Closed doors: gendered power relations and the use of mature themes in Eurocentric fairytales
- Authors: Sawyer, Kathleen Patricia
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/5971 , vital:21003
- Description: Established critics, such as Jack Zipes, assert that the subject matter of fairytales shows evidence that the Westernised 'classics' (by authors such as Charles Perrault or the Grimm brothers) were influenced by the cultural norms of their contemporary society and served as a pedagogical tool for mass socialisation. Often authors writing for younger audiences deliberately inserted a moralising function into these tales, in order to normalise and further disseminate certain gender ideals. Their presentation of adult or mature themes (such as sexuality) is often problematic, with some references presented quite naturally and others excluded entirely. This paper investigates modern retellings of Eurocentric fairytales, and speculates on the significance of the perpetuation or complete elision of such themes, and what their selective invocation might intimate about the culture in which the story is produced. It argues that the way in which the fairytale narrative engages with mature themes is demonstrative of its contemporary ethos and its associated cultural bias, which is conveyed unconsciously through the vehicle of the text. Through a critical analysis of relevant literature, the paper explores the maintenance of socio-cultural norms in fairytales as being emblematic in their establishment as cultural relics.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Sawyer, Kathleen Patricia
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/5971 , vital:21003
- Description: Established critics, such as Jack Zipes, assert that the subject matter of fairytales shows evidence that the Westernised 'classics' (by authors such as Charles Perrault or the Grimm brothers) were influenced by the cultural norms of their contemporary society and served as a pedagogical tool for mass socialisation. Often authors writing for younger audiences deliberately inserted a moralising function into these tales, in order to normalise and further disseminate certain gender ideals. Their presentation of adult or mature themes (such as sexuality) is often problematic, with some references presented quite naturally and others excluded entirely. This paper investigates modern retellings of Eurocentric fairytales, and speculates on the significance of the perpetuation or complete elision of such themes, and what their selective invocation might intimate about the culture in which the story is produced. It argues that the way in which the fairytale narrative engages with mature themes is demonstrative of its contemporary ethos and its associated cultural bias, which is conveyed unconsciously through the vehicle of the text. Through a critical analysis of relevant literature, the paper explores the maintenance of socio-cultural norms in fairytales as being emblematic in their establishment as cultural relics.
- Full Text:
A case for contemporary third literature: the black experience in the postmillennial fiction of three Kwela authors
- Authors: Mthembu, Lumumba
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/3322 , vital:20480
- Description: This study seeks to uncover the manner in which the young black experience is constructed in three novels by Sifiso Mzobe, Kgebetli Moele and K. Sello Duiker. Young Blood, Untitled and Thirteen Cents all feature teenage narrators navigating the social milieu of South Africa in the twenty-first century. My analysis is informed by Frantz Fanon’s postcolonial theory because South Africa’s socio-economic landscape conforms to the divisions laid out in The Wretched of the Earth. I contend that post-apartheid South Africa is developing in a manner that is symptomatic of the Fanonian post-independence African state. My close reading of the novels teases out the conditions under which young black subjects must survive and express themselves. I look into the roles of the community, the government, the family, and the school in shaping this experience. Naturally, my discussion segues into questions of sexuality and gender as they intersect with race. I demonstrate how these texts fail and succeed as works of Third Literature, a genre derived from Third Cinema, which I have adapted due to its Fanonian ideological underpinning. Third Literature is a fundamentally revolutionary and activistic genre which seeks to pave the way for social change. In this regard, I concern myself with the recommendations these three authors may have for the readers of their texts. In conclusion, these texts demonstrate that racialized identities are social constructs with measurable experiential effects. However, there are ways of actively resisting or even
- Full Text:
- Authors: Mthembu, Lumumba
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/3322 , vital:20480
