Die representasie van die visie in die verhalende prosa van Elsabe Steenberg

Abstract

Elsabe Steenberg's oeuvre, consisting among others of forty two stories in book

format, has four target groups -- preschool children, young children, teenagers and

adults. Her narrative work is so richly textured and contains such a depth of insight

into the complexities of life that it should not only attract attention because of its

topicality, but that it should also be exposed -- especially in a society searching for

direction -- to as large a number of readers and researchers as possible.

It is clear that all of her works represent a view of reality which, from an

intertextual point of view, could be seen as being grounded in the ontological point

of departure. The main focus of the present study is to investigate the

representational procedes through which the ontological view is represented in four

selected texts from the oeuvre. This is done in order to establish internal textual

variants and constants. The four selected texts, in which tree symbolism manifests

itself in various intertextual permutations, are: Die boom wat wou loop (for

preschool children), Soek-soek op soek (for young children), Boom homer boomste

(for teenagers) and Plek van die bruin geeste (for adults). The rest of the oeuvre, as

well as Elsabe Steenberg's poetics, are referred to cursorily in order to establish a

corroborating intertextual comparative base.

The procedes representing the whole internal textual universe, from concrete object,

• through the different but also complementary narrative elements, further to the overt

representation and manifestation of the abstract theme and view of the narrative

world, are all investigated. The four texts are first discussed independently by

means of a structuralist-semiotic approach, after which the variants and constants

are determined intertextually.

The numerous aspects of the representational system of the view of reality in all

four the intensively studied texts, as well as those in the rest of the oeuvre which

are only touched on briefly, an point toward one fundamental factor as semiotic

sign, namely: God is. Identity as an intertextual constant plays a very prominent

role in the whole oeuvre. Consequently, the numerous ways in which the

fundamental view of reality are represented, are thus also associated with God's

identity or Being, for example, God is the Origin, God is the Giver of insight into

the diversity, interrelatedness and meaning of reality, and God is the real

regenerating Force.