Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'South African poetry (English) – 19th century'

Many of these poems, although written in English, are inspired by Sepedi idioms and proverbs. Some invoke township and village life, others the observations and questions that come from writing poetry and experiences of travelling to different countries to read my poems. Others dwell on the political transformation in South Africa, or its absence, and on my own spiritual transformation.

In both my English and IsiXhosa poetry, my themes are love, politics, and the social issues of rural communities, and include my own life experiences, both good and bad. My poems are mainly short narrative accounts of township life. Although they do have a broad educational purpose, they do not preach to the reader. In IsiXhosa, my poetic forms are influenced by the works of J J R Jolobe, W N Mbovane, P T Mtuze, and my English poems by Pablo Neruda, Mafika Pascal Gwala, Garcia Lorca and others.
Intliziyo yona izimele gxebe ifihlakele Iyimfihlo, kumagumbi omphefumlo. Iyafunxa, ifukame kulo magumbi amxinwa. Iingcango, mba! Zivaliwe! Maxa wambi zide zixel’ isisila senkukhu, sona sibonwa mhla ligquthayo. Vul’ amehlo ubaz’ iindlebe uchul’ ukunyathela. Yiza ndikubambe ngesandla, sivul’ iingcango! Masivul’ iingcango zentliziyo yam, sikrobe ngaphakathi! Masithi ntla‐ntla kumagumb’ amathathu kuphela! Masithi ntla‐ntla, kwelepolitiki yakwaXhosa, Kaloku nam ndingumXhosa! Masithi ntla‐ntla kwelifukame, i.z.i.x.i.n.g.a.x.i n.o.b.u.n.c.w.a.n.e. b.o.t.h.a.n.d.o, kaloku nam ndinemithamb’ ebalek’ igaz’ eliqhumayo! Ucango lokugqibela lukungenisa kwigumbi elinezidl’ umzi, Kaloku nam ndizalwa kulo mzi wakwaXhoooooosa!
This thesis is presented in two parts: English and isiXhosa.

Touching Brýnstone is the story of Beth, a young journalist who is troubled by misfortunes in her family and work circumstances. In a Pretoria library she is seduced by a book that consoles her and progressively becomes a fetish object. It sparks a journey to Japan, where she arrives to teach English. She is intent on meeting the author, whom she confounds with protagonist and book. This Bildungsroman is an exploration of the complex relationship between inner and outer self, and the struggle towards wholeness. Beth must find a way out of the obsession so that she can return to South Africa with an enriched insight into her shadow self.

A collection of mostly lyrical poems. The poems explore moments of experience and thought relating to longing and belonging, in terms of relations, memory and place. The poems are mostly short and intense. Silence and implied meanings are often as important as what is said; shadows are evoked to recall substance. Though short, the poems are not tightly closed – on the contrary, meanings proliferate in the process of exploration

This collection of poems explores the boundaries between certainty and uncertainty, between the desire for meaning and the destabilisation of meaning. The content encompasses everyday life, love and loss, and the ambiguities are reflected in the forms used, so that, for instance, the linear continuity of narrative and the musicality of the lyric may be juxtaposed with the fragmented and imagistic leaps of the associative poem.

This is a collection of village narrative poems mainly set in rural Limpopo that searches into the complexity of the past and how historical events impact on the present. Although the poems are imagined along the Marxist dialectic, they’re fresh imaginative creations featuring a strong element of surprise, spiritual mysticism, experimenting with form, delving into unknown poetic avenues, creating new music, exploring new sounds and taking risks. The long and intense poem, Ancestral wealth, which is a tribute to the poet’s father, reflects on death and its impact through the effective application of various stylistic elements and poetic devices, thus immortalising the life of a rural South African. Overall the poems, including retrospective and experimental ones, condemn the free market economic system and all that it seems to necessitate: the degradation of ecology, indifference to human suffering and the alienation of vulnerable social groups.

A collection of narrative and confessional poems. The poems are mostly short, cinematic, physical, imagistic: moments in time. They explore the poet’s own life, body, memories, and family relationships, and the tensions between power, duty, love and faith. Several poems concern the navigation of meaning and belonging in a time when international urban culture often clashes with tradition.

