Department of English

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 201

A fragmented history: Visual sites of trauma in Zoë Wicomb's works of fiction
(University of the Western Cape, 2024) Petersen, Charlise Wall; Wittenberg, Hermann
Words cannot express my gratitude towards my supervisor, Dr Hermann Wittenberg, whose patience, words of encouragement, and outstanding feedback challenged my growth, and gave me the confidence to complete this thesis. I am also grateful for The University of the Western Cape which has always been a welcoming space to conduct my research, and for the Arts Faculty and English Department staff members whose professionalism and passion for learning helped to shape the academic I am today. I am indebted to the generosity of the A.W. Mellon Foundation which allowed me academic freedom, and without which I would not have accomplished this goal. I also wish to offer sincere thanks to my supportive friends and family, both nationally and internationally. Their prayers, texts and words of encouragement truly kept me going. In addition, I would be remiss not to offer a special word of thanks to my amazing mother who is unwavering in kindness and love, and whose support and enthusiasm carried me through the tough times. I hope this achievement makes her proud. I am also grateful for the support of my wonderful husband. He kept me smiling and motivated, carrying the load with me. I am thankful for his loving patience which made this task less daunting. Most chiefly, I owe this achievement to my God whose faithfulness I lean on, and who gave me this passion for academia and writing. All glory belongs to Him.
A fragmented history: visual sites of traumav in Zoë Wicomb's works of fiction
(University of the Western cape, 2024) Petersen, Charlise Wall; Hermann, Wittenberg
This thesis examines key works of fiction by the South African author Zoë Wicomb, re-reading them as engagements with the country’s traumatic apartheid past. A crucial argument advanced is that Wicomb’s prose makes trauma readable and visible through several explicitly visual moments. The thesis argues that Wicomb creates pictures in words, shedding light on the traumatic struggles of people in apartheid and post-apartheid settings and that such ekphrastic descriptions of visual media can make visible states of inner being. Such pivotal visual moments in her fictions include references to images such as photographs, art, and sculpture, but also hallucinations, dreams, or visions. These visual descriptions in the fictions do not only point to historical traumas and acts of violence against black bodies, but are themselves narrated in a broken, dismembered, and discontinuous way, thereby staging a collapse of language. The thesis argues that Zoë Wicomb’s works of fiction consistently explore correspondences between literature and various visual media and that this is one of the hallmarks of her authorship.
A place to pray
(University of the Western Cape, 2024) Petersen, Andrea; Martin, Julia
A Place to Pray is a creative nonfiction piece that weaves together personal narrative and historical reflection to explore my family’s dispossession from their ancestral land in Ebenezer, South Africa. The story unfolds through a series of contemporary events—family gatherings, WhatsApp conversations, and the legal steps we are currently taking to reclaim the land. These present moments act as windows into the past, uncovering deep connections between land, identity, and belonging At the heart of this narrative is the figure of my great-grandmother, Ouma Betty, a quiet yet enduring presence in family lore. In A Place to Pray, her life becomes a metaphor for the silenced experiences of women whose stories, like hers, have been overshadowed by history and displacement. By telling a story of my quest to learn more about Ouma Betty, the narrative seeks to recover some of these lost voices and to acknowledge the often-overlooked struggles of women in coloured communities. The work moves between intimate family moments and broader national issues, using personal experience to reflect on the ongoing complexities of land redistribution in South Africa. It begins with a land claim meeting in Ebenezer which establishes both the historical and emotional context of the story. Subsequent chapters include interviews with Tannetjie, Ouma Betty’s daughter, which offer intimate insights into the family's history, and conversations with Antie Lindy, whose vivid memory of Ouma Betty is a crucial inspiration for shaping the narrative. Beyond this, it becomes increasingly difficult to find further information about Ouma Betty, and by end of the fifth chapter, I am unable to continue. Eventually in the final chapter the narrative arc shifts upward again, as I regain the motivation to return to the project, and the story reaches its emotional peak when my mother buys land in Ebenezer. This becomes a symbol of reclaiming not only land but also identity, and it offers a sense of resolution.
