Style and content

We narrow a lot the meaning of style and "stylistics". We narrow so much the meaning of style that it brings us on to more controversial ground, where different definitions of style involve conflicting views of the use of language in literature. 

There is a strong tradition of thought which restricts style to those chices which which are choices of manner rather than matter, of expression rather than content. Some such separation is implied in the common definition of style as a "way of writing" or "mode of expression". This approach is dualis because it rests on an assumed dualism in language between form and meaning. There exists also an opposite tradition in Flaubert's words: "It is like body and soul: form and content to me are one". And this is monist view.