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Between past and future: memory and mourning in the stories of Okwiri Oduor and Ndinda Kioko

- Awuor, Nicholas Amol

Authors: Awuor, Nicholas Amol
Date: 2020
Subjects: Oduor, Okwiri -- Criticism and interpretation , Oduor, Okwiri -- The plea bargain , Oduor, Okwiri -- My father's head , Oduor, Okwiri -- Rag doll , Kioko, Ndinda -- Criticism and interpretation , Kioko, Ndinda -- Sometime Before Maulidi , Kioko, Ndinda -- Some Freedom Dreams , Authors, Kenyan -- Criticism and interpretation , Kenyan fiction (English) -- History and criticism , Kenyan literature (English) -- History and criticism
Language: English
Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/163168 , vital:41015
Description: This study investigates the literary activities of two emerging female Kenyan writers, Claudette Okwiri Oduor and Jacqueline Ndinda Kioko, both of whom are award-winning authors. Oduor won the 2014 Caine Prize for African Writing while Kioko bagged the Wasafiri New Writing Fiction Award 2017. It examines specifically how the writers deal with memory and mourning in negotiating between the past and future. I explore how their fictional and non-fictional narratives assist individuals and groups to confront loss, reconstruct new identities, and renegotiate belonging amidst personal and social upheaval. The fictional narratives at the centre of this research are Oduor’s “The Plea Bargain” (2011), “My Father’s Head” (2013) and “Rag Doll” (2014), and Kioko’s “Sometime Before Maulidi” (2014) and “Some Freedom Dreams” (2017). The study explores the themes of mental illness, existential crisis, and fragmentation, and considers bereavement, queer relationships, cultural freedom, and social recognition. The research further considers the active participation of these two writers in Kenya’s contemporary literary-cultural conversations, which span different genres and various media platforms, including blogs, YouTube clips, online magazines, and social media networks in dialogue with other writers. I trace the significance of the literary-cultural link these authors have with their local, continental, and global counterparts in countries like Uganda, Nigeria, and South Africa. The link finds expression through their (in)direct association with some of the new online publishing outlets in Kenya like Jalada Africa, Enkare Review, and Kikwetu. More importantly, their shared participation in and association with such international awards and scholarships as the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, Kwani Trust Manuscript Project, and Miles Morland Foundation is integral in apprehending contemporary literary exchanges and multidirectional flows of publishing in Africa and beyond. I equally illustrate how mentorship of younger writers through local writers’ organisations and collectives like AMKA and Writivism help in the formation of an alternative canon other than the mainstream. The study affirms that the authors seem to transcend the boundaries of production and circulation by fluidly moving between electronic and non-electronic platforms, thus mimicking the memory production of remembering, repeating, and working through.
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Date Issued: 2020

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No other world: the poetry of Don Maclennan

- Robinson, Brendon Kimbale

Authors: Robinson, Brendon Kimbale
Date: 2008
Subjects: Maclennan, Don Maclennan, Don -- Criticism and interpretation South African poetry (English) -- History and criticism
Language: English
Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
Identifier: vital:2221 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002264
Description: This is a study of the poetry of Don Maclennan in four chapters. Chapter One explores the poetry's deep involvement with the immediate world, and with the being that encounters it. Chapter Two examines the corpus's mistrust of abstract thought, and its suggestions for alternative ways of intepreting (or at least approaching an interpretation of) our existential situation. Chapter Three deals with Maclennan's writing on the subject of death, while the final chapter looks at the response of the poetry to the fact of death: put simply, this is to learn to love the situation we are in, and to record our thoughts for future generations, thus reaching beyond death to share with others the necessarily unique experience of our one and only life.
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Date Issued: 2008

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Translating Heaney: a study of Sweeney astray, The cure at Troy, and Beowulf

