Introduction: Stimela: railway poems of South Africa
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7058 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007420
- Description: preprint , A collection of railway poems is an unusual undertaking. More than an exercise in nostalgia, this anthology captures a large slice of modern South African life, viewed from different perspectives. Many of South Africa’s best poets have written railway poems. This is unsurprising, for railways hold special meaning for a variety of people – people in all walks of life – who find them not only fascinating but emotionally sympatico. The place of railways in the South African economy is changing rapidly, and it will be interesting to see in the coming years whether the less personal, more streamlined business model that is taking shape will attract the same naïve fascination engendered by South African railways over the past two centuries.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7058 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007420
- Description: preprint , A collection of railway poems is an unusual undertaking. More than an exercise in nostalgia, this anthology captures a large slice of modern South African life, viewed from different perspectives. Many of South Africa’s best poets have written railway poems. This is unsurprising, for railways hold special meaning for a variety of people – people in all walks of life – who find them not only fascinating but emotionally sympatico. The place of railways in the South African economy is changing rapidly, and it will be interesting to see in the coming years whether the less personal, more streamlined business model that is taking shape will attract the same naïve fascination engendered by South African railways over the past two centuries.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
Inventing the Human: Brontosaurus Bloom and “the Shakespeare in us”
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7045 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007387 , https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351963534/chapters/10.4324%2F9781315264264-15
- Description: preprint , This essay was occasioned by the casual reading of a book called Harold Bloom’s Shakespeare (2002), a collection of responses, pro, ante and puzzled, to Bloom’s Shakespearean magnum opus. The more I browsed in the assembled essays, some of them originally reviews and conference papers, others specially commissioned responses, the more curious I became. On the whole, the contributors seemed not to understand Bloom, at least not to understand him adequately, which is a devastating handicap when the task in hand is to pass judgment. The problem seems to be that few academic commentators take Bloom seriously, accepting that he means what he says; more accurately, they find it hard to entertain with full seriousness matters Bloom intends should be taken entirely seriously. Shakespeareans, locked into their various ways of understanding the world and critical activity, generally try to find Shakespeare (or “Shakespeare”) through reading Bloom, whereas he wants us to find ourselves through reading Shakespeare: to uncover what Emerson called ‘the Shakespeare in us’ (‘Shakespeare, or The Poet’, 256). The difference is stupendous. We ought first to ask in regard to Bloom’s blockbuster the question Bloom tells us he learned from Kenneth Burke, ‘What is the author trying to do for himself or herself by writing this work?’ (Shakespeare, 412).
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7045 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007387 , https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351963534/chapters/10.4324%2F9781315264264-15
- Description: preprint , This essay was occasioned by the casual reading of a book called Harold Bloom’s Shakespeare (2002), a collection of responses, pro, ante and puzzled, to Bloom’s Shakespearean magnum opus. The more I browsed in the assembled essays, some of them originally reviews and conference papers, others specially commissioned responses, the more curious I became. On the whole, the contributors seemed not to understand Bloom, at least not to understand him adequately, which is a devastating handicap when the task in hand is to pass judgment. The problem seems to be that few academic commentators take Bloom seriously, accepting that he means what he says; more accurately, they find it hard to entertain with full seriousness matters Bloom intends should be taken entirely seriously. Shakespeareans, locked into their various ways of understanding the world and critical activity, generally try to find Shakespeare (or “Shakespeare”) through reading Bloom, whereas he wants us to find ourselves through reading Shakespeare: to uncover what Emerson called ‘the Shakespeare in us’ (‘Shakespeare, or The Poet’, 256). The difference is stupendous. We ought first to ask in regard to Bloom’s blockbuster the question Bloom tells us he learned from Kenneth Burke, ‘What is the author trying to do for himself or herself by writing this work?’ (Shakespeare, 412).