- Description: This study seeks to uncover the manner in which the young black experience is constructed in three novels by Sifiso Mzobe, Kgebetli Moele and K. Sello Duiker. Young Blood, Untitled and Thirteen Cents all feature teenage narrators navigating the social milieu of South Africa in the twenty-first century. My analysis is informed by Frantz Fanon’s postcolonial theory because South Africa’s socio-economic landscape conforms to the divisions laid out in The Wretched of the Earth. I contend that post-apartheid South Africa is developing in a manner that is symptomatic of the Fanonian post-independence African state. My close reading of the novels teases out the conditions under which young black subjects must survive and express themselves. I look into the roles of the community, the government, the family, and the school in shaping this experience. Naturally, my discussion segues into questions of sexuality and gender as they intersect with race. I demonstrate how these texts fail and succeed as works of Third Literature, a genre derived from Third Cinema, which I have adapted due to its Fanonian ideological underpinning. Third Literature is a fundamentally revolutionary and activistic genre which seeks to pave the way for social change. In this regard, I concern myself with the recommendations these three authors may have for the readers of their texts. In conclusion, these texts demonstrate that racialized identities are social constructs with measurable experiential effects. However, there are ways of actively resisting or even
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The black and its double : the crisis of self-representation in protest and ‘post’-protest black South African fiction
- Authors: Kenqu, Amanda Yolisa
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Serote, Mongane Wally, 1944- -- Criticism and interpretation , Duiker, K. Sello -- Criticism and interpretation , Matlwa, Kopano -- Criticism and interpretation , Black people in literature , Race in literature , Protest literature, African (English) , Mimesis in literature , Black people -- Race identity -- South Africa , Serote, Mongane Wally, 1944- -- To every birth Its blood , Duiker, K. Sello -- Thirteen cents , Matlwa, Kopano -- Coconut
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2331 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020835
- Description: This study explores the crisis of representation in black South African protest and ‘post’-apartheid literature. Conversant with the debates on the crisis of representation in black South African protest literature from the 1960s to the late 1980s, the dissertation proposes a re-reading of the ‘crisis’ by locating it in the black writer’s struggle for an aesthetic with which to express the existential crisis of blackness. I contend that not only protest but also contemporary or ‘post’-protest black South African literature exhibits a split or fractured mode of writing which is characterised by the displacement/unheimlichheid produced by colonialism and apartheid, as well as by the contentious nature of that which this literature endeavours to capture – the fraught identity of blackness. In my exploration of the split or double narratives of Mongane Serote’s To Every Birth Its Blood, K. Sello Duiker’s Thirteen Cents, and Kopano Matlwa’s Coconut, I examine the representation of blackness through the themes of violence, trauma, powerlessness, failure, and unhomeliness/unbelongingness – all of which suggest the lack of a solid foundation upon which to construct a stable black identity. This instability, I ultimately argue, suggests a move beyond an Afrocentric perspective on identity and traditional tropes of blackness towards a more processual, fluid, and permeable post-black politics.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Kenqu, Amanda Yolisa
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Serote, Mongane Wally, 1944- -- Criticism and interpretation , Duiker, K. Sello -- Criticism and interpretation , Matlwa, Kopano -- Criticism and interpretation , Black people in literature , Race in literature , Protest literature, African (English) , Mimesis in literature , Black people -- Race identity -- South Africa , Serote, Mongane Wally, 1944- -- To every birth Its blood , Duiker, K. Sello -- Thirteen cents , Matlwa, Kopano -- Coconut
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2331 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020835
- Description: This study explores the crisis of representation in black South African protest and ‘post’-apartheid literature. Conversant with the debates on the crisis of representation in black South African protest literature from the 1960s to the late 1980s, the dissertation proposes a re-reading of the ‘crisis’ by locating it in the black writer’s struggle for an aesthetic with which to express the existential crisis of blackness. I contend that not only protest but also contemporary or ‘post’-protest black South African literature exhibits a split or fractured mode of writing which is characterised by the displacement/unheimlichheid produced by colonialism and apartheid, as well as by the contentious nature of that which this literature endeavours to capture – the fraught identity of blackness. In my exploration of the split or double narratives of Mongane Serote’s To Every Birth Its Blood, K. Sello Duiker’s Thirteen Cents, and Kopano Matlwa’s Coconut, I examine the representation of blackness through the themes of violence, trauma, powerlessness, failure, and unhomeliness/unbelongingness – all of which suggest the lack of a solid foundation upon which to construct a stable black identity. This instability, I ultimately argue, suggests a move beyond an Afrocentric perspective on identity and traditional tropes of blackness towards a more processual, fluid, and permeable post-black politics.
