Browsing Research Publications (English Studies) by Issue Date
Now showing items 1-20 of 81
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Alan Paton’s sublime: race, landscape and the transcendence of the liberal imagination
(University of KwaZulu Natal, 2005)This article develops a postcolonial reading of the sublime by suggesting that aesthetic theories of the sublime were, in their classical philosophical formulations by Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant, founded on problematic ... -
Alan Paton’s writing for the stage: towards a non-racial South African theatre
(Taylor & Francis (Routledge), 2007)Introduction: It would not be an exaggeration to assert that no South African playwright in the 1950s and 1960s received as much international attention and recognition as Alan Paton, until eclipsed by Athol Fugard’s ... -
“Modern prophets, produce a new bible”: Christianity, Africanness and the poetry of Nontsizi Mgqwetho
(Southern African Literature and Culture Centre, UKZN, 2008)In this article I consider how one might approach the apparently singular figure of Nontsizi Mgqwetho, a Xhosa woman who produced an extraordinary series of Christian izibongo in newspapers in the 1920s: through what ... -
The taint of the censor: J.M. Coetzee and the making of In the Heart of the Country
(Institute for the Study of English in Africa, Rhodes University, 2008)With the publication of In the Heart of the Country by the London publisher Secker & Warburg in 1977, J. M. Coetzee had achieved international recognition for his second novel, transcending the narrow national literary ... -
Complicit refugees, cosmopolitans and xenophobia: Khaled Hosseini's 'The Kite Runner' and Romesh Gunesekera's 'Reef' in conversation with texts on xenophobia in South Africa
(Common Ground, 2008)In the aftermath of the brutal xenophobic attacks in parts of South Africa against 'other' Africans between March and May this year, a fairly sustained (if repetitive) public debate has emerged in the local press. The aim ... -
'This thing called reconciliation…' Forgiveness as part of an interconnectedness-towards-wholeness
(Philosophical Society of Southern Africa, 2008)Regular reference is made, within the discourse around the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to the fact that ubuntu, an indigenous world view, played a role in the process. This paper tries to show that ... -
Little perpetrators, witness-bearers and the young and the brave: towards a post-transitional aesthetics
(Taylor & Francis, 2010)The aesthetic choices characterizing work produced during the transition to democracy have been well documented. We are currently well into the second decade after the 1994 election - what then of the period referred to ... -
The everyday experience of xenophobia: performing The Crossing from Zimbabwe to South Africa
(RoutledgeUNISA Press, 2010)Debates on the underlying causes of xenophobia in South Africa have proliferated since the attacks -between March and May 2008. Our article shows how exploring the everyday 'ordinariness' of xenophobia as performance can ... -
The pregnant man: race, difference and subjectivity in Alan Paton’s Kalahari writing
(Taylor & Francis, co-published with Unisa Press, 2010)In South African imaginative writing and scholarly research, there is currently an extensive and wide-ranging interest in the ‘Bushman’, either as a tragic figure of colonial history, as a contested site of misrepresentation, ... -
Late style in J.M. Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year
(Taylor & Francis (Routledge), 2010)J.M. Coetzee’s post-millennial writing has been marked by new forms of inventiveness, formal risk-taking and narrative experimentation that have blurred the boundaries between fiction, autobiography and social commentary. ... -
Facing the stranger in the mirror: Staged complicities in recent South African performances
(Routledge, 2011)The staging of complicity has developed into one of the most prevalent trends in recent South Africa theatre. The audience may become aware of their own complicity in injustice, or complicity may feature as a subject to ... -
Race, resistance and translation: the case of John Buchan’s UPrester John
(Taylor & Francis (Routledge), 2011)In postcolonial translation studies, increasing attention is being given to the asymmetrical relationships between dominant and indigenous languages. This paper argues that John Francis Cele’s UPrester John (1958), is not ... -
Towards an archaeology of Dusklands
(Institute for the Study of English in Africa, 2011)This essay seeks to explore the question of origins: the beginnings of the literary career of arguably South Africa's most significant author, and the development of a form of authorship that was, at its inception, situated ... -
Coming home, coming out: Achmat Dangor's journeys through myth and Constantin Cavafy
(Taylor & Francis Group, 2011)Despite his international status, the impact of Constantin Cavafy’s poetry on South African letters has gone largely unnoticed. This article draws attention to the range of Cavafy's, influence on the local poets, writers, ... -
Notes towards a history of Khoi literature
(Taylor & Francis, 2011)This article puts forward a revisionist history of Khoi literature, and also presents a number of translated Khoi narratives that have not been available in English before. Compared to the large volume of Bushman literature ... -
When orature becomes literature: Somali oral poetry and folktales in Somali novels
(Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012)The article discusses Somali literature, with particular focus given to the influence of Somali oral poetry and folk tales on modern novels. The difference between the concepts of orature and oral literature is examined, ... -
The body unbound: ritual scarification and autobiographical forms in Wole Soyinka’s Aké: the years of childhood
(Sage Publications, 2012)The scarification in Aké is invested with major significance apropos Soyinka’s ideas on African subjectivity. Scarification among the Yoruba is one of the rites of passage associated with personal development. Scarification ... -
‘… The Agapanthi, Asphodels of the Negroes…’: Life-writing, landscape and race in the South African diaries and poetry of George Seferis
(Taylor & Francis, 2012)The Greek poet George Seferis (1900-1971) spent 10 months in South Africa during WWII as a senior diplomatic official attached to the Greek government in exile. Drawing on his diary entries, correspondence and poetry ... -
Wilhelm Bleek and the Khoisan imagination: a study of censorship, genocide and colonial science
(Taylor & Francis Group, 2012)In 1864, Wilhelm Bleek published a collection of Khoi narratives titled Reynard the Fox in South Africa, or Hottentot Fables and Tales. This article critically examines this foundational event in South African literary ... -
Making a case for the teaching of reading across the curriculum in higher education
(Education Association of South Africa (EASA), 2012)Over the past two decades there has been much written in the literature about the importance of reading and the importance of teaching students reading strategies to improve their reading comprehension. Reading is one ...
