‘n “Allegoriese” lesing vanLady Anne

Abstract

Summary In this article an “allegorical” reading of Antjie Krog's Lady Anne is attempted. The allegorical point‐for‐point similarities between Antjie and Anne include thematic (feminism and revolution), structural (both characters have concluding poems) and narratological (a “story” of concern about injustice supplanted by despair about art's function) resemblances. This allegorical process could be explained as the succession of abstract ideas; the portrayal of these ideas in a text; the retrieval of these ideas by the reader and then the potential application of these ideas in the life of the reader. This model of interpretation as allegorical provides an inadequate explanation of especially the metafictional elements of Lady Anne and therefore postmodernist critics such as De Man (allegory as the incomprehensible nature of the text); Jameson (the inevitable use of known explanatory models in the interpretation of texts) and Derrida (the term “differance” enables a synthesis of the viewpoints of De Man ...