Corpus Stylistics in Principles and Practice: a stylistic exploration of John Fowles’ The Magus

In this book, Yufang Ho compares the text style difference between the two versions of John Fowles' The Magus, exemplifying the methodological principles and analytic practices of the corpus stylistic approach.

The Magus was first published in 1966 and was revised and republished by Fowles in 1977. Fowles' own comment on the second edition was that it was 'rather more than a stylistic revision.' The book explores how the revised version is linguistically different from the original, especially in terms of point of view (re) representation. The corpus stylistic approach adopted combines qualitative and quantitative comparison to confirm the overall text style difference. The analysis demonstrates that computer assisted methods can identify significant linguistic features which literary critics have not noticed and provide a more detailed descriptive basis for literary interpretation of (either edition) of the novel. This analysis of The Magus serves as a case study and exemplar of how corpus techniques may be used generally in the study of linguistics.