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ALLS 7(4):95-112, 2016

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analyzing the syntactic structures of Shelley's elegy on the death of John Keats, with recourse to Chomsky's
generative linguistics as a theoretical grid (see in Freeman, 1980:138-165). However, Austin's critical interpretation
has nothing to do with the philosophical impulse. Simply say, Austin has stressed the nature of the thematic structure 
rather than the philosophical one, in spite of the fact that Shelley's poetic discourse is fundamentally a philosophical 
one. Apparently, Austin's analysis of Shelley's
Adonais
has served as a model for the so-called 
Stylistic criticism 
in 
theory and practice.
 
Our theoretical framework may pave the path to investigate a set of verbal works of art 
linguistically and aesthetically, as shown in the stylist practice. 
One final point to be clarified before going a step further in our analytical process, that is, the distinction between the 
two terms, 
Aesthetics 
and 
Aestheticism
. Morphologically, both terms are derived from the Ancient Greek word ( 
aisthetikos, meaning 
perceiving, feeling, sensing
). In etymology and nature, these derived terms are distinctive in 
certain veins. 
Aesthetics
, or the philosophy of beauty, is "the study of beauty and taste. It is about interpreting works 
of art and art movements or theories. The term also used to designate a particular style" (Aesthetics, 2016). The term is 
also applied to cultural objects(ibid). The term could be traced back to classical philosophy. In modern aesthetic 
philosophy, it was Baumgarten (1714-1762), the German philosopher, who developed a new insight in the word to 
mean 
taste
or sense of beauty, instead of sensation, as in ancient Greek. The German aesthetic philosopher defined 
taste
, in its wider sense, as "the ability to judge according to the senses, instead of according to the intellect. Such a 
judgment of taste he saw as based on feelings of pleasure or displeasure. A science of aesthetics would be, for 
Baumgarten, a deduction of the rules or principles of artistic or natural beauty from individual ' taste'"( Alexander 
Gottlieb Baumgarten, 2016). One may comprehend a sense of contradiction to relate the structural or linguistic 
description which is seminally scientific to a theory of beauty which is fundamentally individual. We presume that 
both structuralism and aesthetics are not haphazard ways of analysis; they operate in accordance with rules or 
principles deducted from a given work of art. Both accentuate that a work of art encompasses an aesthetic value more 
than socio-political ones; the work is an aesthetic universe by itself.
As an intellectual movement, 
Aestheticism
, or Aesthetic movement holds the same epistemic view of 
Aesthetics
concerning the work of art as an aesthetic- carrier. Chronologically, the movement started in Europe during the 
nineteenth century. As with Baumgarten in Aesthetics, it was Oxford professor Walter Pater who developed the term 
since he believed in living life with an ideal beauty. In consequence, the slogan 
Art for Art's Sake 
was influentially 
practiced in arts, literature and actual life. Aestheticism became a widely held term in artistic works of the nineteenth 
century painters, writers and philosophers, as in Leighton's publication, 
On Form: Poetry, Aestheticism and the legacy 
of a Word
(Aestheticism, 2016). The ultimate lesson of the artists and writers of aesthetic style was to profess that the 
arts should provide refined a sensuous pleasure, rather than convey a moral or sentimental message. Hence, it is no 
wonder to have a poet like Keats, not Shelley, as an aesthetic model and a source of inspiration for the mid-nineteenth 
century writers and painters. 
In the setting of the mid-nineteenth century, 
Aestheticism
was circulated and interlinked to other intellectual and 
artistic movements such as 
Symbolism 
in literature and 
Impressionism 
in painting. So, the seeds of 
 
Aestheticism were 
blooming in the works of the Prague Linguistic Circle as that of Mukarovsly. Our approach, therefore, will have
recourse to both 
Aesthetics
in the critical judgment,
 
and 
Aestheticism
in the linguistic phase in analyzing literature and 
culture- such an assumption may bring the aesthetically violated style in terms of linguistics to the philosophy of
pleasurable beauty.
One critique we would like to posit to the previously discussed trends is that these stylistic theoretical trends are valid 
in touching certain aspects of style and functions of language, but they have not scrutinized the philosophical stance. 
As a counterpart view, our orientation will come to fill the gap and do the task. This approach, off course, will not be 
the last adventure in exploring the aesthetics of texts; the process of human mind in producing and comprehending 
new visions is endless, and this may sustain the assumption that stylistics is an ever-green blooming tree. To 
recapitulate, 
Aesthetic stylistics 
is a linguistic approach in which the descriptive analysis of an artistic discourse will be 
correlated to the aesthetic interpretation, based on the theory of beauty.
To show the validity of 
Aesthetic stylistics 
in describing a literary text linguistically, and interpreting it aesthetically, 
John Keats's Ode, 
Ode on a Grecian Urn
and Kabbani's Maritime Poem will be chosen as linguistic data for the 
analytical process. The poetic texts will be scrutinized in terms of Halliday's linguistic theory. In his out breaking 
study, 
Descriptive Linguistics in Literary Studies
, printed in 1964, and reprinted in Freeman (1970: 57-72), Halliday 
shows the uses of linguistic theory in unraveling different features in the language of literary texts. He explains the 
primary structure of the English nominal group which consists of (M) H (Q): a head, which may or may not be 
preceded by a modifier and followed by a qualifier(59). Halliday delineates the nominal group pattern by introducing 
the notion of 
 rank shift
, so "nearly everything occurring in the qualifier is rank shifted: that is, is of a rank ( in fact 
always clause or group) above or equal to the unit in whose structure it is operating ( here the group)"( ibid). So far the 
notion of the modifier is concerned, Halliday thinks that the modifier is "an ordered sequence of words (the word 
being the unit immediately blow the group in rank), proceeding from the most grammatical to the most lexical" ( ibid). 
Hence, the notion of 
lexicogrammar 
is central to Halliday's coherent system of ideas; grammar ('lexicogrammar') is 
the level of wording, while semantics is the level of meaning (1980:19). The main concern of the stylistic analysis in 
terms of SFL is the 
text
. The text, for Halliday and Hasan (1976:1-3) is " a unit of language in use; a semantic unit- a 
unit not of form but of meaning." The concept of 
texture 
is a term used to express "the property of 'being a text', so a 
text has texture"(ibid). 

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