Research Outputs (Afrikaans and Theory of Literature)
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Item Trance and transfiguration in rock art and literature(2023-04-14) Northover, Richard AlanWhat can San rock art research reveal about certain kinds of imaginative literature written in English? What do depictions of altered states of consciousness in literature reveal about human needs? In this lecture I explore depictions of altered states of consciousness in literature using the ideas of Aldous Huxley, based on his own experience of taking psychoactive drugs, the work of the German ethnobotanist Christian Rätsch on psychoactive plants, and the archaeologist David Lewis-Williams, whose work explains some aspects of some prehistoric rock art traditions using cognitive neuropsychology. Huxley was concerned with expanded consciousness and spirituality for much of his life, seeing in religion and art some form of salvation from what he saw as the meaninglessness of mass consumer capitalist culture that he critiques in his dystopian novel Brave New World (1932). Indeed, in this novel and in Island (1962), its follow-up and the final novel he wrote, he promotes the use of psychoactive drugs to achieve individual bliss and social cohesion. In The Doors of Perception (1954) and Heaven and Hell (1956) he documents his own experience of the effects of his consumption of mescalin and his reflections on this experience. Although his primary interest is in prehistoric rock art, Lewis-Williams (2002, 2005) also applies his theories of altered states of consciousness to The Epic of Gilgamesh and Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” helping to illuminate the poems in new ways. In this lecture, I compare Huxley and Lewis-Williams’s theories and use them to illuminate aspects of various works of literature in English. The lecture investigates the significance of traces of shamanism and altered states of consciousness in literature, re-reading modernity in the terms of plant studies and indigenous belief systems.Item Migration theatre in South Africa with reference to Mike van Graan’s When swallows cry(Taylor & Francis, 2020) Keuris, MarisaIn this article a discussion on migrant theatre in South Africa is given, with special reference to Mike van Graan’s play When Swallows Cry (2017). In the introduction a short background is given in terms of migration statistics and issues (notably xenophobia) pertaining to the South African state and society. Against the background of an international and national upsurge in migrant theatre the view is expressed that though we have had migrant theatre pre-1994 during the heyday of Nationalist apartheid ideology, a change has occurred since 1994 when the political dispensation changed in South Africa and the African National Congress (ANC) came into power. The situation today is more complex where intra-continental and cross-continental migrancy is now part of everyone’s lives, as portrayed in Mike van Graan’s When Swallows Cry. Van Graan’s play thus reflects a changing focus in migrant plays in South Africa: from the very early plays concerned with internal migration in the country to plays that today reflect a more complex world (i.e. the often violent and xenophobic experiences of African migrants – also within a so-called new South Africa, but also in the rest of Africa and the bigger world).Item Magrita Prinslo (1896), Magdalena Retief (1938) and Mies Julie (2012): From Historical Afrikaner Mothers of the Nation to a Modern Afrikanermeisie (Girl)(Taylor & Francis, 2019) Keuris, MarisaThe focus in this article is a postcolonial reading of Yael Farber's 2012 adaptation (Mies Julie) of Strindberg's Miss Julie (1888) through the lens of the Mother of the Nation concept (Volksmoederkonsep) as situated within Afrikaner nationalist ideology. Strindberg's Miss Julie has been adapted numerous times (apparently more than twenty times) and often through re-imagings of the original play's issues in regards of gender, power and social class. More recent adaptations include Patrick Marber's reworking of the play, entitled After Miss Julie in 2009 and a 2012 Chinese opera version directed by Ravel LuoItem Migration Theatre in South Africa With Reference to Mike van Graan’s When Swallows Cry(2020) Keuris, Marisa