Dit is reeds deur andere gese: dat die "vernuwing van Sestig" in die Afrikaanse prosa die Afrikaanse prosakritiek tot bestekname gedwing het soos die vernuwing in die poësie van Dertig die kritiek van daardie tyd. En waar die vernuwing in die prosa ook op die gebied van die kort prosakuns so duidelik op die voorgrond was, kan daar wel gevra word: hoe geldig is die teorieDit is reeds deur andere gess: dat die "vernuwing van Sestig" in die Afrikaanse prosa die Afrikaanse prosakritiek tot bestekname gedwing het soos die vernuwing in die poesie van Dertig die kritiek van daardie tyd. 2 En waar die vernuwing in die prosa ook op die gebied van die kort prosakuns so duidelik op die voorgrond was, kan daar wel gevra word: hoe geldig is die teorieë wat in Afrikaans so eksplisit oor die "kortverhaal" opgestel is vir die nuwer Afrikaanse verhaalkuns? en daarby: hoe geldig is die nuwer, meer teksgerigte beskouings in Afrikaans? Die vraag is die kern van die huidige studie.

This study is concerned with a particular kind of short story in South African English literature - a kind of story variously called the fireside tale, tall tale, yarn, skaz narrative, frame narrative, or (the term used in this study), the 'oral-sty Ie story.' This kind of story is characterised by the use of an internal narrator (a fictional narrator or storyteller figure), the cadences of his or her speaking voice, and a 'reporting' frame narrator. Stories by A. W. Drayson, Frederick Boyle, J. Forsyth Ingram, W. C. Scully, Percy FitzPatrick, Ernest Glanville, Perceval Gibbon, Francis Carey Slater, Pauline Smith, Aegidius Jean Blignaut and Herman Charles Bosman form the principal body of primary sources examined in this study. The Bakhtinian notion of "simple" and "parodistic" skaz narratives is deployed to analyse the increasing complexity to be discerned in the works by these writers, which roughly span the 100 years from the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the present century. A "simple" use of the skaz narrative is evident in the early or 'ur-South African' oral-style story, represented here by Drayson, Boyle and Ingram. With Scully and FitzPatrick the form is still used 'artlessly,' although the beginnings of a greater self-consciousness can be discerned. The' Abe Pike' tales by Glanville introduce a more complex use of the fictional narrator, a process taken a step further by Gibbon in his 'Vrouw Grobelaar' tales. With the latter, in particular, the complex or "parodistic" skaz narrative makes its advent in South African literature. The oral-style stories of Slater and Smith are largely a regression to the ear lier form, although there are aspects of their stories which anticipate Bosman. With Blignaut and Bosman, however, the South African oral-style story comes into its own. In their Hottentot Ruiter and Oom Schalk Lourens characters is invested all the complexity and 'double-voicedness' that was latent, and largely dormant, in the earlier oral-style narratives. Through Blignaut, and Bosman in particular, the South African oral-style story achieves its most economical, sophisticated and successful form of expression. The study concludes by looking briefly at the use of an oral style in short stories by black South African writers and argues that their stories are not, formally speaking, to be categorised alongside those by the other~ writers examined. The oral-style story, the study concludes, achieved its apogee in Bosman's Oom Schalk Lourens sequence and went into sharp decline after Bosman's death in 1951.

This bibliography aims to record socio-political short stories and novellas, written in English by authors born in South Africa or accepted as South African, published in South Africa or overseas in new monograph editions from January 1960 through June 1987, and available from within the country. It is contended that these stories provide a significant fictional account of the experience of socio-political life under apartheid in South Africa during this period. Some various reasons. The material was not available, for bibliography therefore cannot claim to be comprehensive. Short summaries of the major events of each year precede the entries which are arranged chronologically and then alphabetically by collection author or anthology title. Bibliographical description of entries is guided by Anglo-American cataloguing rules (2nd edition, 1978), second level, and includes plot synopses and thematic subject headings. The bibliography includes author, title and subject indexes. / Thesis (M.Bibl.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1989.

Dissertation (DLitt)--University of Stellenbosch, 2008. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

The stories in this collection explore the fantastical, the power of memory, and the human capacity to love. Moving between the surreal, the absurd, the allegorical, and the metafictional, they elaborate on life's ordinary madness and the mysteries of the spirit. By challenging the either/or boundaries of the binary of realism and fantasy, the stories provoke the reader to engage actively with the text. Influenced by experimental US author Stacey Levine, the mid‐century British novelist Barbara Comyns, and the adventurous Chinese writer Can Xue, in most cases, they create a playful, experimental world that exists at a slight angle to the world as we know it.

