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WORKS OF A THEORETICAL NATURE AGAINST WHICH THE VALLEY CAN BE READ
A classic work in the field of the philosophy of history is the pioneering thinker, Hayden White’s Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-century Europe.32 White explains that historians take events from the past and construct a story in a narrative form. The story is made through the arrangement of events in a specific order, relating what happened, including some and excluding other detail and then stressing some detail more than other detail. White’s model is important for The Valley as a possible, alternative form of history.
Philosophers of history Nancy Partner,33 Richard Vann34 and Ewa Domanska35 have taken up the cudgels for White’s narrativism and Alun Munslow remains primary for an understanding of White’s historical representation. Munslow proclaims ‘at its most basic [level] White maintains [that] historical narrative cannot carry the reality of the past because its story form is not discovered, but imposed by the historian.’36 Thus, according to Munslow, ‘the genuine nature of history can only be understood when it is viewed not as an objectivised empiricist enterprise, but rather as a literary project which must self-reflexively take account of the imposition by historians of a particular narrative form on the past.’37 Munslow concludes that White’s challenge to narrative as a distinct form of historical understanding poses thequestion most recently addressed by historian Robert Berkhofer, when he enquires whether historians re-tell the story of the past, or impose a story on it.
However, there are criticisms of White’s representationalism. Philosopher of history Eelco Runia argues that whilst White’s theory of representation has been successful over a period of twenty years, ‘by now it has lost much of its vigor and it lacks explanatory power when faced with recent phenomena such as memory, lieux de mémoire,39 remembrance, and trauma.’40 A way forward for ‘representationalism’ according to Runia, is to argue for the ‘presence paradigm’ which is the way the past is made present in the present and the notion that metonymy is a metaphor for discontinuity, or put another way, the entwining of continuity and discontinuity is exposed by metonymy as presence through the unconscious enactment of the past event.
Leading scholar and philosopher of history, F R Ankersmit, appeals to Runia’s notion of so-called ‘parallel processes’ in order to analyse this variant of historical representation. These are described as enactments not as much as in vitro43 representations but as in vivo44 interactions.45 It is suggested that this notion of ‘parallel processes’ (‘the unintended ripple of subconscious processes’)46 is to be found in the re-enactment of aspects of Leipoldt’s own life as expressed in the text through some of his characters in The Valley for instance the role of unconditional love in The Mask and the specific reader-responses to this.
CHAPTER 1 . LITERATURE SURVEY .
1.1 – INTRODUCTION .
1.2 – AIM
1.3 – THEORY AND METHODOLOGY
1.4. – CONTEXTUALIZING LITERATURE
1.4.1 – WORKS OF A THEORETICAL NATURE AGAINST WHICH THE VALLEY CAN BE READ
1.4.2 – A NUMBER OF SOUTH AFRICAN HISTORIOGRAPHIC WORKS AGAINST WHICH THE VALLEY CAN BE READ
1.4.3 – CONTEXTUALIZING THE LITERATURE OF LEIPOLDT’S EARLY LIFE THAT IS APPLICABLE TO THE VALLEY
1.4.4 – CONTEXTUALIZING LITERATURE — SEMINAL LEIPOLDT AND OTHER TEXTS THAT HAVE A BEARING ON THE VALLEY
1.4.5 – BIOGRAPHIES, WORKS AND STUDIES AGAINST WHICH THE VALLEY CAN BE READ
1.5 – CONCLUSION .
CHAPTER 2 . AN ALTERNATIVE FORM OF HISTORY― RE-PRESENTATION IN ‘THE VALLEY’ TRILOGY, THE PAST IN THE PRESENT
2.1 – INTRODUCTION
2.2 – HAYDEN WHITE’S THEORY OF HISTORICAL REPRESENTATION .
2.2.1 – WHITE’S THEORY ASSESSED .
2.3 – EELCO RUNIA
2.4 – ASTRID ERLL.
