Introduction
The introduction shows how a general suspicion of stylistic flamboyance in post-war England led writers like Anthony Burgess, Angela Carter, and Martin Amis to feel at odds with English literary culture. Reconsidering these writers as sophisticated stylists and ethicists—the ‘stylists of excess’—the introduction outlines the major arguments of the ethical turn in literary criticism, describing some of the general antagonisms between the humanist revival and the new ethics, before suggesting a literary ethics that borrows from both without over-relying on notions of character and interiority (contra the ‘humanist revival’), and that returns the author to centre-stage (contra the ‘new ethics’). It proposes an expansive approach to style in order to appreciate the stylists of excess: for example, style as perception; style as a way of knowing and being in the world; and style as the expression of an ethical sensibility that can affect the reader.