Author: Marta Fossati
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198910991
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
Through detailed close readings alongside investigations into the history of print culture, Marta Fossati traces the development of the South African short story in English from the late 1920s to the first decade of the twenty-first century. She examines a selection of short stories by important Black South African writers (Rolfes and Herbert Dhlomo, Peter Abrahams, Can Themba, Alex La Guma, Mtutuzeli Matshoba, Ahmed Essop, and Zoë Wicomb) with an alertness to the dialogue between ethics and aesthetics performed by these texts. This new history of Black short fiction problematises and interrogates the often-polarised readings of Black literature in South Africa that can be torn between notions of literariness, protest, and journalism. Due to material constraints, short fiction in South Africa circulated first and foremost through local print media, which Fossati analyses in detail to show the cross-fertilisation between journalism and the short story. While rooted in the South African context, the short stories considered also hold a translocal dimension, allowing us to explore the ethical and aesthetic practice of intertextuality. These are writings that complicate the aesthetics/ethics binary, generic classifications, and the categories of the literary and the political. Theoretically eclectic in its approach, although largely underpinned by a narratological analysis, The South African Short Story in English, 1920-2010: When Aesthetics Meets Ethics offers a fresh perspective on the South African short story in English, spotlighting several hitherto marginalised figures in South African literary studies.
The South African Short Story in English, 1920-2010
Author: Marta Fossati
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198910991
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
Through detailed close readings alongside investigations into the history of print culture, Marta Fossati traces the development of the South African short story in English from the late 1920s to the first decade of the twenty-first century. She examines a selection of short stories by important Black South African writers (Rolfes and Herbert Dhlomo, Peter Abrahams, Can Themba, Alex La Guma, Mtutuzeli Matshoba, Ahmed Essop, and Zoë Wicomb) with an alertness to the dialogue between ethics and aesthetics performed by these texts. This new history of Black short fiction problematises and interrogates the often-polarised readings of Black literature in South Africa that can be torn between notions of literariness, protest, and journalism. Due to material constraints, short fiction in South Africa circulated first and foremost through local print media, which Fossati analyses in detail to show the cross-fertilisation between journalism and the short story. While rooted in the South African context, the short stories considered also hold a translocal dimension, allowing us to explore the ethical and aesthetic practice of intertextuality. These are writings that complicate the aesthetics/ethics binary, generic classifications, and the categories of the literary and the political. Theoretically eclectic in its approach, although largely underpinned by a narratological analysis, The South African Short Story in English, 1920-2010: When Aesthetics Meets Ethics offers a fresh perspective on the South African short story in English, spotlighting several hitherto marginalised figures in South African literary studies.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198910991
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
Through detailed close readings alongside investigations into the history of print culture, Marta Fossati traces the development of the South African short story in English from the late 1920s to the first decade of the twenty-first century. She examines a selection of short stories by important Black South African writers (Rolfes and Herbert Dhlomo, Peter Abrahams, Can Themba, Alex La Guma, Mtutuzeli Matshoba, Ahmed Essop, and Zoë Wicomb) with an alertness to the dialogue between ethics and aesthetics performed by these texts. This new history of Black short fiction problematises and interrogates the often-polarised readings of Black literature in South Africa that can be torn between notions of literariness, protest, and journalism. Due to material constraints, short fiction in South Africa circulated first and foremost through local print media, which Fossati analyses in detail to show the cross-fertilisation between journalism and the short story. While rooted in the South African context, the short stories considered also hold a translocal dimension, allowing us to explore the ethical and aesthetic practice of intertextuality. These are writings that complicate the aesthetics/ethics binary, generic classifications, and the categories of the literary and the political. Theoretically eclectic in its approach, although largely underpinned by a narratological analysis, The South African Short Story in English, 1920-2010: When Aesthetics Meets Ethics offers a fresh perspective on the South African short story in English, spotlighting several hitherto marginalised figures in South African literary studies.
