Doctoral Degrees (Afrikaans and Dutch, German and French)
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Browsing Doctoral Degrees (Afrikaans and Dutch, German and French) by Subject "Afrikaans language -- Rhetoric"
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Item Open Access 'n Diskursiewe ondersoek van enkele verteenwoordigende Afrikaanse en Nederlandse historiese romans(University of the Free State, 2005-11) Marais, Nina-Marié; Van Coller, H. P.English: The preceding study is an exploration of the interdisciplinary and inter-discursive “dialogue” between the historical novel, historiography and the philosophy of history. A rigid distinction between the discourses of literature and historiography is questioned in the contemporary literary criticism and the contemporary philosophy of history. In the work of the narrativist philosophers of history like Hayden White and Frank Ankersmit the narrative features of historiography is analysed. In contemporary literary criticism the historical novel is not studied in an autonomous manner. The emphasis in the work of Linda Hutcheon and Elisabeth Wesseling is on the close ties between historiography, the historical novel and the philosophy of history. Developments in the philosophy of history and historiography from the nineteenth century until the late twentieth century has been related to developments in the genre of the historical novel in this study. Although the developmental phases of the philosophy of history does not correlate completely with the developmental phases of the historical novel, it can be alleged that the Classical historical novel can be associated with empiricism in nineteenth century historiography and philosophy of history and that the new historical novel has a close affiliation with the contemporary philosophy of history. The poststructuralist problematisation of history has had a big influence on the contemporary philosophy of history, as well as on the new historical novel. It appears that the deconstruction of empirical approaches to historiography has a great deal in common with the contemporary critique on the historical novel in which confidence in the objective representability of the historical reality is undermined. Historiography ( like fiction ) is seen as a subjective, ideological and rhetorical construct which cannot represent the past in a transparent manner. History is viewed as a text which is constantly rewritten from new points of view and new ideological perspectives. Each attempt to reconstruct a reliable image of the past is undermined by limitations like the fact that archival material does not provide a complete picture of the past, the fact that each archival document was written from an ideological perspective or that the archive is institusionalized. The idea that history can be viewed as an ideological construct was proposed by Hutcheon and Wesseling in their work and it was especially this aspect of the historiographical discourse that was analysed in this study. Foucault’s association of discourse with a form of power was applied to the manner in which the historiographical discourse took part in the colonial discourse in the past, but also the manner in which a principally male perspective on history was favoured in the historiographical discourse in the past. With reference to contemporary historical novels like Eilande ( 2002 ) by Dan Sleigh as well as the novels of Hella Haasse like Heren van de Thee ( 1992 ), Mevrouw Bentinck of Onverenigbaarheid van karakter ( 1978 ) and Een gevaarlijke verhouding of Daal-en-Bergse brieven ( 1976 ) the ways in which the new historical novel represents an alternative form of historiography than formal historiography was investigated. It appears that new historical novels provides an alternative perspective on history than the Western and androcentric historiographical tradition. The existing historical record is supplemented in these novels with the perspective of marginal subjects such as women, indigenes, or the micro-histories of unimportant historical figures. The novelist Haasse enters the domain of the historian through the re-valuation of “apochryphal” historical sources such as the letter, diary, marriage certificate or will, whereby an alternative perspective is given on history than in the traditional, political historiography.