Where Roy Campbell stands

Tony Voss

doi:10.4102/lit.v34i1.378

Abstract

Although critical interest in Roy Campbell’s work remains lively and his place in South African literary history seems secure, he is not a vital presence in the new South Africa; his work has become peripheral to metropolitan English literature, a small manifestation of a more general shift in global culture. Where then does Roy Campbell stand? Is there a new context for his work? In a review of a range of criticism from the first decade of the 21st century, this article finds that Roy Campbell’s work can be rewardingly read in the context of the Graeco-Roman classical inheritance that he embraced and the Romance culture in which he settled. This recognition has both enriched the resonance of Campbell’s poetry and aligned him with other artists who have been re-absorbed into Europe as the colonial appropriation of Africa recedes.

Highlights

Since 1994 there has been a shift in the situation of Roy Campbell
Elsewhere there has been on the one hand a marginalisation, a recognition that he may not be central to the new South Africa, just as he has been sidelined in the English literary metropole; on the other hand, there is a recognition that Campbell’s work is deeply implicated in, perhaps determined by, the continuing binaries of economics, race and gender (Bethlehem 2006)
This article, reviewing some of the past decade’s work on Campbell, will argue that whilst he remains a South African poet, his colonial imagination has come to terms with a new global sense of European culture

Summary

Introduction

Since 1994 there has been a shift in the situation of Roy Campbell. Accepting him as a modernist with H.I.E. This article, reviewing some of the past decade’s work on Campbell, will argue that whilst he remains a South African poet, his colonial imagination has come to terms with a new global sense of European culture.

Results

Conclusion