Writing backwards: can stylistics be applied to passeism?

Abstract

This article intends to examine the question of return in literature by using the tools of stylistics. It also seeks to question the relevance of those tools for this very object, in which individual and collective issues overlap. We chose to look at two 'past‐styled authors', Richard Millet and Baudouin de Bodinat. Their writings allow us to grasp the connection between style and ideology, but also to compare different stylistic methods (mainly a rhetorical approach or a figurative conception of style) pointing to different conclusions.