- Van der Woude, Peter William

Authors: Van der Woude, Peter William
Date: 2007
Subjects: Heaney, Seamus, 1939- Criticism and interpretation Heaney, Seamus, 1939- Sweeney astray Sophocles. Philoctetes -- Translations History and criticism Beowulf -- Translations History and criticism Buile Suibhne Geilt Buile Suibhne Geilt -- Translations History and criticism
Language: English
Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
Identifier: vital:2213 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002256
Description: This thesis examines Seamus Heaney’s approach to translation with specific reference to Sweeney Astray, The Cure at Troy, and Beowulf. An assessment of Heaney’s translations, and the ways in which they relate to his poetry, is essential to an understanding of his work as a poet. This thesis demonstrates the centrality of translation to Heaney’s oeuvre as an effective means to comment on his Northern Irish socio-political context without producing political propaganda. Translation is a valuable means for Heaney to elucidate his contemporary experience by considering it in terms of the recorded past captured within his chosen translations. Instead of comparing the three translations with their original texts, this thesis concentrates on Heaney’s translations as a continuation of his own creative work and as catalysts for further poetry. The translations are explored in chronological order to allow a sense of Heaney’s development as a translator and his efforts to remain critically attuned to the Northern Irish political situation. The first chapter examines Heaney’s translation of the Gaelic poem Buile Suibhne, which is published as Sweeney Astray. In this first major act of translation Heaney recognises the political role that translation is able to play. He draws attention to the protagonist’s sense of cultural ease in both Britain and Ireland, which he argues is exemplary for the people of Ulster and renders the narrative particularly accessible to a Northern Irish readership due to his anglicisation of the text, which is intended as a reminder to both Catholics and Protestants of their shared identity as Irishmen. The second chapter focuses on Heaney’s translation of Sophocles’ Philoctetes, entitled The Cure at Troy. Heaney’s translation contextualises the Ancient Greek concern for personal integrity in the face of political necessity, a situation relevant to his own complex relationship with Northern Irish politics. His alterations to the text accentuate the positive aspects of the play, suggesting the very real possibility of social change within the seemingly constant violence of Northern Ireland. The third chapter explores Heaney’s engagement with the Anglo-Saxon epic poem, Beowulf, as a means of coming to terms with the complex history of Irish colonisation through language. This chapter assesses Heaney’s incorporation of Irish dialectal words into his translation, which lend the poem political weight, and yet prove to be contextually appropriate, rendering Heaney’s Beowulf a masterpiece of readability and subtle political commentary.
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Date Issued: 2007

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Coleridge on drama

- Wagstaff, Brian John

Authors: Wagstaff, Brian John
Date: 1973
Subjects: Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834 -- Dramatic works , Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834 -- Criticism and interpretation , English drama -- 18th century -- History and criticism
Language: English
Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
Identifier: vital:2276 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007255 , Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834 -- Dramatic works , Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834 -- Criticism and interpretation , English drama -- 18th century -- History and criticism
Description: From Introduction: In the Preface to his book The idea of Coleridge's Criticism, Richard Harter Fogle states: There is... I am confident, a need for such a study as I here introduce; a study of Coleridge's criticism in itself, tentatively accepting the metaphysical assumptions on which it is based and focusing upon its central principles and inner relationship; endeavouring without direct regard for its external connections to the past and the present to see it as a whole, yet at the same time anxiously regardful of its permanent significance and its bearing upon practical criticism. These are the principles on which I have based this thesis, applied more particularly to Coleridge's criticism of drama.
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Date Issued: 1973

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"The wife of Lucifer" : women and evil in Charles Dickens

- Ebelthite, Candice Axell

Authors: Ebelthite, Candice Axell
Date: 2002
Subjects: Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 -- Characters -- Women Evil in literature Women in literature
Language: English
Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
Identifier: vital:2189 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002231
Description: This thesis examines Dickens's presentation of evil women. In the course of my reading I discovered that most of the evil women in his novels are mothers, or mother-figures, a finding which altered the nature of my interpretation and led to closer examination of these characters, rather than the prostitutes and criminals who may have been viewed negatively by Nineteenth century society and thereby condemned as evil. Among the many unsympathetically portrayed mothers and mother-figures in Dickens's works, the three that are most interesting are Lady Dedlock, Miss Havisham, and Mrs Skewton. Madame Defarge initiates the discussion, however, as a seminal figure among the many evil women in the novels. Psychoanalytical and socio-historic readings grounded in Nineteenth century conceptions of womanhood provide background material for this thesis. Though useful and informative, however, these areas of study are not sufficient in themselves. The theory that shapes the arguments of this thesis is defined by Steven Cohan, who argues strongly that the demand for psychological coherence as a requisite of character obscures the imaginative power of character as textual construct, and who both refutes and develops character theory as it is argued by Baruch Hochman. Cohan's theory is also finally closer to that outlined by Thomas Docherty, who provides a complex reading of character as ultimately "unknowable".
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Date Issued: 2002