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
Mussolini's moment: Roy Sargeant directs The Merchant of Venice at Maynardville, January, 2007
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7047 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007389 , http://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC48107
- Description: preprint , What an inspired choice of play for this year’s Maynardville offering! With the national scene strewn with trials and rumours of trials, all of them vital to the quality of life citizens of this fair city beneath the beautiful mountain (‘Belmont’) may hope to enjoy in the future, Shakespeare’s cliff-hanger about the use and abuse of the law couldn’t be more apt.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7047 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007389 , http://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC48107
- Description: preprint , What an inspired choice of play for this year’s Maynardville offering! With the national scene strewn with trials and rumours of trials, all of them vital to the quality of life citizens of this fair city beneath the beautiful mountain (‘Belmont’) may hope to enjoy in the future, Shakespeare’s cliff-hanger about the use and abuse of the law couldn’t be more apt.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
Something rotten in this age of hope, The HamletMachine: directed by Wesley Deintje. Rhodes University Theatre. 28 September 2007: theatre reviews
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2008
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455808 , vital:75458 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC48108
- Description: Heiner Müller's most famous play (Die Hamletmaschine, 1977) has evolved into something of a familiar war-horse for student theatre. The United States in particular has taken to the work; indeed, it was meant in part for them : "Heil Coca-cola!" says the script. For today's South African ears this has become, very aptly, "Hail the Rainbow Nation!" What young director can resist it? Only eight pages in extent, the sparse yet densely referential text offers unfettered scope for interpretation and contextualization.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2008
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455808 , vital:75458 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC48108
- Description: Heiner Müller's most famous play (Die Hamletmaschine, 1977) has evolved into something of a familiar war-horse for student theatre. The United States in particular has taken to the work; indeed, it was meant in part for them : "Heil Coca-cola!" says the script. For today's South African ears this has become, very aptly, "Hail the Rainbow Nation!" What young director can resist it? Only eight pages in extent, the sparse yet densely referential text offers unfettered scope for interpretation and contextualization.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
As You Like It: directed by Helen Flax. Mannville, Port Elizabeth. 2007: theatre review
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: text , review
- Identifier: vital:7051 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007410 , https://journals.co.za/content/iseasosa/19/1/EJC48089
- Description: preprint , This was a stylish, well-conceived production, which made sense and meaning from what is probably Shakespeare’s most delicate, and ‘English’, of comedies. The piece calls for strong ensemble playing, a full stage of equals rather than a few strong parts dominating the story. The Port Elizabeth Shakespearean Festival pulled it off marvelously.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: text , review
- Identifier: vital:7051 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007410 , https://journals.co.za/content/iseasosa/19/1/EJC48089
- Description: preprint , This was a stylish, well-conceived production, which made sense and meaning from what is probably Shakespeare’s most delicate, and ‘English’, of comedies. The piece calls for strong ensemble playing, a full stage of equals rather than a few strong parts dominating the story. The Port Elizabeth Shakespearean Festival pulled it off marvelously.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
Language policy and planning: general constraints and pressures
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7043 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007385
- Description: preprint , The general idea of language policy and planning is easily expressed. Christopher Brumfit, for one, defines language planning as “The attempt to control the use, status, and structure of a language through a language policy developed by a government or other authority” (see the Oxford Companion to the English Language). The Random House Dictionary of the English Language concurs, but adds some detail: language planning is “the development of policies or programmes designed to direct or change language use, as through the establishment of an official language, the standardization or modernization of a language, or the development or alteration of a writing system”. Such definitions could easily be multiplied, and they differ only slightly in nuance and depth.Language Policy is the formal, often legally entrenched, expression of language planning.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7043 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007385
- Description: preprint , The general idea of language policy and planning is easily expressed. Christopher Brumfit, for one, defines language planning as “The attempt to control the use, status, and structure of a language through a language policy developed by a government or other authority” (see the Oxford Companion to the English Language). The Random House Dictionary of the English Language concurs, but adds some detail: language planning is “the development of policies or programmes designed to direct or change language use, as through the establishment of an official language, the standardization or modernization of a language, or the development or alteration of a writing system”. Such definitions could easily be multiplied, and they differ only slightly in nuance and depth.Language Policy is the formal, often legally entrenched, expression of language planning.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
