Stylistics plays a significant role in many areas of literary researches, of which, the most important is supposed to be the literary criticism. A scientific typology of literary styles can doubtlessly facilitate the task of learning about styles.
This paper is intended to be a critical study of prose writing typologies as presented in the Persian books on stylistics. Firstly, the classifications for writing prose are introduced from the standpoints of some researchers; secondly these classifications are commented and criticized. Our investigation itemizes the most important shortcomings of these typologies as follows: lack of the principles of classifications; weak definitions; paradoxical referents; confusing literary and non-literary prose; imprecise and inflexible categorizations; disregarding some style variants particularly the individual styles and microstyles; intermingling genres with styles; one-dimensional views toward styles; inexact determinations of stylistic elements and features; insufficient accounts of the methods of style analysis.
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