ABSTRACT
In this chapter the author reminds the reader that the discipline should not be absolutely formalist, and in fact stylistics has rarely focused on textuality to the exclusion of readerly affect and interpretation In recognising the roots of stylistics in classical rhetoric. Devices which stress artifice and effect were once the concern of traditional rhetoric, whence modern stylistics can trace its origins; but it is rhetoric in a wider sense which will form the analytical framework. One important consequence is that meaning in rhetorical discourses is not only referential but also comprises ‘persuasive force and playful energy’.‘Address’ supposes a ‘speaker’ and an ‘addressee’, the latter either explicitly addressed and therefore inscribed within the world of the text; or else existing outside it, implied or, again, directly addressed. Critical attention in the case of Larkin’s poetry has most commonly focused on the speaker, who is usually assumed to represent the ‘real’ poet.
