Perceptual qualities of literary style

This article reports the results of a study that investigated different aspects of the aesthetic perception of literary style. Excerpts from novels belonging to two broadly defined literary style categories, namely modern and postmodern style, were judged by the participants. Semantic scales corresponding to perceptual qualities of modern and postmodern literature were used. The results indicate that these scales can measure perceptual differences between the selected novels, and that the two novels categorized as modern were experienced differently from those categorized as postmodern. Some of the scales also predicted aesthetic preference for novels. Rating differences on the two scales incoherent – coherent and formal – colloquial predicted the ability to attribute novel excerpts. This finding seems to indicate that the ability to distinguish styles in regard to perceptual qualities helps readers to judge certain similarities of novels.