Ileana Dimitriu
Biographic Data
| ID | 221607 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ileana Dimitriu |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ileana |
| FAMILY NAME | Dimitriu |
| SIGNATURE | DIMITRIU I |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of KwaZulu-Natal |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The Neglected Art of Nadine Gordimer's Early Short Stories
J M Coetzee’s The Death of Jesus - Considerations of Living and Dying
The article focuses on Coetzee’s The Death of Jesus while referring also to the earlier two novels in what is called the ‘Jesus trilogy’. Instead of pursuing the trail of literary studies – novels of migration, of the postcolonies of the South, of whether in their formal representation the novels are allegories or not allegories – I turn towards religious studies. As the novels do, I grant significance to Coetzee’s ideas on a moral education in c…
Father, Daughter and ‘Estranged Belonging’
In this article, I analyse aspects of a father/daughter story that is emblematic of dislocation and a yearning to belong. It is a story of a deep-seated, recurrent condition of ‘estranged belonging’. Most critical responses to Anne Landsman’s prize-winning novel have focused on the narrator’s (the daughter’s) memory and nostalgia within the trope of an ‘elegy for a dying parent’. I embed such a trope, however, in the quite insistent – but hithert…
Whose ‘Lost Ground’? Facets of Outsiderhood
The article considers the concept of ‘home’ and its experiential application in relation to Michiel Heyns’s novel, Lost Ground. A prize-winning novel in South Africa, Lost Ground has taxed interpretation. Is it a detective novel, a novel of ‘gay’ relationships, or a novel of oblique rather than direct political observations on ‘post-apartheid’ South Africa? I argue that the novel is all the above, but tangentially. More centrally, I argue that Lo…
Mirroring Nostalgia in Fractured Coherence
With a focus on Zoë Wicomb’s novel, October (2014) – the title signalling an ‘aesthetic’ elevation of the events of a journey home – I explore the trope of the ‘home visit’ as a catalytic moment of insight into the protagonist’s dislocated life. In October, the syntagmatic chain of events (the plot) yields a paradigmatic resonance: the transitional month of the year embodying the tenuousness of a temporary homecoming.I draw on the concept of ‘hom…
JM Coetzee’s The Schooldays of Jesus (2016)
Similarly to Coetzee's previous 'post-South African' novels, The Schooldays of Jesus minimises plot for Socratic dialogue, Platonic ideas and entanglements of thought. Rather than lamenting a thinning of realist convention, however, I argue that one can fruitfully approach Schooldays within a genre – the novel of ideas – that has a long tradition at the intersection of philosophy and literature
JM Coetzee, the Truth of “Second-order Questions”
The aim of this review article is to point to recent trends in Coetzee’s writings. Increasingly liberated from the pressure of conforming to codes and expectations of fictional representation, Coetzee’s recent works boldly foreground “second-order questions” (Attwell 2015 Attwell, David. 2015. J.M. Coetzee and the Life of Writing: Face to Face with Time. Pretoria: Jacana. [Google Scholar]): time and mortality, longing for affection, parenting and…
Accented Futures
Tydskrif vir Letterkunde is an online, peer-reviewed, accredited scholarly journal which publishes original, previously unpublished research and overview articles on theoretical, applied or comparative aspects of African literatures and cultural practices
A Quest for the ‘New Man’ in Times of Transition
I offer a re-reading of JM Coetzee’s novel, The Master of Petersburg (1994 Coetzee, J M. 1994. The Master of Petersburg. London: Secker & Warburg. [Google Scholar]), according to which I seek to answer the question: Why return to this particular novel today? In pursuing the question, I accord a greater directness than hitherto to both religious and political reference. My point is to locate the novel, both locally and internationally, in a curren…
Then and Now
I explore two of Gordimer’s novels, Burger’s Daughter (1979) and No Time Like the Present (2012), the one written ‘then’, in apartheid times, the other written ‘now’, in post-apartheid times. Both, in different ways, subject personal dilemmas to political aspirations. Gordimer reminds the reader that she, as author, continued to test ideals against ‘methodical doubt’, and that she remained a ‘romantic struggling with reality’
Pathway under construction, spirituality in unexpected places
This article explores new tendencies in the more recent post-apartheid writings of South African Nobel Laureate, Nadine Gordimer. The context is the current critical debate on a resurgence of preoccupations with forms of spirituality broadly understood. The concept of secular spirituality (Cornell Du Toit and Cedric Mayson, eds. 2006. Secular Spirituality as a Contextual Critique of Religion. Research Institute for Theology and Religion, Universi…
J M Coetzee's The Childhood of Jesus
The argument is that J M Coetzee's novel, The Childhood of Jesus (2013), may best be interpreted as ‘postmodern allegory’, in which the deconstruction of suspicion is embodied, paradoxically, in a reconstruction of purpose. It is a purpose in which the ‘real’ of the quotidian is held in tension with an impulse to transcendence. Playing seriously with New Testament motifs in a novel which, despite its title, has no figure in the action named “Jesu…
