The representation of the farm in three South African novels : Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African farm; Pauline Smith's The Beadle; and J.M. Coetzee's In the heart of the country.

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