The discourse between Van den Heever’s work and a few modern Afrikaans novels
Many contemporary critics have castigated Van den Heever for what they allege is his dichotomy between realism and romanticism. But as J.M. Coetzee has indicated, there is in fact no dichotomy: Van den Heever’s portrayal of reality leads quite naturally to its interpretation.
This article assumes that Van den Heever’s works were rooted firmly in reality and were in effect early examples of littérature engagée. His approach has much to do with the seminal nature of his farm novels and explains the many intertextual allusions to them in modern Afrikaans novels
(2012) asserted in his overview of South African films that Afrikaans films, especially in their initial phase, unabashedly and predominantly served Afrikaner nationalism. This assertion is validated by the fact that a nationalistic endeavour in any colonised literature (and culture) is almost a sine qua non as Amuta (1989) and Ashcroft (1989) have explicated in their independent discussion of post-colonial literatures. Our assumption is that this model can mutatis mutandis be applied to the evolution of the Afrikaans film. Brink (1991) employed their theory in his own description of the evolution of Afrikaans literature. This model illustrates that the emancipation of a formerly colonised literature undergoes different stages. The initial stage is that of appropriation of the themes, models and even authors of the former colonial power. The second stage is that of an aggressive nationalism followed by a stage of (initial) emancipation, 'restructuring European "realities" in post-colonial terms, not simply by reversing the hierarchical order, but by interrogating the philosophical assumptions on which the order was based' (Ashcroft 1989:33).Although Amuta, Ashctroft and Brink in their wake only discern three stages, a final stage could be that of total emancipation where the initiative no longer lies with other literatures and cultures (and even the underlying philosophical assumptions), but where the own literary tradition is scrutinised, re-evaluated and even parodied. In the process, the historical past is re-assessed and laid to rest with far-reaching philosophical, ideological and poetical implications.
The travelogue of a post-colonial traveller: The travels of Isobelle by Elsa Joubert Die reise van Isobelle (The travels of Isobelle) written by Elsa Joubert is regarded as one of her best novels. In many respects this novel can be considered as an overview of an extensive and impressive oeuvre. This article attempts to indicate that this novel not only relates to the important tradition of travel writing in Afrikaans literature, but also comments on this tradition from a feminist and postcolonial perspective. In a certain sense this novel can also be read as a continuance (or rewriting) of Joubert's own travel journals that have still been embedded in a colonial consciousness. Once again a symbiotic relationship exists between the above-mentioned novel and several of Elsa Joubert's other travel journals. In this article the intertextual ties with Water en woestyn and Die verste reis are explored in particular. The premise of this hypothesis is that the characteristic aspect of travel literature is the unseverable tie between centrifugal and centripetal forces. To a great extent the structure of this extensive work, with its extraordinarily solid motif structure, already determines this.
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