When her life starts falling apart, a journalist and writer heads for a small rural town. Here the strange and wonderful tales about a local woman ignite her curiosity. As the town's secrets unravel she finds the truth behind all the fantasies. And in fighting her own demons she makes an unusual connection to this woman. She soon realises that this connection holds the key to her own salvation. Or her downfall.

Text in Afrikaans / Die doel van hierdie studie was om vas te stel hoe die Afrikaner in literere tekste van die veertiger- en tagtigerjare uitgebeeld word, en of 'n vaste beskouing oor die begrip Afrikanerskap by die skrywers van die verskillende tekste bestaan. Omdat die verhouding tussen die gekose tekste en die geskiedenis telkens ondersoek is, is die Nuwe Historisistiese benadering as geskikte teoretiese model gevolg. Waar hierdie benadering die klem op die realiteit plaas, stel die lmagologie die beeld voorop, en die lmagologiese werkswyse is dus aanvullend gevolg. Omdat die tekste van veertig hoofsaaklik as koloniale literatuur beskou kan word, en die tekste van tagtig as postkoloniaal van aard, is die koloniale en postkoloniale literatuur in Afrikaans kortliks ondersoek. Die studie het verder gepoog om deeglik verkenning van die begrippe Afrikaner en Afrikanerskap te doen aan die hand van verskillende narratiewe tekste wat nie noodwendig literer van aard is nie. Alhoewel daar by die herlees van die vier en twintig literere tekste van die veertigerjare gevind is dat die tekste hoofsaaklik nog as koloniale literatuur beskou kan word, is die interessante insig verwerf dat sekere tekste wat nie deel van die kanon vorm nie, 'n ander realiteit oor die Afrikaner en oor Afrikanerskap aan die leser voorhou as wat tradisioneel die geval was. So is byvoorbeeld bevind dat die strukture wat die Afrikanermaghebber sedert die veertigerjare geskep het, die belange van die Afrikanerdom moes dien. Deur die herlees van die tekste kon die gegewe opnuut ge'interpreteer word en kon nodige aanpassings dus by aanvaarde opvattings gemaak word. Die ondersoek het verder aan die lig gebring dat veral die tekste uit die tagtigerjare verruimend ingewerk het op bestaande, geykte opvattinge oor die Afrikaner en Afrikanerskap en dat sulke opvattinge deur die tekste ondermyn, ontluister of bloot ontken word. Ten slotte het dit duidelik geword dat daar geen eensydige of stabiele betekenis oor die begrippe Afrikaner en van Afrikanerskap uit die verskillende tekste afgelei kon word nie / The purpose of this study was to determine how the Afrikaner was depicted in the literary texts of the forties and the eighties, and to determine whether the authors of the different texts expresses fixed views of the concept Afrikanerskap. As the relationship between the chosen texts and history had been investigated several times, the New Historisistic approach was adopted as a suitable theoretical model. As this approach places the emphasis on reality, and the lmagology sees the image as the most important, lmagological procedures were used additionally. Because the texts of the forties can be seen as mainly colonial of nature and the texts of the eighties as post colonial, the colonial and post colonial literature in Afrikaans was briefly investigated. The study further attempted to thoroughly investigate the concepts Afrikaner and Afrikanerskap with reference to different narrative texts which are not necessarily literary of nature. Although the rereading of twenty four literary texts of the forties confirms that the texts could mainly be seen as colonial literature, the interesting conclusion was made that certain texts not included in the canon gave the reader another reality of Afrikaner and Afrikanerskap than was traditionally the case. It was found, for example, that structures created by Afrikaner authorities since the forties were created to serve the needs of the Afrikanerdom. The rereading of these specific texts led to new interpretations and the necessary adaptations could be done to previously accepted views. The research further indicated that texts from the eighties especially had a broadening effect on existing hackneyed conceptions of Afrikaner and Afrikanerskap and that such views are undermined, clouded or simply ignored by the texts. In conclusion it became clear that no onesided or static interpretation of the concepts Afrikaner and Afrikanerskap could be derived from the different texts / Afrikaans & Theory of Literature / D. Litt. et Phil. (Afrikaans)

'n Ondersoek na die armoede-diskoers en die uitings patriargie, bloedskande en apartheid in Triomf van Marlene Van Niekerk.

'n Ondersoek na die armoede-diskoers en die uitings patriargie, bloedskande en apartheid in Triomf van Marlene Van Niekerk.

