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This article aims to give insight into the professional identities of seven teachers who teach English literature to Grade 10-12 learners, in the North-West district of South Africa. The focus is on how these teachers' experiences are shaped by larger determinants (social, historical, professional, etc.), and how their experiences might resonate within the larger context of South African education at the current moment. A qualitative approach was used in this study and a multiple case study methodology was adopted. This method allowed me to explore the data in specific contexts, in a small geographical area with a limited number of participants. The aim of this article is to show how teachers' sense of their professional identities constitutes an important dimension of their work. This is in contradistinction to an over-emphasis on results that characterises so-called standards-based reforms and that threatens to reduce teachers to mere technicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

J.M. Coetzee has unquestionably achieved the status of 'international author' within dominant conceptions of world literature: his works circulate widely in both English and translation and have been legitimated by the principal arbitrators of the global cultural industry. He has, however, recently positioned himself as 'an international author, but in a different sense'; that is, as a writer whose internationalism is achieved through his location in 'the South'. This article considers how Coetzee's narratives thematize being 'international' in this 'different sense'. It focuses on the pivotal works of Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life (2002) and the opening chapters of Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons (2003) while tracking an orientation southward across his oeuvre in allusions to Joseph Conrad, Jorge Luis Borges and, in particular, Pablo Neruda as well as in Coetzee's repeated turn to littoral settings. These settings open to what the article describes as the 'blue southern hemisphere', implicating narrative world-making in the geophysical properties and 'troubled histories' that constitute the South and recasting the act of writing from 'the far edges' into a planetary perspective that contends with the uncanny nature of settler societies in the southern temperate zone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses a selection of South African English and Afrikaans humorous and satirical poems and songs about the railways. They include a folksong, "The Kimberley Train", which dates back to the earliest expansion of the railways to the interior, and poems and songs from the 1960s to the early 90s. While Hugh Masekela raged at the condition of migrant miners, the target of the satire by English- and Afrikaans-speaking writers was the Afrikaner nation, its culture and history. Four of the poems are ballads in the heroic tradition. The characters featured are working-class Afrikaners, and the diction employed is a colloquial South African dialect consisting of modern slang, mixed English and Afrikaans, and Fanakalo. A common method of the humour and satire exploits the connotations of personal and place names. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of the Alexandrian Greek poet Constantin Cavafy on South African literature in English has received some attention, but his impact on Afrikaans letters merits further investigation. The present article partly fills that gap by examining a small body of poetry and fiction by Cas Vos and Achmat Dangor. It draws on an article by Phil van Schalkwyk to show what it might mean to write in the manner of Cavafy. Thereafter, it discusses Vos's translations into Standard Afrikaans within his context. Achmat Dangor wrote his Cavafian poetry in a Vernacular Afrikaans. The article considers how writers and poets such as Mark Twain, David Dabydeen, Richard Rive and Adam Small have responded to the challenges and implications of writing in non-standard varieties of English and Afrikaans. Because irony and parody characterise Dangor's initial debt to Cavafy, this piece also considers these devices. It then moves to a detailed analysis of the relevant poems by Dangor, including comparisons with the poems by Cavafy they evoke, and then to work by Dangor on Cavafy in Standard English in which he reflects on why Cavafy has influenced him. It argues that Dangor discarded a literary vernacular medium for Standard English because of the former's implicit distinction between 'ordinary' (inarticulate, authentic) and 'extra-ordinary' (articulate, unauthentic) patois speakers. It concludes that Dangor's switch to Standard English may have resolved a personal dilemma, but leaves unanswered many questions about the literary use of a patois. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Less concerned with the concept of World Literature than with the promise and perils of conceptualization, this essay considers what experiencing some forms of writing as world literature might involve. Using J.M. Coetzee's In the Heart of the Country (1977) as an illustrative example, it addresses questions of circulation, translation, writing systems, book history, and literary geography in the context of recent academic debates about world literary studies. It concludes by revisiting Rabindranath Tagore's landmark 1907 essay "World Literature," arguing that it remains an indispensable guide to experiential reading and anti-conceptual thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the claim that the South African writer Antjie Krog is in essence asking the National Question in what I have termed her “transformation trilogy”:Country of My Skull(1998);A Change of Tongue(2003); andBegging to Be Black(2009). In writing about issues like “race”, identity and belonging in these texts, Krog is asking, “[t]o whom does the South African nation belong?” – a question that was central to debates about the National Question by liberation movements during apartheid. Although the “new” South Africa arguably is very different from the new “nation” that had been imagined, the National Question remains of importance. A postcolonial reading of the transformation trilogy encourages a focus on the National Question and the factors that complicate it. Existing studies about the theme of nationhood in Krog’s work do not draw connections with older discourses on nation and nationalism in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Information about several English literature papers discussed at a symposium held in September 2014 sponsored by the English Academy of Southern Africa on the challenges facing English in literary education in Southern Africa is presented. Topics include literacy challenges and English language education in the African; the effectiveness of academic support programmes in addressing these problems; and Phillip M. Dikotla awarded 2014 Olive Schreiner Prize for Drama.