Crossing and dwelling”
My critical approach to the two novels reflects a recent “cultural turn”, in which anti-humanist theoretical positions (deconstruction, for example) are seen to be inadequate to account for the subjective/experiential life, especially as manifest in diasporic conditions. These newer tendencies in critical theory – for example, “the affective turn” (Ticento Clough 2007) or “the spiritual turn” (Heelas and Woodhead 2005) – have begun to challenge a…
The Writer as ‘Ragpicker’
Recent intellectual debates in the humanities have shown a renewed interest in things spiritual. Also known as ‘subjective-life revolution’ and ‘postmodern holism’, the turn to the spiritual is, paradoxically, post-religious. It is best understood as ‘secular spirituality’: a sense of the sacred without allegiance to religious doctrines or institutions. I shall pursue this line of analysis in one of Nadine Gordimer's post-1990 novels, The House G…
Beyond the Mono-Cultural Mind ‘Translating’ English Studies
The article considers the purpose and scope of English Studies in the academy today. English in South Africa has been characterised as a British-colonial legacy. English, however, in its literary dimension is not only the home of Shakespeare, but also the home of world literature, whether in the western classics (in translation) or, more recently (in translation), Afrikaans or isiXhosa literature, or the oral praises of the great Zulu kings. Is E…
A “Translated” Discipline
English Studies is increasingly defined as an “interdiscipline”, in which literature is stretched beyond its high-art connotations to encompass cultural and media texts. More latterly, translation has begun to enrich what might be termed a “translated” discipline. English Studies in South Africa, the article argues, has a valuable role in a society in which English as the lingua franca (of state, business and tertiary education) has a responsibil…
Why are we suddenly talking about god?” A spiritual turn in recent critical writing
My aim is to consider current debates in the human sciences that – in looking beyond the well‐worn 'trinity' of race, gender, class – seek to address 'the spiritual' as a legitimate category of investigation. (I use this category as a portmanteau term to refer to subjective expressions of belief which are not primarily linked to doctrine or organised forms of religion.) I start by offering an overview of key contributions to these new debates, in…
Nadine Gordimer
Prior to 1990, Gordimer's prominent anti‐apartheid views – on the platform and in her fiction – earned her a reputation as a public intellectual. (Indeed, her Nobel recognition in 1991 was partly posited on her public profile.) Since the coming to power of the ANC, however, she has ceased to challenge key national issues. Has Gordimer – to quote Castells (1997) – become a “legitimising intellectual”, a silent praise singer of the new government? …
Creation and translation
This interview with poet Chris Mann offers a defence of poetry in a society – like South Africa – of diverse, even competing language, cultural and political demands. What role and responsibility does the poet have in acknowledging differences and crossing inter‐cultural barriers, while seeking wider ethical and aesthetic understandings
Translating and being translated
The unbearable simulacrum of being
This article compares two writers, Milan Kundera and Breyten Breytenbach, who, while both addressing conditions of social oppression – in communist Czechoslovakia and apartheid South Africa, respectively – reveal similarities of “double vision” concerning what is home and what is exile. Both have been classified as postmodern according to their fictive, experimental forms of expression. But, I argue, their postmodernism is grounded in geo-politic…
Shifts in Gordimer's recent short fiction
The main aim of this article is to challenge interpretations of Gordimer's short‐story writing as ideologically less significant and/or artistically less accomplished than her novels: by bringing a more comprehensive approach to the shorter fiction, the article suggests the need of going beyond binary thinking regarding genre considerations. After presenting an overview of Gordimer's earlier and later short‐story collections, the focus shifts to …
The end of history
The article examines Gordimer's novels that have appeared after the end of apartheid. In considering the continuing ‘relevance’ of her work, the purpose is to foreground features of the writing that were usually not emphasised when Gordimer was seen as the ‘conscience of the anti‐apartheid struggle’: her liberation from excessive social responsibility, the shift from large historical events to the reconstitution of the civil imaginary, and engage…
Translation, diversity and power an introduction
(2002). Translation, diversity and power an introduction. Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa: Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 1-14
Translation and existential awareness interview with Mihai Şora in South Africa
Then and Now
