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39 - Literary and cultural criticism in South Africa

from PART VI - SOUTH AFRICAN LITERATURE: CONTINUITIES AND CONTRASTS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 January 2012

By
David Johnson
Edited by
David Attwell  and
Derek Attridge
David Attwell
Affiliation:
University of York
Derek Attridge
Affiliation:
University of York
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Summary

Nineteenth-century origins

Many enduring characteristics of South African literary and cultural criticism are evident in the very first articles, book and theatre reviews and lectures that appeared in the small-circulation newspapers and periodicals of the Cape. These early newspapers included John Fairbairn and Thomas Pringle's South African Commercial Advertiser (1824–69), William Bridekirk's South African Chronicle (1824–6), Frederick Brooks's South African Grins; or, The Quizzical Depot of General Humbug (1825–6), Joseph Suasso de Lima's De Verzamelaar/The Gleaner (1826–7), C. E. Boniface and C. N. Neethling's Zuid-Afrikaan (1830–71), A. J. Jardine's Cape of Good Hope Literary Gazette (1830–5), and Robert Godlonton's Graham's Town Journal (1831–1919) (Huigen, ‘Neder-landstalige’, pp. 7–11; Lewin Robinson, None Daring). The periodicals of this period – Fairbairn and Pringle's South African Journal (1824), Abraham Faure's Het Nederduytsch Zuid-Afrikaansche Tydschrift (1824–43), Andrew Smith and James Adamson's South African Quarterly Journal (1830–7) and James L. Fitzpatrick's Cape of Good Hope Literary Magazine (1847–8) – were dominated by articles on the natural sciences, history and travel, and there were only occasional pieces of literary or cultural criticism, like Fairbairn's two-part essay ‘On the Writings of Wordsworth’ in the South African Journal (1 [1824], pp. 12–16, and 2 [1824], pp. 107–17), and the anonymous ‘On the Sources of Shakespeare's Plots’ in the Cape of Good Hope Literary Magazine (2, 10 [1848], pp. 571–92).

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of South African Literature , pp. 818 - 837
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

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