Yves T'Sjoen

Bio: Yves T'Sjoen is an academic researcher from Ghent University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Poetry & Literary magazine. The author has an hindex of 2, co-authored 9 publications receiving 12 citations. Previous affiliations of Yves T'Sjoen include University of Pretoria.

Beloken blikvelden in de Lage Landen: Eenentwintigste-eeuwse receptie van Nederlandse vertalingen van Afrikaanse poëzie

Abstract: The South African poets Ingrid Jonker, Antjie Krog and Ronelda S. Kamfer are part of the literary system of the Low Countries. Their introduction in the Netherlands and Flanders was accomplished by translations into Dutch. An analysis of the role and the image-building of foreign literature in the Dutch-speaking world is important for (the study of) literary historiography. The presence and the reception of the three selected South African poets and their works are documented in this paper. Critics are not only interested in the literary production of national authors but also in the poetry of foreign writers (mainly available through translations). In this way, poets and their works start functioning in the literary poly-system of the Netherlands and Flanders. The manner in which images are created tells us something about the presence of Jonker, Krog and Kamfer in contemporary Dutch literature. Not only are the reactions of readers (or critics) fundamental to the study of literary reception, the way in which these writers and their poetry have gained particular positions in the literary system should also be part of the research. Revealing questions deal with the role played by intermediaries, the selection criteria for poems in anthologies, translation strategies, the promotion by commercial publishers. Foreign literature is interwoven with the poetical discourses of a national literary system. In this respect, the translated poetry by the three selected South African (Afrikaans writing) female authors is part of the borderless (Dutch) literature. Keywords: Afrikaans poetry, Dutch translation, institutional research, literary critcism.

A Trauma-Theoretical Reading of Hugues C. Pernath's War Poetry

Abstract: Summary Dominick LaCapra has pointed out that from a trauma-theoretical perspective definitions which are too generally formulated lead to an unstable distinction between victim and commentator. According to LaCapra, the idea that “contemporary culture, or even all history, is essentially traumatic or that everyone in the post-Holocaust context is a survivor” is dubious (LaCapra 2001: x-xii). If LaCapra's findings are interpreted in a narrow sense, only Holocaust victims meet the criteria for traumatic experience. The aim of this article, which focuses on the poetry of the canonical Flemish poet, Hugues C. Pernath (1931-1975), is to establish a pertinent definition that will justify the inclusion of literary projects by certain post-war poets within trauma-theoretical discourse. Pernath was so moved by visiting Auschwitz and living with a Jewish survivor that his notions about humanity were fundamentally shaken. This rupture in his world view, which is also reflected in his poetry, can thus be called trau...

Breyten Breytenbach in een zijspiegel: het vizier van H.C. ten Berge: transnationale laterale beweging en particuliere 'hetero-images' van een literaire actor

Abstract: At the end of the 1960s and in the beginning of the 1970s the South African poet Breyten Breytenbach had poetry and drawings published in the leading literary magazine Raster. The editor in charge at the time, H.C. ten Berge, gave the experimental writer and socially engaged Sestiger (the literary modernizing movement in South Africa in the sixties) pride of place in the line-ups of the Dutch modernist periodical. In the seventies, Ten Berge contributed to Vingermaan (1980), a collection of poems by Dutch writers (Lucebert, Kopland, Kouwenaar, Schierbeek) in support of the anti-apartheid activist. From 1975 Breytenbach was imprisoned in South Africa for political reasons. He served seven years of a nine year sentence. At that time, in the eighties, the Netherlands organized a cultural and economical boycott against the racist regime in Pretoria. Later on, Ten Berge Unauthenticated Download Date | 7/1/16 6:00 AM PAPERS 10(1) 2015 werkwinkel Yves T’Sjoen 34 presented his own poems dedicated to Breytenbach in his book of poetry Nieuwe gedichten (1981) and in the collection Materia prima: Gedichten 1963-1993 (1993). Before and during the imprisonment of Breytenbach Ten Berge played an important role in the introduction of the writer in the Low Countries. From a cultural-sociological point of view Breytenbach’s presence in the Dutch language area can be described, in the terminology of Francoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih and later on used by Louise Viljoen, as a transnational lateral movement in his writing career. This paper deals with the cultural transmission of an important political and experimental author in the literary system of Afrikaans and English in South Africa into the Dutch system. From a bibliographical viewpoint this paper affords special attention to the publication of Breytenbach’s volume of poetry in Skryt: Om ’n sinkende skip blou te verf ([1972] 1976), Vingermaan (1980) and Nieuwe gedichten ([1981] 1987). Ten Berge played an important role in the introduction of Breytenbach to the Low Countries in the way he presented the author’s political and aesthetic ideas to a Dutch-speaking audience.

Poetry Translations as Legitimation and Recuperation Strategies for Poets: ‘Rewritings’ of Poems by the Flemish Writers Hugo Claus and Herman de Coninck: A Terminological Problem

Abstract: Writers’ translations of other writers’ literary work can be incorporated into poetry research from an institutional perspective. Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory suggests the concept of ‘strategic repertory’: literary agents (e.g. writers) translate texts from literary systems, not just because they feel poetic or aesthetic affinity towards them, but also and especially because they enable them to stress and/or legitimize their own artistic production and positioning in the literary field. The Flemish poet Herman de Coninck, for instance, produced a ‘free, and respectively very free’ adaptation of sonnets by the unconventional and popular American bohemian writer Edna St. Vincent Millay. After his neo-realist poetry debut at the end of the sixties, which was highly acclaimed, De Coninck’s poetics shifted towards a more ‘parlante’ romantic-expressive concept of literature. Volumes like Zolang er sneeuw ligt (As Long as there is Snow, 1975) and Met een klank van hobo (With an Oboe Sound, 1980) can be conside...

