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Die representasie van die visie in die verhalende prosa van Elsabe Steenberg / Elizabeth Susanna van der Westhuizen

Elsabe Steenberg's oeuvre, consisting among others of forty two stories in book



format, has four target groups -- preschool children, young children, teenagers and



adults. Her narrative work is so richly textured and contains such a depth of insight



into the complexities of life that it should not only attract attention because of its



topicality, but that it should also be exposed -- especially in a society searching for



direction -- to as large a number of readers and researchers as possible.



It is clear that all of her works represent a view of reality which, from an



intertextual point of view, could be seen as being grounded in the ontological point



of departure. The main focus of the present study is to investigate the



representational procedes through which the ontological view is represented in four



selected texts from the oeuvre. This is done in order to establish internal textual



variants and constants. The four selected texts, in which tree symbolism manifests



itself in various intertextual permutations, are: Die boom wat wou loop (for



preschool children), Soek-soek op soek (for young children), Boom homer boomste



(for teenagers) and Plek van die bruin geeste (for adults). The rest of the oeuvre, as



well as Elsabe Steenberg's poetics, are referred to cursorily in order to establish a



corroborating intertextual comparative base.



The procedes representing the whole internal textual universe, from concrete object,



• through the different but also complementary narrative elements, further to the overt



representation and manifestation of the abstract theme and view of the narrative



world, are all investigated. The four texts are first discussed independently by



means of a structuralist-semiotic approach, after which the variants and constants



are determined intertextually.



The numerous aspects of the representational system of the view of reality in all



four the intensively studied texts, as well as those in the rest of the oeuvre which



are only touched on briefly, an point toward one fundamental factor as semiotic



sign, namely: God is. Identity as an intertextual constant plays a very prominent



role in the whole oeuvre. Consequently, the numerous ways in which the



fundamental view of reality are represented, are thus also associated with God's



identity or Being, for example, God is the Origin, God is the Giver of insight into



the diversity, interrelatedness and meaning of reality, and God is the real



regenerating Force. / Proefskrif (PhD (Afrikaans en Nederlands))--PU vir CHO, 1997.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nwu/oai:dspace.nwu.ac.za:10394/16626
Date January 1997
CreatorsVan der Westhuizen, Elizabeth Susanna
Source SetsSouth African National ETD Portal
Languageother
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis

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