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"The wings of whipped butterflies" : trauma, silence and representation of the suffering child in selected contemporary African short fiction
- Authors: Njovane, Thandokazi
- Date: 2013
- Subjects: Children in literature Psychic trauma in literature Short stories, African (English) -- 21st century
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2253 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1004214
- Description: This dissertation, which examines the literary representation of childhood trauma, is held together by three threads of inquiry. Firstly, I examine the stylistic devices through which three contemporary African writers – NoViolet Bulawayo, Uwem Akpan, and Mia Couto – engage with the subject of childhood trauma in five of their short stories: “Hitting Budapest”; “My Parents’ Bedroom” and “Fattening for Gabon”; and “The Day Mabata-bata Exploded” and “The Bird-Dreaming Baobab,” respectively. In each of these narratives, the use of ingén(u)s in the form of child narrators and/or focalisers instantiates a degree of structural irony, premised on the cognitive discrepancy between the protagonists’ perceptions and those of the implied reader. This structural irony then serves to underscore the reality that, though in a general sense the precise nature of traumatic experience cannot be directly communicated in language, this is exacerbated in the case of children, because children’s physical and psychological frameworks are underdeveloped. Consequently, children’s exposure to trauma and atrocity results in disruptions of both personal and communal notions of safety and security which are even more severe than those experienced by adults. Secondly, I analyse the political, cultural and economic factors which give rise to the traumatic incidents depicted in the stories, and the child characters’ interpretations and responses to these exigencies. Notions of subjectivity and intersubjectivity, identity and community, victimhood and survival, agency and disempowerment are discussed here in relation to the context of postcolonial Africa and the contemporary realities of chronic poverty, genocide, child-trafficking, the aftermath of civil war, and the legacies of colonialism and racism. Thirdly, this dissertation inspects the areas of congruence and divergence between trauma theory, literary scholarship on trauma narratives, and literary attempts to represent atrocity and trauma despite what is widely held to be the inadequacy of language – and therefore representation – to this task. There are certain differences between the three authors’ depictions of children’s experiences of trauma, despite the fact that the texts all grapple with the aporetic nature of trauma and the paradox of representing the unrepresentable. To this end, they utilise various strategies – temporal disjunctions and fragmentations, silences and lacunae, elements of the fantastical and surreal, magical realism, and instances of abjection and dissociation – to gesture towards the inexpressible, or that which is incommensurable with language. I argue that, ultimately, it is the endings of these stories which suggest the unrepresentable nature of trauma. Traumatic experience poses a challenge to representational conventions and, in its resistance, encourages a realisation that new ways of writing and speaking about trauma in the African continent, particularly with regards to children, are needed. , Adobe Acrobat 9.54 Paper Capture Plug-in
- Full Text:
- Authors: Njovane, Thandokazi
- Date: 2013
- Subjects: Children in literature Psychic trauma in literature Short stories, African (English) -- 21st century
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2253 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1004214
- Description: This dissertation, which examines the literary representation of childhood trauma, is held together by three threads of inquiry. Firstly, I examine the stylistic devices through which three contemporary African writers – NoViolet Bulawayo, Uwem Akpan, and Mia Couto – engage with the subject of childhood trauma in five of their short stories: “Hitting Budapest”; “My Parents’ Bedroom” and “Fattening for Gabon”; and “The Day Mabata-bata Exploded” and “The Bird-Dreaming Baobab,” respectively. In each of these narratives, the use of ingén(u)s in the form of child narrators and/or focalisers instantiates a degree of structural irony, premised on the cognitive discrepancy between the protagonists’ perceptions and those of the implied reader. This structural irony then serves to underscore the reality that, though in a general sense the precise nature of traumatic experience cannot be directly communicated in language, this is exacerbated in the case of children, because children’s physical and psychological frameworks are underdeveloped. Consequently, children’s exposure to trauma and atrocity results in disruptions of both personal and communal notions of safety and security which are even more severe than those experienced by adults. Secondly, I analyse the political, cultural and economic factors which give rise to the traumatic incidents depicted in the stories, and the child characters’ interpretations and responses to these exigencies. Notions of subjectivity and intersubjectivity, identity and community, victimhood and survival, agency and disempowerment are discussed here in relation to the context of postcolonial Africa and the contemporary realities of chronic poverty, genocide, child-trafficking, the aftermath of civil war, and the legacies of colonialism and racism. Thirdly, this dissertation inspects the areas of congruence and divergence between trauma theory, literary scholarship on trauma narratives, and literary attempts to represent atrocity and trauma despite what is widely held to be the inadequacy of language – and therefore