Resourcefulness of graphology: A stylistic study of three African poems

Abstract

While the study of poetry before the advent of stylistics has been the exclusive preserve of literary critics, the arrival of stylistics has brought new and deeper insights into poetic analysis as Stylistics utilises both the linguistic and aesthetic tools of investigation in its desire to achieve fuller interpretation and understanding of literary texts. Graphology and its vast contribution to meaningmaking especially in poetic texts still need to be explored and understood. This paper therefore focuses on the contribution of graphology and its resourcefulness in the understanding of poems. To this end, three African poems – K. G. Kyei‟s Time, Osundare‟s Rain-coming and RemiRaji‟s Silence II – have been purposively selected for analysis at the graphological level. In the process, interpretations at this level shall be related to the meanings in the poems. Analysis reveals that meaning and interpretations of chosen poems cannot be exhaustive without recourse to graphological explorations. The paper concludes that a good poem must foreground its meaning, preoccupations and aesthetics at the various levels of stylistic analysis.

Keywords: Stylistics, graphological deviation, poetry, foregrounding, aesthetics