Allegories of drought and of gardens in the novels of J.M. Coetzee and Dambudzo Marechera

Lilford, Charles Grant

Allegories of drought and of gardens in the novels of J.M. Coetzee and Dambudzo Marechera

Doctoral Thesis

1996

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Department of English Language and Literature

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

This thesis examines the trope of Allegory in the work of two Southern African writers, JM Coetzee and Dambudzo Marechera. It discusses the trope's use in redefining the dominant theme of the dialectic between scarcity and plenty. In much of Southern African literature, this dialectic is expressed allegorically. Drought represents a physical and spiritual lack while gardens represent human attempts to respond to that lack by creating fertility and meaning. The thesis is based on the premise that Southern African literature is best understood from as wide a perspective as possible. Coetzee and Marechera redefine the form and the content of a variety of texts, both African and non-African. In order to study this process of redefinition more closely, I have placed the work of each writer within the context of other genres of writing. Many critics view Marechera's writing as modernistic and European. I attempt to establish his unconscious reliance upon African traditional narrative, particularly the Shona rungano. Marechera uses Shona orature as a mythic pre-text for the more explicitly allegorical sections of his House of Hunger. Similarly, several of Coetzee's novels allegorise concerns around drought found in novels of settlement in Southern Africa. Both writers work within a more global tradition of writing about scarcity and plenty. The garden also appears in Homer, Milton, Rousseau, Voltaire, Dickens and Rushdie, among others, as a site of refuge from poverty and oppression. Contextual chapters examine other texts handling these related themes as background for those chapters which deal with Marechera and Coetzee's work in depth. The thesis makes use of the twentieth-century theory of allegory, particularly as presented by Edwin Honig, Angus Fletcher and Maureen Quilligan. It examines the relationship between consciously allegorical texts, like those written by Coetzee and Marechera, and the unconscious and ubiquitous . use of allegory as an instrument of rhetoric in ostensibly realistic or philosophical texts. Coetzee and Marechera use allegory in critiquing dominant forms of discourse and this thesis uses close critical reading to expose the links between their allegory and its pre-texts.

Keywords

English Language and Literature

Reference:

Collections

PhD / Doctoral

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