Claiming the City in South African Literature
Author: Meg Samuelson
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000439674
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 91
Book Description
This book demonstrates the insights that literature brings to transdisciplinary urban studies, and particularly to the study of cities of the South. Starting from the claim staked by mining capital in the late nineteenth century and its production of extractive and segregated cities, it surveys over a century of writing in search of counterclaims through which the literature reimagines the city as a place of assembly and attachment. Focusing on how the South African city has been designed to funnel gold into the global economy and to service an enclaved minority, the study looks to the literary city to advance a contrary emphasis on community, conviviality and care. An accessible and informative introduction to literature of the South African city at significant historical junctures, this book will also be of great interest to scholars and students in urban studies and Global South studies.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000439674
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 91
Book Description
This book demonstrates the insights that literature brings to transdisciplinary urban studies, and particularly to the study of cities of the South. Starting from the claim staked by mining capital in the late nineteenth century and its production of extractive and segregated cities, it surveys over a century of writing in search of counterclaims through which the literature reimagines the city as a place of assembly and attachment. Focusing on how the South African city has been designed to funnel gold into the global economy and to service an enclaved minority, the study looks to the literary city to advance a contrary emphasis on community, conviviality and care. An accessible and informative introduction to literature of the South African city at significant historical junctures, this book will also be of great interest to scholars and students in urban studies and Global South studies.
The Short Story after Apartheid
Author: Graham K. Riach
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1835533930
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 141
Book Description
The Short Story after Apartheid offers the first major study of the anglophone short story in South Africa since apartheid’s end. By focusing on the short story this book complicates models of South African literature dominated by the novel and contributes to a much-needed generic and formalist turn in postcolonial studies. Literary texts are sites of productive struggle between formal and extra-formal concerns, and these brief, fragmentary, elliptical, formally innovative stories offer perspectives that reframe or revise important concerns of post-apartheid literature: the aesthetics of engaged writing, the politics of the past, class and race, the legacies of violence, and the struggle over the land. Through an analysis of key texts from the period by Nadine Gordimer, Ivan Vladislavić, Zoë Wicomb, Phaswane Mpe, and Henrietta Rose-Innes, this book assesses the place of the short story in post-apartheid writing and develops a fuller model of how artworks allow and disallow forms of social thought.
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1835533930
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 141
Book Description
The Short Story after Apartheid offers the first major study of the anglophone short story in South Africa since apartheid’s end. By focusing on the short story this book complicates models of South African literature dominated by the novel and contributes to a much-needed generic and formalist turn in postcolonial studies. Literary texts are sites of productive struggle between formal and extra-formal concerns, and these brief, fragmentary, elliptical, formally innovative stories offer perspectives that reframe or revise important concerns of post-apartheid literature: the aesthetics of engaged writing, the politics of the past, class and race, the legacies of violence, and the struggle over the land. Through an analysis of key texts from the period by Nadine Gordimer, Ivan Vladislavić, Zoë Wicomb, Phaswane Mpe, and Henrietta Rose-Innes, this book assesses the place of the short story in post-apartheid writing and develops a fuller model of how artworks allow and disallow forms of social thought.
Trauma, Memory, and Narrative in the Contemporary South African Novel
Author:
Publisher: Brill
ISBN: 940120845X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 419
Book Description
The contributions to this volume probe the complex relationship of trauma, memory, and narrative. By looking at the South African situation through the lens of trauma, they make clear how the psychic deformations and injuries left behind by racism and colonialism cannot be mended by material reparation or by simply reversing economic and political power-structures. Western trauma theories – as developed by scholars such as Caruth, van der Kolk, Herman and others – are insufficient for analysing the more complex situation in a postcolony such as South Africa. This is because Western trauma concepts focus on the individual traumatized by a single identifiable event that causes PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). What we need is an understanding of trauma that sees it not only as a result of an identifiable event but also as the consequence of an historical condition – in the case of South Africa, that of colonialism, and, more specifically, of apartheid. For most black and coloured South Africans, the structural violence of apartheid’s laws were the existential condition under which they had to exist. The living conditions in the townships, pass laws, relocation, and racial segregation affected great parts of the South African population and were responsible for the collective traumatization of several generations. This trauma, however, is not an unclaimed (and unclaimable) experience. Postcolonial thinkers who have been reflecting on the experience of violence and trauma in a colonial context, writing from within a Fanonian tradition, have, on the contrary, believed in the importance of reclaiming the past and of transcending mechanisms of victimization and resentment, so typical of traumatized consciousnesses. Narration and the novel have a decisive role to play here.