Shakespeare's Stories of the English Middle Ages: From Richard the Second, Henry the Fourth and Henry the Fifth
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455779 , vital:75456 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC48086
- Description: Here is the story of the history plays from Richard II to Henry 1V (both parts) and Henry V retold in piquant prose sufficiently gripping to hold the attention of anyone willing to make some effort, hi a sense the book reverses the dominant twentieth century pedagogical mantra by turning attention from stage to page, almost novelising the material.[...] the contrast between history proper and the Shakespearean mythography as seen in the plays becomes all the clearer when confronted in this orderly prose exposition, provided you also know the historical versions.[...] the poetry and the vibrant language of the original are missing, and the drama is transmogrified by this very different medium.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455779 , vital:75456 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC48086
- Description: Here is the story of the history plays from Richard II to Henry 1V (both parts) and Henry V retold in piquant prose sufficiently gripping to hold the attention of anyone willing to make some effort, hi a sense the book reverses the dominant twentieth century pedagogical mantra by turning attention from stage to page, almost novelising the material.[...] the contrast between history proper and the Shakespearean mythography as seen in the plays becomes all the clearer when confronted in this orderly prose exposition, provided you also know the historical versions.[...] the poetry and the vibrant language of the original are missing, and the drama is transmogrified by this very different medium.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
The humanities, vocationalism and the public good: exploring 'the Hamlet factor'
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7028 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007214 , https://doi.org/10.1080/17535360712331393503
- Description: preprint , This paper argues that the social mission of the humanities is no longer well understood by the public, sometimes not even by the very institutions seeking to attract students to these disciplines, the universities. It becomes difficult to argue for the cogency of research in the humanities, let alone for a specific national research agenda, when the general relation between the humanities and society is widely mistaken. To address such misapprehensions, the discussion outlines as clearly as possible the characteristic procedures of the humanities, the manner in which they inform individual and social transformation, and the contemporary predicament which makes them more rather than less needed in society’s repertoire of educational resources. With this understanding in place, the paper then puts forward suggestions for strengthening research in the humanities as part of a broader programme to renovate the humanities in the South African education system.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7028 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007214 , https://doi.org/10.1080/17535360712331393503
- Description: preprint , This paper argues that the social mission of the humanities is no longer well understood by the public, sometimes not even by the very institutions seeking to attract students to these disciplines, the universities. It becomes difficult to argue for the cogency of research in the humanities, let alone for a specific national research agenda, when the general relation between the humanities and society is widely mistaken. To address such misapprehensions, the discussion outlines as clearly as possible the characteristic procedures of the humanities, the manner in which they inform individual and social transformation, and the contemporary predicament which makes them more rather than less needed in society’s repertoire of educational resources. With this understanding in place, the paper then puts forward suggestions for strengthening research in the humanities as part of a broader programme to renovate the humanities in the South African education system.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
Trafficking in Shakespeare: origins and prospects for the'Southern Hemisphere Spread of Shakespeare'research and publication programme.
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455904 , vital:75466 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC48091
- Description: This paper introduced the ‘Southern Hemisphere Spread of Shakespeare’ session at the 8th World Shakespeare Congress in Brisbane, July 2006. The purpose of the session was to outline the rationale for the research programme in order to extend its scope and encourage further participation by scholars in the field.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455904 , vital:75466 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC48091
- Description: This paper introduced the ‘Southern Hemisphere Spread of Shakespeare’ session at the 8th World Shakespeare Congress in Brisbane, July 2006. The purpose of the session was to outline the rationale for the research programme in order to extend its scope and encourage further participation by scholars in the field.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
A research prospectus for the humanities
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: Book chapter , text
- Identifier: vital:7027 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007213
- Description: The humanities in South Africa, as elsewhere, face a crisis of credibility.There is pressing need for the humanities to articulate their social and educational purpose more clearly, so that their academic value is recognised beyond the confines of academia.The aim of reshaping human character and society remains the foundational impulse of the humanities. This is achieved through the careful study of specially selected exemplary 'texts': literary works, fine art, social schemes, intellectual movements, historical episodes, and philosophical and religious outlooks.Students are required to respond in person to both 'text' and the discourse of which it is an exemplary instantiation. This is the manner in which they act to influence character and society.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: Book chapter , text
