Mite, sage, epos en sprokie: Die transformasie van tradisionele patrone in twee Afrikaanse romans uit 1991
Year: 1993
Type: article
Abstract: Summary It was more than sixty years ago that Vladimir Propp and Andre Jolles published their formalistic viewpoints on the basic structure of simple tales. Propp researched the fairy tale or Russian “wondertale”; Jolles tried to describe a typical schematic pattern that is present in simple forms like the “Legende, Sage, Mythe, Ratsel, Spruch, Kasus, Memorabile, Marchen, Witz”. Since then Formalism has been replaced by numerous new accents in literary research, and theories related to Structuralism, Semantics, Marxism and Feminism amongst others, successively gained ground. This article offers a contemporary review of the ideas of Jolles and Propp based on a reading of two Afrikaans novels published during 1991. They are Andre P. Brink's Die kreef raak gewoond daaraan (available in English as An Act of Terror), and Abjater wat so lag by Wilma Stockenstrom. In both novels traditional forms like the saga and the fairy tale were transformed at a narratological and ideological level. Brink constructs a paradigm of respectively simple forms like the saga, the myth, the art form and the epic. In Stockenström's novel the fairy tale is deconstructed from a feministic point of view. Evidently schematism and pattern‐like repetition still function in the modern text, albeit within the context of creative transformation and the reaction to a changed social dispensation.
Source: Journal of Literary Studies
Author: Henriette Roos
Institution: University of South Africa
Language: Dutch
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $388
OpenAlex ID: W2002106737