Publisher: Brill
ISBN: 940120845X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 419
Book Description
The contributions to this volume probe the complex relationship of trauma, memory, and narrative. By looking at the South African situation through the lens of trauma, they make clear how the psychic deformations and injuries left behind by racism and colonialism cannot be mended by material reparation or by simply reversing economic and political power-structures. Western trauma theories – as developed by scholars such as Caruth, van der Kolk, Herman and others – are insufficient for analysing the more complex situation in a postcolony such as South Africa. This is because Western trauma concepts focus on the individual traumatized by a single identifiable event that causes PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). What we need is an understanding of trauma that sees it not only as a result of an identifiable event but also as the consequence of an historical condition – in the case of South Africa, that of colonialism, and, more specifically, of apartheid. For most black and coloured South Africans, the structural violence of apartheid’s laws were the existential condition under which they had to exist. The living conditions in the townships, pass laws, relocation, and racial segregation affected great parts of the South African population and were responsible for the collective traumatization of several generations. This trauma, however, is not an unclaimed (and unclaimable) experience. Postcolonial thinkers who have been reflecting on the experience of violence and trauma in a colonial context, writing from within a Fanonian tradition, have, on the contrary, believed in the importance of reclaiming the past and of transcending mechanisms of victimization and resentment, so typical of traumatized consciousnesses. Narration and the novel have a decisive role to play here.
A Companion to African Literatures
Author: Olakunle George
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119058171
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 512
Book Description
Rediscover the diversity of modern African literatures with this authoritative resource edited by a leader in the field How have African literatures unfolded in their rich diversity in our modern era of decolonization, nationalisms, and extensive transnational movement of peoples? How have African writers engaged urgent questions regarding race, nation, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality? And how do African literary genres interrelate with traditional oral forms or audio-visual and digital media? A Companion to African Literatures addresses these issues and many more. Consisting of essays by distinguished scholars and emerging leaders in the field, this book offers rigorous, deeply engaging discussions of African literatures on the continent and in diaspora. It covers the four main geographical regions (East and Central Africa, North Africa, Southern Africa, and West Africa), presenting ample material to learn from and think with. A Companion To African Literatures is divided into five parts. The first four cover different regions of the continent, while the fifth part considers conceptual issues and newer directions of inquiry. Chapters focus on literatures in European languages officially used in Africa -- English, French, and Portuguese -- as well as homegrown African languages: Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Swahili, and Yoruba. With its lineup of lucid and authoritative analyses, readers will find in A Companion to African Literatures a distinctive, rewarding academic resource. Perfect for undergraduate and graduate students in literary studies programs with an African focus, A Companion to African Literatures will also earn a place in the libraries of teachers, researchers, and professors who wish to strengthen their background in the study of African literatures.
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119058171
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 512
Book Description
Rediscover the diversity of modern African literatures with this authoritative resource edited by a leader in the field How have African literatures unfolded in their rich diversity in our modern era of decolonization, nationalisms, and extensive transnational movement of peoples? How have African writers engaged urgent questions regarding race, nation, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality? And how do African literary genres interrelate with traditional oral forms or audio-visual and digital media? A Companion to African Literatures addresses these issues and many more. Consisting of essays by distinguished scholars and emerging leaders in the field, this book offers rigorous, deeply engaging discussions of African literatures on the continent and in diaspora. It covers the four main geographical regions (East and Central Africa, North Africa, Southern Africa, and West Africa), presenting ample material to learn from and think with. A Companion To African Literatures is divided into five parts. The first four cover different regions of the continent, while the fifth part considers conceptual issues and newer directions of inquiry. Chapters focus on literatures in European languages officially used in Africa -- English, French, and Portuguese -- as well as homegrown African languages: Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Swahili, and Yoruba. With its lineup of lucid and authoritative analyses, readers will find in A Companion to African Literatures a distinctive, rewarding academic resource. Perfect for undergraduate and graduate students in literary studies programs with an African focus, A Companion to African Literatures will also earn a place in the libraries of teachers, researchers, and professors who wish to strengthen their background in the study of African literatures.
