Beth Wyrill

Rhodes University, English Department, Graduate Student

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I work at the Amazwi South African Museum of Literature as a Research Curator/Registrar, and last year completed my PhD, titled "The Archival Turn: Rereading the Guy Butler Collection at the National English Literary Museum".

The archival focus of my PhD stems from a historical interest sparked by my MA thesis, which looked at the interface between literature and history in three contemporary South African novels, all of which fit the genre of historiographical metafiction. This provided a way into thinking about historiography in South Africa more generally.

My research interests presently include South African fiction, history and historiography, and archival studies. I am also interested in the ways in which magical realist texts are particularly adept at providing commentary on 19th century realist historical narratives.

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Papers by Beth Wyrill

South African Literary Archives after the ‘Archival Turn’: a Case Study of the Guy Butler collection at the National English Literary Museum

African research & documentation, 2018

This article seeks to investigate the largest collection of literary artefacts in South Africa, h... more This article seeks to investigate the largest collection of literary artefacts in South Africa, housed at the National English Literary Museum, and particularly the relationship between the founder of the museum and archive, Guy Butler, and how NELM has come to operate in the South African literary landscape in a post-colonial and post-apartheid moment. It is necessary to invoke the post-colonial moment from the outset in order to explore the question of post-colonial archives from a critical perspective.This research is informed by what has come to be known as the ‘archival turn,’ which considers the ‘meta-text’ of archival formation. The work investigates the locations of power and regularities of logic that have informed the collection of certain items and histories, and the neglect of others.

Plagues in Palimpsest: Historical Time and Narrative Time in Diane Awerbuck's Home Remedies, Marcus Low's Asylum and Russel Brownlee's Garden of the Plagues

The Plague Years, Jun 13, 2022

The archival turn: rereading the Guy Butler Collection in the National English Literary Museum

This thesis takes as its theoretical springboard the ‘archival turn’ in South African historical ... more This thesis takes as its theoretical springboard the ‘archival turn’ in South African historical studies, a moment that arguably reached its culmination in 2002 with the publication of Refiguring the Archive. The archival turn posits that, rather than using it as an unproblematic source of original material, scholars might begin to investigate the archive itself, including its processes of construction and organisation. This theoretical model also proposes that the archive might reflect the cultural beliefs and epistemologies common to the era in which it was set up. It seems that the time is ripe for a reconsideration of the insights gleaned from this academic moment in South Africa, given the recent contestation over the meanings of history and our cultural markers of heritage in the public domain, largely grouped under the term ‘Fallism.’ As such, a fresh look at South African museums, which in this country are often rooted in colonial practices of knowledge production, seems apt...

South African Literary Archives after the ‘Archival Turn’: a Case Study of the Guy Butler collection at the National English Literary Museum

African Research & Documentation

Guy Butler and NELM’s Literary Project: A Contested History

English Academy Review

This article seeks to investigate the relationship between the National English Literary Museum (... more This article seeks to investigate the relationship between the National English Literary Museum (NELM) and the perceived legacy of its founding personality, Guy Butler. In so doing, the article unpacks the varied historic and contemporary responses to the institutional and cultural work of Guy Butler, while casting Butler as an archival ‘patriarch’, using Derrida’s Archive Fever ([1995] 1996. Chicago: University of Chicago Press) as a theoretical framework. The article explores the conceptual reach of the term ‘archive’ according to contemporary South African academic archive studies, and posits that under this academic perspective the work of NELM and the legacy of Butler might be considered ‘archival’. The article concludes that Butler’s work on behalf of the institution of literary academia and historiography in the latter half of the twentieth century might be connected to the nineteenth century colonial roots of many of South Africa’s knowledge institutions, and that conceptually, the archive, the library, and the museum, are imbricated in a South African geography of coloniality. The article closes with a consideration of NELM’s contemporary moment, given the fraught relationship that South Africa is presently experiencing with its own heritage institutions.