African traditional culture and modernity in Zakes Mda’s the heart of redness
(2005) Birama, Prosper Ndayi; Wittenberg, Hermann
In my thesis entitled ‘African Tradition and Modernity in Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness’, I analyze the way Western modernity and African traditions interact in Mda’s novel. I suggest that both modernity and tradition interact to produce a hybrid culture. This will become apparent in my analysis of the way Mda depicts the cattlekilling episode and the effects of Nongqawuse’s prophecy, and also in the novel’s contemporary characters. Mda shows the development of an African modernity through the semi-autobiographical figure of Camagu who is not slavishly indebted to Western ideas of progress, but is a hybrid of African values and a modern identity. In my thesis I will look at the way Mda also addresses the issue of the oppression of the Xhosa in colonial history, and the way he demonstrates that the divisions of the past deeply influence post-apartheid South Africa. In this regard, I will show how The Heart of Redness is a critique not only of colonial oppression, but also of the newer injustices plaguing the post-apartheid South African society. The focus of Mda’s critique in this regard is the proposed casino that stands as a model of environmentally destructive, unsustainable and capitalist development. Instead, Mda’s novel shows an alternative modernization of rural South African society, one which is based on community upliftment and environmentally friendly development. Through an exploration of the above aspects of the novel, my thesis shows that Mda’s writing exemplifies a hybrid African modernity, one that incorporates Western ideas as well as African values.
�Ag sjeim, siestog, sorry�: Tracing shame�s affect through performance in post-apartheid South Africa
(University of Western Cape, 2021) Wiese, Abigail; Taylor, Jane; Moolman, Jacobus
In this study I investigate what performance as a medium can contribute to our understanding of shame's affect. Given the difficulty of defining and concretising affect according to set parameters and outcomes, critical and dynamic debates about its nature continue. Most recently, New Affect theorists such as Brian Massumi have explored the role of the body in affective meaning-making. Our current social context requires a critical engagement with the forms of affect in order to achieve a deeper understanding of the intangible structures of power and oppression, as well as of desire, interest and pleasure. My aim is to determine the ways in which performance � as a medium through which to navigate an often difficult, evasive and deeply subjective experience � can facilitate a knowledge of how bodies experience, relate to and process shame.
�� The Agapanthi, Asphodels of the Negroes��: Life-writing, landscape and race in the South African diaries and poetry of George Seferis
(Taylor & Francis, 2012) Field, Roger
The Greek poet George Seferis (1900-1971) spent 10 months in South Africa during WWII as a senior diplomatic official attached to the Greek government in exile. Drawing on his diary entries, correspondence and poetry this article challenges earlier interpretations of his work best described as a �synchronic panoptic vision� (Bhabha). Beginning with an exploration of the troubled relationship between the �glory that was Greece� and the failure of its early 20thcentury nationalist, expansionist and modernization projects, the article argues that Seferis tried to overcome alienation from landscape and a crisis of creativity in two ways: he transcribed and commented on Cavafy�s poetry, but was unable to resolve his relationship with the latter; by reaching down into the ruins of ancient Greece and back into its mythological past, through a process of negative displacement he transforms these crises into a descent to the world of the dead. Unlike Odysseus, he receives no guidance from its inhabitants, for they speak only the language of flowers and there are none. Accompanying Seferis� dual purpose use of classical mythology as national heritage and ironic device is a more problematic aspect of modernism � the relegation of Africa and its sub- Saharan inhabitants to a primitive otherness that, he felt, limited his ability to express himself, and which generated some of his greatest poetry.
Alan Paton�s sublime: race, landscape and the transcendence of the liberal imagination
(University of KwaZulu Natal, 2005) Wittenberg, Hermann
This article develops a postcolonial reading of the sublime by suggesting that aesthetic theories of the sublime were, in their classical philosophical formulations by Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant, founded on problematic assumptions of racial difference. In the colonial sphere, it is argued, the sublime could discursively manage and contain the contradictions inherent in the aesthetic appreciation and appropriation of contested landscapes. This is particularly evident in the Alan Paton's writing. This article looks at the origins and the influence of rhetoric of the sublime in Paton's work, particularly in his novel Cry, the Beloved Country, and argues that the sublime is a key discursive structure in the shaping of Paton's complex and ambivalent representation of South Africa's politicised and racialised landscape.
Alan Paton�s writing for the stage: towards a non-racial South African theatre
(Taylor & Francis (Routledge), 2007) Wittenberg, Hermann
Introduction: It would not be an exaggeration to assert that no South African playwright in the 1950s and 1960s received as much international attention and recognition as Alan Paton, until eclipsed by Athol Fugard�s emerging career. Paton�s own plays and musicals, and the stage adaptations of his novels, had some extensive and successful runs on Broadway in New York, and also played to packed houses in South Africa. Some highly acclaimed artists, ranging from the German avant-garde composer Kurt Weill to South Africa�s jazz musician Todd Matshikiza, helped to bring his work to the stage. Yet Paton�s theatrical work has received surprisingly scant attention from critics, which is all the more remarkable, given the author�s prominence as one of South Africa�s most well-known writers. Like his novels, Paton�s plays are not simply light human dramas or romantic comedies as much colonial theatre at the time, but serious works that were deeply concerned with the socio-political issues facing South Africa under apartheid. As Paton once put it, he was never interested in �writing a �jolly good fellow� sort of play.� Three of his major plays were written and performed in a crucial period of South African history: the Sharpeville massacre, the implementation of the Group Areas and other cornerstone apartheid acts, the treason trials, and the declaration of the republic.
