![]() ![]() My aim is both to describe and analyse the ideological dimensions of the texts. A conscious study of this body of work and similar lesser-known texts on, about and inspired by the Bushmen has been the motivating force behind the present volume. But then there is also the less well known four-volume /Xam archive, recorded and compiled in Afrikaans – what had come to be the second language of the /Xam – as Boesman-stories (‘Bushman Stories’) by GR von Wielligh (1919-1921 republished in two volumes in 20). A multitude of recorded oral narratives, myths and fragments of narratives are contained here, recorded in /Xam and translated into English, given by various informants (available online as The Digital Bleek and Lloyd at ). Today, the primary source of further information on these first inhabitants is the Bleek and Lloyd digital /Xam archive housed at the University of Cape Town. This work contains the results of a somewhat variegated, long-standing project that focussed on the narratives, myths and poetry of the /Xam and other Bushmen, as well as their interface with South African literature in general, but primarily Afrikaans literature. Instead, they are shown to convey the substance of the ‘real South’ and to locate the South as an alternative center of gravity that generates its own deictic markers while remaining haunted by its troubled histories. In doing so, it demonstrates that Coetzee’s settings function as neither tromp d’oeil nor exotic local colour, neither blank screen nor empty frame. ![]() Focusing on Foe, Boyhood, Youth and Slow Man, the chapter tracks a referential movement from the insular and segregated state of apartheid South Africa, through the provincial-metropolitan axis and along the southern latitudes. Through readings of selected works in his oeuvre, this chapter shows that setting is vital to narrative world-making while simultaneously performing an indexical function which invests these narratives with ‘worldly weight’ it thus establishes a relation to the real that is simultaneously fictitious and true. Yet various pivotal scenes in Coetzee’s kunstlerroman point to its importance. ![]() Coetzee’s writing and in narratology more generally. Setting seldom receives the attention that it merits in studies of J.M. ![]()
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