The interface of history and fiction in Russel Brownlee’s Garden of the plagues, Ingrid Winterbach’s To hell With Cronjé, and Etienne van Heerden’s The long silence of Mario Salviati

Plagues in Palimpsest: Historical Time and Narrative Time in Diane Awerbuck’s Home Remedies, Marcus Low’s Asylum and Russel Brownlee’s Garden of the Plagues

English Studies in Africa

Rethinking Historiography in Russel Brownlee’s <i>Garden of the Plagues</i>

English in Africa, 2016

South African literary archives after the "archival turn": A case study of the Guy Butler collection at the National English Literary Museum

African Research and Documentation, 2018

This article seeks to investigate the largest collection of literary artefacts in South Africa, h... more This article seeks to investigate the largest collection of literary artefacts in South Africa, housed at the National English Literary Museum, and particularly at the relationship between the founder of the museum and archive, Guy Butler, and how NELM has come to operate in the South African literary landscape in a post-colonial and post-apartheid moment. It is necessary to invoke the post-colonial moment from the outset in order to explore the question of post-colonial archives from a critical perspective. This research is informed by what has come to be known as the ‘archival turn,’ which, very broadly speaking, considers the ‘meta-text’ of archival formation.

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Guy Butler and NELM's Literary Project: A Contested History

English Academy Review, 2018

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Rethinking Historiography in Russel Brownlee's Garden of the Plagues

This paper asserts that, when it comes to approaching previously silenced South African histories... more This paper asserts that, when it comes to approaching previously silenced South African histories (for example, those personal histories that are written out of the official record by colonial practices of archive and documentary record-keeping), literary attempts at historical reimagining can better gesture towards a felt connection with a lived historical moment. This is precisely because creative literary offerings can take as springboard, rather than boundary, the documentary evidence upon which the discipline of History must rely. Russel Brownlee's novel Garden of the Plagues provides a useful case study in unpacking this premise. The novel adds to a body of South African contemporary re-imaginings of slave histories during the Dutch occupation of the Cape. It can be said to fall into the generic category of 'historiographic metafiction,' meaning, fiction which self-consciously engages and critiques the realist literary foundations of traditional nineteenth-century historiography. Brownlee, by using various postmodern literary devices, is able to foreground the Enlightenment epistemologies informing colonial discourse and so generate the grounds for a useful literary-historical dialogue. *** Russel Brownlee's debut novel, Garden of the Plagues (2005), presents an interesting addition to the growing body of South African literary contributions to rethinking the history of slavery at the Cape. The novel has not received much critical attention in academic circles, despite the fact that

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South African Literary Archives after the ‘Archival Turn’: a Case Study of the Guy Butler collection at the National English Literary Museum

African research & documentation, 2018

Plagues in Palimpsest: Historical Time and Narrative Time in Diane Awerbuck's Home Remedies, Marcus Low's Asylum and Russel Brownlee's Garden of the Plagues

The Plague Years, Jun 13, 2022

The archival turn: rereading the Guy Butler Collection in the National English Literary Museum

South African Literary Archives after the ‘Archival Turn’: a Case Study of the Guy Butler collection at the National English Literary Museum

African Research & Documentation

Guy Butler and NELM’s Literary Project: A Contested History

English Academy Review

The interface of history and fiction in Russel Brownlee’s Garden of the plagues, Ingrid Winterbach’s To hell With Cronjé, and Etienne van Heerden’s The long silence of Mario Salviati

Plagues in Palimpsest: Historical Time and Narrative Time in Diane Awerbuck’s Home Remedies, Marcus Low’s Asylum and Russel Brownlee’s Garden of the Plagues

English Studies in Africa

Rethinking Historiography in Russel Brownlee’s <i>Garden of the Plagues</i>

English in Africa, 2016

South African literary archives after the "archival turn": A case study of the Guy Butler collection at the National English Literary Museum

African Research and Documentation, 2018

This article seeks to investigate the largest collection of literary artefacts in South Africa, h... more This article seeks to investigate the largest collection of literary artefacts in South Africa, housed at the National English Literary Museum, and particularly at the relationship between the founder of the museum and archive, Guy Butler, and how NELM has come to operate in the South African literary landscape in a post-colonial and post-apartheid moment. It is necessary to invoke the post-colonial moment from the outset in order to explore the question of post-colonial archives from a critical perspective. This research is informed by what has come to be known as the ‘archival turn,’ which, very broadly speaking, considers the ‘meta-text’ of archival formation.

Download

Guy Butler and NELM's Literary Project: A Contested History

English Academy Review, 2018

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Rethinking Historiography in Russel Brownlee's Garden of the Plagues

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Beth Wyrill

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