Humanism in Peter Abrahams’ ‘Mine Boy’

Abstract

Philosophical beliefs have always found expression in literature and synthesized into literary canons. The tenets of Marxism, feminism, formalism, to mention just these, have been transformed into specific literary traditions. Humanism, as a philosophical belief, has also been crystallized into a literary corpus. The general understanding of the philosophical belief called humanism started with the Greek philosopher, Protagoras, who contended that: ‘man (mankind) is the measure of all things'. This idea of the primacy of man on earth, devoid of any supernatural or societal underpinnings, has influenced the philosophy of humanism from classical period through the renaissance up to modern times, irrespective of the different types of humanism that exist. Thus, Corliss Lamont, H. J. Blackham and other humanists have expressed various views of the general idea of humanism as a philosophical belief that sees man as: ‘the measure of all things'. Nevertheless, humanism, as a unified literary corpus, has not been well-expressed on the African literary scene (although there has been pockets of humanistic criticism) and this tendency has led to the placement of some African writers in literary categories to which they do not truly belong. Peter Abrahams is orphaned by this misgiving, as he is usually regarded as a Pan-Africanist and a cultural nationalist rather than a humanist writer. This paper proves that Peter Abrahams is a humanist writer whose thought and artistry (as discernible in Mine Boy and his other apartheid novels) adhere to the tenets of humanism (the humanism of H.J. Blackham). The paper also, implicitly, portrays Blackhams' brand of humanism as a unified corpus which can be used in the appreciation of African literature. The theoretical framework of the paper is ethical criticism or the moral approach to literature which states that literature is related to life.