The role of narrational strategies in the fiction of Mandla Langa

Abstract

This study deals with Mandla Langa’s deployment of narrational strategies in his narrative oeuvre. Through a structural narratological analysis of Langa’s discourse, the study reveals the role of the narrational strategies in the generation of meaning in his work. It also shows how the strategies are deployed to generate sympathy for specific characters and events in the fiction. The extent to which this draws attention to the fictional characters and their social positions in the Apartheid and post-Apartheid periods in South Africa, in which time periods the narratives are set, determines the interpretation of the meanings encoded in the texts. The study employs the narrative theory developed by Gérard Genette and Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism and concept of polyphony to investigate, describe and analyse the signifying effects of the strategies used in Langa’s fiction.