This collection of prose-poems and flash fiction, together with a few short stories, shows how romantic relationships colour our perspectives on the world. The collection has echoes throughout of speakers' voices, theme, imagery and tone. There is a narrative logic too, but working on a subtle level of echo and resonance

My poetry investigates the extraordinary in the everyday, exploring my life as a mother and wife, to find the quiet truths that lie there. Using fresh ways of describing familiar experiences, the poems describe tiny, almost-missed moments and voices that have shaped me. Throughout the collection, I imagine my younger selves commenting on my current self and vice versa. Ultimately, my poems use simple words and clean lines to evoke how I feel (and how I want the reader to feel) in each of the moments they describe.

In this thesis I present a collection of semi-narrative poems about a rural Africa that is a place of folk-lore and tradition, but also a place of otherworldly, almost grotesque, incident. My characters are, similarly, range in type, from buskers, to guards, school-children, paupers and tycoons. Through the work a place that is both familiar and unknown, common-place and mysterious, emerge.

A collection of lyrical, imaginative prose, ranging from prose poems to more formal short stories to flash fiction. I challenge the ordinary or commonplace by exploring the realms between fiction and poetry, realism and fantasy, reality and illusion. I would like reading the collection to be a sensory experience, one that draws the reader deeper into the imaginary. Stylistically, I work elements of poetic language into the narrative in order to express the mystery and remoteness that the stories require.

My initial intention is to try to show how, as a poet in South Africa, I suffer from a creative identity crisis. I am a white English-speaking male. I live surrounded by isiXhosa-speaking people. Is my poetry, or will my poetry be, relevant in the ‘New’ South Africa? Is English, the language of the colonial oppressors, the appropriate medium in the post-apartheid milieu? Will my subject matter be relevant? These questions and my attempts at answering them, form the basis of the poetry and the portfolio that accompanies the poems. My absorption with finding a creative ‘voice’, my concerns with the environment and a questioning of what post-apartheid poetry should write about all seem a bit Quixotic, especially to me! But at another level, they are deeply serious. (p. 5.)

In this collection of free verse lyric poems I have drawn inspiration from childhood memories, as well as from the natural world and encounters with the people around me. Each poem focuses on a small moment, presenting an emotive portrait of a memory or an experience. These small moments lead, cumulatively, to deeper insights into myself and the world around me. The collection is divided into four seasons, in part because the work is strongly influenced by the natural world, but also because the progression of the seasons mirrors something of the personal journey reflected in the poems.

This book of poems ranges in style from narrative to condensed lyric moment, and shifts in perspective from observation to introspection. Thematically, these poems explore everyday life through its many manifestations – memory, nature, marriage, faith and death – with an emphasis on finding meaning in absolutely ordinary things. Though their tone is often vulnerable and tender, even when it is more distant the poems are always searching.

