"The web, then, or the pattern, a web at once sensuous and logical, an elegant and pregnant texture: that is style, that is the foundation of the art of literature"
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Stevenson defines style as a web, a pattern woven from strands that appeal to the senses and satisfy the mind. Sensuous points to the music of language: rhythm, cadence, vowel color, the pressure and release of sentences. Logical names the structure that orders thought: argument, grammar, progression, the clean joints where ideas connect. When these elements interlace, the page gains not just prettiness but power. The fabric is elegant because it is shapely and economical, and pregnant because meaning is stored in every thread. Style, then, is not ornament pasted on content; it is the very texture that makes content apprehensible, memorable, and moving. That is why he calls it the foundation of literature, not an accessory.
The figure of a web is exact. A web holds by tension and design; remove one strand and the whole changes. So, too, with sentences: word choice, syntax, repetition, and pause operate together to create pattern. Sound assists sense, and sense disciplines sound. A period that resolves like a cadence clarifies an idea; a stark monosyllable after a rolling clause can drive a point home. The reader feels the argument because the ear has been taught the idea.
Stevenson wrote as a craftsman among the late Victorians, in an age debating whether art should teach or simply delight. He refuses the split. The sensuous and the logical are not rivals but partners, and the moral force of writing arises from the exactness of its form. His own essays insist on revision, on the search for the right word in the right place, drawing on models from the Bible to Browne to show how pattern generates resonance. Even in his fiction, the architecture of sentences mirrors the architecture of thought and character. Style, conceived as a woven pattern, is how literature becomes art: through deliberate form that pleases the senses and compels the mind.
The figure of a web is exact. A web holds by tension and design; remove one strand and the whole changes. So, too, with sentences: word choice, syntax, repetition, and pause operate together to create pattern. Sound assists sense, and sense disciplines sound. A period that resolves like a cadence clarifies an idea; a stark monosyllable after a rolling clause can drive a point home. The reader feels the argument because the ear has been taught the idea.
Stevenson wrote as a craftsman among the late Victorians, in an age debating whether art should teach or simply delight. He refuses the split. The sensuous and the logical are not rivals but partners, and the moral force of writing arises from the exactness of its form. His own essays insist on revision, on the search for the right word in the right place, drawing on models from the Bible to Browne to show how pattern generates resonance. Even in his fiction, the architecture of sentences mirrors the architecture of thought and character. Style, conceived as a woven pattern, is how literature becomes art: through deliberate form that pleases the senses and compels the mind.
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| Topic | Writing |
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