The Short Story in South Africa
Author: Rebecca Fasselt
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000562409
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
This book considers the key critical interventions on short story writing in South Africa written in English since the year 2000. The short story genre, whilst often marginalised in national literary canons, has been central to the trajectory of literary history in South Africa. In recent years, the short story has undergone a significant renaissance, with new collections and young writers making a significant impact on the contemporary literary scene, and subgenres such as speculative fiction, erotic fiction, flash fiction and queer fiction expanding rapidly in popularity. This book examines the role of the short story genre in reflecting or championing new developments in South African writing and the ways in which traditional boundaries and definitions of the short story in South Africa have been reimagined in the present. Drawing together a range of critical interventions, including scholarly articles, interviews and personal reflective pieces, the volume traces some of the aesthetic and thematic continuities and discontinuities in the genre and sheds new light on questions of literary form. Finally, the book considers the place of the short story in twenty-first century writing and interrogates the ways in which the short story form may contribute to, or recast ideas of, the post-apartheid or post-transitional. The perfect guide to contemporary short story writing in South Africa, this book will be essential reading for researchers of African literature.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000562409
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
This book considers the key critical interventions on short story writing in South Africa written in English since the year 2000. The short story genre, whilst often marginalised in national literary canons, has been central to the trajectory of literary history in South Africa. In recent years, the short story has undergone a significant renaissance, with new collections and young writers making a significant impact on the contemporary literary scene, and subgenres such as speculative fiction, erotic fiction, flash fiction and queer fiction expanding rapidly in popularity. This book examines the role of the short story genre in reflecting or championing new developments in South African writing and the ways in which traditional boundaries and definitions of the short story in South Africa have been reimagined in the present. Drawing together a range of critical interventions, including scholarly articles, interviews and personal reflective pieces, the volume traces some of the aesthetic and thematic continuities and discontinuities in the genre and sheds new light on questions of literary form. Finally, the book considers the place of the short story in twenty-first century writing and interrogates the ways in which the short story form may contribute to, or recast ideas of, the post-apartheid or post-transitional. The perfect guide to contemporary short story writing in South Africa, this book will be essential reading for researchers of African literature.
The Columbia Guide to South African Literature in English Since 1945
Author: Gareth Cornwell
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231130465
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 270
Book Description
From the outset, South Africa's history has been marked by division and conflict along racial and ethnic lines. From 1948 until 1994, this division was formalized in the National Party's policy of apartheid. Because apartheid intruded on every aspect of private and public life, South African literature was preoccupied with the politics of race and social engineering. Since the release from prison of Nelson Mandela in 1990, South Africa has been a new nation-in-the-making, inspired by a nonracial idealism yet beset by poverty and violence. South African writers have responded in various ways to Njabulo Ndebele's call to "rediscover the ordinary." The result has been a kaleidoscope of texts in which evolving cultural forms and modes of identity are rearticulated and explored. An invaluable guide for general readers as well as scholars of African literary history, this comprehensive text celebrates the multiple traditions and exciting future of the South African voice. Although the South African Constitution of 1994 recognizes no fewer than eleven official languages, English has remained the country's literary lingua franca. This book offers a narrative overview of South African literary production in English from 1945 to the postapartheid present. An introduction identifies the most interesting and noteworthy writing from the period. Alphabetical entries provide accurate and objective information on genres and writers. An appendix lists essential authors published before 1945.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231130465
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 270
Book Description
From the outset, South Africa's history has been marked by division and conflict along racial and ethnic lines. From 1948 until 1994, this division was formalized in the National Party's policy of apartheid. Because apartheid intruded on every aspect of private and public life, South African literature was preoccupied with the politics of race and social engineering. Since the release from prison of Nelson Mandela in 1990, South Africa has been a new nation-in-the-making, inspired by a nonracial idealism yet beset by poverty and violence. South African writers have responded in various ways to Njabulo Ndebele's call to "rediscover the ordinary." The result has been a kaleidoscope of texts in which evolving cultural forms and modes of identity are rearticulated and explored. An invaluable guide for general readers as well as scholars of African literary history, this comprehensive text celebrates the multiple traditions and exciting future of the South African voice. Although the South African Constitution of 1994 recognizes no fewer than eleven official languages, English has remained the country's literary lingua franca. This book offers a narrative overview of South African literary production in English from 1945 to the postapartheid present. An introduction identifies the most interesting and noteworthy writing from the period. Alphabetical entries provide accurate and objective information on genres and writers. An appendix lists essential authors published before 1945.
Olive Schreiner
Author: Carolyn Burdett
Publisher: Northcote House Pub Limited
ISBN: 0746310935
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 121
Book Description
South African born Olive Schreiner was a freethinker, a feminist, an anti-imperialist campaigner and a bold literary experimentalist: unconventional and troubled, her life and work illuminate the energies and the conflicts that characterised the end of Victorianism and the beginning of Modernism.
