Abstract
The Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns (“South African Academy of Arts and Science”) initiated a project to commemorate, through a series of publications in their honour, writers who have won the Hertzog Prize, considered the most prestigious Afrikaans literary prize. A dedicated bibliography of the writings of each author and responses to his or her oeuvre form an integral part of each publication. It is easy to see the potential value for the literary research community of a collected set of resources about important Afrikaans authors. A pivotal question, however, is whether printed author bibliographies can still be justified in an era of electronic databases and search engines, especially since those databases are constantly updated and expanded, while printed bibliographies are usually outdated the moment that they appear on the shelves. Moreover, if there is such justification, the question then becomes how to compile and structure the bibliographic references best to serve the needs of users. This essay takes as its point of departure one of the bibliographies in the Hertzog Prize winner series, namely the one compiled for the publication Breyten Breytenbach: Woordenaar woordnar (“Breyten Breytenbach: Worder, word jester”) on the celebrated Afrikaans poet, essayist, dramatist and public figure Breyten Breytenbach. The editor of the publication, Francis Galloway, an authority on Breytenbach, and co-author Alwyn Roux compiled this bibliography. A survey of the bibliography consolidates its position as an example of a showcase bibliography, which, by means of variously structured categories and subcategories, serves to highlight the achievements and influence of the author at national and sometimes international level. From this starting point, the essay, along various lines, argues for the need and uses of specialised printed author bibliographies in the field of literary research and criticism. Research in the field of critical study of literary canon formation informs the first line of argument. The essay proposes that well-constructed dedicated author bibliographies should be able to provide more information at a glance than just the classic differentiation between primary and secondary sources, between the creative and reflective output of the author and the academic responses to the oeuvre. With regard to the primary resources, author bibliographies, in addition to distinguishing genres of creative output, may include information about subsequent editions, translations, collections and anthologies, and about texts of reflective prose and poetics by the author. Secondary resources, in turn, may be refined to reflect categories for research publications and publications aimed at literary education. In the first subcategory belong books and monographs, literary histories that devote attention to the oeuvre, master’s and doctoral studies, essay reviews and articles in academic journals covering various aspects of the literary output, published conference proceedings and lecture series about the author’s output. In the second subcategory belong curricula, published study guides and general anthologies intended for students. Furthermore, it is possible in showcase type bibliographies to provide information about the public profile, general literary appeal and cultural influence of the author by likewise differentiating between primary and secondary sources. In this case, primary resources would categorise references to articles, essays, news reports, letters, public addresses and public performances of the creative output in addition to intertextual responses by authors in the field and other creatives, through adaptation, reworking, et cetera, of the author’s output. The second category would include references to media reviews as well as general media responses, reports, interviews, polemics and other mentions in the press and on the Internet. From the foregoing, and from available literature on literary networking, follows the second line of argument, which proposes that well-constructed Afrikaans author bibliographies...