Browsing by Author "Du Plooy, Jacobus Andrias"

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    L’Age des tenebres 2.0 : L’Humanite au nadir dans Serotonine de Michel Houellebecq et Die troebel tyd d’Ingrid Winterbach
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2022-03) Du Plooy, Jacobus Andrias; Du Toit, Catherine; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Modern Foreign Languages.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Die troebel tyd by Ingrid Winterbach was published in South Africa in December 2018. Only a month later, Michel Houellebecq's Sérotonine appears, a French novel that has its origins in a context that differs in many respects from the South African context in which Winterbach works. Despite obvious differences in style and plot, there are similarities between the two novels in terms of their themes. This study compares the way in which the novels depict themes reflecting the Anthropocene, society, interpersonal relationships, spirituality and depression. Although each of these themes can be studied separately, they never function completely independently from one another other in the context of each novel. Edgar Morin's complexity theory provides a good theoretical framework within which the thematic coherence can be studied. At the same time, the thesis seeks to contribute in an interdisciplinary manner to the application of complexity theory to literature. By looking at the way in which all the above themes fit together and seemingly contribute to a prevailing esprit du temps that is particularly marked by depression, the thesis casts a holistic view on the depiction of contemporary Western society in Sérotonine and Die troebel tyd. Given the confluence of complexity theory and the two novels, the thesis also offers a representation of the extent to which a novel itself can be regarded as a complex system.