representation – to this task. There are certain differences between the three authors’ depictions of children’s experiences of trauma, despite the fact that the texts all grapple with the aporetic nature of trauma and the paradox of representing the unrepresentable. To this end, they utilise various strategies – temporal disjunctions and fragmentations, silences and lacunae, elements of the fantastical and surreal, magical realism, and instances of abjection and dissociation – to gesture towards the inexpressible, or that which is incommensurable with language. I argue that, ultimately, it is the endings of these stories which suggest the unrepresentable nature of trauma. Traumatic experience poses a challenge to representational conventions and, in its resistance, encourages a realisation that new ways of writing and speaking about trauma in the African continent, particularly with regards to children, are needed. , Adobe Acrobat 9.54 Paper Capture Plug-in
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The limitations and possiblilites of identity and form in selected recent memoirs and novels by white, female Zimbabwean writers : Alexandra Fuller, Lauren Liebenberg
- Authors: Eppel, Ruth
- Date: 2013
- Subjects: Women, White -- Zimbabwe -- Biography Women, White -- Zimbabwe -- Fiction Zimbabwean fiction (English) -- 21st century Women, White -- Zimbabwe -- Autobiography Fuller, Alexandra, 1969- Liebenberg, Lauren St. John, Lauren,1966- Rheam, Bryony
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2185 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1001985
- Description: This study examines selected works by four white female Zimbabwean writers: Alexandra Fuller, Lauren Liebenberg, Bryony Rheam and Lauren St John, in light of the controversy over the spate of white memoirs which followed the violent confiscation of white farms in Zimbabwe from 2000 onwards. The controversy hinges on the notion that white memoir writers exploit the perceived victimhood of white Zimbabweans in the international sphere, and nostalgically recall a time of belonging – as children in Rhodesia – which fails to address the fraught colonial history which is directly related to the current political climate of the country. I argue that such critiques are too generalised, and I regard the selected texts as primarily critical of the values and lifestyles of white Rhodesians/Zimbabweans. The texts I have selected include a range of autobiographical and fictional writing, or memoirs and pseudo-memoirs, and I focus on form as a medium enabling an exploration of identity. The ways in which these authors conform to and adapt particular narratives of becoming is examined in each chapter, with a particular focus on the transition from innocence to experience, the autobiography, and the Bildungsroman. Gender is a recurring point of interest: in each case the female selves/protagonists are situated in terms of the family, which, in reflecting social values, is a key site of conflict. In regard to trends in white African writing, I explore the white African (farm) childhood memoir and the confessional mode. Ultimately I maintain that while the texts may be classified as white writing, as they are fundamentally concerned with white identity, and therefore evince certain limitations of perspective and form, including clichéd tendencies, all the writers interrogate white identity and the fictional texts more self-reflexively deconstruct tropes of white writing.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Eppel, Ruth
- Date: 2013
- Subjects: Women, White -- Zimbabwe -- Biography Women, White -- Zimbabwe -- Fiction Zimbabwean fiction (English) -- 21st century Women, White -- Zimbabwe -- Autobiography Fuller, Alexandra, 1969- Liebenberg, Lauren St. John, Lauren,1966- Rheam, Bryony
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2185 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1001985
- Description: This study examines selected works by four white female Zimbabwean writers: Alexandra Fuller, Lauren Liebenberg, Bryony Rheam and Lauren St John, in light of the controversy over the spate of white memoirs which followed the violent confiscation of white farms in Zimbabwe from 2000 onwards. The controversy hinges on the notion that white memoir writers exploit the perceived victimhood of white Zimbabweans in the international sphere, and nostalgically recall a time of belonging – as children in Rhodesia – which fails to address the fraught colonial history which is directly related to the current political climate of the country. I argue that such critiques are too generalised, and I regard the selected texts as primarily critical of the values and lifestyles of white Rhodesians/Zimbabweans. The texts I have selected include a range of autobiographical and fictional writing, or memoirs and pseudo-memoirs, and I focus on form as a medium enabling an exploration of identity. The ways in which these authors conform to and adapt particular narratives of becoming is examined in each chapter, with a particular focus on the transition from innocence to experience, the autobiography, and the Bildungsroman. Gender is a recurring point of interest: in each case the female selves/protagonists are situated in terms of the family, which, in reflecting social values, is a key site of conflict. In regard to trends in white African writing, I explore the white African (farm) childhood memoir and the confessional mode. Ultimately I maintain that while the texts may be classified as white writing, as they are fundamentally concerned with white identity, and therefore evince certain limitations of perspective and form, including clichéd tendencies, all the writers interrogate white identity and the fictional texts more self-reflexively deconstruct tropes of white writing.
- Full Text:
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