At play in the master's workshop: the experience of reading in the novels of Henry James
- Authors: Seddon, Deborah Ann
- Date: 1998
- Subjects: James, Henry, 1843-1916 -- Criticism and interpretation
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2278 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007451 , James, Henry, 1843-1916 -- Criticism and interpretation
- Description: James's belief that "it is art that makes life" is essential to his own literary technique and to the reading experience within and in relation to his novels. The thesis seeks to posit the notion of reading as a fundamental concern in Henry James's fiction. Drawing largely on the phenomenological and anthropological approaches to the reading process of Wolfgang Iser, this thesis examines the Jamesian text as a performative event involving author, reader and character in creative and interpretative narrational struggles. Iser uses "play" as an integral term to describe the dynamic between author-reader-text which produces a literary work of art. In James's fiction the doubling of the author/reader and reader/character role within the text crucially structures a narrative form which is itself an inquiry into the human use of fiction. The Iserian conception of the act of reading as an engagement with the "gaps" within the play-space of the literary text can elucidate James's structural and thematic use of such sites of indeterminacy to foreground the enlivening necessity of an indeterminate "felt life" within human narrative structures. What Maisie Knew highlights the most important rule in the game -- the necessity for the reader to create meaning from the indeterminate aspects of the text. The shared exercise for author-reader-character is the attempt to access the child's unformulated inner reality to ascertain what Maisie knows. In the section on The Portrait of a Lady Iser's notion of reading as an ideational activity aids an inquiry into the human use of mental fictive picturing to compose reality. The Ambassadors demonstrates the "anthropological" need for the particular mode of consciousness brought about by the literary text when we engage in a world as real as but different to our own. Strether is the reader's ambassador in this world and his interpretative activity mirrors the reader's quest. In The Golden Bowl the bewildering multiplicity of readings made possible by the indeterminate aspects of the literary text instigates a contest for narrative forms in which the chosen fictions of the readers/characters must be actively willed into existence.
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South African panorama: the novels of Daphne Rooke
- Authors: Coetzee, Paulette June
- Date: 1998
- Subjects: Rooke, Daphne, 1914- -- Criticism and interpretation
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2222 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002265 , Rooke, Daphne, 1914- -- Criticism and interpretation
- Description: This thesis covers Daphne Rooke's eight published "South African" novels: A Grove of Fever Trees, Mittee, Ratoons, Wizards' Country, A Lover for Estelle, The Greyling, Diamond Jo, and Margaretha de la Porte. It supports the recent revival of critical interest in Rooke, and argues for the continuing relevance of her work in post-apartheid South Africa. This study also broadens the scope of recent Rooke research by including lesser known works like The Greyling and Margaretha de la Porte in its analysis. Recent criticism has focused on Rooke's unusual blend of romance and realism. The first three chapters concentrate more on "realism", emphasising the depth and extent of Rooke's engagement with serious social issues. The novels are examined in terms of their handling of the themes of class (chapter one), race (chapter two) and gender (chapter three). The concluding chapter shifts in focus to "romance" and examines the question of generic_identity -- touching on Rooke's gothic, magical realist and "popular" qualities -within a consideration of the particular "South African-ness" of her work.
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The motif of initiation in selected works by Joseph Conrad
- Authors: Doherty, Helen
- Date: 1998
- Subjects: Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924 -- Criticism and interpretation , Initiation rites in literature
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2220 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002263 , Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924 -- Criticism and interpretation , Initiation rites in literature
- Description: This thesis explores the archetypal theme of initiation in selected texts by Joseph Conrad. The Introduction first surveys critical attention to initiatory motifs in Conrad with the objective of demonstrating the need for an approach to the topic informed by a more formal and theorized understanding of initiation. It then offers a prima facie case for the centrality of the idea of initiation in Conrad's oeuvre, based on references culled from a range of the author's writings. Chapter One seeks to contextualise initiation by providing a history of anthropological research into and theorisations of the rite, proceeding to a description of its typical structure and functions. A detailed account is given of the most widely accepted model of initiation, Arnold van Gennep's tripartite schema. Moving on to Conrad's writing, Chapter Two draws on both his fiction and more personal writings in order to provide a provisional account of the writer's own understanding of initiation and its importance, and to offer some explanation of why Conrad should have been prompted to accord the motif such prominence in his work. Conrad's presentation and (impliedly) his understanding of initiation was never entirely consistent and underwent some change in the course of his writing career. The critical assessment of "Typhoon" in Chapter Three depicts Conrad's more optimistic conception of initiation as a rite benefitting both society, by promoting solidarity, and the individual, by advancing self-knowledge. Chapter Four introduces, via analyses of the novellas "Youth" and "The Shadow Line", that variation on the motif of initiation which is more typical of its manifestation in Conrad: the failure of individuals to complete their cycles of initiation. Chapter Five identifies those characteristics of initiation which appear to be determinative in the representations of incomplete initiation in Conrad's work. Initiation seems to play out approximately seven paradoxes; the impact of some of these is examined through analysis of the initiatory ordeals of the main protagonists in The Secret Agent. Integral to this discussion is an attempt to demonstrate the vital role which initiation plays in the healthy maintenance not only of social order but also of faith and life itself. The Conclusion summarises the more important findings of the study and indicates some directions for further, related research.
