Background
MacKenzie, Craig Hugh was born on August 9, 1960 in Durban, Natal, South Africa. Son of Brian Hugh and Ali (Brandse) MacK.
(This study deals with a particular kind of short story in...)
This study deals with a particular kind of short story in South African English literature - a kind of story variously called the fireside tale, tall tale, skaz narrative or (the term used here) the 'oral-style' story. Most famously exemplified in the Oom Schalk Lourens narratives of Herman Charles Bosman, the oral-style story has its roots in the hunting tale and camp-fire yarn of the nineteenth century and has dozens of exponents in South African literature, most of them long forgotten. Here this neglect has been addressed. A.W. Drayson's Tales at the Outspan (1862) provides a point of departure, and is followed by discussions of works by William Charles Scully, Percy FitzPatrick, Ernest Glanville, Perceval Gibbon, Francis Carey Slater, Pauline Smith, and Aegidius Jean Blignaut, all of whom used the oral-style story genre. In the work of Herman Charles Bosman, however, the South African oral-style story comes into its own. In his Oom Schalk Lourens figure is invested all of the complexity and 'double-voicedness' that was latent - and largely dormant - in the earlier works. Bosman demonstrates his sophistication particularly in his metafictional use of the oral-style story. The study concludes with a discussion of the use of oral forms in the work of more recent black writers - among them Bessie Head, Mtutuzeli Matshoba, and Njabulo Ndebele.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/9042005270/?tag=2022091-20
("When the depredations of apartheid forced most of her co...)
"When the depredations of apartheid forced most of her contemporaries into exile in Britain, Europe, and the United States, the South African writer Bessie Head (1937-1986) chose to move to neighboring Botswana, by South African standards then a dry, dusty, and undeveloped backwater. And where her fellow writers chose apartheid's depredations as the subject for their searing social indictments, Head turned for inspiration to local sources, recording in stories of parable-like intensity the daily lives of people in a remote African village. She is perhaps the only black African writer who has successfully dealt with the tensions and torments of her own life - madness, guilt, vexed personal relationships, loneliness, exile - and the often haunting results have won her a growing following in critical circles, most notably among feminists, who see her as having been victimized not only by South Africa's brutal racial politics but also by patriarchal attitudes among African men." "In this overview of Head's work, Craig MacKenzie argues that the physical journey Head took from South Africa to Botswana has a special resonance in her writing, in which she moves from disintegration to wholeness, from alienation to commitment."--BOOK JACKET.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805716297/?tag=2022091-20
MacKenzie, Craig Hugh was born on August 9, 1960 in Durban, Natal, South Africa. Son of Brian Hugh and Ali (Brandse) MacK.
Bachelor, University Natal, Durban, South Africa, 1982. Bachelor in English with honors, University Natal, Durban, South Africa, 1983. Master of Arts in English, University Natal, Durban, South Africa, 1985.
Doctor of Philosophy in English, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa, 1997.
Curator, researcher National English Literary Museum, Grahamstown, South Africa, 1987-1991. Lecturer Rand Afrikaans University, Johannesburg, South Africa, since 1991.
("When the depredations of apartheid forced most of her co...)
(This study deals with a particular kind of short story in...)
Married Susan Mary Jenkins. Children: Daniel, Matthew, Jessica.