Text in Afrikaans / Die doel van hierdie studie was om vas te stel hoe die Afrikaner in literere tekste van die veertiger- en tagtigerjare uitgebeeld word, en of 'n vaste beskouing oor die begrip Afrikanerskap by die skrywers van die verskillende tekste bestaan. Omdat die verhouding tussen die gekose tekste en die geskiedenis telkens ondersoek is, is die Nuwe Historisistiese benadering as geskikte teoretiese model gevolg. Waar hierdie benadering die klem op die realiteit plaas, stel die lmagologie die beeld voorop, en die lmagologiese werkswyse is dus aanvullend gevolg. Omdat die tekste van veertig hoofsaaklik as koloniale literatuur beskou kan word, en die tekste van tagtig as postkoloniaal van aard, is die koloniale en postkoloniale literatuur in Afrikaans kortliks ondersoek. Die studie het verder gepoog om deeglik verkenning van die begrippe Afrikaner en Afrikanerskap te doen aan die hand van verskillende narratiewe tekste wat nie noodwendig literer van aard is nie. Alhoewel daar by die herlees van die vier en twintig literere tekste van die veertigerjare gevind is dat die tekste hoofsaaklik nog as koloniale literatuur beskou kan word, is die interessante insig verwerf dat sekere tekste wat nie deel van die kanon vorm nie, 'n ander realiteit oor die Afrikaner en oor Afrikanerskap aan die leser voorhou as wat tradisioneel die geval was. So is byvoorbeeld bevind dat die strukture wat die Afrikanermaghebber sedert die veertigerjare geskep het, die belange van die Afrikanerdom moes dien. Deur die herlees van die tekste kon die gegewe opnuut ge'interpreteer word en kon nodige aanpassings dus by aanvaarde opvattings gemaak word. Die ondersoek het verder aan die lig gebring dat veral die tekste uit die tagtigerjare verruimend ingewerk het op bestaande, geykte opvattinge oor die Afrikaner en Afrikanerskap en dat sulke opvattinge deur die tekste ondermyn, ontluister of bloot ontken word. Ten slotte het dit duidelik geword dat daar geen eensydige of stabiele betekenis oor die begrippe Afrikaner en van Afrikanerskap uit die verskillende tekste afgelei kon word nie / The purpose of this study was to determine how the Afrikaner was depicted in the literary texts of the forties and the eighties, and to determine whether the authors of the different texts expresses fixed views of the concept Afrikanerskap. As the relationship between the chosen texts and history had been investigated several times, the New Historisistic approach was adopted as a suitable theoretical model. As this approach places the emphasis on reality, and the lmagology sees the image as the most important, lmagological procedures were used additionally. Because the texts of the forties can be seen as mainly colonial of nature and the texts of the eighties as post colonial, the colonial and post colonial literature in Afrikaans was briefly investigated. The study further attempted to thoroughly investigate the concepts Afrikaner and Afrikanerskap with reference to different narrative texts which are not necessarily literary of nature. Although the rereading of twenty four literary texts of the forties confirms that the texts could mainly be seen as colonial literature, the interesting conclusion was made that certain texts not included in the canon gave the reader another reality of Afrikaner and Afrikanerskap than was traditionally the case. It was found, for example, that structures created by Afrikaner authorities since the forties were created to serve the needs of the Afrikanerdom. The rereading of these specific texts led to new interpretations and the necessary adaptations could be done to previously accepted views. The research further indicated that texts from the eighties especially had a broadening effect on existing hackneyed conceptions of Afrikaner and Afrikanerskap and that such views are undermined, clouded or simply ignored by the texts. In conclusion it became clear that no onesided or static interpretation of the concepts Afrikaner and Afrikanerskap could be derived from the different texts / Afrikaans and Theory of Literature / D. Litt. et Phil. (Afrikaans)

This study focuses on the creative adaptation of Anglo-Boer War material in Ingrid Winterbach’s (Lettie Viljoen) Niggie [Cousin] (2002) with specific reference to the Oorlogsdagboek van Jan F.E. Celliers, 1899-1902 [War Diary of Jan F.E. Celliers, 1899-1902] (1978) and other texts written during or shortly after the Anglo Boer War in Dutch, such as Totius’ Vier-en-sestig dae te velde: ‘n Oorlogsdagboek [Sixty Four Days Afield: A War Diary] (1977) and in English, Woman’s Endurance (1904) by A.D.L. and Deneys Reitz’s Commando. A Boer Journal of the Boer War (1929). More recent Afrikaans novels dealing with the same war are also analysed, such as Ons oorlog [Our War] (2000) by Klaas Steytler, Op soek na Generaal Mannetjies Mentz [In Search of General Mannetjies Mentz] (1998) by Christoffel Coetzee and Etienne Leroux’s Magersfontein O! Magersfontein (1976). A literary analysis is done of the novel Niggie, with specific focus on the nature and function of Anglo-Boer War material in Winterbach’s text. The question is posed why there is such a sustained focus and creative adaptation of Anglo-Boer War texts in Winterbach’s oeuvre (especially in Belemmering [Impediment], 1990, Karolina Ferreira, 1993, Buller se plan [Buller’s Plan], 1999, and Niggie [Cousin], 2002)? This novel has a profound effect on the reader a century after the war, because it addresses postcolonial issues and predicaments such as a defragmenting identity, as well as the possible demise of the Afrikaans language and culture, faced by the descendants of those involved in the war a century ago. In her reworking of the past to come to grips with the present, Winterbach confronts difficult South African topics, such as interracial relationships, racism, the relationship with the land, possible language death, gender relationships, the role of the supernatural and the unconscious in everyday life (in the form of dreams and trickster figures), amongst many others. The dissertation offers an intertextual study as well as a literary analyses of the literary techniques used, and the characteristics of this magisterial novel, which deservedly won the Hertzog prize in 2004, the highest accolade possible for an Afrikaans novel. The anomaly of such a novel in 2002 seemingly dwelling on the past, is shown up for what it is: a metaphor for the present and its dilemmas, reflecting the social conflicts existing at present in the crumbling Afrikaans community.