Alex La Guma’s short stories in relation to A Walk in the Night: A socio-political and literary analysis
(University of the Western Cape, 2005) Ntaganira, Vincent; Field, Roger; Dept. of English; Faculty of Arts
The minithesis provides a detailed socio-political and literary analysis of A Walk in the Night: Seven stories from the streets of Cape Town. It investigates and systematically compares each short story to the novella or compares the short stories with each other and shows their thematic and formal similarities and differences. The results of the study will provide a valuable contribution to the study of African literature. It will complete what other critics have left out. No one among La Guma’s scholars has analysed the anthology as a single entity; most critics have analysed the novella and have not analysed the accompanying short stories. As a result, the relationships between the novella and the short stories are unknown to many readers. I argue that this needs to be corrected. In order to situate the thesis, the study also presents a selected list of critics who have studied the novella and the short stories, and indicates their achievements and their shortcomings. The study will be carried out from a Marxist perspective, and will explore the use of realist and naturalist literary styles. Marxism will provide the socio-political and theoretical framework. Naturalism and realism are the two main literary genres that occur in the anthology.
Alex la Guma: a literary and political biography of the South African years
(University of the Western Cape, 2001) Field, Roger Michael; Bundy, Colin; Taylor, Jane; Dept. of English; Faculty of Arts
The South African years (1925-1966) of Alex la Guma is examined in this thesis. While La Guma's father was an important role model, most critics have overlooked his mother's contribution to his literary and political development. Throughout the thesis the same point is made about Blanche, La Guma's wife, who supported him in many ways. The researcher describes La Guma's infancy, childhood and adolescence, his father's political profile, how notions of race and writing, coloured identity and family and political experiences created the conditions that enabled him to become a story teller and political activist .
All the Tokoloshes are dying
(Routledge, 2021) Pancham, Kershan ikram
The last line of defence, when even the most distant tokoloshe returned, Took up a place of arms or/of wisdom, to make the last stand of the world. Even the oldest ones returned, long away in their peace and nature after their years of service, even The Oldest Ones, returned.
An un/timely re-reading: the first South African by Fatima Dike
(Taylor & Francis Group, 2025) Flockemann, Miki
It has been suggested that re-staging iconic performances from the 1970s and 1980s over the last three decades has become a way of reflecting on the ‘now,’ and recouping previously desired futures that have failed to materialize. Local audience responses to the 2022 revival of Fugard’s The Blood Knot, 60 years after its first production noted how it still spoke powerfully to the present. But instead of seeing this familiarity as a stark indictment of the entrenched legacy of racialiszd identity politics, the play was described as potentially ‘hopeful.’ This apparently counter-intuitive response uncannily brought back to mind a character from another less well-known family drama from the late 1970s, provocatively titled, The First South African by Fatima Dike. Despite similarities in their broad thematic focus on apartheid identity politics within intimate settings, the two works use very different performance aesthetics. The primary aim here is thus to return to Dike’s The First South African in order to explore whether the earlier assessments of a sense of historical ‘stuckness’ evoked in her play can be challenged by paying attention to what can be described as the polyphonic modality employed in the text. Moreover, I shall explore how the representation of the bi-racial white–black protagonist’s psychic break speaks to the concept of ‘political death’ when looking at the play again from the vantage point of the present.
Antigone’s return: when a once-told story is not enough
(African Journals Online (AJOL), 2022) Marika Flockemann
Encountering an old story in a reimagined way is sometimes deliberately more unsettling than pleasurably familiar in its new guise. A case in point is a recent revisioning of Sophocles’ Antigone, arguably the most frequently recalled story from the classical canon, which has seen several local it erations over time – most notably in The Island by Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshon a (1973). The focus here is how the re-enactment of the Antigone story, Antigone (not quite/quiet) at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town in 2019, produced as part of a project on Re-imagining Tragedy in the Global South, generates a multi-layered reading experience within the affect-laden and communal atmosphere of a live performance event. Reading here encompasses several dimensions: apart from reading the re-envisioned performative response in relation to its much-translated ‘original’ version, there is the experience of reading as an embodied, affective encounter in the context of the live performance event. In addition, this invites a process of reading around classic texts, which as I argue, can revitalise the intersections between current and apparently forgotten texts in one’s own reading history. In reflecting on Antigone (not quite/quiet) for instance, in relation to the contemporary need for ‘stark fictions’ of the past in developing an ethics of responsibility, I was struck by an unbidden recollection of Thomas Hardy’s preoccupation with tragedy in late nineteenth-century Victorian England. As I shall show, Hardy’s frequent rebuttals in response to often somewhat dismissive accusations of his over-determined pessimism reveal his fore sight in understanding the necessity of a tragic sensibility, which in hindsight now makes sense ‘differently’ and even anticipates some current debates on there velatory and critically urgent aspects of a tragic consciousness.
