ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides a sustained literary analysis of Undinein light of Olive Schreiner's politics by attending to her characteristically allegorical modes of representation. It focuses on the metaphorically significant zoomorphic and anthropomorphic animal characters in the novel that have roots in mythical, fairytale, and Ancient Greek philosophical texts. The book gives a direct address to Schreiner's presentation of racial difference and racist language in African Farm. It explores the radical import of the evolutionary theory outlined in Schreiner's final novel, From Man to Man. The book situates Schreiner's literary innovations in the context of South African literature more broadly, beginning with readings of black African writers of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries as other theorist-practitioners of African modernism. It argues that Schreiner's use of racialised primitivist tropes and allegory can be interpreted as a modernist strategy to assert anti-racist and anti-imperialist arguments.
