Introduction: Enacting Style and Sense(s)

This introductory chapter explains the circumstances leading to the birth of this book. In the wake of the COVID crisis where senses were put to the test and distance maintained from one another, the volume must be read as a celebration of our senses through style. It highlights the recent corporeal turn across disciplines which gives pride of place to the body as grounding base, showing how it enters language and the role it plays in sense-making. Non-verbal (olfactory, gustative, aural, tactile, visual) readings of the world are shown to be essential in making sense of language itself insofar as the perceptual body activates language. This chapter also highlights the way the different chapters of the book investigate how stylistic markers can bring about renewed perceptual readings, make us tune in to a new rhythm or get an experiential feel of what is being described through enactment. Lastly it brings to the fore why a sensory stylistics should also be interested in the affective effects produced by a switch from one medium/semiotic system to another.