Ndebele’s Relationship with the Liberal-Humanists and an Evaluation of the Story-Telling Tradition

Abstract

Literature, like all the other art-forms, cannot really be seen from one point of view as it subscribes to different schools of thought, with the schools constantly at loggerheads in relation to technique and content of a narrative. But must be clear here that the role of narrative depends largely on its persistence to complexity of a given historical situation without exhausting itself by an indulgence or pre-occupation with the history itself, for then it will inevitably trap itself within that given historical time-frame. This then gives rise to a saturation of what to write about and we then end up with a genre whose main characteristic, it would seem, is repetition. This on the surface is Ndebele’s stated position. This article will attempt to examine Njabulo Ndebele’s relationship with the liberal-humanist tradition and how his theory of the storytelling tradition developed. It will also explore his perceptions on protest fiction with its characteristic of expressing ‘mechanical surface representations. The main point here is to make a case for the relativity of all forms of literature by arguing for literary placement and criticism in context.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n23p2425