Description:
In Poetic Voices, Austin demonstrates some of the potential applications of such a discourse-based stylistics by pursuing what amounts to a literary conundrum, an apparent anomaly at the heart of a well-respected text, William Wordsworth's "Resolution and Independence."
Review Quotes:
"Austin shows that historical and biographical insights can be indispensable. Such insights were once considered essential for reasons external to a poem, the inessential for such reasons. Austin shows that they are essential for internal reasons; without them the poem cannot adequately be interpreted....This is an excellent work, by a well-informed, careful, insightful, and resourceful critic; it is readily accessible to both linguists and literary critics, and because it meets fully the needs and standards of both.--Charles E. Ruhl, Old Dominion University