Browsing by Author "Phillips, Jolyn"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Bientang’s cave: A trans-disciplinary study of marginality in the epic in Afrikaans
    (University of the Western Cape, 2023) Phillips, Jolyn; Moolman, Jacobus; Krog, Antjie
    This reflexive essay has a creative and an in-depth research component. I sought to write an Epic poem about a marginalised woman known as Bientang. Bientang was a Khoisan, or ‘strandloper’ as Khoisan people were known, in the coastal region of the Southern Cape, featured in several legends from this area. The legends tell of a woman who was supposed to have lived in a cave situated in the Old Harbour in Hermanus. Since then, the cave has had many incarnations and is currently a restaurant called Bientang’s Cave. Writing an Epic poem about a marginalised character is in some ways a contradiction. Therefore, I examine the terms ‘marginalised’ and ‘Epic’ in various ways: firstly, through research into issues of marginalization and creolization, more specifically of fishing communities in the southern Cape; secondly, through research into the characteristics, changes, and manifestations of the Epic in Afrikaans literature, in particular; thirdly, through writing my original Epic poem itself – an accepted form of practice-based research; and fourthly, through translating parts of the poem into English. The critical component of my research consisted of an inquiry into the Epic, especially within a South African context. Various Afrikaans long poems – the long poetic idyll Martjie (1911) by Jan F. E. Cilliers, Raka (1941) by N.P. Van Wyk Louw, Trekkerswee (1947) by D.J.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Let’s go home: Stories and portraits
    (University of the Western Cape, 2014) Phillips, Jolyn; Meg, Van Der Merwe
    Let's Go Home encompasses thirteen short stories inspired by the Coloured fishing community of Blompark in Gansbaai. These stories embody a range of voices and perspectives, some contemporary, some set in the past thirty to forty years, each of which attempts to represent the lives, loves and losses of a rural community that too often has found itself at the margins of society and ignored by literary representations. Themes explored include traumaphysical, psychological and spiritual. Some of these traumas are linked to the legacies of Apartheid: For example, my story titled "Fraans‟ is about a man who struggles with alcohol addiction and represents one of countless individuals within rural Coloured communities still haunted by the inheritance of the dop system. Other traumas in Let's Go Home represent more personal and private traumas. In "Secrets‟, for instance, a young woman who finds out that the man she wishes to marry is in fact her illegitimate brother. Such stories in rural communities are not uncommon because children born out of wedlock are seen as sinful and thus many women keep quiet about illegitimate offspring. Voice, (whether that of a narrator or in the form of the characters' dialogue) is also a central concern, for as I have explained above, one of my chief preoccupations and inspirations for writing this collection, has been the lack of texts giving voice to Coloured fishing communities.