- Identifier: vital:7027 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007213
- Description: The humanities in South Africa, as elsewhere, face a crisis of credibility.There is pressing need for the humanities to articulate their social and educational purpose more clearly, so that their academic value is recognised beyond the confines of academia.The aim of reshaping human character and society remains the foundational impulse of the humanities. This is achieved through the careful study of specially selected exemplary 'texts': literary works, fine art, social schemes, intellectual movements, historical episodes, and philosophical and religious outlooks.Students are required to respond in person to both 'text' and the discourse of which it is an exemplary instantiation. This is the manner in which they act to influence character and society.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
Book review: Derek Barker: English Academic Literary Discourse in South Africa 1958-2004: A Review of 11 Academic Journals
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:7044 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007386
- Description: Barker’s book concerns the evolution and publishing trajectories of South African journals devoted to English literary studies between the years 1958 (when the first such journal, English Studies in Africa, came into being) and 2004, the end-date of the survey. In other words, his work coincides with the period in South African history when apartheid’s protagonists were pushing for total political and social ascendancy through to the nation’s emergence into the arena of democratic possibility.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:7044 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007386
- Description: Barker’s book concerns the evolution and publishing trajectories of South African journals devoted to English literary studies between the years 1958 (when the first such journal, English Studies in Africa, came into being) and 2004, the end-date of the survey. In other words, his work coincides with the period in South African history when apartheid’s protagonists were pushing for total political and social ascendancy through to the nation’s emergence into the arena of democratic possibility.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
Much Ado: Directed by Linda-Louise Swain, 2006. 21 February-4 March: theatre review
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455654 , vital:75446 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC48071
- Description: Shakespeare’s comedies are full of froth and frivol, none more so than Much Ado, which purportedly advertises an overt lack of seriousness in its title. If a production misses the essential lightness of such plays, two things happen. First, the audience is lost, hopelessly at sea, completely bewildered. Second, those unexpected moments where the genius of comedy suddenly erupts in searing insight become indistinguishable from the general temper of events.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455654 , vital:75446 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC48071
- Description: Shakespeare’s comedies are full of froth and frivol, none more so than Much Ado, which purportedly advertises an overt lack of seriousness in its title. If a production misses the essential lightness of such plays, two things happen. First, the audience is lost, hopelessly at sea, completely bewildered. Second, those unexpected moments where the genius of comedy suddenly erupts in searing insight become indistinguishable from the general temper of events.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
Repositioning Renaissance studies in South Africa: strategic thinking or 'business-as-usual
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:7054 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007415
- Description: Increasingly, in many leading South African tertiary departments of literature, early modern studies have a fairly slim hold on the core curriculum. More and more, departmental offerings concentrate on nineteenth and twentieth century literature, perhaps in the belief either that today’s students are so poorly prepared that they will never be able to cope with the mental shifts necessary to appreciate pre-industrial literature and its language, or, worse, that nothing before the C19 colonial incursion into South Africa can really matter very much to undergraduates. Whatever the reason, in such departments, it is no longer possible to get to grips with the contribution of the renaissance to the formation of the modern world. The significance of the broader nomenclature, early modern studies, doesn’t appear to strike home, especially the point that, if students want to understand the world we live in, they have to know this period particularly well. Indeed, they need to have some idea of the interaction between early modern Europe and the literature and ideas of the ancient civilizations of Rome and Greece. If we fail them in this regard, as I believe we are doing to an increasing extent, the result will be generations of intellectual sleepwalkers, denizens of mental landscapes they are responding to, or ‘reading’, in terms of an inner life unaware of important historical continuities and disjunctions; cut off, moreover, from understanding essential features of modernity.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:7054 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007415
