Lit 101: Introduction to Stylistics
I never had the opportunity to take a dedicated literature class, so I'm building my own personal curriculums! The technical goal of this list is to help me learn how to analyze prose style at the sentence level - diction, syntax, figuration, narrative distance, etc. The more practical goal of this is to help me understand the what an author is doing and have the language to properly describe it.
created by acidicchaos
last updated September, 2026
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These were the books recommended to me as the starting point: David Lodge's The Art of Fiction, James Wood's How Fiction Works, and then John Gardner's The Art of Fiction. They also recommended Virginia Tufte's Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style as the next step, but that might be more specific to what I'm personally hoping to gain out of reading these books.
yayayayyyy this is so cool! i'd love to hear more about your curriculum if it goes beyond reading the books!
This list looks amazing! Iāve got similar goals re: developing my reading/text analysis skills so Iāll definitely be checking out some of these books!
Omg love this list, this is exactly what Iāve been wanting to learn lately but had no idea where to start !! š©·š
fancy shmancy i love building personal curriculums (i have one on carthage)
So sexy-brained of you šāāļø instant save
addicted to this list and have a similar goal! i can read very literally sometimes so iām trying to get better at noticing what sentences/paragraphs/chapters are doing to me as a reader and how those effects accumulate. iām starting with A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders, which might not be sentence-focused enough for what youāre after but iām really enjoying how it trains me to notice what the writing is doing and why it works! š
