Wordsworth’s Disgrace: The Insistence of South Africa in J.M. Coetzee’s Boyhood and Youth

Abstract

This article takes issue with the critical tendency to understand J.M. Coetzee’s autobiographical novels Boyhood and Youth as applications of Coetzee’s statements on confession and on “autrebiography” in Doubling the Point. I use Coetzee’s novel Disgrace to argue that his work resists such a reductive interpretation, and that it correlates such an interpretation with certain pedagogical and poetical positions, which all converge in the figure of William Wordsworth. I then argue, through close readings of Boyhood and Youth, that Coetzee’s autobiographical work situates his own writing practice in relation to these positions, and that they formulate a specifically South African response to them that consists in an explicitly “prosaic” form of fiction, which embodies a way of relating experience and recollection that can best be understood in relation to the Wordsworthian program that Boyhood and Youth reconfigure.

Opsomming
Hierdie artikel neem stelling in teenoor die neiging in kritiek om J.M. Coetzee se outobiografiese romans Boyhood en Youth te vertolk as toepassings van Coetzee se stellings oor belydenis en oor “autrebiografie” in Doubling the Point. Ek gebruik Coetzee se roman Disgrace om aan te voer dat sy werk weerstand bied teen so ‘n reduktiewe interpretasie en dat dit so ’n interpretasie korreleer met sekere pedagogiese en poëtiese standpunte wat almal in die figuur van William Wordsworth konvergeer. Voorts voer ek aan die hand van ’n noulettende lees van Boyhood en Youth aan dat Coetzee se outobiografiese werk sy eie skryfpraktyk in verhouding tot hierdie standpunte plaas en dat hulle ’n spesifiek Suid-Afrikaanse respons daarop formuleer, ’n respons wat uit ’n eksplisiet “prosaïese” vorm van fiksie bestaan. Dit behels ’n manier van ervaring en herinnering met mekaar in verband bring wat ten beste verstaan kan word aan die hand van die Wordsworthiaanse program wat Boyhood en Youth herkonfigureer.