Bosman as Verbindingsteken: Hybridities in the Writing of Herman Charles Bosman.
- Authors: Leff, Carol Willa
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Bosman, Herman Charles, 1905-1951 -- Criticism and interpretation , South African fiction (English) -- 20th century -- History and criticism , Authors, South African -- 20th century , South Africa -- Social life and customs -- 20th century , National characteristics, South African
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2314 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013163
- Description: This thesis is concerned with how hybridity is created and interpreted by Herman Charles Bosman in his fiction and non-fiction. Bosman was a gifted writer and raconteur who captured the historical, socio-political context of his time by translating Afrikaans culture for the edification and pleasure of an English readership. Hennie Aucamp summed up this linguistic and cultural translation by pointing out that Bosman was a writer who acted as a “verbindingsteken” or hyphen (65) between Afrikaans and English. His texts contain many voices, and are therefore essentially hybrid. Firstly, by drawing on aspects of postcolonial theory, the terms ‘hybridity’, ‘culture’ and ‘identity’, are discussed. Homi Bhabha’s notion of ‘hybridity’ is the conceptual lens through which Bosman’s texts are viewed, and aspects of Mikhail Bakhtin’s cultural theory also serve the same function. Thereafter, biographies of Bosman are discussed in an effort to understand his hyphenated identity. Following this, specific attention is paid to a selection of Bosman’s essays, short stories, and a novel. Scholarly opinions aid interpretation of levels of hybridity in Bosman’s work. In analysing Bosman’s texts critically, it becomes clear that he believed in a united South Africa that acknowledged and accepted all races. However, analysis also reveals that there are some inconsistencies in Bosman’s personal views, as expressed particularly in his essays. His short stories do not contain the same contradictions. Critical analysis of the novel Willemsdorp attests that cultural hybridity is not always viewed as celebratory. It can also be a painful space where identities are split, living both inside and outside their environment, and subsequently marginalized. Bosman’s texts, although published decades ago, remain relevant today in post-apartheid South Africa as much of his writing can be seen as a record of historical events. His short stories and novels capture a confluence of languages, people and cultures. His essays illustrate a deep commitment to promoting South African culture and literature. When reading Bosman one is constantly reminded that differences are not only to be acknowledged, but embraced, in what he prophetically imagined as a hybrid, post-apartheid South African society.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
- Authors: Leff, Carol Willa
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Bosman, Herman Charles, 1905-1951 -- Criticism and interpretation , South African fiction (English) -- 20th century -- History and criticism , Authors, South African -- 20th century , South Africa -- Social life and customs -- 20th century , National characteristics, South African
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2314 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013163
- Description: This thesis is concerned with how hybridity is created and interpreted by Herman Charles Bosman in his fiction and non-fiction. Bosman was a gifted writer and raconteur who captured the historical, socio-political context of his time by translating Afrikaans culture for the edification and pleasure of an English readership. Hennie Aucamp summed up this linguistic and cultural translation by pointing out that Bosman was a writer who acted as a “verbindingsteken” or hyphen (65) between Afrikaans and English. His texts contain many voices, and are therefore essentially hybrid. Firstly, by drawing on aspects of postcolonial theory, the terms ‘hybridity’, ‘culture’ and ‘identity’, are discussed. Homi Bhabha’s notion of ‘hybridity’ is the conceptual lens through which Bosman’s texts are viewed, and aspects of Mikhail Bakhtin’s cultural theory also serve the same function. Thereafter, biographies of Bosman are discussed in an effort to understand his hyphenated identity. Following this, specific attention is paid to a selection of Bosman’s essays, short stories, and a novel. Scholarly opinions aid interpretation of levels of hybridity in Bosman’s work. In analysing Bosman’s texts critically, it becomes clear that he believed in a united South Africa that acknowledged and accepted all races. However, analysis also reveals that there are some inconsistencies in Bosman’s personal views, as expressed particularly in his essays. His short stories do not contain the same contradictions. Critical analysis of the novel Willemsdorp attests that cultural hybridity is not always viewed as celebratory. It can also be a painful space where identities are split, living both inside and outside their environment, and subsequently marginalized. Bosman’s texts, although published decades ago, remain relevant today in post-apartheid South Africa as much of his writing can be seen as a record of historical events. His short stories and novels capture a confluence of languages, people and cultures. His essays illustrate a deep commitment to promoting South African culture and literature. When reading Bosman one is constantly reminded that differences are not only to be acknowledged, but embraced, in what he prophetically imagined as a hybrid, post-apartheid South African society.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
The interface of history and fiction in Russel Brownlee’s Garden of the plagues, Ingrid Winterbach’s To hell With Cronjé, and Etienne van Heerden’s The long silence of Mario Salviati
- Authors: Wyrill, Beth Alexandra
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Brownlee, Russel -- Criticism and interpretation , Winterbach, Ingrid -- Criticism and interpretation , Van Heerden, Etienne, 1954- -- Criticism and interpretation , South African fiction (English) -- History and criticism , South African fiction (English) -- 20th century -- History and criticism , African fiction (English) -- 21st century -- History and criticism , Brownlee, Russel -- Garden of the plagues , Winterbach, Ingrid -- Niggie -- English , Van Heerden, Etienne, 1954- -- Swye van Mario Salviati -- English , Historical fiction -- History and criticism , Magic realism (Literature)
