Student Number : 0318162X - MA research report - School of Literature and Language Studies - Faculty of Humanities / This Research Report comprises the preface to an opera libretto based on the English translation by Charles Eglington (1964) of Etienne Leroux’s novel Seven Days at the Silbersteins (1962), and the libretto itself. In the preface I discuss the genre of operatic libretto and the literary and personal context in which Leroux worked, by way of explaining why Seven Days made such a compelling challenge to adapt as libretto. I consider some of the issues involved in transposing a rambling allegorical narrative produced in Afrikaans in the 1960s in the lineage of the plaasroman, into a tighter postapartheid discourse in English in the 2000s, one that creates space for live music, singing, acting, staging, setting and pre-recorded audio-visuals – some of which take over the ‘layered’ significations of Leroux’s earlier literary discourse. A work of great poetic resonance in the original language (beautifully captured by poet and critic Charles Eglington in translation), this surrealist novel, so rooted in cultural and ideological tropes unique to Leroux’s time and yet presented by him as if they belonged to a timeless world, presents opportunities for a new kind of realisation as an operatic text in our own time.

In this dissertation the boundaries between normality and disability are investigated, as well as how these boundaries can be represented and changed through literary works. The purpose of this study is to examine the representation of disabled characters according to the theoretical insights of cognitive narratology. In order to analyse the boundary between normality and disability, this study focuses on focalisation and the narration as narrative techniques. The representation of disabled characters is a well-known phenomenon in literature in general but this dissertation analyses and discusses four novels which have been identified as texts in which the representation of disabled characters plays a significant role. These novels are: Is Sagie (1987) by Jan van Tonder, Raaiselkind (2001) by Annelie Botes, Siegfried (2007) by Willem Anker en Een vir Azazel (1964) by Etienne Leroux. Disablility, as a deviation from normality, is represented in different ways in literature, and has different functions. The theoretical argument is that the investigation and interpretation of the representation of disablilty in literature will provide insight in disability as a social phenomenon, as a literary act and as an act of understanding. Cognitive narratology uses the theoretical concepts of frames and scripts to describe the way in which human perceptions are structured and may even become fossilised in the human mind. Subsequent expreriences and information are therefore determined by existing codes and rules. The understanding or negotiation of new information is based on preferences that evolve from prior knowledge and programming. Cognitive choices are made on the basis of existing frames and scripts and determine whether a concept is new, standard, stereotypical, unusual, indefinite or ambiguous. This study shows how frames and scripts on disability are undermined within the novels and how disability is used as a functional novel element. / Thesis (MA (Afrikaans and Dutch))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

In this dissertation the boundaries between normality and disability are investigated, as well as how these boundaries can be represented and changed through literary works. The purpose of this study is to examine the representation of disabled characters according to the theoretical insights of cognitive narratology. In order to analyse the boundary between normality and disability, this study focuses on focalisation and the narration as narrative techniques. The representation of disabled characters is a well-known phenomenon in literature in general but this dissertation analyses and discusses four novels which have been identified as texts in which the representation of disabled characters plays a significant role. These novels are: Is Sagie (1987) by Jan van Tonder, Raaiselkind (2001) by Annelie Botes, Siegfried (2007) by Willem Anker en Een vir Azazel (1964) by Etienne Leroux. Disablility, as a deviation from normality, is represented in different ways in literature, and has different functions. The theoretical argument is that the investigation and interpretation of the representation of disablilty in literature will provide insight in disability as a social phenomenon, as a literary act and as an act of understanding. Cognitive narratology uses the theoretical concepts of frames and scripts to describe the way in which human perceptions are structured and may even become fossilised in the human mind. Subsequent expreriences and information are therefore determined by existing codes and rules. The understanding or negotiation of new information is based on preferences that evolve from prior knowledge and programming. Cognitive choices are made on the basis of existing frames and scripts and determine whether a concept is new, standard, stereotypical, unusual, indefinite or ambiguous. This study shows how frames and scripts on disability are undermined within the novels and how disability is used as a functional novel element. / Thesis (MA (Afrikaans and Dutch))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.