Department of English

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Browsing by Author "Brown, Duncan"

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    �Modern prophets, produce a new bible�: Christianity, Africanness and the poetry of Nontsizi Mgqwetho
    (Southern African Literature and Culture Centre, UKZN, 2008) Brown, Duncan
    In this article I consider how one might approach the apparently singular figure of Nontsizi Mgqwetho, a Xhosa woman who produced an extraordinary series of Christian izibongo in newspapers in the 1920s: through what kind of language, from what critical perspective, might one think and write about her? There have been various attempts to write about Mgqwetho, and there are certain obvious possibilities in terms of approach and methodology, which I explore briefly, but I want to suggest a mode of reading which provides a richer, more engaged and more engaging understanding � one which reads with and through, rather than onto or against, her African Christian articulations.
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    Native: An album of modern South African blues songs
    (University of the Western Cape, 2021) Ellis, John; Brown, Duncan
    This Creative Writing project is an album of South African songs written specifically in the context of American blues music. Although blues is an intrinsically American genre of Western popular music, it has its roots (along with other African-American forms of musical expression such as ragtime and jazz) in African culture, and as a South African musician and writer, I am intrigued by the possibilities of exploring African-American blues in the context of South Africa. This project therefore attempts some hybridity between these two cultural expressions, and to ascertain what kinds of lyric might be possible in modern South Africa in terms of the formation and perpetuation of a South African identity. Blues songs traditionally have a rather narrow focus as far as lyrics are concerned, but the genre’s melodic structure, its instrumentation and its very specific vocal qualities have over the last century formed the bedrock of the whole of modern Western popular music.
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    Oral literature in South Africa: 20 years on
    (Taylor & Francis, 2016) Brown, Duncan
    I offer a retrospective on the field of orality and performance studies in South Africa from the perspective of 2016, assessing what has been achieved, what may have happened inadvertently or worryingly, what some of the significant implications have been, what remain challenges, and how we may think of, or rethink, orality and performance studies in a present and future that are changing at almost inconceivable pace.
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    South African crime fiction and the narration of the post-apartheid
    (University of the Western Cape, 2013) Fletcher, Elizabeth; Brown, Duncan
    In this dissertation, I consider how South African crime fiction, which draws on a long international literary history, engages with the conventions and boundaries of the genre, and how it has adapted to the specific geographical, social, political and historical settings of South Africa. A key aspect of this research is the work’s temporal setting. I will focus on local crime fiction which is set in contemporary South Africa as this enables me to engage with current perceptions of South Africa, depicted by contemporary local writers. My concern is to explore how contemporary South African crime fiction narrates post-apartheid South Africa. Discussing Margie Orford’s Daddy’s Girl and the possibilities of South African feminist crime fiction, my argument shoes how Orford narrates post-apartheid through the lens of the oppression and abuse of women. The next chapter looks at Roger Smith’s thriller Mixed Blood. Smith presents the bleakest outlook for South Africa and I show how, even though much of his approach may appear to be ‘radical’, the nihilism in his novel shows a deep conservatism. The third South African crime novel I examine is Diale Thlolwe’s Ancient Rites and I discuss it in the light of his use of the conventions of ‘hardboiled’ crime fiction as well as rural/urban collocations. In this case, the author’s representation of postapartheid South Africa appears to reveal more about the author’s personal views than the country he attempts to describe. The fourth and final novel I discuss is Devil’s Peak by Deon Meyer. My discussion here focuses on the notion of justice in post-apartheid South Africa and Meyer’s ambiguous treatment of the subject. This discussion of contemporary South African crime fiction reveals what the genre might offer readers in the way they understand post-apartheid South Africa, and how it might be seen as more than simple ‘entertainment’.