Introduction
Introduction
The range and variety of English studies in contemporary South Africa can best be conveyed by juxtaposing two very different versions of Shakespeare encountered by the author in 1989. The first Shakespeare was firmly entrenched at Athlone Teacher Training College in Paarl, where students were protesting against apartheid education policy, the state of emergency, and elections for the discredited tricameral parliament. At the same time, the author came across a second Shakespeare on the shelves of the University of Cape Town library in an article written by South African critic Rob Nixon for the U.S. literary journal Critical Inquiry. What these two Shakespeares point to is a third figure, namely ‘Shakespeare’. This book explores the central, symptomatic role played by William Shakespeare in South African English studies, and surveys all South African literary criticism, and particularly Shakespeare criticism, produced from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present.
Keywords: English studies, South Africa, William Shakespeare, literary criticism, Shakespeare criticism, Athlone, apartheid, Rob Nixon
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