Publisher: Northcote House Pub Limited
ISBN: 0746310935
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 121
Book Description
South African born Olive Schreiner was a freethinker, a feminist, an anti-imperialist campaigner and a bold literary experimentalist: unconventional and troubled, her life and work illuminate the energies and the conflicts that characterised the end of Victorianism and the beginning of Modernism.
A Prophet of the People
Author: Lauren V. Jarvis
Publisher: MSU Press
ISBN: 1628955171
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 278
Book Description
In 1910 Isaiah Shembe was struggling. He had left his family and quit his job as a sanitation worker to become a Baptist evangelist, but he ended his first mission without much to show. Little did he know that he would soon establish the Nazaretha Church as he began to attract attention from people left behind by industrial capitalism in South Africa. By his death in 1935, Shembe was an internationally known prophet and healer, described by his peers as “better off than all the Black people.” In A Prophet of the People: Isaiah Shembe and the Making of a South African Church, historian Lauren V. Jarvis provides a fascinating and intimate portrait of one of South Africa’s most famous religious figures, and in turn the making of modern South Africa. Following Shembe from his birth in the 1860s across many environments and contexts, Jarvis illuminates the tight links between the spread of Christianity, strategies of evasion, and the capacious forms of community that continue to shape South Africa today.
Publisher: MSU Press
ISBN: 1628955171
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 278
Book Description
In 1910 Isaiah Shembe was struggling. He had left his family and quit his job as a sanitation worker to become a Baptist evangelist, but he ended his first mission without much to show. Little did he know that he would soon establish the Nazaretha Church as he began to attract attention from people left behind by industrial capitalism in South Africa. By his death in 1935, Shembe was an internationally known prophet and healer, described by his peers as “better off than all the Black people.” In A Prophet of the People: Isaiah Shembe and the Making of a South African Church, historian Lauren V. Jarvis provides a fascinating and intimate portrait of one of South Africa’s most famous religious figures, and in turn the making of modern South Africa. Following Shembe from his birth in the 1860s across many environments and contexts, Jarvis illuminates the tight links between the spread of Christianity, strategies of evasion, and the capacious forms of community that continue to shape South Africa today.
Indian Soldiers in the First World War
Author: Ashutosh Kumar
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000335283
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 153
Book Description
This book explores the lives and social histories of Indians soldiers who fought in the First World War. It focuses on their motivations, experiences, and lives after returning from service in Europe, Mesopotamia, East Africa, and Palestine, to present a more complete picture of Indian participation in the war. The book looks at the Indian support to the war for political concessions from the British government and its repercussions through the perspective of the role played by more than one million Indian soldiers and labourers. It examines the social and cultural aspects of the experience of fighting on foreign soil in a deadly battle and their contributions which remain largely unrecognised. From micro-histories of fighting soldiers, aspects of recruitment and deployment, to macro-histories connecting different aspects of the War, the volume explores a variety of themes including: the material incentives, coercion and training which converted peasants into combatants; encounters of travelling Indian soldiers with other societies; and the contributions of returned soldiers in Indian society. The book will be useful to researchers and students of history, post-colonial studies, sociology, literature, and cultural studies as well as for those interested in military history, World War I, and colonial history.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000335283
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 153
Book Description
This book explores the lives and social histories of Indians soldiers who fought in the First World War. It focuses on their motivations, experiences, and lives after returning from service in Europe, Mesopotamia, East Africa, and Palestine, to present a more complete picture of Indian participation in the war. The book looks at the Indian support to the war for political concessions from the British government and its repercussions through the perspective of the role played by more than one million Indian soldiers and labourers. It examines the social and cultural aspects of the experience of fighting on foreign soil in a deadly battle and their contributions which remain largely unrecognised. From micro-histories of fighting soldiers, aspects of recruitment and deployment, to macro-histories connecting different aspects of the War, the volume explores a variety of themes including: the material incentives, coercion and training which converted peasants into combatants; encounters of travelling Indian soldiers with other societies; and the contributions of returned soldiers in Indian society. The book will be useful to researchers and students of history, post-colonial studies, sociology, literature, and cultural studies as well as for those interested in military history, World War I, and colonial history.