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Hermann Wittenberg Hermann Wittenberg i(A138986 works by)
Gender: Male
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Works By

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1 Sven Hedin's “Vanished Country” : Setting and History in J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians, Hermann Wittenberg , Kate Highman , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Scrutiny2 , vol. 20 no. 1 2015; (p. 103-127) 'Since J.M. Coetzee’s manuscripts, notebooks and miscellaneous other archival materials have become available for study at the Harry Ransom Centre (HRC) in Texas in 2013, it has become possible to shed new light on one of the more enigmatic aspects of Coetzee’s early fictions, namely the origins of the setting and landscape of Waiting for the barbarians. With his previous two novels, Dusklands (1974) and In the heart of the country (1977), Coetzee had established himself as a significant avant-garde South African writer, but the next novel, Barbarians (1980), on the face of it, seemed to veer off-course as an engagement with the historical trauma of his country. When the book was published, readers and critics found Coetzee’s choice of a richly detailed yet seemingly invented non-South African setting both attractive and puzzling. Irvin Howe wrote in the New York times that the novel’s landscape was an “unspecified place and time, yet recognizable as a ‘universalised’ version of South Africa”, and Bernard Levin, in an influential London Sunday times review, thought that the story appeared to indict the repressive South African political situation, “[b] ut that beneath the surface it is timeless, spaceless, nameless and universal” (1980: n.p.). A reviewer in Newsweek thought that Coetzee’s “terrain is African” but that “subtle dislocations in time and geography, however, make it clear that his political parable is set in a mythical realm” (Clemons 1980: 55). Peter Lewis (1980: 1270) also recognized allusions to South Africa, but concluded that “the place cannot be located on any map”. In many critical responses there was a tension between a desire to read the novel as a South African narrative, and a simultaneous recognition of the story’s non-specific emplacement which transcended the political oppression of late apartheid. It was precisely the text’s sense of geographical and historical dislocatedness that made it a compelling reading experience, as for example articulated by Peter Wilhelm: “The strange landscapes, part-African, part a country of the mind; the sense of action and thought scarcely disturbing the flux of time; the crystalline lucidity of the language – these will haunt the reader long after the novel has been set aside” (cited in Kannemeyer 2012: 345). ' (Author's introduction)
1 y separately published work icon Two Screenplays J. M. Coetzee , Hermann Wittenberg (editor), Cape Town : UCT Press , 2014 8072246 2014 selected work screenplay

'J.M. Coetzee’s screenplay versions of In the Heart of the Country and Waiting for the Barbarians are original and as yet unproduced cinematic adaptations of his novels. For readers familiar with Coetzee’s writing career spanning more than 40 years, the screenplays, published for the first time in this volume, are thus an unusual and unexpected addition to the oeuvre.' (Publisher's summary)
1 Late style in J.M. Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year Hermann Wittenberg , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Scrutiny2 , September vol. 15 no. 2 2010; (p. 40-49) J.M. Coetzee's post-millennial writing has been marked by new forms of inventiveness, formal risk-taking and narrative experimentation that have blurred the boundaries between fiction, autobiography and social commentary. Using the example of the novel Diary of a Bad Year (2007), it is argued that this latter fiction is exemplary of Edward Said's idea of "late style", accounting not only for Coetzee's surprising venture into explicit political commentary, but also his narrative minimalism. The paper looks carefully at the content and style of Coetzee's novel, contrasting its descriptive technique with earlier fictions.
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