On Literary Attachment in South Africa: Tough Love

This book explores the literary in literature in South Africa, focusing on the relationship between creative work and critical act. It adopts a style of intimacy, avoiding the configuration of literary works to state-of-the-nation issues. Instead, it preserves a space for conversation, accented inwards to locality or outwards to the Anglophone world. The study raises questions about reader reception, epistemological and aesthetic frame, and archival use, considering the influence of language, race, and culture contestation. It also examines the aesthetic appeal of contemporaneous works, the relationship between science and poetry, and the role of autobiographical journeys in literary criticism. The study is alert to the limits of critique while releasing literature to speak to us today, within the contours of its originating energy.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 198 pages
Publication date: 31 May 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

This book delves into the intricate relationship between literature and the literary, offering a nuanced and affirmative perspective. Rather than imposing ideological interpretations, it adopts an intimate approach, akin to tough love, in exploring the connection between creative works and critical acts. Instead of aligning literary works with state-of-the-nation issues, as is often the case in South African literature, the chapters create a space for conversation, whether focused inward towards local contexts or outward towards the broader Anglophone world. While South Africa may be a postcolony that straddles Africa and the West, or the South and the North, its literature navigates a unique terrain, oscillating between its locality and its global reach. This raises intriguing questions regarding reader reception, epistemological frameworks, and the archival use of literature. Are Nobel laureates Nadine Gordimer and J.M. Coetzee local writers or global figures? Is the novel or the short story more suitable for capturing the essence of metropolitan cultures? Given the ongoing contestations of language, race, and culture, how can we reclaim and contemporize Bushman expressions? How can we evaluate the aesthetic appeal of two contemporaneous works, one in English and the other in isiXhosa, one influenced by Bloomsbury modernism and the other by African customs? How does Douglas Livingstone bridge the gap between the Third World and the First World through his work in science and poetry? What role does Kopano Matlwa, a born-free novelist, play in comparison to the legendary Bard of Avon? In a time of theoretical discourse, can Lewis Nkosi embody literary criticism through an autobiographical journey? How can we read the rupturing event of the statue of Rhodes falling through a literary lens? The book is attentive to the influences and resonances that shape the literary landscape, providing a rich and thought-provoking exploration of the complex interplay between literature and the literary.

Weight: 381g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032064475