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Author, ideology and publisher a symbiotic relationship : Lovedale Missionary Press and early Black writing in South Africa: with specific reference to the critical writings of H.I.E. Dlomo

- Midgley, Henry Peter

Authors: Midgley, Henry Peter
Date: 1994
Subjects: Shepherd, Robert H W (Robert Henry Wishart), 1888-1971 Dhlomo, H I E (Herbert I E), 1903-1956 Rhodes University Dissertations African literature Lovedale Institution South African literature -- Black authors -- History and criticism South African literature (English) -- History and criticism Politics and literature -- South Africa -- History -- 20th century Press and politics -- South Africa -- History
Language: English
Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
Identifier: vital:2241 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002284
Description: The specific instances of R.H.W. Shepherd and H.I.E. Dhlomo are used in this thesis to investigate some of the many factors that influence the formation of a colonial literature, such as politics, social structures and personal ideals. By isolating the Lovedale Mission Press ~s a "contact zone" - a·place where the cultures of the colonizer and the colonized come into direct contact with each other - it is possible to trace how the interaction between these cultures shaped the writing of a particular African writer, H.I.E. Dhlomo. This is done through an analysis of historical factors that shaped the policy of the Lovedale Mission Press in the twentieth century: the development of liberalism in South Africa, the·role of the missionary in African education, the function ofa liberal magazine such as The South African Outlook and the appointment of an ambitious missionary, R.I.W. Shepherd, to the position of Director of Publications. This necessarily included a study of Shepherd's vision of African literature. On the other hand, this study takes cognisance of the factors that shaped Herbert Dhlomo's vision of literature: the development of African nationalism, the entrenchment of segregation as a politial doctrine, and most importantly, his struggle to have his creative writing published by the Lovedale Press. It is shown how Shepherd's vision of what African literature should entail contrasted with Dhlomo's, and how, as a result, Dhlomo deliberately structured his critical writing as a response to Shepherd's Eurocentric approach to African literature.
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Date Issued: 1994

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Diteng tsa ditlhopha tsa maina a Bantu: ntlhathakanelo e le mo Setswanang : “The semantics of Bandu noun classes: a focus on Setswana

- Tladi, Oboitshepo

Authors: Tladi, Oboitshepo
Date: 2020
Subjects: Tswana language , Tswana language -- Grammar , Tswana language -- Noun , Noun , Bantu languages , Bantu languages -- Noun , Bantu languages -- Grammar
Language: English
Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/167654 , vital:41500
Description: The present study investigated the semantic classification of the Setswana noun class system. This enquiry falls under the broad area of the noun classification system in Bantu languages, psycholinguistics and lexicogrpahy. Specifically it explores the basis of noun classification in Setswana making indications that Setswana noun classification is based on a partial semantic classification. Data for the study was drawn from the Setswana Oxford Dictionary. Sixty Setswana nouns, from class 1, 3, 5, and 7, were selected and analysed and then grouped into semantic categories (i.e., PERSON, DEROGATION, TRANSPORATION and so forth). The study adopted Kgukutli’s (1994) semantic classification in performing the dictionary analysis. The rest of the data was drawn from the intuitions of thirty-nine contemporary speakers of Setswana, with the aid of a linguistic test which was fashioned according to Selvik’s (2001) psycholinguistic test. The language test required participants to match the predetermined Setswana definitions with hypothetical Setswana nouns with selected class prefixes attached to them. The results from the empirical study showed that speakers were associating prefixes to certain semantic values, suggesting that each noun class had specific semantic content that was unique to that class. The semantic categories created through the dictionary analysis were then compared to those given by the thirty-nine Setswana speakers, to analyse whether there were any similaritires in the semantic classification of the noun classes. The findings of the dictionary analysis and linguistic test revealed that there were certain semantic characteristics that each class was associated with that seemed to be unique to the class. However, there were various semantic overlaps in the semantic categories associated with the different noun classes, which brings into question whether a semantic classification is viable in the classing of nouns. The study suggests that prior classification of Setswana nouns are not precise enough and that additional semantic categories are needed to offer a more precise classification of nouns in this language.
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Date Issued: 2020

