The essays in this volume hold up for scrutiny, in diverse ways, many facets of the artistic output of Breyten Breytenbach, the Afrikaans poet who first became a public figure in apartheid South Africa – his poetry, his fictional and non-fictional prose, his plays, and his painting and drawing. The approaches adopted by the authors of the essays range from the largely theoretical to the more popular forms of the interview and the review. Collectively, they represent a kaleidoscope of approaches, viewpoints and foci; their various critical and analytical colorations make up a timely statement about the centrality of this important artist’s creativity, engagement, ‘exile’ and belongness to a land once impacting under its own contradictions and now experiencing an efflorescence that still harbours the paradoxes that Breytenbach’s protean craft uncompromisingly anatomizes. Contributors are: Ampie Coetzee, J.M. Coetzee, Judith Lütge Coullie, Ileana Dimitriu, J.U. Jacobs, Tim Trengove, Jones, Erhard Reckwitz, Sandra Saayman, Marilet Sienaert, Lisbe Smuts, Louise Viljoen, Andries Visagie.

One number each year includes Annual bibliography of Commonwealth literature.

African literature is a vast subject of growing output and interest. Written especially for students, this book selectively surveys the topic in a clear and accessible way. Included are roughly 600 alphabetically arranged entries on writers, genres, and major works. Many entries cite works for further reading, and the volume closes with a selected, general bibliography. Africa is a land of contrasts and of diverse cultures and traditions. It is also a land of conflict and creativity. The literature of the continent draws upon a fascinating body of oral traditions and lore and also reflects the political turmoil of the modern world. With the increased interest in cultural diversity and the growing centrality of Africa in world politics, African literature is figuring more and more prominently in the curriculum. This book helps students learn about the African literary achievement. Written expressly for students, this book is far more accessible than other reference works on the subject. Included are nearly 600 alphabetically arranged entries on authors, such as Chinua Achebe, Athol Fugard, Buchi Emecheta, Nadine Gordimer, and Wole Soyinka; major works, such as Things Fall Apart and Petals of Blood; and individual genres, such as the novel, drama, and poetry. Many entries cite works for further reading, and the volume closes with a selected, general bibliography.

This collection of essays explores some new possibilities for understanding postcolonial traumas. It examines representations of both personal and collective traumas around the globe from Palestinian, Caribbean, African American, South African, Maltese, Algerian, Indian, Australian and British writers, directors and artists.

The Facts On File Companion to World Poetry : 1900 to the Present is a comprehensive introduction to 20th and 21st-century world poets and their most famous, most distinctive, and most influential poems.

Metaphors of Confinement: The Prison in Fact, Fiction, and Fantasy offers a historical survey of imaginings of the prison as expressed in carceral metaphors in a range of texts about imprisonment from Antiquity to the present as well as non-penal situations described as confining or restrictive. These imaginings coalesce into a 'carceral imaginary' that determines the way we think about prisons, just as social debates about punishment and criminals feed into the way carceral imaginary develops over time. Examining not only English-language prose fiction but also poetry and drama from the Middle Ages to postcolonial, particularly African, literature, the book juxtaposes literary and non-literary contexts and contrasts fictional and nonfictional representations of (im)prison(ment) and discussions about the prison as institution and experiential reality. It comments on present-day trends of punitivity and foregrounds the ethical dimensions of penal punishment. The main argument concerns the continuity of carceral metaphors through the centuries despite historical developments that included major shifts in policy (such as the invention of the penitentiary). The study looks at selected carceral metaphors, often from two complementary perspectives, such as the home as prison or the prison as home, or the factory as prison and the prison as factory. The case studies present particularly relevant genres and texts that employ these metaphors, often from a historical perspective that analyses development through different periods.

Point, Dot, Period… The Dynamics of Punctuation in Text and Image is a collection of twelve previously unpublished essays which explore the fundamental role played by punctuation in the two semiotic fields of text and image. Whilst drawing upon a wide range of material, including painting, engraving, photography, video art, poetry, fiction, and journalism, each essay contributes to the exploration of singular uses of punctuation which highlight the complexity of what remains in all cases a silent, and yet particularly eloquent, mode of expression. By bringing together authors from a variety of fields, such as linguistics, literary studies, and art criticism, at a time when the relation between text and image occupies a prominent place in the critical landscape, this volume offers new insights into the possibility and nature of their encounter, and invites the reader to focus on the material aspect of visual and textual creation. This collection also offers an original approach to the works of some major artists and canonical authors, whilst simultaneously making room for emerging talents.