This study investigates short stories published in South Africa and in Zimbabwe before the turn of the twenty-first century. The short story as a genre provides a more accessible and shorter means of viewing literary trends after the official end of the hostilities of apartheid and colonialism. Because of their brevity and specific focus, these short stories from many voices allow a glimpse of different arenas affecting contemporary reality. Post-independence stories reveal that in the process of navigating or directing hope after independence, people are sometimes left bereft as disenchantment with politics sets in, leaving people to search for hope in areas of their everyday lives such as marriage, birth and friendship. But because their lives are also fraught with conflict, hate and betrayal, hope may remain uncertain and prospects frightening. Chapter One embarks on a brief historical and political background of South Africa and Zimbabwe. This chapter also conceptualizes the issues of hope and disillusionment in the South African and Zimbabwean socio-historical contexts. Chapters Two and Three analyze selected stories from South Africa and Zimbabwe, respectively, focusing on issues with which the writers are preoccupied, especially how they explore hope and disillusionment. The analyses of the stories in these two chapters are structured chronologically depicting events in the stories. Thus the study creates its own narrative of South African and Zimbabwean life towards the new millennium. These two chapters discuss how meanings, significances and ramifications of the post-colonial community are negotiated and re-negotiated in selected stories, highlighting the challenges and engagements with hope and disillusionment dramatized in short prose fiction. Chapter Four will undertake to conclude with comparisons of the selected stories, discussing the implications of the study for South African and Zimbabwean contemporary societies at the turn of the twenty-first century. Granted, it is always difficult to generalize about a society from such highly individual, personal stories. But my study suggests that at the turn of the twenty-first century in South Africa, disillusionment is beginning to displace the heady expectation many felt at the 1994 election. And perhaps even more unlikely, given the current crisis, Zimbabwean stories from recent years show people hopefully waiting for the new millennium, a dawning of new, unpredictable possibilities.

Most current studies on 'African' and/or 'Black' literature in South Africa appear to ignore the contradictions underlying the valuative concepts 'African' and 'Black'. This (Jamesonian) unconsciousness has led, primarily, to a situation where writers and critics assume generally that the concepts 'African' and 'Black' are synonymous and interchangeable. This study argues that such an attitude either unconsciously represses an awareness of the distinctive aspects of the worldview connotations of these concepts or deliberately suppresses them. The theoretical and pragmatic approach which this study adopts to explore the distinctive aspects of the worldview connotations of these concepts takes the form, initially, of a critique of such assumptions and their connotations. It is argued that any misconceptions about the relations between the concepts 'African' and 'Black' can only be elucidated through a rigorous and distinct definition of each of these concepts and the respective world views embodied in them. Each of the variables of these definitions is also examined thoroughly through an application of, inter alia, Frederick Jameson's 'dialectical' theory of textual criticism, Pierre Macherey's 'theory of literary production' and also through the post-colonial notions of 'hybridity' and 'syncreticity' propounded by Bill Ashcroft et.al (eds). In this way the study examines the dialectical interplay between, for instance, such oppositional notions as 'African' and 'Western' (place-conscious), 'Black' and 'White' (race-conscious), and other forms of ideological 'dominance' and 'marginality' reflected in the 'African' and/or 'Black' writers' motivations for the acquisition, appropriation and uses of the language of the 'other' (i.e. English) and its literary discourse in South Africa, Africa and elsewhere in the world. A close textual reading of the stories in Mothobi Mutloatse's (ed) Forced Landing, Mbulelo Mzamane's (ed) Hungry Flames underlies an examination of the processes of anthologisation and their implications of aesthetic collectivism, reconstruction and world view monolithicism which repress the distinctive world outlooks of the stories in these anthologies. The notions of aesthetic monolithicism implicit in each of these anthologies are interrogated via the editors' truistic assumptions about the organic nature of the relations between the concepts 'African' and 'Black'. The notion of a monolithic 'African' and 'Black' aesthetic is further decentred through a close textual reading of the uses of the 'African' and 'Black' valuative concepts in the short story collections The Living and the Dead and In Corner B by Es'kia (formerly Ezekiel) Mphahlele. The humanistic pronouncements in Mphahlele' s critical and short story texts suggest various ways of resolving the racial demarcations in both the 'Black' and 'White' South African literary formations. According to Mphahlele, a predominant racial consciousness inherent in the racial capitalist mode of economic production has deprived South African literature and culture an opportunity of creating a national humanistic and 'Afrocentric' form of aesthetic consciousness. The logical consequence of such a deprivation has been that the racial impediments toward the formation of a single national literature will have to be dismantled before the vision of a humanistic and 'Afrocentric' aesthetic can be realised in South Africa. The dismantling of both the 'Black' and 'White' monolithic forms of consciousness may pave the way toward the attainment of a synthetic and place-centred humanistic aesthetic. Such a dismantling of racial monolithicism will, hopefully, stimulate a debate on the question of an equally humanistic economic mode of production.

My collection has the common theme of addiction: addictive personalities strung across the pages. Not only the usual addictions such as the daily-ritualized beer or joint, but also the pain of addiction to anti-social habits, pathologies, forbidden love, etc. I try to capture the behavior and life that surrounds addictions too: relationships, rehab, criminal behavior, all sorts of abuse, etc. Some of the stories are heavy-handed, slapping the reader in the face, some are subtler. Some are told with lightness and humor, some with gravity.

Touching Brýnstone is the story of Beth, a young journalist who is troubled by misfortunes in her family and work circumstances. In a Pretoria library she is seduced by a book that consoles her and progressively becomes a fetish object. It sparks a journey to Japan, where she arrives to teach English. She is intent on meeting the author, whom she confounds with protagonist and book. This Bildungsroman is an exploration of the complex relationship between inner and outer self, and the struggle towards wholeness. Beth must find a way out of the obsession so that she can return to South Africa with an enriched insight into her shadow self.

Vicky, a thirty something English radio journalist, has moved to Cape Town to try and work out what it is that's missing from her life and to fill the gap. At first she thinks she's found what she's looking for, but a series of unsettling events makes her realise she has simply brought her problems with her. She goes back to England, ostensibly for work, where she is contacted by her stepbrother, Mark. They hardly know each other but he has a reason for wanting to find her. They meet and, for both of them, their encounters change the way they see themselves and their relationships. Vicky comes to understand more about her past and her family and, for the first time, to find a connection with her emotional life