“Two loves that I have, of comfort and despair”: the drama and architecture of Shakespeare’s sonnets
- Authors: van Wyk Smith, Malvern
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/453963 , vital:75301 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10130950.2007.9674885
- Description: This essay was delivered as the annual Shakespeare Birthday Lecture of the Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa in Grahamstown in 2017. It argues that Shakespeare’s predisposition to recognise and develop the dramatic moment turned his initial interest in the normally static and contemplative sonnet into the components of something more like an oratorio of dramatic variations in sonnet form. The author focuses on four sonnets (18, 30, 116, 129) that stake out the thematic and structural range of the whole sequence, and discusses how the poet explores the compositional and indeed architectonic possibilities inherent in the principles and procedures of pursuing ‘variations on a theme’. The sonnets can thus be understood as an ambitious proto-baroque diptych, the two halves of which were to present an elaborate allegory of love versus lust, trust versus deceit, and innocence versus experience.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
“Two loves that I have, of comfort and despair”: the drama and architecture of Shakespeare’s sonnets
- Authors: van Wyk Smith, Malvern
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/453963 , vital:75301 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10130950.2007.9674885
- Description: This essay was delivered as the annual Shakespeare Birthday Lecture of the Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa in Grahamstown in 2017. It argues that Shakespeare’s predisposition to recognise and develop the dramatic moment turned his initial interest in the normally static and contemplative sonnet into the components of something more like an oratorio of dramatic variations in sonnet form. The author focuses on four sonnets (18, 30, 116, 129) that stake out the thematic and structural range of the whole sequence, and discusses how the poet explores the compositional and indeed architectonic possibilities inherent in the principles and procedures of pursuing ‘variations on a theme’. The sonnets can thus be understood as an ambitious proto-baroque diptych, the two halves of which were to present an elaborate allegory of love versus lust, trust versus deceit, and innocence versus experience.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
“We are white”: oral tradition, documented history and molecular biology of Xhosa clans descended from non-African forebears and their expression of this ancestry through the idiom of ancestor religion
- Authors: Hayward, Janet M
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Clans -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Patrilineal kinship -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Xhosa (African people) -- Genealogy , Oral history -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Genetic genealogy , Xhosa (African people) -- Rites and ceremonies , Xhosa (African people) -- Race identity
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/62939 , vital:28312
- Description: Xhosa clan membership is symbolised by a clan-name (isiduko) and passed along the male line from father to son. This social indicator has a biological counterpart in Y chromosome DNA that passes through successive generations in the patriline. Both relate specifically to a distant patrilineal forebear or apical ancestor. The present study has involved the collection and documentation of oral-historical information relating to the descent of certain Cape Nguni clans from non-African forebears and (where possible) a review of documented accounts of such origins. The research has also included collection of buccal cells from male research participants and analysis of their Y chromosome DNA. This method indicates whether a man’s patrilineal forebear lived in Africa. Otherwise, it indicates the broad geographical region from which he originated, hence providing an additional, independent source of information relating to ancestry that can confirm or challenge claims made based on oral history. Ethnographic research into the performance of distinctive ancestor rituals by clan members explores the continuing relevance of foreign ancestry in the contemporary context of rural communities in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. The study heeds calls for the decolonisation of scholarship in various ways: methodologically, through transdisciplinary research; ontologically, by questioning the utility of the nature: culture and related dichotomies; and epistemologically, because instead of relying entirely on the western academic tradition, it takes account of other modes of knowledge production. In rejection of the notion that only one side of history is true, it records multiple voices – those of the powerful but also the ordinary. The study deals with race and racial identification, but confirms the superficiality of these constructed differences by offering evidence of their submergence in the unifying power of kinship and descent.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
- Authors: Hayward, Janet M
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Clans -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Patrilineal kinship -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Xhosa (African people) -- Genealogy , Oral history -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Genetic genealogy , Xhosa (African people) -- Rites and ceremonies , Xhosa (African people) -- Race identity
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/62939 , vital:28312
- Description: Xhosa clan membership is symbolised by a clan-name (isiduko) and passed along the male line from father to son. This social indicator has a biological counterpart in Y chromosome DNA that passes through successive generations in the patriline. Both relate specifically to a distant patrilineal forebear or apical ancestor. The present study has involved the collection and documentation of oral-historical information relating to the descent of certain Cape Nguni clans from non-African forebears and (where possible) a review of documented accounts of such origins. The research has also included collection of buccal cells from male research participants and analysis of their Y chromosome DNA. This method indicates whether a man’s patrilineal forebear lived in Africa. Otherwise, it indicates the broad geographical region from which he originated, hence providing an additional, independent source of information relating to ancestry that can confirm or challenge claims made based on oral history. Ethnographic research into the performance of distinctive ancestor rituals by clan members explores the continuing relevance of foreign ancestry in the contemporary context of rural communities in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. The study heeds calls for the decolonisation of scholarship in various ways: methodologically, through transdisciplinary research; ontologically, by questioning the utility of the nature: culture and related dichotomies; and epistemologically, because instead of relying entirely on the western academic tradition, it takes account of other modes of knowledge production. In rejection of the notion that only one side of history is true, it records multiple voices – those of the powerful but also the ordinary. The study deals with race and racial identification, but confirms the superficiality of these constructed differences by offering evidence of their submergence in the unifying power of kinship and descent.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018