The articles in Contextualized Stylistics, written especially to honour the work of Peter Verdonk, one of the leading figures in the field of stylistics over the last twenty years, represent the state of the art in literary linguistics. A wide range of approaches, from traditional stylistic analysis to innovative new directions, is to be found here in literary contexts as varied as the writings of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, Pope, Sterne, Browning, Yeats, Auden, Joyce, British surrealist poetry, urban and political graffiti, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Jane Gardam, contemporary Anglo-Irish fiction, modern comic satire and Flann O'Brien.
Among the contributors are some of the foremost theorists and practitioners working in the field today: Walter Nash, Peter Stockwell, Willie van Peer, Keith Green, Tony Bex, Michael Burke, Mick Short, Jonathan Culpeper, Elena Semino, Michael Toolan, Jean-Jacques Weber, Gerard Steen, Henry Widdowson, and Paul Simpson. Olga Fischer and Katie Wales contribute a Foreword, and Ronald Carter an Afterword. A number of Professor Verdonk's colleagues have also contributed articles from a more literary perspective. This book is an essential addition to the personal library of any researcher interested in the interface and connections between language and literature, and it would make an excellent course reader for undergraduate students in both literary and linguistic studies.