Die manifestasie van die Christelik-religieuse in die tagtigerdrama in Afrikaans met besondere klem op Reza de Wet se Diepe grond

Abstract

This study was prompted and justified by the great number of Afrikaans dramas that were written in the early eighties. A study of the dramas of the past decade ensures the topicality of the undertaking. Not only is the object of this study of current interest, but even more so the subject, i.e. the Christian-religious. The crux of the study is rooted in the three prominent words of the title: manifestation, Christian-religious and eighty. After clarification of these terms a hypothesis could be worded as follows: The manifestation of the Christian-religious (a radical and totalitarian relationship between man and the God of the Bible) within the Afrikaans dramas of the eighties (termed as such because of common dominant entities) would be revealed in different ways to the author of this study. It was also assumed that the Christian-religious, the most determining force in all human activity, would feature in the Afrikaans dramas of the eighties, a product of man's artistic expression. While this study is primarily a literary analysis of the dramatic texts of the eighties, it was assumed that the Christian-religious would embody itself in conventional dramatic literary ways such as the drama tis personae, dramatic time and place, dramatic events, structure and language. However, it was also anticipated that the Christian-religious would be fore grounded in the didascalia. To verify the hypothesis a modus operandi in which the potential theatrical performance of the text was taken into account, would be followed. The term eighty, meaning a literary system, needed explanation before the manifestation of the Christian-religious could be explored. In chapter 2 the conclusion is reached that eighty is an open literary system in interaction with its immediate reality. Because of several common dominant entities, which could be abstracted from the relevant dramatic texts of the eighties, intertextual conversation is possible.