Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2022.2055852
Rick de Villiers
On 16 June, 1926, the Johannesburg newspaper Rand Daily Mail carried a gloved dismantling of a new literary magazine called Voorslag. In name and in content, this half-crown monthly promised to be at the sharp end of a rising South African avant-garde, all the while keeping touch with the best art abroad. Splendid ideals, a timely intervention – but was Voorslag quite ‘what it should be’ (Millin 43)? The reviewer, Sarah Gertrude Millin, had her doubts. Despite its claims to radical newness, she saw in Voorslag something oddly familiar, derivative even. Its focus was too ‘narrow’. Its philosophy resembled too closely that of certain Anglo-American little magazines. And its editors – Roy Campbell, William Plomer and Laurens van der Post – seemed to endorse a predictable cast of European ‘prophets’ and ‘gods’ (44): the Sitwells, Clive Bell, Roger Fry, T.S. Eliot, Marcel Proust, James Joyce and others. There is neat irony in the fact that Millin’s piece appeared on 16 June, otherwise known as ‘Bloomsday’. Only four years had passed since modernism’s ‘annus mirabilis’ – the year that saw the publication of Ulysses, The Waste Land, and Jacob’s Room, the year that supposedly ‘[broke] the world... in two’ (Cather v) – and already its tenets, methods and proponents were being treated as a known quantity. ‘The fact of the matter,’Millin lamented, ‘is that Voorslag, for all its South African flavour, is a branch of a well-defined overseas group’ (44). An uncharitable reader might be tempted to say the review betrays that ‘grocer’s mentality’ (Gardner and Chapman 4) which Voorslag sought to trouble. It is difficult not to regard Millin’s quibbles as both slight and slighting. It is difficult, too, crediting the idea that modernism was as ‘well-defined’ as her tone of polite boredom would suggest. But despite some hasty dismissals, the novelist’s tacit scepticism about a ‘South African modernism’ is itself not easily dismissed. Could such a movement ever amount to more than a provincial version of its metropolitan model? Could it add anything other than local ‘flavour’ to an apparently European project? Would ‘South African modernism’ ever shake the pincers of the provisional?
1926年6月16日，约翰内斯堡的《兰德每日邮报》（Rand Daily Mail）报道了一本名为《Voorslag》的新文学杂志的拆卸。无论在名义上还是在内容上，这本半克朗的月刊都承诺将成为崛起的南非先锋派的先锋，同时与国外最好的艺术保持联系。美好的理想，及时的干预——但Voorslag完全是“应该的”吗（Millin 43）？评论家Sarah Gertrude Millin对此表示怀疑。尽管它声称具有激进的新颖性，但她在《Voorslag》中看到了一种奇怪的熟悉，甚至是衍生的东西。它的关注点过于“狭隘”。它的哲学与某些英美小杂志的哲学过于相似。该杂志的编辑Roy Campbell、William Plomer和Laurens van der Post似乎支持一批可预测的欧洲“先知”和“神”（44）：Sitwells、Clive Bell、Roger Fry、T.S.Eliot、Marcel Proust、James Joyce等人。具有讽刺意味的是，米林的作品出现在6月16日，也被称为“Bloomsday”。现代主义的“奇迹之年”只过去了四年，这一年出版了《尤利西斯》、《荒原》和《雅各布的房间》，据说这一年“打破”了世界。。。在两个”（Cather v）中——其原理、方法和支持者已经被视为已知数量“事实上，”Millin哀叹道，“Voorslag，尽管有着南非的味道，但却是一个定义明确的海外集团的一个分支”（44）。一个不友善的读者可能会说，这篇评论暴露了Voorslag试图制造麻烦的“杂货商心态”（Gardner和Chapman 4）。很难不把米林的狡辩看作是轻视和轻视。也很难相信现代主义就像她礼貌的无聊语气所暗示的那样“定义明确”。但是，尽管有一些草率的否定，这位小说家对“南非现代主义”的默许怀疑本身并不容易被否定。这样的运动会比其大都市模式的省级版本更重要吗？它能为一个明显的欧洲项目增添除当地“风味”之外的任何东西吗？“南非现代主义”会动摇临时的钳夹吗？
{"title":"Introduction: South African and African Modernism – Beyond a Century, Beyond the Provisional","authors":"Rick de Villiers","doi":"10.1080/00138398.2022.2055852","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2022.2055852","url":null,"abstract":"On 16 June, 1926, the Johannesburg newspaper Rand Daily Mail carried a gloved dismantling of a new literary magazine called Voorslag. In name and in content, this half-crown monthly promised to be at the sharp end of a rising South African avant-garde, all the while keeping touch with the best art abroad. Splendid ideals, a timely intervention – but was Voorslag quite ‘what it should be’ (Millin 43)? The reviewer, Sarah Gertrude Millin, had her doubts. Despite its claims to radical newness, she saw in Voorslag something oddly familiar, derivative even. Its focus was too ‘narrow’. Its philosophy resembled too closely that of certain Anglo-American little magazines. And its editors – Roy Campbell, William Plomer and Laurens van der Post – seemed to endorse a predictable cast of European ‘prophets’ and ‘gods’ (44): the Sitwells, Clive Bell, Roger Fry, T.S. Eliot, Marcel Proust, James Joyce and others. There is neat irony in the