Maltese fictional prose forms

Abstract

The concept of style presented here is primarily descriptive in nature as the investigation attempts to describe the distinctive quality of prose varieties which may be used in fiction. 1 The stylistic identity of literary prose results from conscious and/or unconscious selections of linguistic features. Selections are conscious when the author chooses a linguistic guise with functional suitability (as, for instance, adopting a narrative persona of an introvert to depict the mind style of a potential suicide), and they are unconscious when they show an authorial tendency that reflects the author's character (for example, the use of ratiocination in one's narrative in contrast with another's linguistic humour). Thus the use of rhythm in prose may be the product of both conscious and unconscious measures which are stylistically relevant and interesting in one's perception of language.