Begrens én onbegrens : intertekstualiteit in die oeuvre van H.J. Pieterse

Abstract

This dissertation attempts to investigate the intertextual modus operandi in the oeuvre of H.J. Pieterse, with specific focus on his volumes, Alruin (1989) and Die burg van hertog Bloubaard (2000). The overarching purpose of the investigation is to prove that the author not only uses intertextuality in the sense that one text (literary text) refers to another text (literary and non–literary), or that one text influences another. Pieterse engages in conversation with other texts and re–writes these texts by repositioning them in another context and by adding additional metaphoric meaning to them. The author allows these texts to exchange conversation, to mutually influence one another, and this has as a result that, in his poems, his poetry and his oeuvre, metaphoric lines come into being, which lend a layered meaning to these texts and enrich the possibilities of their interpretation. Thus, a play on multiple meaning develops, which moves between texts: written texts, literary texts, non–literary texts, the author, the reader and the context(s). The conclusion to which this dissertation comes, is that the above mentioned manifestations of meanings, which exist and come into existence within the physically confines of the text, expand this text to a less confined existence in terms of meaning, more unlimited and unbound than what is necessarily allowed by the physically confined nature of the written text. The question thus arises of how the physically limited text take possession of and draws into the texts what lies beyond its physical confines to produce meaning, and how this tension around the limits of the literary text is functionally used. Consequentially, the question that follows is how this happens in the oeuvre of H.J. Pieterse and how the author uses his poetic technique to go beyond the confines of the written text.