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A study of the heroine in certain Victorian novels

- Addecott, Grahame John

Authors: Addecott, Grahame John
Date: 1959
Subjects: English fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism , Heroines in literature
Language: English
Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
Identifier: vital:2319 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013374
Description: During the reign of Queen Victoria was seen the gradual emergence of the emancipated woman. The idea that women were innocent beings who must be kept from real knowledge of the world died hard, however, and to the end of the era there were many who repudiated the very concept of emancipation whether in literature or life. Coupled with the chivalrous, idealistic concept of womanhood was Victorian respectability, and it is not surprising that in the earlier Victorian novels we see clearly the idealistic concept of women and the effects of the cult of respectability. To illustrate my theme, of the gradual change in the concept of the novel which naturally kept pace, more or less, with the progress the emancipation of women was making, I have chosen one novel from each of seven great Victorian novelists whose works span the whale era. The only exception I have made is with Charlotte Bronte. In her case the heroines of two of her novels are discussed mainly because she is the first Victorian novelist to sound a note of protest against the then conventional concept of the heroine.
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Date Issued: 1959

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“How can you build a nation without telling its stories?”: Transgressive, Testimonial Fiction in Post-TRC South Africa

- Collett, Keenan

Authors: Collett, Keenan
Date: 2020
Subjects: South African fiction (English) , Violence in literature , South Africa -- In literature , AIDS (Disease) in literature , Duiker, K Sello -- Thirteen cents , Moele, Kgebetli -- The book of the dead , Staggie, Jason -- Risk
Language: English
Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147092 , vital:38592
Description: Transgressive fiction refers to works of literature that are fundamentally concerned with the provocation of their reader. This effect is typically accomplished by authors crafting novels that feature upsetting content: extreme violence, taboo sex acts, and drug abuse – often narrated by protagonists who are either the recipients or enactors of violence and trauma. Given their rootedness in familiar social settings, these works of fiction manage to relay critiques of their particular societies. Over the past three decades, transgressive fiction has amassed a small critical reception with focus predominantly directed toward texts from the United States and the United Kingdom. In an attempt to build on existing scholarship, this thesis explores recent and disturbing works of South African literature in order to gauge whether the markers of transgressive fiction are as easily applicable in a new national setting. K. Sello Duiker’s Thirteen Cents, Kgebetli Moele’s The Book of the Dead and Jason Staggie’s Risk form the basis of the discussion. Each novel exposes a concern with social developments within a ‘post-apartheid’ South Africa, and codes its respective critique in narratives concerned with the violation of consent, as depicted in profoundly unsettling ways. The spread of publication dates across the three novels also allows for an examination of morphing social critique from 2000-2013.
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Date Issued: 2020

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Elie Wiesel's fictional universe : the paradox of the mute narrator

