Umabatha: Zulu play or Shakespeare translation?
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2009
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7062 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007426 , https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351963381/chapters/10.4324%2F9781315264219-12
- Description: preprint , There can be few recent theatrical productions in greater need of interpretative effort than Welcome Msomi’s Umabatha. From its inception debate has raged over the cultural status of the production: was it an authentic expression of Zulu culture, or a tacky piece of ‘blacksploitation’? – to use Russell Vandenbroucke’s term. Was the production pleasing evidence of Shakespeare’s universality, a gift to the colonies returning joyfully to the motherland with interest accruing? Could it perhaps be a case of Zulu culture triumphing over Shakespeare, native invention swamping and overwhelming a colonially-imposed ‘high culture’? Was the show performing ‘Africa’ for the world and, if so, was this the way Africa ought to be represented in the twentieth century? Or were we perhaps looking at a fetishized theatrical commodity, wrenched from any authentic cultural roots, and circulating aimlessly but profitably through a globalised theatrical cosmopolis? Such speculative questions – and there are many others – have regularly jostled each other in the bulky heritage of Umabatha’s reception history. The central problem underlying this chapter is whether it might not be possible to define a basis for a more objective response to some of them, so that the issues involved no longer rest quite so slackly in the realm of mere critical opinion.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2009
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2009
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7062 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007426 , https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351963381/chapters/10.4324%2F9781315264219-12
- Description: preprint , There can be few recent theatrical productions in greater need of interpretative effort than Welcome Msomi’s Umabatha. From its inception debate has raged over the cultural status of the production: was it an authentic expression of Zulu culture, or a tacky piece of ‘blacksploitation’? – to use Russell Vandenbroucke’s term. Was the production pleasing evidence of Shakespeare’s universality, a gift to the colonies returning joyfully to the motherland with interest accruing? Could it perhaps be a case of Zulu culture triumphing over Shakespeare, native invention swamping and overwhelming a colonially-imposed ‘high culture’? Was the show performing ‘Africa’ for the world and, if so, was this the way Africa ought to be represented in the twentieth century? Or were we perhaps looking at a fetishized theatrical commodity, wrenched from any authentic cultural roots, and circulating aimlessly but profitably through a globalised theatrical cosmopolis? Such speculative questions – and there are many others – have regularly jostled each other in the bulky heritage of Umabatha’s reception history. The central problem underlying this chapter is whether it might not be possible to define a basis for a more objective response to some of them, so that the issues involved no longer rest quite so slackly in the realm of mere critical opinion.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2009
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
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
Intellectual challenge is as necessary as breathing: an interview with Laurence Wright
- Authors: Wright, Laurence , Pearce, B
- Date: 2009
- Language: English
- Type: text , Article
- Identifier: vital:7059 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007422
- Description: Professor Laurence Wright is Director of the Institute for the Study of English in Africa at Rhodes University. In 2009, he will have completed 25 years of research, teaching and scholarship at Rhodes University and this interview marks the occasion. A Rhodes Scholar and a Commonwealth Scholar, he studied at the universities of Rhodes, Warwick and Oxford. He is also Honorary Life President of the Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa. He has published widely in literary studies and is the Managing Editor of two academic journals as well as of the poetry magazine New Coin. He currently serves on the Council of the English Academy and is a co-opted member of the English National Language Body. He has taken a broad interest in the role of English in this country, ranging from language policy and teacher education matters, to archival research and the role of the humanities in public life. I thought that it would be worthwhile to interview him as his knowledge of literature is substantial, while his incisive and engaging thoughts on a range of topics are worth hearing. The interview was conducted intermittently by email between July and October, 2008.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2009
- Authors: Wright, Laurence , Pearce, B
- Date: 2009
- Language: English
- Type: text , Article
- Identifier: vital:7059 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007422
- Description: Professor Laurence Wright is Director of the Institute for the Study of English in Africa at Rhodes University. In 2009, he will have completed 25 years of research, teaching and scholarship at Rhodes University and this interview marks the occasion. A Rhodes Scholar and a Commonwealth Scholar, he studied at the universities of Rhodes, Warwick and Oxford. He is also Honorary Life President of the Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa. He has published widely in literary studies and is the Managing Editor of two academic journals as well as of the poetry magazine New Coin. He currently serves on the Council of the English Academy and is a co-opted member of the English National Language Body. He has taken a broad interest in the role of English in this country, ranging from language policy and teacher education matters, to archival research and the role of the humanities in public life. I thought that it would be worthwhile to interview him as his knowledge of literature is substantial, while his incisive and engaging thoughts on a range of topics are worth hearing. The interview was conducted intermittently by email between July and October, 2008.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2009