Beloken blikvelden in de Lage Landen: Eenentwintigste-eeuwse receptie van Nederlandse vertalingen van Afrikaanse poëzie

Abstract: The South African poets Ingrid Jonker, Antjie Krog and Ronelda S. Kamfer are part of the literary system of the Low Countries. Their introduction in the Netherlands and Flanders was accomplished by translations into Dutch. An analysis of the role and the image-building of foreign literature in the Dutch-speaking world is important for (the study of) literary historiography. The presence and the reception of the three selected South African poets and their works are documented in this paper. Critics are not only interested in the literary production of national authors but also in the poetry of foreign writers (mainly available through translations). In this way, poets and their works start functioning in the literary poly-system of the Netherlands and Flanders. The manner in which images are created tells us something about the presence of Jonker, Krog and Kamfer in contemporary Dutch literature. Not only are the reactions of readers (or critics) fundamental to the study of literary reception, the way in which these writers and their poetry have gained particular positions in the literary system should also be part of the research. Revealing questions deal with the role played by intermediaries, the selection criteria for poems in anthologies, translation strategies, the promotion by commercial publishers. Foreign literature is interwoven with the poetical discourses of a national literary system. In this respect, the translated poetry by the three selected South African (Afrikaans writing) female authors is part of the borderless (Dutch) literature. Keywords: Afrikaans poetry, Dutch translation, institutional research, literary critcism.

Breyten Breytenbach in een zijspiegel: het vizier van H.C. ten Berge: transnationale laterale beweging en particuliere 'hetero-images' van een literaire actor

Abstract: At the end of the 1960s and in the beginning of the 1970s the South African poet Breyten Breytenbach had poetry and drawings published in the leading literary magazine Raster. The editor in charge at the time, H.C. ten Berge, gave the experimental writer and socially engaged Sestiger (the literary modernizing movement in South Africa in the sixties) pride of place in the line-ups of the Dutch modernist periodical. In the seventies, Ten Berge contributed to Vingermaan (1980), a collection of poems by Dutch writers (Lucebert, Kopland, Kouwenaar, Schierbeek) in support of the anti-apartheid activist. From 1975 Breytenbach was imprisoned in South Africa for political reasons. He served seven years of a nine year sentence. At that time, in the eighties, the Netherlands organized a cultural and economical boycott against the racist regime in Pretoria. Later on, Ten Berge Unauthenticated Download Date | 7/1/16 6:00 AM PAPERS 10(1) 2015 werkwinkel Yves T’Sjoen 34 presented his own poems dedicated to Breytenbach in his book of poetry Nieuwe gedichten (1981) and in the collection Materia prima: Gedichten 1963-1993 (1993). Before and during the imprisonment of Breytenbach Ten Berge played an important role in the introduction of the writer in the Low Countries. From a cultural-sociological point of view Breytenbach’s presence in the Dutch language area can be described, in the terminology of Francoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih and later on used by Louise Viljoen, as a transnational lateral movement in his writing career. This paper deals with the cultural transmission of an important political and experimental author in the literary system of Afrikaans and English in South Africa into the Dutch system. From a bibliographical viewpoint this paper affords special attention to the publication of Breytenbach’s volume of poetry in Skryt: Om ’n sinkende skip blou te verf ([1972] 1976), Vingermaan (1980) and Nieuwe gedichten ([1981] 1987). Ten Berge played an important role in the introduction of Breytenbach to the Low Countries in the way he presented the author’s political and aesthetic ideas to a Dutch-speaking audience.

White Laughter, Black Pain? On the Comic and Parodic Enactment of Racial-Colonial Stereotypes

Abstract: This chapter examines the potential of comic and parodic enactments of racial and colonial stereotypes to critique and disarm such stereotypes. Adopting a multidisciplinary approach, four explanatory models are proffered based on different concepts and mechanisms borrowed from psychoanalytic, aesthetic, and cultural theory such as over-identification, psychic discordance, purging, and defamiliarisation. The chapter further addresses recurrent criticisms and trouble spots of such enactments. These include the audience’s failure to notice the intended irony, the phenomenon of enlightened racism, complications caused by the multiracial composition of audiences and cultural producers’ positionality, and the effects of contextual factors on the experience of a work’s acceptability. Throughout, brief references are made to comic and parodic stagings of racial stereotypes taken from diverse cultural genres—ranging from theatre and film to stand-up comedy and political satire—and socio-political contexts.

Binding grammar to horror: considering trauma in the poetry of Ingrid de Kok, Alicia Partnoy and Mongane Wally Serote

Abstract: This article argues that it is possible to capture the nuances of traumatic experiences through the medium of poetry, rather than through fiction alone. Because of its ability to be elliptic, its reliance on symbolism and especially syntactic interruptions, poetry can be an effective medium by which trauma is examined, especially in the postcolonial context. Studies have indicated that poetry is effective when used as therapy, that is when victims of traumatic experiences are encouraged to write the trauma out of themselves. Journals such as Traumatology and Journal of poetry therapy attest to the fact that poetry is a credible medium and can be effective as an aid to healing. The article explores the poetry of Ingrid de Kok, Alicia Partnoy and Mongane Wally Serote, who reflect on and write haunting poems showing the multifaceted perspectives on traumatic experiences in South Africa and Argentina. Trauma studies, an area of cultural investigation that came to prominence in the early to mid-1990s, ...