Conrad Aiken’s observation that the “landscape and the language are the same, and we ourselves are language and are land,” depicts the material terrain we inhabit as necessarily informing the language we speak. An important corollary to Aiken’s observation is language itself writes the land. I argue that the binary division between culture and nature, as well as the attempts to universalise languages, abstracts discourse from necessary situated knowledges, alienating the land from the language it embodies. The severing of culture and nature as implied by Aiken’s observation is indicative of humanity’s progressive isolation from the land through language, as well as from their embodied natures. Remoteness results in what Marlene van Niekerk’s novel Agaat (2006) terms a “poverty disease” (2006: 251). Michiel Heyns confirms that the character Agaat relates this barrenness of spirit to her “diagnosis of spiritual ills through human dealings with the soil” (2009: 132). I illustrate the novel’s revitalisation of language as an act of ecological recuperation that alleviates dis-eased consciousnesses by potentially recognising, valuing and responding to situated knowledges revealed in land narratives.1 My argument therefore uncovers the challenges that the novel directs at an unreformed and universal Western2 To this end I use critiques of colonialism that reveal culture’s assimilation of the Other, rationalist discourse that continues to appropriate nature as resource for a hierarchical culture. 3 By combining this literary analysis with a wider eco-theoretical enquiry I position my study in an interdisciplinary field of investigation. This is in response to the damaging consequences of the inherited and fragmentary nature of specialisation. In addition, by detailing literary and feminist especially the work of Val Plumwood, Donna Haraway and Nicole Brossard. I use these critiques to analyse self/Other oppositions that Western culture constructs and patrols to maintain a defensive culture of domination. I show how nature and all those feminised and marginalised by Western discourses that hierarchise culture have been consistently overlooked and under-represented by those who purport to ‘control’ the environment and privilege the symbolic language as the carrier of culture. Agaat provides fruitful terrain for the reflection of marginalised voices; voices that confirm the environment and language as necessarily both feminist and social justice issues. 1 My preference for the hyphenated usage of the word ‘dis-ease’ signals the equation between discomfort or unease and disease or sickness. 2 While I am concerned over emphasising words such as Western and Apartheid by capitalising them, I have decided to retain this form so as not to diminish the magnitude of the effect these discourses have had on global and regional communities. 3 When referring to Others I, like Karen J. Warren, capitalise the term. Warren defines Others as all earth Others subjected to “unjustified domination-subordination relationships” (2005: 252). responses to Western patriarchal discourse and its impact on nature, I show the ways in which literature negotiates the possible re-conceptualisation of our collective cultural imagination. Van Niekerk’s novel offers a sustained critique of the oppressive Western conceptual frameworks that have dominated Others through hegemonic constructions. Furthermore, I investigate what this writer might offer as an alternative to systems of social, political and ecological control and the violence it inflicts.

