Postcolonial Stylistics

This accessible introduction to postcolonial stylistics looks at the shared aims of stylistics and postcolonial studies and illustrates how to apply the analytical and theoretical tools of stylistics to a selection of literary and non-literary texts from a range of English-speaking postcolonial contexts.

Structured around the five keywords of Language, Identity, Belonging, History, and Ecology, the book:

• sheds light on the way in which writers from a range of former colonial territories have creatively drawn from such thematic areas to construct complex and committed discourses
• shows how a rigorous linguistic analysis can help reach a better understanding of the rhetorical mechanisms and cultural dynamics operating in these works
• underlines how meaning is generated from the interaction between author, reader, and context; how narratives shape and propagate a specific worldview; and how metaphor can convey social and political values
• expands on each keyword by considering texts of different typology such as fiction, poetry, drama, and non-fiction, accompanied by activities and references
• includes historical and literary postcolonial timelines and an index of names and topics

Comprehensive in its coverage and assuming no prior knowledge of the topics considered, the book adopts an interactive and activity-based approach to develop readers’ understanding of linguistic structures and forms through postcolonial texts. Offering a new interdisciplinary perspective, this is essential reading for students new to stylistics and postcolonial literature.

Esterino Adami is an Associate Professor of English Language, Translation, and Linguistics at the University of Turin, Department of Humanities (Italy). He is the author of Language, Style and Variation in Contemporary Indian English Texts (2022), and Railway Discourse: Linguistic and Stylistic Representations of the Train in the Anglophone World (2018).