The contemporary South African trauma novel: Michiel Heyns' Lost Ground (2011) and Marlene van Niekerk's The Way of the Women (2008)
The result's identifiers
Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F70883521%3A28150%2F20%3A63526638" target="_blank" >RIV/70883521:28150/20:63526638 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
<a href="https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/angl/138/1/article-p144.xml" target="_blank" >https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/angl/138/1/article-p144.xml</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ang-2020-0007" target="_blank" >10.1515/ang-2020-0007</a>
Alternative languages
Result language
angličtina
Original language name
The contemporary South African trauma novel: Michiel Heyns' Lost Ground (2011) and Marlene van Niekerk's The Way of the Women (2008)
Original language description
After the end of apartheid in 1990 and the new constitution of 1994, the genre of the contemporary South African novel is experiencing a heyday. One reason for this is that, with the end of censorship, the authors can go about unrestraint to take a critical look at the traumatized country and the state of a nation that shows a great need to come to terms with its past. In this context, trauma and narration prove to be a fertile combination, an observation that stands in marked contrast to the deconstructionist view of trauma as 'unclaimed' experience and the inability to speak about it. Michiel Heyns' Lost Ground (2011) and Marlene van Niekerk's The Way of the Women (2008) are prime examples of the contemporary South African trauma novel. As crime fiction, Lost Ground not only tells a thrilling story but is also deeply involved in South African politics. The novelist Heyns plays with postmodernist structures, but the real strength of the novel lies in its realistic milieu description and the analysis of the protagonist's traumatic 'entanglements'. The Way of the Women is mainly a farm novel but also shows elements of the historical novel and the marriage novel. It continues the process of the deconstruction of the farm as a former symbol of the Afrikaner's pride and glory. Both novels' meta-fictional self-reflections betray the self-consciousness of their authors who are aware of the symbolization compulsions in a traumatized country. They use narrative as a means of 'working through', coming to terms with trauma, and achieving reconciliation. Both novels' complex narrative structures may be read as symbolic expressions of traumatic 'entanglements' that lie at the heart of the South African dilemma.
Czech name
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Czech description
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Classification
Type
J<sub>SC</sub> - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the SCOPUS database
CEP classification
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OECD FORD branch
60206 - Specific literatures
Result continuities
Project
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Continuities
I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace
Others
Publication year
2020
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů
Data specific for result type
Name of the periodical
Anglia-Zeitschrift Fur Englische Philologie
ISSN
0340-5222
e-ISSN
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Volume of the periodical
138
Issue of the periodical within the volume
1
Country of publishing house
DE - GERMANY
Number of pages
22
Pages from-to
144-165
UT code for WoS article
000519965300008
EID of the result in the Scopus database
2-s2.0-85082319652