The dissertation offers a reception study followed by a critical analysis of Bidsprinkaan by André P. Brink [Praying Mantis, 2005], as well as a careful study of the relevant historical and anthropological intertexts pertaining to the text. This research adds to a fuller understanding of the history of Cupido Kakkerlak and the missionaries. Brink encoded the novel with certain historical and anthropological codes, well-hidden beneath the surface of his fictional writing, thus achieving a finely balanced interaction between fact and fiction in his novelistic construct. This novelistic amalgam of the imaginative world with the historical and anthropological material, gives multidimensionality to the text which is not visible at a first superficial reading. Failing to recognize the traces to these intertexts, would result in a lesser understanding of the conflicting fields in which the main character is positioned, specifically between indigenous belief and Christianity, as well as between indigenous culture and mythology on the one hand, and western culture on the other hand. The author ‘encodes’ the novel (to use the terminology of Jakobson’s communication model) with these historical and anthropological intertexts, which the reader has to ‘decode’ in order to unlock the novel. One central technique therefore, is that of interwoven fact and fiction. This is a technique employed in most of Brink’s novels, such as ‘n Oomblik in die wind, 1975 [An Instant in the Wind], Houd-den-Bek, 1982 [A chain of voices,], Die eerste lewe van Adamastor, 1986 [The First Life of Adamastor, 1993], Inteendeel, 1993 [On the Contrary, 1993] and Duiwelskloof, 1998 [Devil’s Valley, 1998]. Khoi and San history, culture and identity also figure centrally in these novels. A further aspect of my hypothesis is suggested by the politically correct Afrikaans title, Bidsprinkaan (the common nomenclature for the praying mantis is “hotnotsgot”, which roughly translates as “hottentots’ god”, with obvious racial pejorative suggestion). Brink’s use of “bidsprinkaan” for his title, alerts the reader to contemporary political sensitivity, thus contrasting the society of two centuries ago with the present. The more sophisticated reading process followed here compares colonial and postcolonial South African societies, and attempts to tease out the implied ideological facet embedded in the novel.

Bibliography: pages 336-354. / Tegniese en tematiese vernuwing, aansien én verguising van sy literêre werk, 'n opsienbare openbare lewe én dood - dit alles het bygedra dat Koos Prinsloo bykans 'n kultusfiguur geword het en dat sy skrywersloopbaan en literêre arbeid 'n uiters interessante, maar komplekse studieterrein is. Verskeie artikels en nagraadse studies oor uiteenlopende aspekte van Prinsloo se verhale is reeds voltooi, maar daar is nog geen sistematiese ondersoek gedoen oor die verhouding tussen feit en fiksie soos dit na vore kom in sy vier bundels nie. Met die skrywer se afsterwe in Maart 1994 is sy oeuvre afgesluit. Dit is dus vir die navorser moontlik om tot bepaalde gevolgtrekkings te kom ten opsigte van 'n volledige korpus tekste. Die werkswyse in hierdie studie is om Prinsloo se verhaalbundels in chronologiese volgorde te ontleed, te bepaal watter verhale outobiografiese merkers vertoon, na te gaan watter tegnieke die skrywer gebruik het om sy tekste te fiksionaliseer/defiksionaliseer, en wat die funksies en konsekwensies is van die byhaal van die "werklikheid" by die fiksionele. Die uitsprake van kritici word by elke bundel gegee, met die navorser se reaksie op die kritiek. As gevolg van die omvang van hierdie studie, word daar nie aandag gegee aan die (meer omvattende) verhouding tussen "feit" en "fiksie" in Prinsloo se oeuvre nie. Sodanige studie sal meebring dat die talryke dokumentêre verwysings in sy werk nagevors en die funksionaliteit daarvan bepaal word. Hierdie studie konsentreer net op die verhouding tussen die outobiografiese feit en fiksie in sy werk, maar verwys, waar nodig, na sommige van hierdie dokumente.

Summaries in Afrikaans and English / The aim of this dissertation is to analyse those poems in which the image of the knife, el cuchillo, appears in the collection El rayo que no cesa, by Miguel Hernandez. The poet manifests his all-encompassing tragic view of life by means of this recurring negative symbol. The poetry of Miguel Hernandez is autobiographical: The universal themes of nature, love and death reveal a close link between the course of his life and the evolution of his poetry. El rayo que no cesa is central to the evolution of Hernandez's poetry: it is the product of the crisis of conscience that propelled the poet toward a radical change of world-view. The book reveals his frustration with love within the rigid norms of the society of his time. The poet expresses his bitterness by means of destructive images such as knife, sword, and ray/flash, images that project the tragic fate that threatened his entire existence. / Met eietydse denkrigtings oor die literere historiografie as uitgangspunt, word 'n deelgeskiedenis aangebied van die plaasroman as deurlopende en prominente genre in die Afrikaanse letterkunde oor 'n tydperk van nagenoeg sewentig jaar (1926 -1993). Ter inleiding word besin oor die geldigheid van kategorisering van romans en oor die aard van die plaasroman as eiesoortige genre. Orie opeenvolgende periodes word onderskei binne hierdie deelgeskiedenis op grond van bepaalde perspektiefverskuiwings wat in die Afrikaanse literere klimaat opvat. Hierdie periodes word deur die volgende noemers getipeer: Die Afrikaanse gedagte (1920-1940), Die internasionale gedagte (1956-1976) en Die Afrika gedagte (1976-1993). Twaalf plaasromans van literer-historiese betekenis word sinchronies, diachronies en binne ekstratekstuele konteks bespreek. Ten slotte word 'n oorsig gebied van die historiese gang sowel as die veranderende betekenis van die plaasroman in die Afrikaanse letterkunde. / Afrikaans and Theory of Literature / M.A. (Afrikaans)