- Berman, Mona

Authors: Berman, Mona
Date: 1986
Subjects: Wiesel, Elie, 1928- -- Criticism and interpretation , Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives , Auschwitz , Narration , Silence , English literature , Criticism
Language: English
Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
Identifier: vital:2178 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1001829
Description: The approach I have chosen for my study is to analyse the narrative techniques in Wiesel's fiction, with particular emphasis on the role of the narrator and listener in the narratives. This will not only highlight aspects of his authorial strategy involving the reader's response to various dimensions of the Holocaust, but will allow an appraisal of the literary merit of Wiesel's novels. The hushed reverence that tends to accompany allusions to Auschwitz and its literature has impeded certain theoretical investigations, with the result that most critical studies undertaken on Wiesel's works have dealt predominantly with themes and content rather than with form. A narrative approach, however, while it accounts for themes, does so within the narrative process of the work. Form and content are examined as interwoven entities in the particular context of an individual work. My decision to adopt this pursuit is based on the conviction that Wiesel's fiction is a significant contribution to the literature of testimony, not only because of its subject matter, but also because of the way in which his narrators unfold their stories with words suspended by silence in the text. The paradox of the mute narrator, the title of my study, is intended to convey the paradoxical quality of Wiesel's fiction and to show how silence, which is manifested in the themes of his work, is concretized by his strategy of entrusting the transmission of the tale to narrators, who, for various reasons have been silenced. A mute by definition cannot emit an articulate sound. A narrator, on the other hand, is a storyteller who is reliant on verbal articulation for communication. This contradiction in terms is dramatized in the novels and is symptomatic of the dilemma of Wiesel's narrators who are compelled to bear testimony through their silence. In my study of Wiesel's fiction, I will follow the chronological sequence in which the novels were written, although I will not be using a developmental approach, except to point out that the trilogy which marks the beginning of his exploration into narrative strategies, and The Testament, the last book I will be dealing with, are a culmination of his previous fictional techniques. While a developmental analysis of his fiction, particularly from a thematic point of view, enables the reader to gain insight into his background, which is important in a comprehensive study of his works, I feel that this avenue of investigation has been competently dealt with by other critics. Ellen Fine's Legacy of Night, one of the first book-length studies of Wiesel, puts forward a convincing argument for examining his fiction in chronological sequence as a kind of serialized journey from being a witness in l'univers concentrationnaire to bearing - witness in a post-Holocaust world. Furthermore, it is possible to trace the direction Wiesel's fiction follows, as in each book the seeds are sown for new ideas which are expanded upon in subsequent books. My discussion, however, will deal with the narrative process of each novel as an individual work in its own particular context. Apart from the trilogy which is examined in one chapter, and The Testament which serves as a conclusion to the study, I have not used cross references to Wiesel's other fiction when analysing specific books. Moreover, I have deliberately avoided including Wiesel's comments on his works and references to them in his essays, interviews and non-fiction writing. The reason for this approach is that I consider each novel to be a separate narrative work which merits an interpretative response that is independent of the comparative criteria that has up to now influenced the assessment of his fiction. (Introduction, p. 12-14)
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Date Issued: 1986

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The environmental imagination in Arthur Nortje’s poetry

- Kaze, Douglas Eric

Authors: Kaze, Douglas Eric
Date: 2018
Subjects: Nortje, Arthur, 1942-1970 -- Criticism and interpretation , Ecology in literature , Race awareness in literature , South African poetry (English) -- History and criticism , Nature in literature , Transversal postcolonial environmental criticism
Language: English
Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/58024 , vital:27033
Description: This thesis seeks to contribute to the conversations in the humanities about the treatment of the physical environment in the context of a global ecological fragility and increased scholarly interest in the poetry of Arthur Nortje, a South African poet who wrote in the 1960s. While previous studies on Nortje concentrate on the political, psychic and technical aspects of his poetry, this study particularly explores the representations of the environment in Nortje’s poetic imagination. Writing in the dark period of apartheid in South Africa’s history, Nortje’s poetry articulates a strong interest in the physical environment against the backdrop of official racialization of space and his personal nomadic life and exile. The poetry abounds with constant intersections of nature and culture (industrialism, urbanity and the quotidian), a sense of place and a deep sense of dislocation. The poems, therefore, present a platform from which to reevaluate conventional ecocritical ideas about nature, place-attachment and environmental consciousness. Drawing mainly on Felix Guattari’s ideas of three ecologies and transversality along with other theories, I conduct the study through what I call a transversal postcolonial environmental criticism, which considers the ecological value of the kind of assemblages that Nortje’s works represent. The first chapter focuses on conceptualizing a postcolonial approach to the environment based on Guattari’s concept of transversality to lay the theoretical foundation for the whole work. The second chapter analyses Nortje’s poetic imagination of place and displacement through his treatment of the private-public tension and the motif of exile. While the third chapter examines Nortje’s depiction of nature as both an everyday and urban phenomenon, the fourth chapter turns to his direct treatment of environmental crises handled through his imagination of the Canadian urban spaces, exile memory of apartheid geography, war and ecocide and the human body as a subject of environmental degradation. The fifth chapter, which is the conclusion, takes a brief look at the implication of Nortje’s complex treatment of the environment on postcolonial environmentalism.
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Date Issued: 2018