fact that Millin’s piece appeared on 16 June, otherwise known as ‘Bloomsday’. Only four years had passed since modernism’s ‘annus mirabilis’ – the year that saw the publication of Ulysses, The Waste Land, and Jacob’s Room, the year that supposedly ‘[broke] the world... in two’ (Cather v) – and already its tenets, methods and proponents were being treated as a known quantity. ‘The fact of the matter,’Millin lamented, ‘is that Voorslag, for all its South African flavour, is a branch of a well-defined overseas group’ (44). An uncharitable reader might be tempted to say the review betrays that ‘grocer’s mentality’ (Gardner and Chapman 4) which Voorslag sought to trouble. It is difficult not to regard Millin’s quibbles as both slight and slighting. It is difficult, too, crediting the idea that modernism was as ‘well-defined’ as her tone of polite boredom would suggest. But despite some hasty dismissals, the novelist’s tacit scepticism about a ‘South African modernism’ is itself not easily dismissed. Could such a movement ever amount to more than a provincial version of its metropolitan model? Could it add anything other than local ‘flavour’ to an apparently European project? Would ‘South African modernism’ ever shake the pincers of the provisional?","PeriodicalId":42538,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH STUDIES IN AFRICA","volume":"65 1","pages":"1 - 4"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43171818","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2022.2055860
R. West-Pavlov
Abstract In this article I argue that Nigerian author Chinua Achebe ostentatiously co-opted Yeats’s poem ‘The Second Coming’ in the title of his 1958 novel Things Fall Apart to mobilize a modernist gesture in order to bookend what is in fact primarily a rehearsal of markers of modernity (realist narration, the structure of the historical novel as defined by Lukács). The latter rehearsal was central to Achebe’s claim for the fully-fledged rationalist character of the Igbo polity and his bid to put his society on a par with European modernity. Crucial to this claim for parity, however, was Achebe’s countervailing manipulation of residual markers of modernism to force a wedge into the monolith of modernity so as to disable those elements of modernity that disqualified African societies from parity with Europe, as against those elements that were desired as offering parity. By the same token, Achebe’s ‘countermodernism’ also foregrounds other versions of history that resonate with global alter-modernisms and thus posits alternative modernities.
{"title":"Modernisms and Modernities in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart","authors":"R. West-Pavlov","doi":"10.1080/00138398.2022.2055860","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2022.2055860","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this article I argue that Nigerian author Chinua Achebe ostentatiously co-opted Yeats’s poem ‘The Second Coming’ in the title of his 1958 novel Things Fall Apart to mobilize a modernist gesture in order to bookend what is in fact primarily a rehearsal of markers of modernity (realist narration, the structure of the historical novel as defined by Lukács). The latter rehearsal was central to Achebe’s claim for the fully-fledged rationalist character of the Igbo polity and his bid to put his society on a par with European modernity. Crucial to this claim for parity, however, was Achebe’s countervailing manipulation of residual markers of modernism to force a wedge into the monolith of modernity so as to disable those elements of modernity that disqualified African societies from parity with Europe, as against those elements that were desired as offering parity. By the same token, Achebe’s ‘countermodernism’ also foregrounds other versions of history that resonate with global alter-modernisms and thus posits alternative modernities.","PeriodicalId":42538,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH STUDIES IN AFRICA","volume":"40 2","pages":"72 - 86"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41306802","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-17DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2021.1969103
Kobus Moolman
(2021). The Room. English Studies in Africa: Vol. 64, The Plague Years, pp. 110-113.
