White Writing

Last updated
First (1988) edition
Cover artist: Thomas William Bowler, Graham's Town from the Bay Road, 1865 WhiteWriting.jpg
First (1988) edition
Cover artist: Thomas William Bowler, Graham's Town from the Bay Road, 1865

White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa is a collection of essays by Nobel-laureate J. M. Coetzee, originally published in 1988, and in 2007 was reprinted, with a new introduction, by Pentz Publishers ( ISBN   9780980270006).

"Since it first appeared in 1988, JM Coetzee's first volume of criticism has emerged as an indispensable reference in the study of South African literature. In the seven essays comprising the collection, he reads a range of texts, in various genres, which represent the endeavours of white writers to come to terms with the South African landscape and their tenuous place within it. The seven essays concern a wide range of works written in both English and Afrikaans, including the nineteenth-century travel writing of William Burchell, which compares the landscapes of England and South Africa, always to the latter's detriment, is discussed in relation to subsequent engagements by Thomas Pringle, WEG Louw, WC Scully and Roy Campbell. In addition to landscape, land ownership and pastoralist ideologies, the studies address the versions of race developed, implicitly or explicitly, in writings by authors as diverse as Pauline Smith, Mikro, Alan Paton and Gertrude Millin." [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nadine Gordimer</span> South African writer (1923–2014)

Nadine Gordimer was a South African writer and political activist. She received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991, recognised as a writer "who through her magnificent epic writing has ... been of very great benefit to humanity".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. M. Coetzee</span> South African and Australian writer and scholar (born 1940)

John Maxwell Coetzee FRSL OMG is a South African and Australian novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is one of the most critically acclaimed and decorated authors in the English language. He has won the Booker Prize (twice), the CNA Literary Award (thrice), the Jerusalem Prize, the Prix Femina étranger, and The Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and holds a number of other awards and honorary doctorates.

<i>Disgrace</i> Novel by J. M. Coetzee

Disgrace is a novel by J. M. Coetzee, published in 1999. It won the Booker Prize. The writer was also awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature four years after its publication.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen Watson (poet)</span> South African poet (1954–2011)

Stephen Watson was a South African poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antjie Krog</span> South African poet, philosopher, academic, and writer (born 1952)

Antjie Krog is a South African writer and academic, best known for her Afrikaans poetry, her reporting on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and her 1998 book Country of My Skull. In 2004, she joined the Arts faculty of the University of the Western Cape as Extraordinary Professor.

The poetry of South Africa covers a broad range of themes, forms and styles. This article discusses the context that contemporary poets have come from and identifies the major poets of South Africa, their works and influence.

Zoë Wicomb is a South African-Scottish author and academic who has lived in the UK since the 1970s. In 2013, she was awarded the inaugural Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for her fiction.

<i>Country of My Skull</i> 1998 book by Antjie Krog

Country of My Skull is a 1998 nonfiction book by Antjie Krog about the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). It is based on Krog's experience as a radio reporter, covering the Commission from 1996 to 1998 for the South African Broadcasting Corporation. The book explores the successes and failures of the Commission, the effects of the proceedings on her personally, and the possibility of genuine reconciliation in post-Apartheid South Africa.

<i>Dusklands</i> 1974 debut novel by J. M. Coetzee

Dusklands (1974) is the debut novel by J. M. Coetzee, winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. The novel consists of two separate stories, "The Vietnam Project" and "The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee."

Pauline Janet Smith was a South African novelist, short story writer, memoirist and playwright.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">South African literature</span> Literature of South Africa

South African literature is the literature of South Africa, which has 11 national languages: Afrikaans, English, Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Pedi, Tswana, Venda, Swazi, Tsonga and Ndebele.

There is a wide range of ways in which people have represented apartheid in popular culture. During (1948–1994) and following the apartheid era in South Africa, apartheid has been referenced in many books, films, and other forms of art and literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elleke Boehmer</span>

Elleke Boehmer, FRSL, FRHistS is Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford, and a Professorial Governing Body Fellow at Wolfson College. She is an acclaimed novelist and a founding figure in the field of Postcolonial Studies, internationally recognised for her research in colonial and postcolonial literature and theory. Her main areas of interest include the literature of empire and resistance to empire; sub-Saharan African and South Asian literatures; modernism; migration and diaspora; feminism, masculinity, and identity; nationalism; terrorism; J. M. Coetzee, Katherine Mansfield, and Nelson Mandela; and life writing.

Derek Attridge FBA is a South African-born British academic in the field of English literature. He is Emeritus Professor of English and Related Literature at the University of York, having retired from the university in 2016, and is a Fellow of the British Academy. Attridge undertakes research in South African literature, James Joyce, modern fiction, deconstruction and literary theory and the history and performance of poetry. He is the author or editor of thirty books, and has published eighty articles in essay collections and a similar number in journals. He has held a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Leverhulme Research Professorship, and Fellowships at the National Humanities Center, the Bogliasco Foundation, the Camargo Foundation, and The Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, and All Souls and St. Catherine's Colleges, Oxford. Among the visiting positions he has held have been professorships at the American University of Cairo, the University of Sassari, the University of Cape Town, Northwestern University, Wellesley College, and the University of Queensland.

<i>The Lives of Animals</i> 1999 novella by John Coetzee

The Lives of Animals (1999) is a metafictional novella about animal rights by the South African novelist J. M. Coetzee, recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. The work is introduced by Amy Gutmann and followed by a collection of responses by Marjorie Garber, Peter Singer, Wendy Doniger and Barbara Smuts. It was published by Princeton University Press as part of its Human Values series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gert-Johan Coetzee</span> South African fashion designer

Gert-Johan Coetzee, is a South African fashion artist. His fashion atelier is based in Linden, Johannesburg in Gauteng province. He specialises in couture red carpet gowns, he also designs ready-to-wear range. Coetzee is known for dressing South African and international celebrities at red-carpet events.

J. M. Coetzee is a South African-born novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He has also won the Booker Prize twice, the Jerusalem Prize, CNA Prize (thrice), the Prix Femina étranger, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, as well as many other awards and honours, and he holds a number of honorary doctorates and is one of the most acclaimed and decorated authors in the English language.

Mogobe Bernard Ramose is a South African philosopher, one of the key thinkers to have popularised African philosophy, and specifically Ubuntu philosophy, internationally. Ramose is Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Africa in Pretoria.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2003 Nobel Prize in Literature</span> Award

The 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the South African novelist John Maxwell Coetzee, better known simply as J. M. Coetzee, "who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider." He is the fourth African writer to be so honoured and the second South African after Nadine Gordimer in 1991.

Carli Coetzee is a research associate and Africanist at the African Studies Centre of the University of Oxford focusing on African literature and African popular cultural studies. In 1988 she obtained a Master's degree in Afrikaans literature and in 1993 a PhD degree, both at the University of Cape Town. Coetzee held positions at the University of Western Cape, the University of Cape Town, SOAS University of London and Queen Mary University of London and was a Fellow at Harvard and Wits University. She is the Editor of the Journal of African Cultural Studies, United Kingdom, and is the president of the African Studies Association of the United Kingdom.

References

  1. CM van den Heever, as cited in Amazon