The South African place in fantasies of recovery and the sublime

Abstract

This thesis analyses the depiction of South African inspired places within the aesthetic of the fantastic utilizing a theoretical toolkit enabled by criticism of the marvellous fantasy subgenre. In my study, I consider the marvellous subgenre not as an arbitrary grouping but more holistically as an aesthetic approach entailing narrative structures and rhetorical strategies that enable the depiction of desirable places evocative of a specific mood and quality. This kind of desirability, I argue, is characterised by an enchanting sublime mode designed to awe and enthrall without alienating. The aim of my investigation is to shed light on a spectrum of questions revolving around the status and curious absence of the marvellous aesthetic in South African fiction and fantastic literature in general, centred specifically on the depiction of place. Are such depictions capable of inspiring wonder and recovery in the mode of the sublime? The selection of texts analysed in this study has been based on the questions each one opens up about depictions of desirable South African inspired places in fiction making use of the fantastic. In an analysis of H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines (1885), I trace the marvellous subgenre to its roots within the imperial romance, which left on the subgenre traces of imperialist rhetoric that are intrinsically antithetical to postcolonialist sensibilities. The Heart of Redness (2000), a magical realist work by Zakes Mda, implicitly interrogates the binaries underlying the marvellous aesthetic whilst simultaneously enabling enchantment in the service of national healing. The Hidden Star (2006) by Sello Duiker is a children’s novel and reflects the important role that children’s literature has performed within the marvellous subgenre, yet it also indicates an unexpected but telling affinity with horror fantasy. Under the revealing lens of a theoretical frame that juxtaposes marvellous fantasy criticism with magical realist thinking, I explore the unique challenges involved in the depictions of South Africa as a place of enchantment.