Broadened Horizons

Perhaps, as a point of departure and orientation to this collection, we need to pose the question, ‘What is literature?’ There are three reasons for doing this. Firstly, the question forms the core to the understanding of this concept in the context of this collection of critical essays. Secondly, thinking through this question and attempting to provide an answer to it will prepare readers of the collection for what to expect in the book. Thirdly, a definition of ‘literature’ will make readers better understand the rationale behind the title of this collection, Broadened Horizons.

Cuddon (2013: 404) defines ‘literature’ as

Abrams and Harphan (2012: 197) define ‘literature’ in similar terms when they put it thus:

There are a few observations worth making about the foregoing definitions. The three scholars agree that literature generally refers to written works that are categorized under the main literary genres, namely poetry, short prose, long prose and drama. By implication, this excludes fictional narratives such as films, children’s stories and creative advertisement. As Abrams and Harphan’s definition observes, a broader definition of ‘literature’ includes other writings, which include philosophy, history and scientific writings that demonstrate high levels of form and express emotional power. This broadened understanding of literature is relevant to this collection because the collection views literature as not limited to the main literary genres but also inclusive of other creative forms such as advertisements, cartoons, films and telenovelas. For the inclusive understanding of literature, we, as editors of this collection, thought it necessary not to divide the book into different sections. Had it been necessary, we would have easily had three sections, namely literature, films and popular media.

This collection comprises ten chapters from different authors, and these chapters are independent of each other. The authors of these chapters are experts in their field; some teach at university and others are excellent postgraduate research students at their respective universities. The chapters cover a wide range of issues, which include alliteration in poetry, code switching in cartoons, the dramatic method of characterization in the novel, gendered identities in films, the depiction of theme in poetry and the multimodal discourse analysis of a television reality show. There are also chapters on postcolonial interpretation of a South African film, a feminist reading or interpretation of an African film, a comparative approach to Shakespeare’s drama and the isiZulu drama and postcolonial reading of selected isiZulu novels. We hope that the readers of this collection will be enriched and their understanding of African literature broadened.

Dumisani Sibiya

Zilibele Mtumane

References

Abrams, M. H. (2012). A Glossary of Literary Terms (Tenth edition). Australia: Wadsworth.

Cuddon, J. A. (2013). A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (Fifth edition). West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.

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Introduction

Elelwani (2012) is the first Tshivenda feature film shot in Thohoyandou, Limpopo. It is an adaptation of a novel written in 1954 by Titus Tsieni Maumela. Directed by Ntshabeni wa Luruli, who is a first-language Tshivenda speaker, this film becomes the site of inclusion of the marginal landscape. The young Elelwani, with her Western education, embodies modernity whereas her village and rural background represent a traditional system which is enormously influential and will, seemingly, be the young woman’s life in the future. In Elelwani the novel, the narration reflects on the fractures and anxieties of the 1950s, which were ushered by Christian modernity and its infiltration into traditions, customs and rituals of the Venda people. In his text, Maumela portrays education as empowering Venda women in Limpopo and offering alternative ways through which to imagine themselves as social actors with voices. In Wa Luruli’s adaptation of the novel into a film, Elelwani is a graduate with an auspicious scholarship to further her studies abroad. However, (Western) education, which is seen as an empowering tool for a girl child in Maumela’s novel and as progressive discourses would have it, does not appear to be a priority in this narration.

Scholars such as Frassinelli (2017) and Tager (2017) have described this text as an African film with a third cinema aesthetic. The film adopts magical realism and African mythologies in accordance with Tshivenda culture to create a special visual vocabulary on screen. Like any third cinema aesthetic film, Wa Luruli’s adaptation draws on third cinema aesthetics which operate through ‘contexts’ that allow the culture of VhaVenda to dictate the form of the narrative. As a post-apartheid film, Elelwani offers alternative ways of imagining a marginal community and ways of reconciling the past and the present through the inclusion of historical memory. This chapter explores how the inclusion of oral tradition in the film assists Elelwani in accepting her customary duty as queen. The filmmaker as a griot and his ability to provide subtle commentary on the context of the Venda culture navigate the crossroads of cultural reality and fiction juxtaposed against the historical recollection of memory and, in this way, allow for the possibility of an aspirant future in which modernity and tradition coexist. Drawing on third-space aesthetics, the argument in this chapter is demonstrated by analysing the following thematic concerns: the mother as a custodian of cultural traditions, return to the source, memory-making and the positionality of women and leadership in Africa, power-giving objects and binding mystical beliefs, and temporality as explored through Madzwara’s (the village madman) recollection of memory.