1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910511360203321

Autore

Jackson Jeanne-Marie

Titolo

South African literature's Russian soul : narrative forms of global isolation / / Jeanne-Marie Jackson

Pubbl/distr/stampa

London : , : Bloomsbury, , 2015

ISBN

1-4742-5884-0

1-4725-9301-4

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (249 p.)

Collana

New horizons in contemporary writing

Disciplina

809.8968

Soggetti

South African literature - Russian influences

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

1. Introduction. Russia in the South African Imaginary -- 2. The Novel at a Crossroads: Gordimer, Tlali, & the Struggle for Form: I. Testing Trans-Century Parallels ;                                                                   II. Gordimer's Effacement by Narration ; III. The Path of Progress in Miriam Tlali's Amandla -- 3. Making Animals Work in Tolstoy, Coetzee, and Van Niekerk: I. Dismantling Tolstoy's Strider ; II. Coetzee's Action of Absence ; III. Enduring Isolation in Marlene van Niekerk's Triomf -- 4. Retreating Reality: Chekhov's South African Afterlives: I. Structuring Chekhovian Timelessness ; II. De Wet's Self-Disabling Response ; III. The Risky Business of Canonical Affirmation -- 5. Émigré Fiction and the Double-Bind of Home. I. Permeable Repossessions and Nabokov's Speak, Memory ; II. Mark Behr's Not-Quite-Global Novel ; III. Nkosi's Mandela's Ego as Ambivalent Mourning -- 6. Epilogue -- Works Cited -- Index.

Sommario/riassunto

"How do great moments in literary traditions arise from times of intense social and political upheaval? South African Literature's Russian Soul charts the interplay of narrative innovation and political isolation in two of the world's most renowned non-European literatures. In this book, Jeanne-Marie Jackson demonstrates how Russian writing's "Golden Age" in the troubled nineteenth-century has served as a model for South African writers both during and after apartheid. Exploring



these two isolated literary cultures alongside each other, the book challenges the limits of "global" methodologies in contemporary literary studies and outdated models of center-periphery relations to argue for a more locally involved scale of literary enquiry with more truly global horizons."--Bloomsbury Publishing.