Sacred Spaces in Southern African Literature: From Mhudi to Mutemwa

Abstract

This article examines the representation of sacred spaces in the novels of four authors from southern Africa and their translations. It critically considers the representation of sacred spaces and the marginalisation of some areas of Africa. The selected passages feature common themes, such as the dispossession of the soil. A convenient distinction between sacred spaces is made in this article through categorising these spaces as apotropaic, chthonic, mystic and messianic, and theological and epiphanic. Translations into the Romance languages of predominantly Catholic countries show evidence of textual divergence in the cohesion of symbols, lexico-semantic shifts, and cultural domestication. Whether this is imputed to ideological barriers and sociocultural filters is a matter for further investigation. Ultimately, the challenging issue is whether there is still space for the sacred in world literature.