I explore two of Gordimer’s novels, Burger’s Daughter (1979) and No Time Like the Present (2012), the one written ‘then’, in apartheid times, the other written ‘now’, in post-apartheid times. Both, in different ways, subject personal dilemmas to political aspirations. Gordimer reminds the reader that she, as author, continued to test ideals against ‘methodical doubt’, and that she remained a ‘romantic struggling with reality’
Pathway under construction, spirituality in unexpected places
This article explores new tendencies in the more recent post-apartheid writings of South African Nobel Laureate, Nadine Gordimer. The context is the current critical debate on a resurgence of preoccupations with forms of spirituality broadly understood. The concept of secular spirituality (Cornell Du Toit and Cedric Mayson, eds. 2006. Secular Spirituality as a Contextual Critique of Religion. Research Institute for Theology and Religion, Universi…
Translating and being translated
The unbearable simulacrum of being
This article compares two writers, Milan Kundera and Breyten Breytenbach, who, while both addressing conditions of social oppression – in communist Czechoslovakia and apartheid South Africa, respectively – reveal similarities of “double vision” concerning what is home and what is exile. Both have been classified as postmodern according to their fictive, experimental forms of expression. But, I argue, their postmodernism is grounded in geo-politic…
Translations of the self
Approaches to translation
Translation at the crossroads of history
Translation, diversity and power an introduction
(2002). Translation, diversity and power an introduction. Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa: Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 1-14
Translation and existential awareness interview with Mihai Şora in South Africa
The end of history
The article examines Gordimer's novels that have appeared after the end of apartheid. In considering the continuing ‘relevance’ of her work, the purpose is to foreground features of the writing that were usually not emphasised when Gordimer was seen as the ‘conscience of the anti‐apartheid struggle’: her liberation from excessive social responsibility, the shift from large historical events to the reconstitution of the civil imaginary, and engage…
Shifts in Gordimer's recent short fiction
The main aim of this article is to challenge interpretations of Gordimer's short‐story writing as ideologically less significant and/or artistically less accomplished than her novels: by bringing a more comprehensive approach to the shorter fiction, the article suggests the need of going beyond binary thinking regarding genre considerations. After presenting an overview of Gordimer's earlier and later short‐story collections, the focus shifts to …
Creation and translation
This interview with poet Chris Mann offers a defence of poetry in a society – like South Africa – of diverse, even competing language, cultural and political demands. What role and responsibility does the poet have in acknowledging differences and crossing inter‐cultural barriers, while seeking wider ethical and aesthetic understandings
Translating and being translated
The unbearable simulacrum of being
This article compares two writers, Milan Kundera and Breyten Breytenbach, who, while both addressing conditions of social oppression – in communist Czechoslovakia and apartheid South Africa, respectively – reveal similarities of “double vision” concerning what is home and what is exile. Both have been classified as postmodern according to their fictive, experimental forms of expression. But, I argue, their postmodernism is grounded in geo-politic…
Nadine Gordimer
Prior to 1990, Gordimer's prominent anti‐apartheid views – on the platform and in her fiction – earned her a reputation as a public intellectual. (Indeed, her Nobel recognition in 1991 was partly posited on her public profile.) Since the coming to power of the ANC, however, she has ceased to challenge key national issues. Has Gordimer – to quote Castells (1997) – become a “legitimising intellectual”, a silent praise singer of the new government? …
A “Translated” Discipline
English Studies is increasingly defined as an “interdiscipline”, in which literature is stretched beyond its high-art connotations to encompass cultural and media texts. More latterly, translation has begun to enrich what might be termed a “translated” discipline. English Studies in South Africa, the article argues, has a valuable role in a society in which English as the lingua franca (of state, business and tertiary education) has a responsibil…
Why are we suddenly talking about god?” A spiritual turn in recent critical writing
My aim is to consider current debates in the human sciences that – in looking beyond the well‐worn 'trinity' of race, gender, class – seek to address 'the spiritual' as a legitimate category of investigation. (I use this category as a portmanteau term to refer to subjective expressions of belief which are not primarily linked to doctrine or organised forms of religion.) I start by offering an overview of key contributions to these new debates, in…
Beyond the Mono-Cultural Mind ‘Translating’ English Studies
The article considers the purpose and scope of English Studies in the academy today. English in South Africa has been characterised as a British-colonial legacy. English, however, in its literary dimension is not only the home of Shakespeare, but also the home of world literature, whether in the western classics (in translation) or, more recently (in translation), Afrikaans or isiXhosa literature, or the oral praises of the great Zulu kings. Is E…
