Thl3704 Essay

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Luyanda Unati Nyawo 43141153 THL3704 Unique No. 833478 Luyanda Unati Nyawo Student Number 43141153 Module THL3704 Assignment No. 2 Unique No. 833478 Luyanda Unati Nyawo 43141153 THL3704 Unique No. 833478 A National South African Literature? A National Albatross. The concept of a “national South African literature” is a problematic one. If one agrees that “a national literature is a body of works produced over a period of time, which is interpreted, recognised and accepted as a body of writing which articulates and supports the proclaimed identity of a people, with a common language, living in, or desiring to live in, a unified and sovereign national state” (Oliphant, AW. 2011. Theory and Practice of South African Literary Studies. Pretoria: Unisa Press. 49), then it would be safe to conclude that South Africa does not, strictly speaking, have a national literature. To begin any sort of discourse regarding the existence of a national South African literature one must first come to grips with terms such as nation, nationalism and nation state. The term nation as we currently understand it is derived from the Latin word natio, meaning something born (Oliphant, AW. 2011. Theory and Practice of South African Literary Studies. Pretoria: Unisa Press. 37). In ancient Rome the word had derogatory implications due to the fact that it referred to a community of foreigners residing in Rome who were given a “national identity”, simultaneously separating them from and ensuring that they were not privy to the human rights reserved for those of Roman heritage. Between AD 300 and AD 1300, the Middle Ages, a semantic shift occurred, making the word nation applicable to a community of students who had uprooted themselves to reside in medieval university towns/universities. These scholastic communities came to be distinguished by their commonly held
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