2.5 – F R ANKERSMIT
2.6 – JONAS GRETHLEIN
2.7 – PAUL RICOEUR .
2.8 – THE VOICES OF SERIOUS CRITICISM AGAINST THE POSTMODERNIST AND DECONSTRUCTIVIST PARADIGM
2.9 – NEWER TRENDS IN THE THEORY OF HISTORY – ALEIDA ASSMANN, ANN
RIGNEY AND ASTRID ERLL
2.10 – CONCLUSION
CHAPTER 3 . THE GUSTAV S PRELLER-C LOUIS LEIPOLDT POLEMIC – THE HEDGEHOG AND THE FOX
3.1 ― BACKGROUND TO THE GREAT TREK .
3.2 ― GUSTAV SCHOEMAN PRELLER (1875 – 1943)
3.3 ― GUSTAV PRELLER THE HISTORIAN .
3.4 ― CONCLUSIONT ..
3.6 ― C LOUIS LEIPOLDT’S THE VALLEY, HISTORY IN FICTION?
3.7 ― CONCLUSION
3.8 ― THE PRELLER-LEIPOLDT ‘FEUD’
3.9 – LEIPOLDT AND ENGELENBURG .
3.10 ― CONCLUSION
CHAPTER 4 GUSTAV PRELLER’S CONSTRUCTION OF A PUBLIC HISTORY BETWEEN 1905 AND 1938 ― THE SUMMATIVE, CONTRARY EVIDENCE TO THE VALLEY: .
4.1 – INTRODUCTION
4.2 – THE VAN DER STEL CONTROVERSY – A LITTLE-KNOWN INSTANCE OF THE WRITING-UP OF A PUBLIC HISTORY AND THE COUNTER TO IT
4.3 – THE PRELLER-LEIPOLDT POLEMIC ― MATERIAL IN THEIR RELEVANT WORKS, RESPECTIVELY
4.4 – THE VALLEY (IN ITS FULL THRUST) AS A FORM OF ALTERNATIVE HISTORICAL WRITING IN THE PRELLER-LEIPOLDT POLEMIC
4.5 – PRELLER, THE CAMPAIGNER FOR THE MEDIUM OF AFRIKAANS
4.6 – PRELLER’S MATERIAL – HIS PUBLISHED HISTORY PIET RETIEF
4.7 – OTHER PRELLER MATERIAL USED TO PROMOTE AN AFRIKANER HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS
4.8 –THE YEARS 1908 TO 1915; IMPORTANT YEARS FOR THE AFRIKANER .
4.8.1 ― THE DEVELOPMENT OF AFRIKANER POLITICS – 1910 – 1914
4.8.2 ― A POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS SUPPORTED BY CULTURAL MANIFESTATIONS ― 1917 – 1924.
4.9 – 1925 to 1929 .
4.10 – PRELLER’S IDEOLOGY – 1929 ONWARDS
4.11 – THE FINAL STAGE IN CONSTRUCTING A VOLKSGESKIEDENIS: ANDRIES
PRETORIUS AND THE FESTIVAL OF THE GREAT TREK OF 1938
4.12 ― PRELLER IN VOORTREKKER HISTORIOGRAPHY; ISABEL HOFMEYR
4.13 ― CONCLUSION
CHAPTER 5 C LOUIS LEIPOLDT’S LITERARY SUBSTANCE IN THE VALLEY ― AN ALTERNATIVE HISTORIOGRAPHY
5.2 – THE EMPLOYMENT OF FICTION IN THE VALLEY
5.3 – THE LITERARY SUBSTANCE OF THE VALLEY
5.4 – GALLOWS GECKO
5.5 – STORMWRACK
5.6 – THE MASK
CHAPTER 6 RESPONSES TO THE VALLEY & WHY IT WAS REJECTED BY PUBLISHERS AT THE THE TIME ― CONCLUDING REMARKS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
