Literary and cultural criticism in South Africa

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521199285.041

39 - Literary and cultural criticism in South Africa

from PART VI - SOUTH AFRICAN LITERATURE: CONTINUITIES AND CONTRASTS

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 January 2012

David Johnson

Edited by

David Attwell and

Derek Attridge

Show author details

David Attwell: Affiliation:
University of York
Derek Attridge: Affiliation:
University of York

Book contents

Get access

Summary

Nineteenth-century origins

Many enduring characteristics of South African literary and cultural criticism are evident in the very first articles, book and theatre reviews and lectures that appeared in the small-circulation newspapers and periodicals of the Cape. These early newspapers included John Fairbairn and Thomas Pringle's South African Commercial Advertiser (1824–69), William Bridekirk's South African Chronicle (1824–6), Frederick Brooks's South African Grins; or, The Quizzical Depot of General Humbug (1825–6), Joseph Suasso de Lima's De Verzamelaar/The Gleaner (1826–7), C. E. Boniface and C. N. Neethling's Zuid-Afrikaan (1830–71), A. J. Jardine's Cape of Good Hope Literary Gazette (1830–5), and Robert Godlonton's Graham's Town Journal (1831–1919) (Huigen, ‘Neder-landstalige’, pp. 7–11; Lewin Robinson, None Daring). The periodicals of this period – Fairbairn and Pringle's South African Journal (1824), Abraham Faure's Het Nederduytsch Zuid-Afrikaansche Tydschrift (1824–43), Andrew Smith and James Adamson's South African Quarterly Journal (1830–7) and James L. Fitzpatrick's Cape of Good Hope Literary Magazine (1847–8) – were dominated by articles on the natural sciences, history and travel, and there were only occasional pieces of literary or cultural criticism, like Fairbairn's two-part essay ‘On the Writings of Wordsworth’ in the South African Journal (1 [1824], pp. 12–16, and 2 [1824], pp. 107–17), and the anonymous ‘On the Sources of Shakespeare's Plots’ in the Cape of Good Hope Literary Magazine (2, 10 [1848], pp. 571–92).

Information

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of South African Literature , pp. 818 - 837

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521199285.041 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Adamson, J.Modern Literature: An Address Delivered at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Subscribers to the Public Library, Cape Town: J. H. Collard, 1844.Google Scholar

Attwell, D.Rewriting Modernity: Studies in Black South African Literary History, Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2005.Google Scholar

Bhabha, H. Interview by Attwell, D., Current Writing 52 (1993).Google Scholar

Biko, S.I Write What I Like, London: Heinemann, 1979.Google Scholar

Bleek, W. H. I. ‘On Inquiries into Australian Aboriginal Folklore’, Cape Monthly Magazine 9 (1874).Google Scholar

Bosman, F. C. L.Drama en Toneel in Suid-Afrika, Cape Town: HAUM, 1928.Google Scholar

Brown, D., and Dyk, B. (eds.). Exchanges: South African Writing in Transition, Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1991.Google Scholar

Calhoun, C. ‘Nationalism and the Public Sphere’, in Weintraub, J. and Kumar, K. (eds.), Public and Private in Thought and Practice: Perspectives on a Grand Dichotomy, University of Chicago Press, 1997.Google Scholar

Carusi, A. ‘The Postcolonial Other as a Problem for Political Action’, Journal of Literary Studies 7:3–4 (1993).Google Scholar

Chrisman, L. ‘Inventing Post-Colonial Theory: Polemical Observations’, Pretexts 5:1–2 (1995).Google Scholar

Coetzee, A.Marxisme en die Afrikaanse Letterkunde, Bellville: University of the Western Cape Press, 1988.Google Scholar

Cope, J.The Adversary Within: Dissident Writers in Afrikaans, Cape Town: David Philip, 1982.Google Scholar

Couzens, T. ‘Criticism of South African Literature’, Work in Progress 2 (1977).Google Scholar

Couzens, T.The New African: A Study of the Life and Work of H. I. E. Dhlomo, Johannesburg: Ravan, 1985.Google Scholar

Dubow, S.A Commonwealth of Knowledge: Science, Sensibility, and White South Africa, 1820–2000, Oxford University Press, 2006.Google Scholar

Eberly, R. A.Citizen Critics: Literary Public Spheres, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000.Google Scholar

Eberly, R. A.English in Africa, special issue on ‘H. I. E. Dhlomo’, 4:2 (1977).Google Scholar

Fletcher, J.The Story of Theatre in South Africa: A Guide to its History from 1780–1930, Cape Town: Vlaeberg, 1994.Google Scholar

Gérard, A.Four African Literatures: Xhosa, Sotho, Zulu, Amharic, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971.Google Scholar

Gardner, M.South African Literary Magazines 1956–1978, Johannesburg: Warren Sieberts, 2004.Google Scholar

Hirson, B.The Cape Town Intellectuals: Ruth Schechter and her Circle, 1907–34, Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 2001.Google Scholar

Hofmeyr, I. ‘Building a Nation from Words: Afrikaans Language, Literature and Ethnic Identity, 1902–1924’, in Marks, S. and Trapido, S. (eds.), The Politics of Race, Class and Nationalism in Twentieth-Century South Africa, London and New York: Longman, 1987.Google Scholar

Hofmeyr, I. ‘Problems of Creative Writers: A Reply’, Work in Progress 2 (1977).Google Scholar

Huigen, S. ‘Nederlandstalige Suid-Afrikaanse Letterkunde, 1652 tot 1925’, in Coller, H. P. (ed.), Perspektief en Profiel: 'n Afrikaanse Literatuurgeskiedenis, vol. III, Pretoria: Van Schaik, 2005.Google Scholar

Johnson, D.Shakespeare and South Africa, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.CrossRef Google Scholar

