The farm in South Africa is an ideologically laden but also ambivalent concept,
associated with pastoral ideals and the hierarchy of the colonial past; but also with fear
and insecurity. The representation of the farm in the South African farm novel has been
subjected to larger processes of development, dissolution and replacement in accordance
with changing socio-historical contexts. Accordingly, the farm novel's contribution to
the conceptualization of space, place and identity within the South African and
postcolonial literary context, needs to be traced and related to the pastoral tradition as
well as its mutations and deviations. This dissertation investigates how Olive Schreiner's
The Story of an African Farm (1883) and J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace (1999) as anti-pastoral
farm novels, in different ways and degrees, rewrite and transcend the pastoral farm novel
tradition by rejecting and subverting the inherent ideological assumptions and pastoral
values exemplified by this genre. Specific focus is given to the role of space and place in
the identity formation of the female protagonists and the conceptualization thereof in a
postcolonial society. / Thesis (M.A. (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2005
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NWUBOLOKA1/oai:dspace.nwu.ac.za:10394/873 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Creators | Smit, Susanna Johanna |
| Publisher | North-West University |
| Source Sets | North-West University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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