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2323 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1015517
- Description: Both historiographical and literary practices have undergone revision in recent years in attempting to address the inheritance of nineteenth-century realism. Since the object of realist stylistics, employed in both the writing of fiction and history, is to render authorship authoritative or even invisible, the ideological import of these narratives is often such that the constructedness of the historical record and its absences are veiled. In developments beginning in the 1980s with the advent of ‘New Historicism’ and with the emergence of postmodern literary techniques, the interface of literature and history became of seminal importance, since both were now credited as being products of narrative and discourse, and hence, to varying degrees, of the literary imagination. This movement intersects interestingly with developments in postcolonial studies, since it is the voices of the marginalized and disempowered colonized peoples that are routinely co-opted and excised from nineteenth-century realist histories. These concerns are now being fully explored in the literature of the contemporary post-transitional South African moment, since authors in this country seemingly now feel freed up to look back to histories that precede the immediate traumas of apartheid. The concern, in relation to apartheid developments but also on a broader universal scale, is this: if history is viewed as perpetual emergences of modernities, then one of the great absences in the record is the historical determinants of any given epistemology. The attempt to recreate such an epistemological genealogy is thus simultaneously postcolonial, historiographical, and literary. Russel Brownlee’s Garden of the Plagues (2005), Ingrid Winterbach’s To Hell with Cronjé (2010), and Etienne van Heerden’s The Long Silence of Mario Salviati (2002) attempt to bridge this gap in the recorded sensibilities of any historical moment by representing a ‘lived experience’ of the past, and in the process imaginatively recreating the cultural, historical and psychological locations of the proponents of an emerging modernity. This study concerns itself with the ways in which these authors address the influence of realist historiography through the use of literary innovations that allow for the departure from realist stylistics. Most commonly, all three authors draw on forms of magic realism, but multiple refigurings and recombinations of notions of temporality, narrative, and characterization likewise work to defamiliarize the once stable discourse of history.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
- Authors: Wyrill, Beth Alexandra
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Brownlee, Russel -- Criticism and interpretation , Winterbach, Ingrid -- Criticism and interpretation , Van Heerden, Etienne, 1954- -- Criticism and interpretation , South African fiction (English) -- History and criticism , South African fiction (English) -- 20th century -- History and criticism , African fiction (English) -- 21st century -- History and criticism , Brownlee, Russel -- Garden of the plagues , Winterbach, Ingrid -- Niggie -- English , Van Heerden, Etienne, 1954- -- Swye van Mario Salviati -- English , Historical fiction -- History and criticism , Magic realism (Literature)
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2323 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1015517
- Description: Both historiographical and literary practices have undergone revision in recent years in attempting to address the inheritance of nineteenth-century realism. Since the object of realist stylistics, employed in both the writing of fiction and history, is to render authorship authoritative or even invisible, the ideological import of these narratives is often such that the constructedness of the historical record and its absences are veiled. In developments beginning in the 1980s with the advent of ‘New Historicism’ and with the emergence of postmodern literary techniques, the interface of literature and history became of seminal importance, since both were now credited as being products of narrative and discourse, and hence, to varying degrees, of the literary imagination. This movement intersects interestingly with developments in postcolonial studies, since it is the voices of the marginalized and disempowered colonized peoples that are routinely co-opted and excised from nineteenth-century realist histories. These concerns are now being fully explored in the literature of the contemporary post-transitional South African moment, since authors in this country seemingly now feel freed up to look back to histories that precede the immediate traumas of apartheid. The concern, in relation to apartheid developments but also on a broader universal scale, is this: if history is viewed as perpetual emergences of modernities, then one of the great absences in the record is the historical determinants of any given epistemology. The attempt to recreate such an epistemological genealogy is thus simultaneously postcolonial, historiographical, and literary. Russel Brownlee’s Garden of the Plagues (2005), Ingrid Winterbach’s To Hell with Cronjé (2010), and Etienne van Heerden’s The Long Silence of Mario Salviati (2002) attempt to bridge this gap in the recorded sensibilities of any historical moment by representing a ‘lived experience’ of the past, and in the process imaginatively recreating the cultural, historical and psychological locations of the proponents of an emerging modernity. This study concerns itself with the ways in which these authors address the influence of realist historiography through the use of literary innovations that allow for the departure from realist stylistics. Most commonly, all three authors draw on forms of magic realism, but multiple refigurings and recombinations of notions of temporality, narrative, and characterization likewise work to defamiliarize the once stable discourse of history.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
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