Johnson, D. ‘Violence and Philosophy: Jack Cade, A. W. Schlegel, and Nathaniel Merriman’, in Joughin, J. (ed.), Philosophical Shakespeares, London: Routledge, 2000.Google Scholar

Jordan, A. C.Towards an African Literature: The Emergence of Literary Form in English, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.Google Scholar

Kannemeyer, J. C.Geskiedenis van die Afrikaanse Literatuur, 2 vols., Cape Town and Pretoria: Academica, 1978, 1983.Google Scholar

Kannemeyer, J. C.Die Koléperas van Kees Konyn, Emmerentia: Taurus, 1983.Google Scholar

Kirkwood, M. ‘The Colonizer: A Critique of the English South African Culture Theory’, in Wilhelm, P. and Polley, J. (eds.), Poetry 74, Johannesburg: Ad Donker, 1976.Google Scholar

Kock, L. ‘Postcolonial Analysis and the Question of Critical Disablement’, Current Writing 5:2 (1993).Google Scholar

Kok, I., and Press, K. (eds.). Spring is Rebellious, Cape Town: Buchu, 1990.Google Scholar

Lewin Robinson, A. M.None Daring to make us Afraid: A Study of the English Periodical Literature of the Cape from 1824–1834, Cape Town: Maskew Miller, 1962.Google Scholar

Lockett, C. ‘Feminisms and Writing in English in South Africa’, Current Writing 2:1 (1990).Google Scholar

Makgoba, M. W. (ed.). African Renaissance: The New Struggle, Cape Town: Tafelberg, 1999.Google Scholar

Masilela, N.The Cultural Modernity of H. I. E. Dhlomo, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2007.Google Scholar

McClintock, A. ‘The Angel of Progress: Pitfalls of the Term “Postcolonialism”’, Social Text 31/32 (1992).Google Scholar

McClintock, A., and Nixon, R.. ‘No Names Apart: The Separation of Word and History in Derrida's “Le Dernier mot du racisme”’, Critical Inquiry 13:1 (1986).CrossRef Google Scholar

Merriman, N.On the Study of Shakespeare, Grahamstown: General Institute, 1857.Google Scholar

Merriman, N.Shakespeare as Bearing on English History, Grahamstown: General Institute, 1858.Google Scholar

Merrington, P. ‘A Staggered Orientalism: The Cape-to-Cairo Imaginary’, Poetics Today 22:2 (2001).CrossRef Google Scholar

Moloka, E., and Roux, E. le (eds.). Problematising the African Renaissance, Pretoria: Africa Institute of South Africa, 2000.Google Scholar

Moran, S.Representing Bushmen: South Africa and the Origin of Language, NewYork: University of Rochester Press, 2009.Google Scholar

Mutloatse, M.Forced Landing: Africa South – Contemporary Writings, Johannesburg: Ravan, 1980.Google Scholar

Negt, O., and Kluge, A.. Public Sphere and Experience: Toward an Analysis of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Sphere [1972], trans. Labanyi, P., Daniel, J. Owen and Oksiloff, A., Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993.Google Scholar

Nkosi, L.Home and Exile, London: Longman, 1965.Google Scholar

Opland, J. ‘Fighting with the Pen: The Appropriation of the Press by Early Xhosa Writers’, in Draper, J. A. (ed.), Orality, Literacy, and Colonialism in Southern Africa, Pietermaritzburg: Cluster, 2003.Google Scholar

Opland, J. ‘The First Novel in Xhosa’, Research in African Literatures 38:4 (2007).Google Scholar

Opland, J.Xhosa Poets and Poetry, Cape Town: David Philip, 1998.Google Scholar

Opland, J., and Nyamende, A. (eds. and trans.). Isaac Williams Wauchope, Selected Writings 1874–1916, Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 2008.Google Scholar

Parry, B. ‘The Postcolonial: Conceptual Category or Chimera?’, Yearbook of English Studies 27 (1997).CrossRef Google Scholar

Sandwith, C. ‘Dora Taylor: South African Marxist’, English in Africa 29:2 (2002).Google Scholar

Sole, K. ‘Culture, Politics and the Black Writer: A Critical Look at Prevailing Assumptions’, English in Africa 10:1 (1983).Google Scholar

Sole, K. ‘Problems of Creative Writers in South Africa’, Work in Progress 1 (1977).Google Scholar

Sole, K. ‘South Africa Passes the Posts’, Alternation 4:1 (1997).Google Scholar

Stapleton, R. J. (ed.). Poetry of the Cape of Good Hope Selected from the Periodical Journals of the Colony, Cape Town: G. Greig, 1828.Google Scholar

Vaughan, M. ‘A Critique in the English-Speaking Universities of South Africa’, Critical Arts 3:2 (1984).CrossRef Google Scholar

Visser, N. (ed.). ‘Postcoloniality of a Special Type: Theory and its Appropriations in South Africa’, Yearbook of English Studies 27 (1997).CrossRef Google Scholar

Vuuren, H. ‘Introduction: Literary Historiography, with specific reference to the problems of the South African context’, Journal of Literary Studies 10:3–4 (1994).Google Scholar

Watson, S. (ed.). Guy Butler: Essays and Lectures 1949–1991, Cape Town: David Philip, 1994.Google Scholar

Willan, B. (ed.). Sol Plaatje: Selected Writings, Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1996.Google Scholar

Willemse, H.Aan die Ander Kant: Swart Afrikaanse Skrywers in die Afrikaanse Letterkunde, Pretoria: Protea, 2007.Google Scholar

Wyk, J.Constructs of Identity and Difference in South African Literature, Durban: University of Durban-Westville, 1995.Google Scholar

Accessibility standard: Unknown

Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.