Are first-year students linguistically ready for further studies: a needs analysis of english for academic purposes students at King Saud University
(Universty of the Western Cape, 2025) Mataar, Yusuf
This study aimed to investigate the English for academic purposes (EAP) needs of the Common First Year (CFY), particularly first-year Engineering students at King Saud University (KSU), Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Additionally, the study intended to examine whether intermediate or B-level students studying the Q: Skills for Success coursebook were linguistically or academically ready to continue their studies successfully at the university's Engineering College. The objectives of the study were to (i) assess the present EAP needs of prospective Engineering students in the CFY; (ii) analyse the target EAP needs of students and the demands of the field of study they have entered, i.e. the Engineering College of KSU; and (iii) evaluate the current EAP programme delivered by the English Language Skills Department (ELSD) at the CFY. The main research question was: Did the EAP programme for the CFY level students at KSU adequately prepare them for further studies in the field of Engineering – if not, why not? Three sub-questions guided the research. These were: (i) What were the key features of the academic needs of Engineering students at the CFY? (ii) What were the main traits of the target academic needs of second-year students at the College of Engineering (COE)? (iii) What should the EAP programme at the CFY ideally resemble and constitute to maximise its impact? The study’s theoretical framework was based on needs analysis. It used two of the four prominent needs analysis approaches: present situation needs analysis (PSA) and target situation needs analysis (TSA) (Basturkmen, 2010). The qualitative study employed a phenomenological research design, enabling the researcher to explore and identify problems, barriers, and potential solutions for improvement (Jeremic, 2019).
Argonaut
(University of the Western Cape, 2024) Smith, Hélène; Brown, Duncan
Argonaut is a book written in the genre of creative non-fiction to fulfil the requirements of a master’s degree in creative writing in the Department of English at the University of the Western Cape. As a result of chronic anxiety and unbearable physiological symptoms, I entered therapy as a twenty-four-year-old, where I discovered that I had very few memories before the age of 14, and this unearthed a compulsion to recall and understand what happened to me as a child. Argonaut documents the process of recovering and piecing together my life story by combining fragments of memories, chronic physical and psychological symptoms, dreams, and the analysis of these dreams. In the process I discover a history of trauma that was deliberately obfuscated, denied and buried by the adults in my life while I was a child. The book weaves together the themes of trauma, posttraumatic stress and post-traumatic growth, and uses the discipline of depth psychology as a lens through which to view and understand my psyche, its experiences, and its coping mechanisms, one of which was to repress my unbearable and unacceptable memories. Depth psychology focuses on the functioning and role of the unconscious mind and its processes, which are often symbolically expressed in the form of dreams and body symptoms. With depth psychology as a theoretical framework, Argonaut explores the connections between my internal psychic landscapes and the external landscape of real-life choices, behaviours and events. From a literary perspective, the book weaves together the psychic imagery of the unconscious mind with the external imagery of the human and natural environments, elucidating the intimate and meaningful ways in which our experiences of these different worlds are linked. The story also explores the complicated psychological vacillation between the repression and the recovery of memories.
Around a Fire: Poems of Memory and Ritual
(University of the Western Cape, 2019) Mpuma, Nondwe; Moolman, Jacobus
This Creative Writing mini-thesis offers a deep meditation on what it means to speak to ritual and memory. The thesis is compiled from a collection of original creative work as well as a short reflective essay that present a critical analysis of the creative pieces in relation to the ideas I present. The first of these ideas being, memory as an encapsulation of the past, present and future as explored by writers such as W.G. Sebald and Toni Morrison. This collection examines an understanding of memory and ritual as being uncontained, as constant providers of stimulation for a range of literary responses. Ritual will be regarded primarily in the South African context where there is the intersection of the urban and rural landscapes both physically and metaphorically. In this regard I am thinking alongside writers such as Louise Glúck and Vangile Gantsho. The understanding of ritual is extended to the realm of spirituality where Christianity and African spirituality exist both harmoniously and in conflict. In short, the collection of poems and the reflective essay will explore the ways that memory and ritual interact in time and they will collectively contribute to the production of literature in South Africa.
