ABSTRACT
I have spoken of a ‘norm’, or a ‘normative style’, which Mansfield and Lawrence establish and then disrupt, and which can be identified in one case by a particular idiom and point of view, and in the other by a particular syntax. This norm guarantees to minimize the cost of processing and maximize the contextual effect. But the guarantee a text offers does not depend entirely on the shape of its opening sentences. It is something we would expect to identify in generic or narrative as well as stylistic terms. A genre is a criterion of relevance which tells us how to process information, and what kind of contextual effect to anticipate. In this chapter I want to establish the main criteria of relevance which operate in Edwardian fiction.
