The skaz narrative mode in short stories by W. C. Scully, Percy FitzPatrick, Perceval Gibbon and Herman Charles Bosman

Abstract

While an overwhelming amount of cultural activity worldwide has been (and is being) conducted in societies which had (or have) very little or no knowledge at all of writing, and which can therefore be described as predominantly ‘oral’ cultures, very little attempt has been made in the field of South African literature to examine how oral modes of cultural exchange influence and interpenetrate the more recent written (literary) modes. South Africa is a region which has several rich oral traditions and it is therefore important to explore how aspects of these traditions are incorporated into (written) literature. This paper looks at the use of the fictional narrator and skaz (the Russian Formalist term meaning 'speech') in some South African short stories by Scully, FitzPatrick, Gibbon and Bosman. It is argued that whereas Scully and FitzPatrick produce only partially successful narratives in the skaz style, Gibbon and Bosman introduce greater artistic and ideological complexity to the form.