Abstract
M.A. (English)
In the following dissertation, the literary representation of the farm in
Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm (18%3), Smith's The Beadle (1926), and
Coetzee's In the Heart of the Country (1976) will be examined under two main
categories. The first is the treatment of the farm landscape, or the specifically
'* South African version of the pastoral myth. The second, and interrelated category,
is the stereotypic vision that originated around the inhabitants of the South
African farm. In both categories the focus will fallon the stereotypes of both
land and inhabitants that existed at the time that Schreiner and Smith wrote, and
the ways in which these stereotypes were used, modified, or expanded by these two
authors. In the final chapter I shall examine Coetzee' s ironic use of these
stereotypes, especially those that were created around the farm landscape during
the nineteenth century.