<!doctype html public «-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en»> http-equiv=content-type> The issue of “style” has thus far played a minor role in the intensive debates regarding the historical poetics of medieval vernacular literature, even though it is such a critical element in the linguistic form of literary self-consciousness. The essays in this volume examine the phenomenology of linguistic form as an intrinsic element in the creation of poetic meaning and discuss new methodological approaches to stylistic analysis.