Aspects of narration and voice in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God
(The University of the Western Cape, 2017) Vass, Verity; Espin, Mark
Zora Neale Hurston is a significant figure in American fiction and is strongly associated with the Harlem Renaissance, the period noted for the emergence of literature by people of African-American descent. Hurston worked as a writer of fiction and of anthropological research and this mini-thesis will discuss aspects of her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, first published in 1937. While the novel traces the psychological development of the central female character, Janie Mae Crawford and, thus, demonstrates several features of a conventional Bildungsroman, the novel also contains some intriguing innovations in respect of narration and voice. These innovations imply that the novel can be read in terms of the qualities commonly associated with the Modernist novel. This contention becomes significant when it is understood that a considerable degree of critical responses to the novel have discounted these connections. The novel is widely accepted to be a story about a woman’s journey to self-actualisation through the relationships she has with the men in her life. Much of the criticism related to the novel is based on this aspect of it, with many stating that Janie’s voice is often silenced by the third-person narrator at crucial moments in the text and that, as a consequence, she does not achieve complete self-actualisation by the end of the novel. This thesis will examine the significance of the shifts between first-person and thirdperson narration and the manifestations of other voices or means of articulation, which give the novel a multi-vocal quality. The importance of this innovation will also be considered, particularly when it is taken into account that Hurston sought to incorporate some elements associated with the oral tradition into her work as a writer of fiction.
Attending to the affective: exploring first year students� emotional experiences at university
(South African Journal of Higher Education, 2018) Bharuthram, Sharita
This study engaged students at the affective level in order to acquire a better understanding of their emotional experiences at university with the ultimate aim of improving teaching and learning. A qualitative research study was undertaken whereby students wrote about their feelings at that particular moment, on two different occasions in a semester. The data reveals that students used mostly negative descriptors to express their emotions some of which included feelings of self-doubt, alienation, loss of identity and not belonging to the university and their disciplinary community. The feelings expressed by students show that their emotions constitute the very core of their being and are therefore intertwined with the way they perceive their studies and themselves as students and as individuals. Hence, it is argued that emotional factors cannot be disentangled from teaching and learning and that spaces need to therefore be created in the curriculum for the inclusion of the affective domain.
Bab’aba - Ugly short stories
(University of the Western Cape, 2018) Nxadi, Julie Ruth Sikelwa; Moolman, Kobus
Bab’aba - Ugly Short Stories is a collection of vignettes whose function is to colour and collage three portraits of Black women characters; namely, a rural woman (Nozikhali), a township teenager (Zola), and a child/baby (Loli). Each of these stories serve as details in each other’s portraits whilst remaining stories on their own. My intention with this collection was to restore some form of abstract equality and right to mystery by functioning within a lexicon of opacity. In the scholarship of decoloniality this is my argument for the legitimacy of vernacular/customised definitions for problems that preoccupy communities/individuals rather than having to always pin ourselves to already existing theory in order to be legible. In the scholarship of opacity, this is a contribution to the argument against the necessity for legibility/transparency (in the first place) in exchange for dignity. I chose ugliness as my thematic district of departure because of its connoted potential to provide richer explorations into notions of marginality and an emancipatory praxis that cannot afford to have in its makeup the potential to seek to eliminate. And though such a liberatory ambition is hard to fantasize about against the backdrop of popular chauvinism in the contemporary landscape of - particularly - South Africa, and the visceral effects thereof and the swift justice needed to attend thereto, I do think that there is merit in hallucinating some sort of doctrine of humanity that ends in dignity for all.
BECOMING-MINORITARIAN Constructions of coloured identities in creative writing projects at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa
(Taylor & Francis, 2020) Moola, Fatima
The institutional history of the University of the Western Cape (UWC) in some ways mirrors the paradoxes, ambiguities, absurdities, contradictions and possibilities � in short, the complexities � of the concept �coloured�. The one feature that remains constant in coloured identity constructions is the conception of marginality, a marginality which primes it for consideration through the lens of theoretical articulations of minority discourses generally, and minority literature, in particular. If published writers of coloured identity are a minority in the South African literature landscape, the creative writing student is an interesting minority within that minority. Perhaps what is most unique about the UWC creative writing programmes is the way in which they have fostered a �becoming-minoritarian� in respect of language, through the multi-and trans-linguality encouraged by cross-faculty collaborations, bringing in disciplinary expertise from Afrikaans, English and Xhosa, the Nguni language most commonly spoken in the Western Cape

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