This study primarily investigates the autobiographical code in Antjie Krog's poetical oeuvre, spanning from 1970 to the present. Krog's poetry collections may be read as offering life writing through poetry, while the prose works mostly present the reader with a mixture of autobiographical fact plus creative reworkings of fact and fiction. Even though her 10 volumes of poetry follow her biological development from young girl to grandmother, uncertainty still exists about about where truth ends and fiction begins in this poet and autobiographer's interwoven tapestry of multiple and varied perspectives. Furthermore, autobiographical (as utilised and adapted in Krog's oeuvre, in combination with the conventioans from other genres), offers a variety of creatively innovative, experimental strategies and possibilities exploited adroitly by Krog. Reading her poetry with the focus on autobiographical markers leads to another, mostly untapped, dimension of interpretation. This literary approach is in stark contrast to the approach prescibed by N.P. van Wyk Louw in "Die 'mens' agter die boek" ["The 'Person' behind the Book] (1956), in which he states clearly that a text should be interpreted as not "about the human behind the text". To a large extent Krog as poet is inviting the reader to consciously break the taboo that Louw placed on the reader intent on "searching the actual person behind the text". My hypothesis is that in Krog's poetry there is a distinct interrelationship between the perceptions, experiences and sensual impressions of the lyrical "I" in the poems and that of the authobiographical "I" writing. It would be irresponsible to declare the poet and the speaker as one and the same, but in instances where the poet purposefully integrates autobiographical elements into her poems, she is implicitly requesting the reader to interpret her work in this way. This fictive and implicit request is referred to by Philippe Lejeune as the autobiographical poet. Krog's poetry can be divided into four categories: "direct autobiographical", "indirect autobiographical", "universal" and "general" poems. The first category involves criteria that are linked to the poet, such as the use of the names, initials and dates. Indirect autobiographical poems can be read against the background of knowledge (previously published information) about the poet. Poetry with no apparent autobiographical element, but with universal themes such as love, loss and transience, fall into the third category of "universal" poetry. If poems do not fit into the mentioned categories, they are deemed "general".
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nmmu/vital:8444 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Botha, Maria Elizabeth |
| Publisher | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Faculty of Arts |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | Afrikaans |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Doctoral, DLitt |
| Format | ix, 340 leaves, pdf |
| Rights | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University |
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