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Thematic integrity in filmic versions of E.M. Forster's novels
- Authors: Hayes, Kalmia Joy
- Date: 1998
- Subjects: Forster, E. M. (Edward Morgan), 1879-1970. Passage to India , Forster, E. M. (Edward Morgan), 1879-1978. Where Angels Fear To Tread , Forster, E. M. (Edward Morgan), 1879-1978. Howards End , Sturridge, Charles , Merchant Ivory Productions , Lean, David, 1908-1991 , Film adaptations , Motion pictures -- Plots, themes, etc
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2218 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002261 , Forster, E. M. (Edward Morgan), 1879-1970. Passage to India , Forster, E. M. (Edward Morgan), 1879-1978. Where Angels Fear To Tread , Forster, E. M. (Edward Morgan), 1879-1978. Howards End , Sturridge, Charles , Merchant Ivory Productions , Lean, David, 1908-1991 , Film adaptations , Motion pictures -- Plots, themes, etc
- Description: This study discusses the extent to which Charles Sturridge's Where Angels Fear to Tread, Merchant Ivory's Howards End, and David Lean's A Passage to India have aimed at, and succeeded in, exploring the thematic concerns of E.M. Forster's novels. A brief introductory chapter explains the motivation behind this research, and the choice of critical methodologies used. It concludes with an outline of some of the problems confronting film-makers wishing to explore the concerns of novels. The first chapter, which is devoted to Where Angels Fear to Tread, reveals that while Sturridge is "faithful" to Forster's novel at a superficial level, basing most of his scenes on, and taking most of his dialogue directly from, the text, he does not explore Forster's themes. The facility with which film tells stories proves to be a treacherous trap for Sturridge. His version of Where Angels Fear to Tread is totally vacuous because he failed to develop anything beyond the story -- Forster's "tapeworm" of time (Aspects of the NoyeI41). The causality that Forster calls plot seemed beyond Sturridge's comprehension, leaving his film little more than an endless progression of "and then[s]" (Forster, Aspects 87). Characters are not given their full weight; symbols and leitmotifs are overlooked; the allegorical elements he did recognize, he failed to understand, and thus misplaced, so that the epiphanic moments of the novel are lost. There is no possibility of thematic concerns emerging from a film in which plot, characterization, symbol and rhythm are ignored. Sturridge's apparent inability to understand his source is in stark contrast to Merchant Ivory's sensitivity to Howards End, and their evident familiarity with literary criticism on the work. Chapter two explores the way in which their adaptation smooths out putative flaws in characterization and plot, and uses filmic rhythm and camera work to suggest comments made by the novel's narrator. Almost wholly successful in developing the novel's themes, Merchant Ivory's Howards End does not, however, successfully explore the spiritual dimensions of Forster's novel. Film is a medium capable of great subtlety, but its strength lies in its ability to capture the seen; the unseen tends to evade its grasp. It is in dealing with the unseen that Lean's A Passage to India misses greatness, for in virtually every other respect his version of Forster's masterpiece is superb. Chapter three explores Lean's creative and flexible approach to adaptation, his acute sensitivity to the differing demands of film and novel, and his confident technical mastery. It also explores, however, the emptiness at the heart of his film, an emptiness that is the result of his trivialization of the spiritual concerns of Forster's novel.
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