David Lurie's learning and the meaning of J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2010
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7063 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007428 , http://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC47864
- Description: preprint , One of the teasing characteristics of novels soused in literariness, like J.M. Coetzee’s, is their tendency to leak, to bleed, into vast inchoate terrains of intertextuality.The reader is constantly challenged to measure and assess their implications within or against the frail containing form of the story, much as Russian formalism taught us to keep sujet and fable in perpetual dialogue. However, it has become apparent that in the dense thickets of commentary occasioned by Coetzee’s most controversial novel, Disgrace (1999), insufficient attention has been paid to the intertextual implications of David Lurie’s learning, his scholarly preoccupations. Unless the reader attempts this kind of exploration, two of the most vexed issues freighting the novel’s central fabulation: Lucy’s curiously stoical, impassive response to her rape, together with her decision to stay on in South Africa; and David Lurie’s sudden, seemingly inexplicable care for the doomed dogs, from their last moments at the animal shelter until he lovingly consigns their corpses to the incinerator, must remain opaque. In particular, the final words of the novel, “Yes, I am giving him up” (220), uttered in relation to the immanent “Lösung” of the little dog Bev Shaw calls Driepoot, will tend to taunt the reader, rather than illuminate.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2010
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2010
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7063 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007428 , http://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC47864
- Description: preprint , One of the teasing characteristics of novels soused in literariness, like J.M. Coetzee’s, is their tendency to leak, to bleed, into vast inchoate terrains of intertextuality.The reader is constantly challenged to measure and assess their implications within or against the frail containing form of the story, much as Russian formalism taught us to keep sujet and fable in perpetual dialogue. However, it has become apparent that in the dense thickets of commentary occasioned by Coetzee’s most controversial novel, Disgrace (1999), insufficient attention has been paid to the intertextual implications of David Lurie’s learning, his scholarly preoccupations. Unless the reader attempts this kind of exploration, two of the most vexed issues freighting the novel’s central fabulation: Lucy’s curiously stoical, impassive response to her rape, together with her decision to stay on in South Africa; and David Lurie’s sudden, seemingly inexplicable care for the doomed dogs, from their last moments at the animal shelter until he lovingly consigns their corpses to the incinerator, must remain opaque. In particular, the final words of the novel, “Yes, I am giving him up” (220), uttered in relation to the immanent “Lösung” of the little dog Bev Shaw calls Driepoot, will tend to taunt the reader, rather than illuminate.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2010
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
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
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
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
Hill of Fools: a South African Romeo and Juliet?
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2004
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7039 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007377 , http://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC47866
- Description: preprint , What kind of debt does Hill of Fools owe to Shakespeare? Look up ‘Peteni’ in the Companion to South African English Literature (1986) and you will be told that Hill of Fools is “loosely based on the story of Romeo and Juliet” (155). Scan the first newspaper reviews (see “The Early Reception of Hill of Fools” in this volume) and it is noticeable that a great many journalists focus on the Shakespeare connection as a means of introducing the book to their readers. One of the publisher’s readers, Henry Chakava, urged before publication that once all references to tribe or tribalism had been excised “the result will be a Romeo and Juliet type story much more superior to Weep Not Child.” The author himself reportedly described the book as “a black Romeo and Juliet drama” (Tribune Reporter 1988). And, indeed, some kind of parallel is patent to anyone who reads Hill of Fools with Shakespeare’s play in mind.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2004
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2004
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7039 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007377 , http://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC47866
- Description: preprint , What kind of debt does Hill of Fools owe to Shakespeare? Look up ‘Peteni’ in the Companion to South African English Literature (1986) and you will be told that Hill of Fools is “loosely based on the story of Romeo and Juliet” (155). Scan the first newspaper reviews (see “The Early Reception of Hill of Fools” in this volume) and it is noticeable that a great many journalists focus on the Shakespeare connection as a means of introducing the book to their readers. One of the publisher’s readers, Henry Chakava, urged before publication that once all references to tribe or tribalism had been excised “the result will be a Romeo and Juliet type story much more superior to Weep Not Child.” The author himself reportedly described the book as “a black Romeo and Juliet drama” (Tribune Reporter 1988). And, indeed, some kind of parallel is patent to anyone who reads Hill of Fools with Shakespeare’s play in mind.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2004