Refiguring Prose Style: Possibilities For Writing Pedagogy

Style is of vital practical interest to college writing teachers, because everyone has to teach it one way or another. Yet, for about two decades, the theoretical discussion of how to address prose style in teaching college writing has been stuck, with style standing in as a proxy for other stakes in the theory wars. A consequence of the impasse is that a theory of style itself has not been well articulated. In Refiguring Prose Style, Johnson and Pace suggest that moving the field toward a better consensus will require establishing style as a clearer subject of inquiry. Accordingly, Refiguring Prose Style takes up a comprehensive study of the subject. The hope of the essays here?focusing on historical, aesthetic, practical, and theoretical issues?is to reawaken composition studies to the possibilities of style, and, in turn, to rejuvenate a great many classrooms.