- Description: Increasingly, in many leading South African tertiary departments of literature, early modern studies have a fairly slim hold on the core curriculum. More and more, departmental offerings concentrate on nineteenth and twentieth century literature, perhaps in the belief either that today’s students are so poorly prepared that they will never be able to cope with the mental shifts necessary to appreciate pre-industrial literature and its language, or, worse, that nothing before the C19 colonial incursion into South Africa can really matter very much to undergraduates. Whatever the reason, in such departments, it is no longer possible to get to grips with the contribution of the renaissance to the formation of the modern world. The significance of the broader nomenclature, early modern studies, doesn’t appear to strike home, especially the point that, if students want to understand the world we live in, they have to know this period particularly well. Indeed, they need to have some idea of the interaction between early modern Europe and the literature and ideas of the ancient civilizations of Rome and Greece. If we fail them in this regard, as I believe we are doing to an increasing extent, the result will be generations of intellectual sleepwalkers, denizens of mental landscapes they are responding to, or ‘reading’, in terms of an inner life unaware of important historical continuities and disjunctions; cut off, moreover, from understanding essential features of modernity.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
A Magical 'Dream': The Port Elizabeth Shakespearean Festival 2005
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2005
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455563 , vital:75439 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC48058
- Description: Mannville has always had a special relationship with this particular play, which inaugurated the theatre in St George's Park with Lesley French's 1972 production, and has been performed there on a number of occasions since. It is the archetypal Shakespearean show for outdoor theatre, and the PE Shakespearean Festival productions in a sense transport the delightful balmy (and sometimes barmy!) traditions established at the summertime open-air theatre in Regents Park, London, where Lesley French enjoyed so many triumphs--not least with this play--to Eastern Cape soil. Outdoor theatre has its risks, logistical and climatic, but when it comes off, as this show did, the result is vividly memorable.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2005
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2005
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455563 , vital:75439 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC48058
- Description: Mannville has always had a special relationship with this particular play, which inaugurated the theatre in St George's Park with Lesley French's 1972 production, and has been performed there on a number of occasions since. It is the archetypal Shakespearean show for outdoor theatre, and the PE Shakespearean Festival productions in a sense transport the delightful balmy (and sometimes barmy!) traditions established at the summertime open-air theatre in Regents Park, London, where Lesley French enjoyed so many triumphs--not least with this play--to Eastern Cape soil. Outdoor theatre has its risks, logistical and climatic, but when it comes off, as this show did, the result is vividly memorable.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2005
Book Review:‘These Traits Portend’: review of Thabo Mbeki and the Struggle for the Soul of the ANC by William Mervyn Gumede
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2005
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7049 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007391 , https://www.researchgate.net/publication/29807204_Book_Review_'These_Traits_Portend'_Review_of_Thabo_Mbeki_and_the_Struggle_for_the_Soul_of_the_ANC_by_William_Mervyn_Gumede_Cape_Town_Zebra_Press_2005
- Description: preprint , “The identity of the old ANC is changing fast and its soul is becoming harder to locate” – so writes William Gumede in his best-selling account of the Mbeki presidency. This is a thoroughly admirable book, critical, informed and deeply concerned with the welfare of the people of South Africa, especially the poor – with no taint of political hagiography. The central plank of the critique concerns the ANC’s management of the economy. Gumede’s account of the genesis of GEAR and the devious way it was sprung on the tri-partite alliance is illuminating. It was done under the rubric of necessary modernization, according to Gumede, and allegiance to the Blair/Schroeder Third Way. But there were huge ancillary consequences: the loss of influence by the ordinary ANC membership, neglect of branch activity, sidelining of the parliamentary caucus, centralization of policy development in the office of the president, increasing reliance on consultants and relentless cosying up to big business.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2005
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2005
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7049 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007391 , https://www.researchgate.net/publication/29807204_Book_Review_'These_Traits_Portend'_Review_of_Thabo_Mbeki_and_the_Struggle_for_the_Soul_of_the_ANC_by_William_Mervyn_Gumede_Cape_Town_Zebra_Press_2005
- Description: preprint , “The identity of the old ANC is changing fast and its soul is becoming harder to locate” – so writes William Gumede in his best-selling account of the Mbeki presidency. This is a thoroughly admirable book, critical, informed and deeply concerned with the welfare of the people of South Africa, especially the poor – with no taint of political hagiography. The central plank of the critique concerns the ANC’s management of the economy. Gumede’s account of the genesis of GEAR and the devious way it was sprung on the tri-partite alliance is illuminating. It was done under the rubric of necessary modernization, according to Gumede, and allegiance to the Blair/Schroeder Third Way. But there were huge ancillary consequences: the loss of influence by the ordinary ANC membership, neglect of branch activity, sidelining of the parliamentary caucus, centralization of policy development in the office of the president, increasing reliance on consultants and relentless cosying up to big business.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2005
Introduction [to the book "Thuthula: Heart of the Labyrinth" by Chris Zithulele Mann]
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2005
- Language: English
- Type: Book chapter
- Identifier: vital:7057 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007419