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Some observations on Wordsworth's achievement in sonnet

- Gubb, Linette Reay

Authors: Gubb, Linette Reay
Date: 1982
Subjects: Wordsworth, William, 1770-1850. Sonnets
Language: English
Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
Identifier: vital:2270 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006346 , Wordsworth, William, 1770-1850. Sonnets
Description: From preface: This study seeks to give a perspective on Wordsworth's achievement in sonnet, taking into account all the sonnets he wrote, from the outburst of sonneteering in 1802 to the final decade (1840-1850). My chief concern has been to trace Wordsworth's handling of form and theme throughout his poetic career. A subordinate but related concern has been to try to show that Wordsworth's powers do not diminish after 1815, a date which is sometimes regarded as marking the beginning of the poet's "decline" ~ Wordsworth’s skill in blank verse and in other types of lyric is widely acknowledged; his dexterity in the sonnet form is less well recognized or thought to be limited to fewer poems (usually those of the earlier years) than there actually are. As a result, his performance in sonnet is sometimes underestimated, there being more sonnet concerns and structural patterns than the well-known few reflect. It is possible that Wordsworth's own ambiguous attitude to the genre as expressed in his prose writings, together with his insistence that his sonnets were not amongst the best of his poems, has helped to foster such a view. His practice in sonnet, however, proves that his genius is as evident in some of these poems as it is elsewhere, whether he esteemed them less or not.
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Date Issued: 1982

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Versions of confinement: Melville's bodies and the psychology of conquest

- Goddard, Kevin Graham

Authors: Goddard, Kevin Graham
Date: 2003
Subjects: Melville, Herman, 1819-1891 -- Criticism and interpretation Human body in literature
Language: English
Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
Identifier: vital:2216 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002259
Description: This thesis explores aspects of Melville’s presentation of both the whale and the human bodies in Moby-Dick and human bodies in other important novels. It argues that Melville uses his presentation of bodies to explore some of the versions of confinement those bodies experience, and by doing so, analyses the psychology which subtends that confinement. Throughout Melville’s works bodies are confined, both within literal spatial limits and by the psychology which creates and/or accepts these spatial limits. The thesis argues that perhaps the most important version of bodily confinement Melville addresses is the impulse to conquer bodies, both that of the other and one’s own. It adopts a largely psychoanalytic approach to interpreting bodies and their impulse to conquer, so that the body is seen to figure both in its actions and its external appearance the operations of the inner psyche. The figure of the body is equally prevalent in Melville’s exploration of nationalist conquest, where, as with Manifest Destiny and antebellum expansionism, the psychological and physical lack experienced by characters can be read as motivating factors in the ideology of conquest. A final important strand of the thesis is its argument in favour of a gradual shift in Melville’s interpretation of the value and possibility of genuine communion between human beings and between humans and the whale. One may read Typee as an attempt by Melville to explore the possibility of a this-worldly utopia in which human beings can return to a version of primitive interconnectedness. This exploration may be seen to be extended in Moby-Dick, particularly in Ishmael’s attempts to find communion with others and in some moments of encounter with the whales. The thesis uses phenomenology as a theory to interpret what Melville is trying to suggest in these moments of encounter. However, it argues, finally, that such encounter, or ‘intersubjectivity’ is eventually jettisoned, especially in the works after Moby-Dick. By the end of Melville’s life and work, any hope of an intersubjective utopia he may have harboured as a younger man have been removed in favour of a refusal actually to assert any final ‘truth’ about social, political or even religious experience. Billy Budd, his last body, is hanged, and his final word is silence.
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Date Issued: 2003

