The category of style (idiostyle) as a literary phenomenon

Abstract

The article summarises modern approaches to the interpretation of the essence of the concepts of «style» and «individual style of a writer». The universality and interdisciplinary nature of the definition of «style» lies in the fact that the term is used by linguistics, cultural studies, aesthetics, art studies and literary studies. And this gives rise to a certain difficulty in understanding of the term, sometimes leading to unwanted synonymy and blurring of conceptual boundaries. Various interpretations of this concept can be observed in literary studies. For example, scientists distinguish the style of a time and the style of a tendency and direction; the writer’s style and the style of a certain period of his (or her) creativity; the style of a work and the style of its individual element. The relevance of the study is determined by the fact that scientists have not yet developed common approaches to the study of this category. Therefore, the most widespread thing in literary studies is the understanding of style as an individual creative manner, the «creative face» of a particular writer. The concept of «style» is widely used to comprehend the trends of the literary process, to clarify the national specificity of literatures and the creative individuality of authors. The article highlights the essence of the concept of «individual style of a writer», which is based on the works of famous literary critics. It is established that the problem of idiostyle is one of the most relevant in literary studies when researching a literary text. The correlation between general style and idiostyle is analysed. It is determined that they are generally interrelated and to a certain extent determine each other. Often, style is also considered as a display of the essence of many individual styles, united by common features. Therefore, individual style can be considered as a space of interaction between the author and the recipient, each of whom is looking for the most optimal means of expression and cognition. The style carriers and stylistic dominants laid down by the writer help the reader to «build» the «author’s image». The individual style of a writer is defined as an extremely complex phenomenon, which can be explained by a whole complex of style-forming factors. Among them literary critics distinguish socio-historical and cultural conditions, correlation of biased traditions and special innovation in a particular work of a writer or in his
entire creativity, specific generic and genre features of the work, tone of the narrative, worldview, artist’s talent, freedom of creativity, fictional truth and creative conjecture.