South African-born Lindsey Collen, based for most of her writing years on the Indian Ocean Republic of Mauritius, has been propelled to fame in the postcolonial English-language sphere for twice having gained the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Africa region. Best known for her first winner, the breakthrough novel The Rape of Sita (1993, 1995, 2001), she has nevertheless also published several other works, notably in the local Kreol language. She is hailed there as an activist publicising advanced causes through the medium of her innovative short and long fictions, as this summary demonstrates afresh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a gap between Olive Schreiner's impressive output of publications, and the 'damaged, unproductive' view prevalent in early biographical writing about her, which has occurred in significant part as the result of the authorial and editorial activities of her estranged husband. For readers who want to explore further, earlier editions of Schreiner's letters have suffered from similar problems of selectivity and interpretive heavy-handedness. However, a number of issues which have arisen in two different approaches to editing -- in producing the complete Olive Schreiner Letters Online and the print selection The World's Great Question -- are discussed. These suggest that the relationship between the reader, the text and the editor has some intractable aspects and that repositioning the reader in relation to the text needs to take full account of the 'lateness of the reader' and the insoluble problems surrounding this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a stand-alone text, Olive Schreiner's novel From Man to Man, or Perhaps Only -- (1926) has been out of print since the mid-1990s and has never had South African publication. Moreover, its various print versions are all more or less flawed by unsatisfactory editing and proofreading. Along with a detailed assessment of the editorial practice of S. C. Cronwright-Schrciner, Schreiner's husband, biographer, editor, sometime co-writer and ambiguous caretaker of her literary remains, preparation of a new edition of the novel, forthcoming from University of Cape Town Press, has been facilitated by the use of Schreiner's 1911 typescript of the Prelude and chapters I to VI of the novel as the primary copy-text. This typescript has hitherto not been consulted by Schreiner critics. The novel is rightly regarded as incompletely revised and as unfinished, but its unfinished nature deserves reconsideration as an indication of Schreiner's interest in process, allowing us to see the "unfinished" in thematic terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents results of an elicited-production study investigating syntactic and prosodic consequences of language contact on two varieties of multilingual Black speakers of South African English, namely Black South African English (BlSAfE) and a newly emerging variety by Black speakers ("crossing over variety"). The results indicate that contact varieties of South African English share syntactic traits of General South African English (GenSAfE) relating to focus marking. At the same time, BlSAfE also shows differences in the frequency of use of the syntactic structures. The differences cannot be accounted for solely by L1 influence. Also, in prosody, significant differences between the varieties emerge. For BlSAfE, the differences can be related to L1 influence. A language can exert its influence differently on different areas of another language's grammar: With respect to syntax the "crossing over" variety groups with GenSAfE, with respect to prosody it is in-between GenSAfE and BlSAfE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes up the question of “crime writing” and rejoins the debate around whether such literature stands in for the “political novel” in postapartheid South Africa. What social function might crime writing be serving? Research by political economists and cultural anthropologists suggests that acts of writing in “social detection” mode (rather than “crime writing”) serve as an allegory for occulted sociopolitical conditions. Cultural difference is seen, once again, to play a pivotal role in the legitimation of power, and writers in the detection mode are correspondingly seen to be probing the possibility of a resurgence of “bad” difference. This notion, it is argued, is a key differentiator in an otherwise murky scene in which the borderline between licit and illicit, and right and wrong, has become obscure. While many South African writers are brought into the discussion, including but not restricted to crime authors, a key novel by leading crime writer Deon Meyer is read as a case study to illustrate the more general points made in the article. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents a case study in cross-cultural literary reception following the act of literary translation--in this instance, of author Etienne Leroux--from Afrikaans into English. It describes the literary reception of Leroux in general terms, in Afrikaans and Dutch in the first place and subsequently in English (South Africanist) criticism. Our focus falls on the translation and subsequent reception of Leroux's major novel, Sewe dae by die Silbersteins, first published in Afrikaans in 1962, and crowned with the Hertzog Prize in 1964. The novel's rendering into English by poet Charles Eglington (Seven Days at the Silbersteins) in 1964 provides the centrepoint of our study. We argue that this translation, along with the several forms of what André Lefevere calls "rewriting" (in literary-critical registers) that it engendered, created disjunctive moments of cross-lingual critical reception in which dubious conclusions hardened into routine paraphrase or accepted "wisdom" in English criticism. By "rewriting" in this case, following Lefevere, we mean inter-lingual re-descriptions of literary works within literary-critical histories or reviews that are often based on translations, and on readings of them in relative isolation from their fuller context in the original language (here, Afrikaans). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lucy Dlamini is a Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Swaziland. She has published drama and fiction in English and siSwati. Dlamini's English language fiction includes the novel The Amaryllis (2001), as well as short stories that explore how local patriarchal structures exploit tradition and culture to subjugate women. She has also written a play in siSwati, Kuba Njalo Nje (1995), and edited two poetry anthologies, The Soul Selects (2008) and When Fishes Flew & Other Poems (2009). In the interview, Dlamini discusses early influences on her writing, local Anglophone and siSwati writing, censorship, and the publishing industry in Swaziland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Robert Semple’s Walks and Sketches at the Cape of Good Hope (1803), a largely forgotten early colonial text which intriguingly blends the genres of travel writing and the sentimental novel. My analysis seeks to place the text within the longer genealogies of South African literature in English by arguing that it anticipates a number of the central concerns this literature, among them sympathy for the suffering of others, the representation of racial and social difference, and the fracturing of metropolitan literary protocols in the colonial context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a memoir of South African author Douglas Livingstone. Topics covered include the value of South African English literature and inclusion of Livingstone's works in the collection of the University of Texas' Humanities Research Center. Also mentioned are some of his works stored in the center such as the typescript of the play "The Crusaders," texts of the radio drama "The Sea My Winding Sheet" and the anthology "New South African Drama."