（2021）. 这房间。非洲英语研究:第64卷，瘟疫年代，第110-113页。
{"title":"The Room","authors":"Kobus Moolman","doi":"10.1080/00138398.2021.1969103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2021.1969103","url":null,"abstract":"(2021). The Room. English Studies in Africa: Vol. 64, The Plague Years, pp. 110-113.","PeriodicalId":42538,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH STUDIES IN AFRICA","volume":" 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138492533","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2021.1969104
C. Warren
Abstract This paper provides an overview of the representation of outbreaks of infectious disease in South African speculative fiction. The focus is on novels by South African authors (even if some are set in the US) which envision a future plague or pandemic, from AIDS to flu-like viruses to a zombie outbreak. This is not an in-depth analysis of individual texts but a survey of the ways in which future plagues are envisioned, including in young adult fiction and popular fiction.
{"title":"Fever Dreams: Surveying the Representation of Plagues and Pandemics in South African Speculative Fiction","authors":"C. Warren","doi":"10.1080/00138398.2021.1969104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2021.1969104","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper provides an overview of the representation of outbreaks of infectious disease in South African speculative fiction. The focus is on novels by South African authors (even if some are set in the US) which envision a future plague or pandemic, from AIDS to flu-like viruses to a zombie outbreak. This is not an in-depth analysis of individual texts but a survey of the ways in which future plagues are envisioned, including in young adult fiction and popular fiction.","PeriodicalId":42538,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH STUDIES IN AFRICA","volume":"64 1","pages":"114 - 120"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49258748","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2021.1969101
E. Bergmann
Abstract In this paper, I analyze whether the COVID-19 crisis might lead to a new wave of neo-nationalism. History teaches that socio-economic crises tend to pave the way for populist nationalists to seize the moment and place themselves as saviours of the people/nation against both an external threat and the domestic elite. In previous research, I detected three waves of nativist populism, emerging into what I call neo-nationalism in the post-war era, each rising in the wake of crisis. The characteristics of the current crisis are in many ways reminiscent of those that have previously led to the rise of nativist populism, which defines much of contemporary politics in the West, and indeed around the world. It is therefore timely to contemplate whether the crisis resulting from governmental responses to COVID-19 might ignite the fourth wave of neo-nationalism.
{"title":"Will the COVID-19 Crisis Lead to a Fourth Wave of Neo-nationalism?","authors":"E. Bergmann","doi":"10.1080/00138398.2021.1969101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2021.1969101","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this paper, I analyze whether the COVID-19 crisis might lead to a new wave of neo-nationalism. History teaches that socio-economic crises tend to pave the way for populist nationalists to seize the moment and place themselves as saviours of the people/nation against both an external threat and the domestic elite. In previous research, I detected three waves of nativist populism, emerging into what I call neo-nationalism in the post-war era, each rising in the wake of crisis. The characteristics of the current crisis are in many ways reminiscent of those that have previously led to the rise of nativist populism, which defines much of contemporary politics in the West, and indeed around the world. It is therefore timely to contemplate whether the crisis resulting from governmental responses to COVID-19 might ignite the fourth wave of neo-nationalism.","PeriodicalId":42538,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH STUDIES IN AFRICA","volume":"64 1","pages":"98 - 109"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43298673","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2021.1969094
Hedley Twidle
This is an account of reading Albert Camus's The Plague in the wake of various real-world epidemics, and from a place, South Africa, that emerges as a kind of mirror image of the north Africa in which the novel is set. It suggests that what seems at first like a simple story is in fact a deeply complex, even contradictory work: one that that absorbs and reflects back as much history and difficulty as the reader is willing to bring to it. While giving postcolonial critiques of the work their due, I explore how and why The Plague still holds energy and meaning for a 21st-century audience.
