This textbook provides a thought-provoking introduction to the practice of literary stylistics. It is based on extensive teaching experience, and makes new insights from linguistic and literary scholarship accessible to students in their daily practice of reading, analysing and evaluating literary texts. The twelve chapters, written by experts in the field, provide a firm foundation for the development of language and context-based literary criticism. The book allows students to increase their creative responsiveness to the interplay between text and context, and between language and social situation.