Abstract
ABSTRACT This essay reconsiders JM Coetzee's much-cited “The novel today” address (1987), and argues that a return to the origins of his earliest fiction, Dusklands (1974), reveals a more complex and creative relationship to the discourses of history and historiography than Coetzee or his critics usually acknowledge (notable exceptions are Dovey 1988; Attwell 1993; and Green 1997). Beginning with the story of the nineteenth-century British naturalist and traveller William Burchell (whose influence on the writing of Dusklands will be discussed), the essay attempts to demonstrate something of the mutual adaptability and heterogeneity of history and fiction, of their textuality and transformation over the courseof history. More generally, this has implications for current disciplinary divisions and critical discourse; more specifically, it offers a challenge to our rather fixed configurations of Coetzee and the Cape.
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