The author presents a revised version of an inaugural lecture he delivered on November 19, 2012 at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. He framed his talk as a confessional autobiographical narrative, an intellectual memoir stressing the need for a principium in English studies based on achieved knowledge. He recalls how his encounter with senior lecturer and poet Stephen Gray's determination to establish South African literature as a legitimate academic topic changed his life.

J. M. Coetzee is the most controversial social novelist in Contemporary Euro -- American literary world. In most of his novels, readers cannot ignore those historical and cultural topics such as power and violence in the period of post -- segregation. Employing the postcolonial theory, this article rereads his novel Disgrace from an ethic perspective of cultural criticism, and explores the writing of power and violence. J. M. Coetzee explored the dilemma of the white in the postcolonial times and expressed his reflection on history, his worry about reality and his hope for the future of South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion of several books by South African author Beverley Naidoo, including "Journey to Jo'burg," "Burn My Heart," and "No Turning Back," adapted from the Dorothy Briley Lecture given at the United States Board on Books for Young People (USBBY) conference in October 2011.

The article discusses the "The Columbia Guide to South African Literature in English Since 1945" and the particular challenges of assembling literary reference works. The decisions of the editors of the Columbia Guide to focus on literary history and include translated works are discussed, and the critical reception of the guide as well as its relevance to the study of postcolonialism is analyzed. The author's favorable opinion of the guide is also provided.

The article discusses the South African writer William Plomer, with particular attention paid to his use of the pseudonym Robert Pagan and his role as a promoter of South African literature. Plomer's adoption of an alternate persona when writing as Pagan is explored, and his career in London, England is remarked upon.