- Description: There are certain stories, the world over, that stir our hearts and minds to imaginings richer and deeper than the bald facts of history can easily satisfy. Such is the legend of Thuthula, the young Xhosa girl whose beauty and grace won the heart of Ngqika, chief of the Rharhabe Xhosa; the woman who was later married to his uncle Ndlambe, and then taken by Ngqika to become his wife. The events took place in or around the years 1806 and 1807 in what is now the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Prior to the central episode treated in the play, legend has it that Thuthula was out collecting firewood one day with her friends when she knelt at a spring to drink. Startled by the sudden appearance of a hunting dog crossing the stream below the spring, she looked up and saw a handsome young hunter chasing behind the dog. She was struck by his charm and good looks. Teasingly, as any young girl might do, she called her friends round her and challenged the young man to choose his favourite from among them. Amid much flirting and laughter, the object of all this girlish attention was pushed into making a choice. Inevitably, given her beauty, his playful decision fell on Thuthula. This was the first meeting of Thuthula, daughter of Mthunzana, with Ngqika, son of Chief Mlawu.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2005
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2005
- Language: English
- Type: Book chapter
- Identifier: vital:7057 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007419
- Description: There are certain stories, the world over, that stir our hearts and minds to imaginings richer and deeper than the bald facts of history can easily satisfy. Such is the legend of Thuthula, the young Xhosa girl whose beauty and grace won the heart of Ngqika, chief of the Rharhabe Xhosa; the woman who was later married to his uncle Ndlambe, and then taken by Ngqika to become his wife. The events took place in or around the years 1806 and 1807 in what is now the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Prior to the central episode treated in the play, legend has it that Thuthula was out collecting firewood one day with her friends when she knelt at a spring to drink. Startled by the sudden appearance of a hunting dog crossing the stream below the spring, she looked up and saw a handsome young hunter chasing behind the dog. She was struck by his charm and good looks. Teasingly, as any young girl might do, she called her friends round her and challenged the young man to choose his favourite from among them. Amid much flirting and laughter, the object of all this girlish attention was pushed into making a choice. Inevitably, given her beauty, his playful decision fell on Thuthula. This was the first meeting of Thuthula, daughter of Mthunzana, with Ngqika, son of Chief Mlawu.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2005
The relevance of (South African) Renaissance studies
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2005
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7055 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007416 , https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sisa/article/view/40550
- Description: preprint , This paper is part of a longer piece devoted to the elucidation of two related propositions. The first is that in South Africa the humanities in general, and Renaissance Studies in particular, are stymied by a lack of strategic thinking from those in the academy. The second is that the humanities, and Renaissance Studies, and Shakespeare, are valid and needed in this country, possibly as never before. This paper tackles the latter question, the challenge of intrinsic relevance. What possible bearing have art and literature, politics and religion, customs and technologies developed 10,000 kilometres away and nearly half a millennium ago to do with South Africa in the 21st century? I steal up on the main issue by outlining an abbreviated rhetoric of relevance, establishing a framework within which intrinsic relevance can be conceptualised for Renaissance Studies today.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2005
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2005
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7055 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007416 , https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sisa/article/view/40550
- Description: preprint , This paper is part of a longer piece devoted to the elucidation of two related propositions. The first is that in South Africa the humanities in general, and Renaissance Studies in particular, are stymied by a lack of strategic thinking from those in the academy. The second is that the humanities, and Renaissance Studies, and Shakespeare, are valid and needed in this country, possibly as never before. This paper tackles the latter question, the challenge of intrinsic relevance. What possible bearing have art and literature, politics and religion, customs and technologies developed 10,000 kilometres away and nearly half a millennium ago to do with South Africa in the 21st century? I steal up on the main issue by outlining an abbreviated rhetoric of relevance, establishing a framework within which intrinsic relevance can be conceptualised for Renaissance Studies today.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2005
"My novel, Hill of Fools"
- Peteni, R L, Wright, Laurence
- Authors: Peteni, R L , Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2004
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7038 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007376 , http://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC47869
- Description: preprint , R.L. Peteni - 'There is a tendency in human beings to pay no heed to events in small remote areas. They would rather concern themselves only with those events which make headlines, with political upheavals and industrial conflicts centred in large metropolitan regions. Yet there is always drama and human conflict in the humblest rural village. In selecting a pastoral theme and small fictitious villages in an obscure corner of Keiskammahoek as the setting of the novel, I had an ironic intention. Themes illustrated in these obscure villages would, I believed, have more universal application than they would if I had selected a larger centre, identifiable personages and known political trends. I did not want anybody to sit back, complacent, feeling that the spotlight was on Lennox Sebe’s Ciskei alone, or Kaiser Matanzima’s Transkei, or John Vorster’s apartheid South Africa. The spotlight is on the Ciskei, yes, on Transkei, on South Africa, on any other country where public life and personal relationships are bedevilled by tribalism or racialism or any form of sectionalism.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2004