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2013.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis examines the work of two contemporary South African poets, Antjie Krog and Joan Metelerkamp. Through an analytical-discursive engagement with their work, it explores the relationship between confession and embodiment, drawing attention to the ethical potential located at the confluence of these theories and modes. The theory informing this thesis is drawn from three broad fields: that of feminism, embodiment studies and ethical philosophy. More specifically, foundational insights will come from the work of Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Emmanuel Levinas. While much of the theory used originates from Western Europe and North America, this will be mediated by sensitivity towards Krog and Metelerkamp’s South African location, as is fitting for a study focused on embodied confession and the ethical treatment of the other. The first chapter will establish Krog and Metelerkamp as confessional poets and explore the ethical implications of this designation. It will also explore the contextual grounds for the establishment for a confessional culture in both the United States of America of the 1950s that gave rise to the school of confessional poets, and in South Africa of the 1990s. The second chapter will use embodiment theory to discuss the relationship between poetry and the body in their work, and the ethics of this relationship. The remaining chapters concentrate on three forms of embodiment that frequently inhabit their poetry: the maternal body, the erotic body and the ageing body. Throughout the analyses of their poetic depictions of, and engagements with, these bodies, the ethical potential of these confessional engagements will be investigated. Through the argument presented in this thesis, Metelerkamp’s status as a minor South African poet will be re-evaluated, as will that of Krog’s undervalued English translations of her acclaimed Afrikaans poetry. The importance of confessional poetry and poetry of the body, often pejorative classifications, will also be asserted. Ultimately, through drawing the connections between confession, embodiment and ethics in poetry, this thesis will re-evaluate the way poetry is read, when it is read, and propose alternative reading strategies.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis ondersoek die werk van twee kontemporêre Suid-Afrikaanse digters, Antjie Krog en Joan Metelerkamp. Analities-beredeneerde benadering tot hulle werk verken die verband tussen belydenis en beliggaming. Klem word gelê op die etiese implikasies waar hierdie teorieë en vorme bymekaarkom. Die teorie waarop hierdie tesis berus, word vanuit drie breë velde geput: feminisme, beliggamingsteorie en etiese filosofie. Daar word meer spesifiek op die fundamentele beskouings van Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty en Emmanuel Levinas gesteun. Alhoewel die teorie grotendeels ontstaan het in Wes-Europa en Noord-Amerika, sal dit met begrip benader word ten opsigte van Krog en Metelerkamp se Suid-Afrikaanse agtergrond, wat meer gepas is vir studie wat fokus op beliggaamde belydenis en die etiese hantering van die ander. Die eerste hoofstuk vestig Krog en Metelerkamp as belydenisdigters en verken die etiese implikasies van hierdie benaming. Die kontekstuele beweegredes vir die vestiging van belydeniskultuur word ook ondersoek, in beide die Verenigde State van Amerika van die 1950s (wat geboorte geskenk het aan die era van belydenisdigters) en in Suid-Afrika van die 1990s. Die tweede hoofstuk rus op beliggamingsteorie om die verband tussen poësie en liggaam in hul werk te bespreek, asook die etiese implikasies binne hierdie verband. Die oorblywende hoofstukke fokus op drie vorme van die liggaam wat dikwels in hulle digkuns neerslag vind: die moederlike lyf, die erotiese lyf en die verouderende lyf. Die etiese implikasies van hierdie belydende betrokkenheid word deurgaans in ag geneem in die analise van hulle digterlike uitbeelding van en omgang tot hierdie liggame. Die argument in hierdie tesis herevalueer Metelerkamp se status as meer geringe Suid-Afrikaanse digter asook Krog se onderskatte Engelse vertalings van haar bekroonde Afrikaanse gedigte. Die waarde van belydenispoësie en gedigte oor die liggaam, dikwels pejoratiewe klassifikasies, sal ook verdedig word. Deur belydenis, beliggaming en etiek in digkuns met mekaar te verbind, herevalueer hierdie tesis uiteindelik die manier waarop gedigte gelees word, wanneer dit gelees word, en stel alternatiewe leesstrategieë voor.

This thesis uses the Victorian ideology of chivalric manlines to explain the class-oriented army hierarchy developed by volunteer soldiers from northern England during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902. Newspaper reports, advertising, and popular fiction reveal a public mythology of imperial manliness and neo-chivalric ideals that was transferred onto civilian volunteers, creating an ideal warrior that satisfied a thirst for honour. This mythology created a world view in which northern communities, once supporters of the burgeoning peace movement, became committed supporters of parochial units of volunteer soldiers that fought in the newly expanded army. Soldiers' letters and diaries reveal that ingrained ideals of manliness and chivalry led to class-differentiated hierarchies within the army that mirrored those in civilian life. Contrary to the conclusions of some current historians, the Regular soldier remained in his traditional place at the bottom of the army structure, so that "the more things change, the more they remain the same."
vi, 138 leaves ; 29 cm.

More than any other people, the Bushmen - like the Aborigines on the Australian continent - have epitomized the sub-human other in South African historiography. My primary concern in this study will be to interrogate the representations that gave rise to such entrenched notions of Bushman alterity, and the consequences these have had for Bushman lives. Through an assessment of the writings of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century travellers, missionaries, settlers, colonial officials and scholars, I shall examine understandings of ‘otherness’ and ‘difference’, and the ways in which alterity discourse opened up a space for the ensuing colonial policies of genocide and subjugation against the Bushmen. By allowing the Bushman ‘voices’ to talk back - through an exploration of verbal and visual forms of Bushman creative expression - I hope to present a more balanced sense of Bushman ‘identity’, and expose the fundamental intolerance of difference that lies at the heart of alterity discourse. I shall conclude the thesis with a problematization of contemporary trends of representation, an examination of how these often inadvertently continue the process of othering, and a consideration of their repercussions for present-day Bushman lives. Aside from the obvious relevance of such a study to an understanding of both the destructive events and representations of history, and the current traumatic circumstances of Bushman lives, the questions that this thesis raises can be seen to have more far-reaching implications. In a country such as South Africa, with its long history of segregation and discrimination, issues of otherness and difference take on a particularly compelling resonance. It seems crucial - especially at this point in our national progress - to interrogate our historical attitudes towards otherness, and posit more constructive ways of approaching difference, that allow others their distinct identity, without either demonizing or collapsing such difference; or, to phrase it in Homi Bhabha’s question: “How can the human world live its difference? how [sic] can a human being live Other-wise?” (1994:122).
Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1998.