A Corpus Stylistic Analysis of Niyi Osundare’s Poetry

There has been an ongoing discussion regarding the significance of corpus-based methods in Stylistics. This study therefore investigates how corpus-based approach can enrich our understanding of themes and style of a literary writer, using one of Niyi Osundare’s collections, titled, The Eye of the Earth. While previous studies on Osundare have richly examined his poems individually through qualitative close reading, none of this scholarship has attempted a corpus-based quantitative method. Using Mahberg’s (2013) criteria, KWIC analysis show that content keywords (i.e. earth, like, sun, forest, and rain) in poems foreground the themes of nature and human ecosystem, which is further verified by the deliberate deployment of Yoruba lexical items like Olosunta and Iroko having the highest frequency of occurrence in the entire collection. These quantitative patterns corroborate submissions by earlier qualitative studies (Onyejizu & Obi, 2020; Amore & Amusan, 2016). The study also identified certain stylistic regularities in the poem that may not be easily recognized by close reading. This shows how a corpus-assisted discourse method amplifies detail that might be hidden to close reading especially the integration of relevant Yoruba words in strategic positions to invoke realities that are deeply rooted in Yoruba oral traditions. The smooth flow of Yoruba language as a means of complementing the thematic ideas already captured in English language depicts Osundare as not just a literary icon but a linguistic genius whose literary idiolect is a product of premeditation and perspiration to reflect cultural identity, cosmology, ecology.