- Authors: Peteni, R L , Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2004
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7038 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007376 , http://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC47869
- Description: preprint , R.L. Peteni - 'There is a tendency in human beings to pay no heed to events in small remote areas. They would rather concern themselves only with those events which make headlines, with political upheavals and industrial conflicts centred in large metropolitan regions. Yet there is always drama and human conflict in the humblest rural village. In selecting a pastoral theme and small fictitious villages in an obscure corner of Keiskammahoek as the setting of the novel, I had an ironic intention. Themes illustrated in these obscure villages would, I believed, have more universal application than they would if I had selected a larger centre, identifiable personages and known political trends. I did not want anybody to sit back, complacent, feeling that the spotlight was on Lennox Sebe’s Ciskei alone, or Kaiser Matanzima’s Transkei, or John Vorster’s apartheid South Africa. The spotlight is on the Ciskei, yes, on Transkei, on South Africa, on any other country where public life and personal relationships are bedevilled by tribalism or racialism or any form of sectionalism.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2004
An introduction: Peteni in context
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2004
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7036 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007372 , http://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC47870
- Description: preprint , It is rare for a writer to make a literary impact with only one novel. It is even more unusual when that work is written by a novice author in his early sixties. Yet such is the case of R.L. Peteni, whose novel, Hill of Fools, was published by David Philip in South Africa in 1976, and internationally in the same year by Heinemann in the African Writers Series. Four years later, in 1980, the book was translated by the author into Xhosa as Kwazidenge and published by the Lovedale Press. Twenty years after initial publication, in 1996, there came a television version of Kwazidenge broadcast by the SABC, starring Willie Thambo and Amanda Quwe, though the locale was translated – in the bizarre logic of television – to an urban environment on the Cape Flats. The transposition, though pragmatic in terms of television demographics, destroyed much of the point of Peteni’s work, for Hill of Fools is South Africa’s first regional novel in English by a black writer. It is also the first novel in English by a Xhosa-speaker.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2004
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2004
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7036 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007372 , http://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC47870
- Description: preprint , It is rare for a writer to make a literary impact with only one novel. It is even more unusual when that work is written by a novice author in his early sixties. Yet such is the case of R.L. Peteni, whose novel, Hill of Fools, was published by David Philip in South Africa in 1976, and internationally in the same year by Heinemann in the African Writers Series. Four years later, in 1980, the book was translated by the author into Xhosa as Kwazidenge and published by the Lovedale Press. Twenty years after initial publication, in 1996, there came a television version of Kwazidenge broadcast by the SABC, starring Willie Thambo and Amanda Quwe, though the locale was translated – in the bizarre logic of television – to an urban environment on the Cape Flats. The transposition, though pragmatic in terms of television demographics, destroyed much of the point of Peteni’s work, for Hill of Fools is South Africa’s first regional novel in English by a black writer. It is also the first novel in English by a Xhosa-speaker.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2004
Bollywood Twelfth Night: Steven Beresford's Production. Albery Theatre, London, September 2004: theatre review
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2004
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455629 , vital:75444 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC48040
- Description: BOLLYWOOD TWELFTH NIGHT : Steven Beresford's Production. Albery Theatre, London, September 2004. LAURENCE WRIGHT A Bollywood Shakespeare? Why not? Steven Beresford's directorial debut in West End theatre was pleasant rather than stunning, and one came away with a sense of the possibilities he had envisioned, more than those he had realized. The show opens with a tropical monsoon, sponsor of comedy's shipwreck. The setting is present-day India, a run-down street in a large city.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2004
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2004
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455629 , vital:75444 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC48040
- Description: BOLLYWOOD TWELFTH NIGHT : Steven Beresford's Production. Albery Theatre, London, September 2004. LAURENCE WRIGHT A Bollywood Shakespeare? Why not? Steven Beresford's directorial debut in West End theatre was pleasant rather than stunning, and one came away with a sense of the possibilities he had envisioned, more than those he had realized. The show opens with a tropical monsoon, sponsor of comedy's shipwreck. The setting is present-day India, a run-down street in a large city.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2004