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Unstable ironies: narrative instability in Herman Charles Bosman's "Oom Schalk Lourens" series

- Davis, Rebecca

Authors: Davis, Rebecca
Date: 2006
Subjects: Bosman, Herman Charles, 1905-1951 -- Criticism and interpretation , Irony in literature , Narration (Rhetoric)
Language: English
Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
Identifier: vital:2215 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002258 , Bosman, Herman Charles, 1905-1951 -- Criticism and interpretation , Irony in literature , Narration (Rhetoric)
Description: This thesis examines the narrative situation within Herman Charles Bosman’s “Oom Schalk Lourens” series of stories, focussing on the nature of the relationship between author and narrator. In particular, it seeks to trace the source of the multiple ironies at work in the texts. It has been customary for critics in the past to claim that the irony within the stories stems from Bosman, operating authorially ‘above’ Oom Schalk. In terms of this theory, Oom Schalk is read as being largely unaware of the inconsistencies and contradictions within his narrative. It is the claim of this thesis, however, that Oom Schalk is the self-aware creator of the texts’ ironies much of the time. Chapter 1 commences with an attempt at defining irony, and provides a brief overview of the history of its deployment within South African literature before discussing the literary genre which Bosman was to exploit as his ironic vehicle: the “oral-style” short story. Chapter 2 examines Wayne C. Booth’s notions of “stable” and “unstable” irony: the irony of the Oom Schalk stories has, in the past, been classified as belonging to the former category, but this thesis attempts to show that its inconsistent deployment within the stories consigns it more accurately to the latter. Chapter 3 offers an assessment of the extrinsic contexts relevant to the analysis: the context of the stories’ publication, and the likely composition of Bosman’s reading public. Chapter 4 begins to examine the distance between implied author and implied narrator in the stories. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 subject stories dealing with the themes of art, race and land to detailed analysis in order to examine the shifting – and progressively, though unevenly, diminishing – distance between Bosman and Oom Schalk. The thesis concludes that the degree to which the ironic distance between author and narrator fluctuates within, and between, the stories, results in a narrative situation which must be classified as fundamentally unstable.
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Date Issued: 2006

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The use of certain myths in the work of T.S. Eliot

- Hall, R F

Authors: Hall, R F
Date: 1964
Subjects: Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns), 1888-1965 -- Knowledge -- Literature , Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns), 1888-1965 -- Criticism and interpretation , Mythology in literature
Language: English
Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
Identifier: vital:2300 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1012129 , Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns), 1888-1965 -- Knowledge -- Literature , Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns), 1888-1965 -- Criticism and interpretation , Mythology in literature
Description: T.S. Eliot's statement that myth is an ordering device in literature 'is constantly belied by his use of myth in his own poems'. This is the belief of the American critic Richard Chase, noted for his work on myths and mythological themes in English and American literature. Whether or not Chase is right must emerge from the chapters which follow. The purpose will be to examine the effects of the use of myths and mythological patterns on Eliot's work in general, rather than to annotate individual mythological allusions. Simply to recognise an allusion is to raise a question, not to answer one: for we have then to decide what the writer hope to achieve by its use, and whether or not he has succeeded. Unless they lead on to such questions, lists of sources contribute little to our understanding of a work. Far more important than incidental allusions are the mythological themes and patterns on the larger scale, which reveal themselves in recurrent allusions and in basic patterns of symbolism. Again, merely to recognise such a pattern is inadequate: in every case a discovery of its function in both the poem's (or play's) structure and the poet's technique should be our main concern. ... Eliot himself has made it clear that in his case the use of myths and mythological patterns has often been a fully conscious, even self-conscious process. Therefore we may apply to his work the questions mention by Norman: what functions the myths fulfil within individual works; and why Eliot uses them in the first place. This last question leads us back to a more fundamental one; why do many writers, especially modern ones, use myths 'in the first place'? The problem involves discussion of the relation between myths and literature and of the nature of myths themselves, this forms the material of the first chapter. The other chapters will deal with some of Eliot's works, attempting to explain and analyse his use of myths in them, and to illustrate its importance in each case.
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Date Issued: 1964

