Browsing by Author "Fourie, Reinhardt"

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    Entanglements of the English and Afrikaans literary systems : reading epitexts on the works of Marlene van Niekerk
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2020-03) Fourie, Reinhardt; Visagie, A. G.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Afrikaans and Dutch.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study investigates the entanglements of the Afrikaans and the South African English literary systems. Sarah Nuttall’s notion of “entanglement” (2009) is utilised as an analytical metaphor within a combined framework that draws on the polysystems theory of Itamar Even-Zohar (1990) and the concept of the cultural field of Pierre Bourdieu (1993). The primary sites of analysis are the series of “epitexts” (Gérard Genette, 1997) surrounding the work of author, poet and playwright, Marlene van Niekerk. These epitexts take the form of popular and critical reviews of her work, interviews with and opinion pieces or essays by the author, as well as scholarly research that has been published on her work (including academic articles and essays, book chapters, and theses and dissertations). Van Niekerk made her literary debut in 1977, and her most recent work was published in 2019. As such, her literary work spans a period of remarkable political, social and cultural change, includes three literary genres, and stretches across the literary systems of both Afrikaans and English. This offers an epitextual archive that is well suited, in scope and depth, to a comparative systemic approach. Following an overview of the theory employed, the positions of Van Niekerk in the respective Afrikaans literary system and the South African English literary system are discussed. Within this frame, the author is considered as both an author writing in Afrikaans and an author translated into English, with a concomitant focus on her related position in the larger system of a “national” South African literature, in addition to the circulation of her work in the bigger, transnational Anglo-American literary system and the system of world literature. The predominant discourses within the popular and scholarly reception of Van Niekerk’s work – and how these have influence her positioning in the different literary systems – are charted and interrogated, after which they are compared and discussed in order to understand the reciprocal influences, overlaps and imbrications – i.e. entanglements – that can be observed between the literary systems in question. Utilising Van Niekerk’s oeuvre as analytical lens, this study observes the nature of the interconnectedness between two of South Africa’s literary systems, and what this means for understanding the country’s dynamic literary landscape as it developed into and exists in the present. Finally, this study offers a view as to the possibilities of comparative literary studies in South Africa.