Re-reading Feminist Stylistics Commitment in Literary Education: A Critical Study on Okoye’s Behind the Clouds

This paper critically re-reads feminist stylistics commitment in Ifeoma Okoye's Behind the Clouds as a re-appraisal of the feminist discourse. It tries to permeate through the aesthetics deployed diction and style in her work to establish a pulsating and rational feminist communication which orates complementarity of the sexes. The thrust of this work asserts that a number of works have been done by scholars on the study and interpretation of Ifeoma Okoye's prose fiction, especially through literary and critical analysis. However, it appears that there is an absence of fictional texts studies on rereading the feminist stylistics commitment in her work. The problem which this research recognizes, therefore, is that Okoye's fiction, especially the title under the present study, has not been studied and interpreted using the feminist stylistics commitment principles. To this end, therefore, it could be said that radical feminism had yielded little dividends in Africa and this was not distinct with the fact that female radicalism, either in words or in deed did not conform to the African cultural values and realities. This works seeks to address the issue of feminist stylistics, through a critical re-reading of the diction and style Okoye adopts as the major weapons in the disseminating the feminist missive. The author's text title suggests a liberal and pulsating strand of feminism through a stylistic and textual analysis of her work, especially with emphasis on linguistic techniques and theories such as alliteration, humour, diction, authorial voice, violation of character code, etc. These literary aesthetics and theories served as our framework. This work buttresses that Ifeoma Okoye's stylistic approach upheld a brand of feminism which is sensitive to African cultural values and tradition. It justifiably posits that this brand of feminism is feasible in the African context and capable of promptly preceding the ideologies of feminism.