Masters Degrees (English)

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Browsing Masters Degrees (English) by browse.metadata.advisor "De Kock, Leon"

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    New media English literature : a product re-launch
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2012-12) James, Ryan; De Kock, Leon; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In the recent past, the large-scale production and marketing of e-reading devices, such as Amazon’s Kindle, and tablet computers, such as Apple’s iPad, have allowed literary works to be presented in a digital reading space, both in the form of standard e-books and, more recently, as enhanced or “amplified” e-books. Much of the position-taking on the matter is polarised: technologists continue to imagine the myriad possibilities of multimodal online “stories”, focusing on opportunities for interactive engagement, while the guardians of literary tradition fear the digital reading space might well cause fluency disruptions and break the hermeneutic immersion necessary for strong reading, irrevocably altering a traditional, paper-based reading experience known to promote a state of deep attention and imaginatively engaged reading. This thesis looks realistically at the current literary climate in which the so-called “digital native” operates, scrutinises the “print” versus “electronic” debate, paying careful attention to how an online environment may well prevent hermeneutic immersion, and then discusses recent enhanced literary products, such as the transmedia fiction title, Chopsticks (Penguin Group USA 2012), and the nonfiction titles released by online publisher Atavist. Then, in an attempt to bridge the gap between the technologists and the print-book purists, and based on what might be considered to be literature’s original value, the thesis proposes a digital reading product in which a formalised set of conventions and a strategic instructional design, or interface, attempts to protect the qualities of traditional, paper-based reading, while at the same time taking advantage of on-screen, online environments to reconnect digital natives with the relevance of past literatures. More specifically, the product presented herein is an attempt to demonstrate 1) how a new aesthetic of literary presentation might stimulate renewed interest in the humanities and liberal arts; 2) how fiction might be reinstated as one of the central components in the education process; 3) how works of fiction that have become increasingly obscure over time or inaccessible to young people might be re-energised; and 4) how what one might call “local” literatures might be “de-parochialised” within an increasingly globalised reading environment.
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    Welgevonden revisited : a new translation of Sewe Dae by die Silbersteins, and its literary-critical rationale
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2013-12) Penfold, Gregory; De Kock, Leon; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis re-evaluates the writing of seminal Afrikaans modernist Etienne Leroux from a South African English perspective. The present author's new translation of Leroux's prizewinning novel Sewe Dae by die Silbersteins (1962) is the focal point of an enquiry into how “rewriting”, in translation theorist André Lefevere's coinage, has shaped the reception of Leroux's work outside the Afrikaans literary system. It is shown from a literary-historiographical viewpoint that translation played a crucial role in Leroux's rise to international prominence and subsequent eclipse. It is demonstrated that Leroux's standing within the English literary system rests predominantly on extant translations of his novels, without taking into account the cyclical quality of his fiction, especially the overarching nine-novel cycle – the basis of Leroux's renown in Afrikaans. The distortions produced by this fact are critiqued. In particular, the received idea of Leroux as an apolitical obscurantist is challenged, the work of J.C. Kannemeyer especially showing that Leroux's politics and art were much more integral and radical than previously (mis)understood. A case is made for Leroux's re-evaluation as a seminal contributor to modern South African fiction comparable to J.M. Coetzee, and for the production of fresh translations of his work to facilitate this re-evaluation. A detailed account of the translation process behind the present author's new translation of Sewe Dae by die Silbersteins follows. A series of close readings compares this new translation to the first translation by Charles Eglington (1964), shows how Eglington's translation obscured certain textual strategies vital to a full comprehension of Leroux's text, examines the difficulties inherent in restoring them, and argues for the new translation's success therein. A mise au point in which insights yielded by this process feed back into an assessment of Leroux's relevance today concludes the thesis. Leroux's technique is shown to have immunised his texts against the desuetude into which time-bound “committed” literature often falls. In particular, Sewe Dae by die Silbersteins, or its new translation, emerges as a satirical anatomisation of subjectivity under late modern capitalism entirely in tune with contemporary cultural representations of apartheid as metaphor for global capitalism.