{"title":"‘As others feel pain in their lungs’: Albert Camus’s The Plague","authors":"Hedley Twidle","doi":"10.1080/00138398.2021.1969094","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2021.1969094","url":null,"abstract":"This is an account of reading Albert Camus's The Plague in the wake of various real-world epidemics, and from a place, South Africa, that emerges as a kind of mirror image of the north Africa in which the novel is set. It suggests that what seems at first like a simple story is in fact a deeply complex, even contradictory work: one that that absorbs and reflects back as much history and difficulty as the reader is willing to bring to it. While giving postcolonial critiques of the work their due, I explore how and why The Plague still holds energy and meaning for a 21st-century audience.","PeriodicalId":42538,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH STUDIES IN AFRICA","volume":"64 1","pages":"24 - 40"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42432450","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2021.1969099
Zhiyong Mo
In the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, countries, regions and international organizations dispatched personal protective equipment (PPE) to frontline workers and afflicted people. Lines of ancient Chinese poetry were printed on the side of boxes dispatched by the People’s Republic of China both nationally and globally, as well as some sent from Japan to China. Many of these lines invoked shared histories and the long tradition of crosscultural communication and international friendship between China and other countries. But the printing of poetry was also motivated by a desire to remove people – albeit temporarily – from the context of COVID-19 suffering, to lead them to a more peaceful and harmonious world. The good will and friendship among people, as well as the common destiny of all humanity, is a recurrent theme. On the boxes of PPE sent to Wuhan, initially the most affected city, by the Chinese language academy (HSK) in Japan, eight Chinese characters read, ‘Mountain, River, Different, Areas / Wind, Moon, Same, Sky’ (Figure 1). The elemental and ethereal images, wind, moon and sky emblematize a lofty, magnanimous, and capacious mind, able to accommodate ‘ten thousand things’. These words were first embroidered on a thousand cassocks – on the orders of Japan’s Emperor Tenmu’s grandson Prince Nagaya (circa. 684–729) – and were sent to the Tang Dynasty court about 1300 years ago. After receiving them, the high monk Ganjin (Jianzhen 688–763), inspired by the gift, sailed to Japan to propagate Buddhism there. Invoking and rekindling this ancient memory of Japan reaching out – reiterating the gift – the HSK affirmed the long history of solidarity between the two nations. As the pandemic unfolded, China reciprocated the gift by sending PPE to Japan. China’s poem to Japan also affirmed their common heritage despite the distance separating them. The Tiantai Sect was founded during the Tang Dynasty and Japanese monks traveled to Tiantai to study, which led to them establishing the Tiantai Sect in Japan and instigating ongoing exchange. The Buddhist scholar Juzan’s lines allude to this history by using the metaphor of a tree’s blossom spreading its fragrance to two places (Figure 3). In the lines by Southern Song Dynasty poet, Zhang Xiaoxiang (Figure 7), printed on the PPE
{"title":"Ancient Chinese Poetry and Chinese Calligraphy in Combatting COVID-19","authors":"Zhiyong Mo","doi":"10.1080/00138398.2021.1969099","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2021.1969099","url":null,"abstract":"In the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, countries, regions and international organizations dispatched personal protective equipment (PPE) to frontline workers and afflicted people. Lines of ancient Chinese poetry were printed on the side of boxes dispatched by the People’s Republic of China both nationally and globally, as well as some sent from Japan to China. Many of these lines invoked shared histories and the long tradition of crosscultural communication and international friendship between China and other countries. But the printing of poetry was also motivated by a desire to remove people – albeit temporarily – from the context of COVID-19 suffering, to lead them to a more peaceful and harmonious world. The good will and friendship among people, as well as the common destiny of all humanity, is a recurrent theme. On the boxes of PPE sent to Wuhan, initially the most affected city, by the Chinese language academy (HSK) in Japan, eight Chinese characters read, ‘Mountain, River, Different, Areas / Wind, Moon, Same, Sky’ (Figure 1). The elemental and ethereal images, wind, moon and sky emblematize a lofty, magnanimous, and capacious mind, able to accommodate ‘ten thousand things’. These words were first embroidered on a thousand cassocks – on the orders of Japan’s Emperor Tenmu’s grandson Prince Nagaya (circa. 684–729) – and were sent to the Tang Dynasty court about 1300 years ago. After receiving them, the high monk Ganjin (Jianzhen 688–763), inspired by the gift, sailed to Japan to propagate Buddhism there. Invoking and rekindling this ancient memory of Japan reaching out – reiterating the gift – the HSK affirmed the long history of solidarity between the two nations. As the pandemic unfolded, China reciprocated the gift by sending PPE to Japan. China’s poem to Japan also affirmed their common heritage despite the distance separating them. The Tiantai Sect was founded during the Tang Dynasty and Japanese monks traveled to Tiantai to study, which led to them establishing the Tiantai Sect in Japan and instigating ongoing exchange. The Buddhist scholar Juzan’s lines allude to this history by using the metaphor of a tree’s blossom spreading its fragrance to two places (Figure 3). In the lines by Southern Song Dynasty poet, Zhang Xiaoxiang (Figure 7), printed on the PPE","PeriodicalId":42538,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH STUDIES IN AFRICA","volume":"64 1","pages":"84 - 97"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47754140","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：