Literature and Society in South Africa is a powerful collection of essays by some of the field's foremost writers and scholars based on papers given at a conference on 'Literature and Society in Southern Africa', held at the University of York, 1981. The essays form a wide-ranging survey of the relationship between both black and white literature and society in the development of South Africa. Xhosa and Zulu-Ndebele praise-poetry, the 'colonial' novel in English and Afrikaans, and Black theatre and writing of the last hundred years are explored afresh. United in the belief that literature and literary criticism can never be autonomous activities, the contributors argue that criticism of literature is inextricably linked to criticism of society.
This exciting and challenging book is essential reading for students of South African and African literature, and all interested in the past, present and future role of black and white literature in South African society.
Author(s): Landeg White; Tim Couzens
Series: Longman Studies in African Literature
Edition: pbk
Publisher: Longman
Year: 1984
Language: English
Pages: 220
Introduction
The genius of Ntsikana: traditional images and the process of change in early Xhosa literature / Janet Hodgson --
The art of being ruled: Ndebele praise-poetry, 1835-1971 / Leroy Vail and Landeg White --
Widening horizons of African literature, 1870-1900 / Tim Couzens --
Sol T. Plaatje and Tswana literature: a preliminary survey / Brian Willan --
The theatre of Stephen Black: an example of cultural discontinuity in South Africa / Stephen Gray --
No place for a white proletariat: notes on an early Afrikaans novel / Ampie Coetzee --
Romance and the development of the south African novel / Paul Rich --
Alternative theatre: fifty years of performance in Johannesbirg / Ian Steadman --
The uses of traditional oral forms in black South African literature / Mbulelo Vizikhungo Mzamane --
Writing in a fractured society: the case of Nadien Gordimer / Stephen Clingman --
The isolation of the Xhosa oral poet / Jeff Opland --
Staffrider and directions within contemporary South African literature / Michael Vaughan
Index