Presents literary criticism of the work of novelist and journalist Ernest Glanville (1855-1925), who wrote high romances about life in South Africa. Of particular note is the 1888 book "Among the Cape Kaffirs." Glanville, the article notes, is in a unique position as a writer because he is on the borderland between Africa and the West and between Black and White and his literature is the antithesis of the sort of industrial pro-empire literature that was being written at the time.

This essay reads Zakes Mda's novels- Ways of Dying (1995) and Cion (2007)-as densely equivocal meditations on the relation between history and memory, the past and the present, and modernity and tradition. In doing so, it explores debates over the role of art in postapartheid South Africa in conjunction with narrative impasses in the genre of the neo-slave narrative. Mda emphasizes the haunting presence of the violent past of apartheid and slavery, and suggests that in mourning the past, memory might lead in unexpected, uncomfortable directions, rather than restoring a whole identity or healing the scars of the past. In stepping beyond redemptive forms of memory, Mda asks for new forms of politics that are equal to the task of imagining the possibilities of contemporary life. He thus offers a rich counterpoint to influential theorizations of memory, mourning, and temporality in discussions of contemporary fiction about slavery and apartheid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how Phaswane Mpe's post-apartheid novel, Welcome to Our Hillbrow (2000), responds to Njabulo Ndebele's idea of "rediscovering the ordinary". This is probed through analyses of themes, characterization and style. It will be argued that, through Welcome to Our Hillbrow, Mpe makes a call for introspection to the black South African populace of the post-apartheid era, so that instead of simplistically continuing to blame social ills on (the legacy of) apartheid, they examine their own attitudes, thoughts, perceptions and feelings regarding socio-political problems like corruption, crime, xenophobia and HIV/ AIDS. In this respect Mpe stands apart from other black South African writers, such as Zakes Mda, who have produced their writings in the post-apartheid period. Ndebele's theory denounces the "spectacular" way of writing, which he sees as characterising the literary output of black South African writers during the apartheid era. However, this perspective has relevance beyond the apartheid era, in as far as black South African fiction writers should not deny society its natural wholeness of existence by not exploring diverse themes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the publication of the novel "The Virtuoso," by Samuel Eusebius Hudson, within the issue. The author presents information on the historical background of the novel, including its creation in South Africa between 1826 and 1828, the handwritten manuscript version of the novel, which is part of the "Hudson papers" collection in the Cape Archives, and the role of sailing ships in the novel.

The fragmentary and interruptive style of Nadine Gordimer's novel Get a Life has met some critical resistance. This article defends the continuity of Gordimer's late-modernist writing and accounts for stylistic anomalies by invoking the narrative productivity of free indirect style. In Gordimer's expert hands, this device serves the broader ideological agenda of dramatizing a plural consciousness ailed by dislocation, inertness, and unspeakableness. The novel thus unfolds as a tragedy of point of view, a vocal drama of moral representativeness climaxed in a "crisis of authority" (Gramsci). The centrality in the novel of the term quarantine attests to Gordimer's enduring concern with the persistency of the South african interregnum, an exceptional sociopolitical condition hindering both utopian commitment and moral agency. Get a Life enacts this stasis through a verbal performance characterized by an unspeakable (yet readable) multivoicedness which however manages to yield the modernist hope of "another life." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an interview with Maxine Case, a South African writer and author of the novel "All We Have Left Unsaid." In the interview Case addresses a number of topics including her use of the memoir style in the creation of "All We Have Left Unsaid," the reasons she became a writer, and her attitude toward South Africa.

Presented is an interview with South African author André Brink. In the interview Brink addresses a number of topics including the nature of "July's People," a novel by fellow South African Nadine Gordimer, aspects of apocalyptic fiction, and the influence that trauma has on narrative structure.

This article reviews the contribution of Guy Butler (1918-2001) to South African literature and cultural life over more than half a century. Concentrating on Butler's poetry, the paper argues that despite Butler's high-profile and at times controversial public role in the promotion of what he regarded as the humane and liberal values associated with his English heritage, the poetry reveals a deeply unquiet, private, and questing spirit seeking illumination and fulfilment as much in confessional verse as in religious certitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]