Journal of Literary Studies articles

Recent articles from Journal of Literary Studies

Introduction: the power of autobiography in Southern Africa.(Special Issue 1)(Editorial)
March 1, 2009... Biography became an important method of reconstructing the past in Britain and America only in the nineteenth century and by the second quarter of the twentieth century it had, in radical circles at least, come to be regarded as inferior historiography. The cult of the great leader or the...

Writing a life in epistolic form: Bessie Head's letters.(Interview)
March 1, 2009... Summary In this article Bessie Head's letters--mainly those published in the two collections, Vigne's A Gesture of Belonging (1991) and Cullinan's/maginative Trespasser (2005) along with extracts from her letters quoted in Eilersen's biography of Head, Thunder Behind Her Ears (1995)--are...

The self-invention of Hugh Masekela.
March 1, 2009... Summary This article examines the self-invention of Hugh Masekela as a troubadour of music and the frames through which the construction of the memory process is allowed to unfold. It argues that unlike straightforward resistance autobiography, Masekela's Still Grazing (2004) is an odd...

Challenging aids denialism--Khabzela: life and times of a South African.(Critical essay)
March 1, 2009... Summary This article argues that the biography Khabzela: Life and Times of a South African (Mc Gregor 2005) repositions Aids sufferers at the centre of the current HIV and Aids debate. The article shows that, through the tragic representation of its subject, the biography advocates the...

The story of Seretse and Ruth: a Southern African foundational fiction.(Critical essay)
March 1, 2009... Summary This article is centred on Wilf Mbanga and Trish Mbanga's Seretse and Ruth (2005), a Zimbabwean-authored, fictionalised biography of the first President of Botswana, Seretse Khama and his British wife, Ruth Williams. In the article, analysis of Seretse and Ruth is placed within...