Full Text Available
Note: Clicking the button above will open the full text document at the original institutional repository in a new window.
Fiction, ideology and history : a critical examination of Hans Grimm's novel 'Kaffernland'
Bibliography: pages 186-197.
Saved in:
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
German Language and Literature
2016
|
| Subjects: | |
| Tags: |
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| _version_ | 1867613217759428608 |
|---|---|
| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | Bardien, Faiza |
| author2 | Pakendorf, Gunther |
| author_browse | Bardien, Faiza Pakendorf, Gunther |
| author_facet | Pakendorf, Gunther Bardien, Faiza |
| author_sort | Bardien, Faiza |
| collection | Thesis |
| description | Bibliography: pages 186-197. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/21877 |
| institution | University of Cape Town (South Africa) |
| language | eng |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:32:38.580Z |
| license_str | Not specified — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| publishDate | 2016 |
| publishDateRange | 2016 |
| publishDateSort | 2016 |
| publisher | German Language and Literature |
| publisherStr | German Language and Literature |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| spelling | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/21877 Fiction, ideology and history : a critical examination of Hans Grimm's novel 'Kaffernland' Bardien, Faiza Pakendorf, Gunther German Language and Literature Bibliography: pages 186-197. This dissertation aims to place Hans Grimm's uncompleted epic, Kaffernland, eine deutsche Sage (Kaffraria, a German Legend) within the context of the historical discourse of the nineteenth-century as it has been challenged by presentday critical historiography. Central to Grimm's text is the problematic relationship between fiction and historical reality. It reproduces historical documents and relies on the scientific aura of a bourgeois realist discourse to present itself as having reference to an extra-textual reality. These truth-claims are examined with Roland Barthes' structuralist techniques. I locate Grimm's text within an intertext dominated by the ideologies of German nationalism, colonial space and fate. His portrayal of mid-nineteenth century political questions is shown as a contradictory amalgam of partisanship for both the bourgeoisie and the small peasantry, of romantic anti-capitalism and pro-imperialism. The authoritarian narrative discourse affirms Britain's colonial subjugation of the Xhosa and negates Xhosa resistance. I focus on speaking positions in the text and the power of the colonizer's practice of designating and signifying. The rhetoric of the text is seen as a continuation of politics against Britain's exploitation of the British German Legion and of German missionary work in British Kaffraria. Grimm reproduces and embellishes the mythology of the German Legion as saviours of Kaffraria and Germany. He inverts history to re-make the negative record of the German Military Settlement. I show how mythic signs and a moralizing discourse stimulate an envisaged pre-World War I readership to recognize Kaffraria as a German colony and to reflect on how, in its own times, Germany can be regenerated through acquiring colonial space. The mythological discourse is also viewed in the light of the text's attempts to manifest the external factual reliability and inner truth of bourgeois realism. While Grimm deploys the literary conventions of the modern novel, as an epigone he draws on the forms of legend, saga and epic cultivated in the nineteenth century. He alludes to the Icelandic saga also to legitimize a claim to Xhosaland. This first book of the epic, presented as complete, attains a measure of cohesion through techniques of parallelism and contiguity. The text parallels the fate of the German and Xhosa nations and simultaneously signifies the Xhosa as destroyers of Xhosaland and the cattle-killing movement of 1856-57 as a diabolical plan. I see this mythologization of history as the ideological justification for the expropriation of the Xhosa and show that Grimm's colonialist fiction is in fact a colonizing discourse. 2016-09-25T16:21:49Z 2016-09-25T16:21:49Z 1988 Master Thesis Masters MA http://hdl.handle.net/11427/21877 eng application/pdf German Language and Literature Faculty of Humanities University of Cape Town |
| spellingShingle | German Language and Literature Bardien, Faiza Fiction, ideology and history : a critical examination of Hans Grimm's novel 'Kaffernland' |
| thesis_degree_str | Master's |
| title | Fiction, ideology and history : a critical examination of Hans Grimm's novel 'Kaffernland' |
| title_full | Fiction, ideology and history : a critical examination of Hans Grimm's novel 'Kaffernland' |
| title_fullStr | Fiction, ideology and history : a critical examination of Hans Grimm's novel 'Kaffernland' |
| title_full_unstemmed | Fiction, ideology and history : a critical examination of Hans Grimm's novel 'Kaffernland' |
| title_short | Fiction, ideology and history : a critical examination of Hans Grimm's novel 'Kaffernland' |
| title_sort | fiction ideology and history a critical examination of hans grimm s novel kaffernland |
| topic | German Language and Literature |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/11427/21877 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT bardienfaiza fictionideologyandhistoryacriticalexaminationofhansgrimmsnovelkaffernland |