J. M. Coetzee, Summertime

Franklyn Hyde (Booth University College)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 7.2.3.03: South Africa and other Southern Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Helen Rachel Cousins (Newman University), David Firth (University of Manchester)

Dates

First circulation or publication 2009

Places

South Africa (Country of Origin)
United States (Publication/ performance)

Genres and Modes

Non-Fiction
- Life writing (literature)
Prose Fiction Narrative

Resources

Summertime: Scenes from Provincial Life III (2009) is the third volume of J. M. Coetzee’s autobiographical trilogy begun with Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life (1999) and Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II (2002). As is common to all three volumes, the technical approach employed in Summertime is strangely divorced from the familiar autobiographical mode in which the author simply outlines a series of notably events from her/his life in the first-person past-tense. The premise behind the text is that the “Coetzee” of Summertime has died sometime after the completion of Diary of a Bad Year (2007) – instead of a memoir, the text purports to be a collection of materials assembled by …

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2780 words

Citation: Hyde, Franklyn. "Summertime". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 February 2011 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=28550, accessed 24 November 2024.]

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