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The intensifying vision of evil: the Gothic novel (1764-1820) as a self-contained literary cycle

- Letellier, Robert Ignatius

Authors: Letellier, Robert Ignatius
Date: 1977
Subjects: Gothic revival (Literature) , English fiction -- 18th century -- History and criticism , English fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism
Language: English
Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
Identifier: vital:2274 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006920 , Gothic revival (Literature) , English fiction -- 18th century -- History and criticism , English fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism
Description: The purpose of this study is to investigate the Gothic novel, a much neglected and misunderstood school, as a unified literary cycle. Attention has been centred on the domains or sub-systems of the novel where cultural models and generic traits are particularly important and distinguishable: character, plot (with the necessary evocation of a fictional world), theme and symbol. No apology is offered for the many quotations: far too little recourse is made to the texts in most discussions of the Gothic novel and this has all too frequently led to misapprehensions and unfounded generalizations. The opening section places the genre in a historio-literary context, and centres attention on the major novels, while the final section opens additional perspectives on the cycle, suggests the importance of the Gothic school for modern times, and illustrates the inevitability of its central vision of evil.
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Date Issued: 1977

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A book history study of Michael Radford's filmic production William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice

- Green, Bryony Rose Humphries

Authors: Green, Bryony Rose Humphries
Date: 2008
Subjects: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Film adaptations Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Merchant of Venice Merchant of Venice (Motion picture: 2004) English drama -- Film and video adaptations Film adaptations -- History and criticism
Language: English
Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
Identifier: vital:2197 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002239
Description: Falling within the ambit of the Department of English Literature but with interdisciplinary scope and method, the research undertaken in this thesis examines Michael Radford’s 2004 film production William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice using the Book History approach to textual study. Previously applied almost exclusively to the study of books, Book History examines the text in terms of both its medium and its content, bringing together bibliographical, literary and historical approaches to the study of books within one theoretical paradigm. My research extends this interdisciplinary approach into the filmic medium by using a modified version of Robert Darnton’s “communication circuit” to examine the process of transmission of this Shakespearean film adaptation from creation to reception. The research is not intended as a complete Book History study and even less as a comprehensive investigation of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Rather, it uses a Shakespearean case study to bring together the two previously discrete fields of Book History and filmic investigation. Drawing on film studies, literary concepts, cultural and media studies, modern management theory as well as reception theories and with the use of both quantitative and qualitative data, I show Book History to be an eminently useful and constructive approach to the study of film.
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Date Issued: 2008

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Identity, belonging and ecological crisis in South African speculative fiction

- Steenkamp, Elzette Lorna

Authors: Steenkamp, Elzette Lorna
Date: 2011
Subjects: South African fiction -- History and criticism Identity (Philosophical concept) in literature Group identity in literature Ecology in literature Science fiction, South African -- History and criticism Fantasy fiction, South African -- History and criticism Ecofiction -- History and criticism Ecocriticism
Language: English
Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
Identifier: vital:2219 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002262
Description: This study examines a range of South African speculative novels which situate their narratives in futuristic or ‘alternative’ milieus, exploring how these narratives not only address identity formation in a deeply divided and rapidly changing society, but also the ways in which human beings place themselves in relation to Nature and form notions of ‘ecological’ belonging. It offers close readings of these speculative narratives in order to investigate the ways in which they evince concerns which are rooted in the natural, social and political landscapes which inform them. Specific attention is paid to the texts’ treatment of the intertwined issues of identity, belonging and ecological crisis. This dissertation draws on the fields of Ecocriticism, Postcolonial Studies and Science Fiction Studies, and assumes a culturally specific approach to primary texts while investigating possible cross-cultural commonalities between Afrikaans and English speculative narratives, as well as the cross-fertilisation of global SF/speculative features. It is suggested that South African speculative fiction presents a socio-historically situated, rhizomatic approach to ecology – one that is attuned to the tension between humanistic- and ecological concerns.
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Date Issued: 2011

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