The Writer as ‘Ragpicker’
Recent intellectual debates in the humanities have shown a renewed interest in things spiritual. Also known as ‘subjective-life revolution’ and ‘postmodern holism’, the turn to the spiritual is, paradoxically, post-religious. It is best understood as ‘secular spirituality’: a sense of the sacred without allegiance to religious doctrines or institutions. I shall pursue this line of analysis in one of Nadine Gordimer's post-1990 novels, The House G…
J M Coetzee's The Childhood of Jesus
The argument is that J M Coetzee's novel, The Childhood of Jesus (2013), may best be interpreted as ‘postmodern allegory’, in which the deconstruction of suspicion is embodied, paradoxically, in a reconstruction of purpose. It is a purpose in which the ‘real’ of the quotidian is held in tension with an impulse to transcendence. Playing seriously with New Testament motifs in a novel which, despite its title, has no figure in the action named “Jesu…
Crossing and dwelling”
My critical approach to the two novels reflects a recent “cultural turn”, in which anti-humanist theoretical positions (deconstruction, for example) are seen to be inadequate to account for the subjective/experiential life, especially as manifest in diasporic conditions. These newer tendencies in critical theory – for example, “the affective turn” (Ticento Clough 2007) or “the spiritual turn” (Heelas and Woodhead 2005) – have begun to challenge a…
Pathway under construction, spirituality in unexpected places
This article explores new tendencies in the more recent post-apartheid writings of South African Nobel Laureate, Nadine Gordimer. The context is the current critical debate on a resurgence of preoccupations with forms of spirituality broadly understood. The concept of secular spirituality (Cornell Du Toit and Cedric Mayson, eds. 2006. Secular Spirituality as a Contextual Critique of Religion. Research Institute for Theology and Religion, Universi…
A Quest for the ‘New Man’ in Times of Transition
I offer a re-reading of JM Coetzee’s novel, The Master of Petersburg (1994 Coetzee, J M. 1994. The Master of Petersburg. London: Secker & Warburg. [Google Scholar]), according to which I seek to answer the question: Why return to this particular novel today? In pursuing the question, I accord a greater directness than hitherto to both religious and political reference. My point is to locate the novel, both locally and internationally, in a curren…
Then and Now
I explore two of Gordimer’s novels, Burger’s Daughter (1979) and No Time Like the Present (2012), the one written ‘then’, in apartheid times, the other written ‘now’, in post-apartheid times. Both, in different ways, subject personal dilemmas to political aspirations. Gordimer reminds the reader that she, as author, continued to test ideals against ‘methodical doubt’, and that she remained a ‘romantic struggling with reality’
JM Coetzee, the Truth of “Second-order Questions”
The aim of this review article is to point to recent trends in Coetzee’s writings. Increasingly liberated from the pressure of conforming to codes and expectations of fictional representation, Coetzee’s recent works boldly foreground “second-order questions” (Attwell 2015 Attwell, David. 2015. J.M. Coetzee and the Life of Writing: Face to Face with Time. Pretoria: Jacana. [Google Scholar]): time and mortality, longing for affection, parenting and…
Accented Futures
Tydskrif vir Letterkunde is an online, peer-reviewed, accredited scholarly journal which publishes original, previously unpublished research and overview articles on theoretical, applied or comparative aspects of African literatures and cultural practices
JM Coetzee’s The Schooldays of Jesus (2016)
Similarly to Coetzee's previous 'post-South African' novels, The Schooldays of Jesus minimises plot for Socratic dialogue, Platonic ideas and entanglements of thought. Rather than lamenting a thinning of realist convention, however, I argue that one can fruitfully approach Schooldays within a genre – the novel of ideas – that has a long tradition at the intersection of philosophy and literature
Mirroring Nostalgia in Fractured Coherence
With a focus on Zoë Wicomb’s novel, October (2014) – the title signalling an ‘aesthetic’ elevation of the events of a journey home – I explore the trope of the ‘home visit’ as a catalytic moment of insight into the protagonist’s dislocated life. In October, the syntagmatic chain of events (the plot) yields a paradigmatic resonance: the transitional month of the year embodying the tenuousness of a temporary homecoming.I draw on the concept of ‘hom…
Father, Daughter and ‘Estranged Belonging’
In this article, I analyse aspects of a father/daughter story that is emblematic of dislocation and a yearning to belong. It is a story of a deep-seated, recurrent condition of ‘estranged belonging’. Most critical responses to Anne Landsman’s prize-winning novel have focused on the narrator’s (the daughter’s) memory and nostalgia within the trope of an ‘elegy for a dying parent’. I embed such a trope, however, in the quite insistent – but hithert…
Philosophy (19 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Art (17 works) · Literature (16 works) · South African History and Culture (16 works) · Law (13 works) · Political science (13 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Aesthetics (10 works) · History (10 works)