected at random written by Karl Barth and I can identify the author. Readers more skilled than I will invariably not only do the same with Henry James, but tell you if it’s from his early, middle, or late period. Finally, there is what Murry calls Style Absolute; “a complete fusion of the personal and the universal.” This, Murry tells us, is the highest achievement of literature.
The absolute master of Style Absolute is (spoiler alert not necessary) Shakespeare. Also highly rated is Keats and, among authors active in Murry’s day, Hardy.
This doesn’t strike me as controversial, but apparently at the time this was an unabashedly elitist position, taken in opposition to those who decried style as unnecessary ornament and who advocated a flat style.
Not until the fourth lecture, however, does Murry deal with what he calls the central problem of style. This is the application of qualities of other art forms (rhythm from music and visual imagery from painting). These can also be qualities of written style, Murry concedes, but they are subordinate. The essential quality, however, is precision, also called crystallization. It seemed surprising at first that one means of achieving this, according to Murry, is metaphor. Rather than being an ornament, it is at times the most effective way to convey emotion (which he values—in the case of literature—above intellectual precision). And “in literature,” he assures us, “thought is always the handmaid of emotion.”
In the end, it seems, style is not technique. It comes from clear thought and honest feeling. As Murry writes: even “the smallest writer can do something to ensure that his individuality is not lost, by trying to make sure that he feels what he thinks he feels;—that he thinks what he thinks he thinks, that his words mean what he thinks they mean.”
This book is a century old, and I might not have looked it up if a good friend, also a passionate reader and writer, hadn't recommended it. I'm glad he did.

[Roger · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting little tome. Originally lectures delivered at Oxford University in 1921, Middleton Murry has grappled in this book with the notion of literary style, what it is and what it isn't, and how authors achieve it.

Through a connected series of pithy chapters, Murry contends that style comes from the author's heightened sensibility approaching language in a way that explains exactly the message or story that he or she is trying to express - "every work of enduring literature is not so much a triumph of language as a victory over language".

Therefore there are potentially as many styles as there are authors, although not all authors necessarily have a style. The process of creating a style comes from an author using their individual sensibility to pin down exactly what it is they are trying to say - "but the smallest writer can do something to ensure that his individuality is not lost, by trying to make sure that he feels what he thinks he feels; - that he thinks what he thinks he thinks, that his words mean what he thinks they mean."

Style differs when the story differs: Murry does not feel there is any difference between poetry and prose in terms of a hierarchy of style, merely that one form or the other is perhaps more appropriate to convey certain messages. This leads Murry to talk about the appropriateness of poetic language in prose, and back to the contention that the author should use exactly the language required to impart their vision, nothing more. Of course this might mean a more or less florid style as is suited to the message, but using language merely to aggrandize is always wrong.

As a relatively poor student of literary criticism, there is much in this book for me to ponder. Worth a look.

Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au/

[Tlacaelel Rinma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Algunas ideas me gustaron y partes como que decir que un autor tiene estilo no implica un elogio, pero decir que no tiene es condenarlo, me parecieron interesantes. Cosas como la crítica del autor a la prosa poética me parecen desacertadas pues prosa como la de Rimbaud, Lautréamont, Vela son bellos ejemplos de prosa poética.

[Gustavo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Anticuado y específico a la literatura sajona y francesa.

[Joey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lucid exploration of the nature of style in literature. Particularly notable is the discussion of the role of metaphor. In Murray's view, a good metaphor isn't just an ornamental way of expressing something but rather a more precise way of conveying a distinct and specific impression. Many literary metaphors worm their into language and become more imprecise over time as they're stretched to fit various circumstances, and so new metaphors (and novel juxtapositions, neologisms etc.) must continually be crafted.