Dissertations / Theses: 'African literature (english), bibliography'

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Geider, Thomas. "A bibliography of Swahili literature, culture and history." Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, 2012. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa-91490.

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The present alphabetical Bibliography ranging from `Abdalla` to `Zhukov` includes old and new titles on Swahili Literature, Linguistics, Culture and History. Swahili Studies or \'Swahilistics\' have grown strong since the mid-1980s when scholars started to increasingly engage in international networking, first by communicating through the newsletter Swahili Language and Society: Notes and News from Vienna (Nos. 1.1984-9.1992) and Antwerp (No. 10.1993) and then through the journal Swahili Forum published at the University of Cologne (Nos. I. 1994 - IX. 2002), not to mention the numerous conferences held in Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, London, Bayreuth and other places, and not to forget the achievements of the journal Kiswahili from Dar es Salaam as another steady medium of Swahili scholarship. Of course, this Bibliography is not the only one: other useful and specialized bibliographical information appeared in articles, surveys, reference books and larger studies, which are indicated in the following. Part of the titles have been extracted from these sources and integrated into the present Bibliography after having had a physical look at them. As this was not always possible, it seems still to be advisable and necessary to consult the indicated sources themselves when it comes to selecting one\'s base of research literature.

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Bolanos-Salvatierra, Luis M. "Annotated bibliography of Salomon de la Selva's collected poems." FIU Digital Commons, 2009. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1721.

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The purpose of my project is to provide a compilation of the work of Nicaraguan born poet, Salomon De la Selva, who incidentally was nominated for a Nobel Prize in 1919, and was the first Latin-American poet to publish extensively in English. In order to achieve this goal, my research methods included the substantial use of the Internet, as well as two investigative trips to Mexico and one to Nicaragua, which ultimately led me to uncover a total of 135 unaccounted English-language poems. In addition, De la Selva's uniqueness lies in the fact that he was a truly bilingual writer, who was equally able to create both in English and Spanish, simultaneously. Therefore, my project not only represents an act of reclamation, but the new material also provides new exciting possibilities for his work by facilitating an intertextual analysis of his poems, which will aid in understanding the complexities of bilingualism.

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Kuhn, Justin. ""Instructive Recreations": Playbooks and Political Stability in the English Republic, 1649-1660." The Ohio State University, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu155558224340157.

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Piaseckyj, Oksana. "Bibliography of Ukrainian literature in English and French translation (1950-1983) and criticisms." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 1985. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/4647.

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Kreuz, Jill. "Shakespeare on South African television." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1992. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/21692.

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This study undertakes the analysis of the eight productions of Shakespeare that were produced for television by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) between 1977 and 1988. The plays that were selected for production are Much Ado About Nothing (1977) Macbeth (1980) Twelfth Night (1981), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1982), Hamlet (1983), and The Merchant of Venice (1987). The SABC has also televised two stage productions by performing arts councils; these are Romeo en Juliet (1982) and The Winter's Tale (1988). The approach I have taken is a cultural materialist one. The television productions are analysed within the context of the SABC as a social, political and cultural institution, whose policies and practices are in turn shaped by the wider national political, economic and social context. The cultural role of the SABC is a dominant one, not least because of its monopoly over South African broadcasting until 1986. Its perception of its role and function is based on the passive "mirror" theory of media communication whereby "reality" is simply reflected within the operations and by the products of radio and television. In contrast, my approach to broadcast media incorporates the view that a broadcasting institution has a mutually active relationship with the community it addresses itself to, that this relationship undergoes change through historical development and that its products engage with their audience as it engages with them; they are as much informed as informing. In exploring the conditions of production of the SABC's television Shakespeares, I have undertaken to interview as many people as possible involved in their production. Analysis of their approach to the production of Shakespearean drama in South Africa combined with (semiotic) analysis of the message of production leads to an interpretation of the ideological reference of these productions. I conclude that the eight television productions of Shakespeare (separately and together) reinforce the traditional idealist attitudes towards Shakespeare instilled by critical orthodoxy. To a large extent, these attitudes are maintained by the educational, theatrical, and popular cultural background which produces the "Shakespeare myth" in South Africa.

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Lazenby, Nicola. "Afterlives: resurrecting the South African border war." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/12031.

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Includes abstract. [W]hile the image of the SADF as a heinous perpetrator of Apartheid violence is undeniable, it is being complicated by the emergence of a range of recent cultural productions. Using Jacqui Thompson’s collection of SADF memoirs, An Unpopular War: From Afkak to Bosbefok (2006), and the revival of Anthony Akerman’s play, Somewhere on the Border (2012), this thesis explores how these cultural productions assert an alternative, individual, and humanised rendering of the SADF soldiers who experienced the Border War. The attempt to render these soldiers in an alternative light signals an anxiety regarding the way the SADF is remembered in contemporary South Africa. This anxiety resonates with broader issues of the role of “victimhood” in South Africa’s national identity in the aftermath of Apartheid.

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Ocita, James. "Diasporic imaginaries : memory and negotiation of belonging in East African and South African Indian narratives." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/80354.

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Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2013. ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This dissertation explores selected Indian narratives that emerge in South Africa and East Africa between 1960 and 2010, focusing on representations of migrations from the late 19th century, with the entrenchment of mercantile capitalism, to the early 21st century entry of immigrants into the metropolises of Europe, the US and Canada as part of the post-1960s upsurge in global migrations. The (post-)colonial and imperial sites that these narratives straddle re-echo Vijay Mishra‘s reading of Indian diasporic narratives as two autonomous archives designated by the terms, "old" and "new" diasporas. The study underscores the role of memory both in quests for legitimation and in making sense of Indian marginality in diasporic sites across the continent and in the global north, drawing together South Asia, Africa and the global north as continuous fields of analysis. Categorising the narratives from the two locations in their order of emergence, I explore how Ansuyah R. Singh‘s Behold the Earth Mourns (1960) and Bahadur Tejani‘s Day After Tomorrow (1971), as the first novels in English to be published by a South African and an East African writer of Indian descent, respectively, grapple with questions of citizenship and legitimation. I categorise subsequent narratives from South Africa into those that emerge during apartheid, namely, Ahmed Essop‘s The Hajji and Other Stories (1978), Agnes Sam‘s Jesus is Indian and Other Stories (1989) and K. Goonam‘s Coolie Doctor: An Autobiography by Dr Goonam (1991); and in the post-apartheid period, including here Imraan Coovadia‘s The Wedding (2001) and Aziz Hassim‘s The Lotus People (2002) and Ronnie Govender‘s Song of the Atman (2006). I explore how narratives under the former category represent tensions between apartheid state – that aimed to reveal and entrench internal divisions within its borders as part of its technology of rule – and the resultant anti-apartheid nationalism that coheres around a unifying ―black‖ identity, drawing attention to how the texts complicate both apartheid and anti-apartheid strategies by simultaneously suggesting and bridging differences or divisions. Post-apartheid narratives, in contrast to the homogenisation of "blackness", celebrate ethnic self-assertion, foregrounding cultural authentication in response to the post-apartheid "rainbow-nation" project. Similarly, I explore subsequent East African narratives under two categories. In the first category I include Peter Nazareth‘s In a Brown Mantle (1972) and M.G. Vassanji‘s The Gunny Sack (1989) as two novels that imagine Asians‘ colonial experience and their entry into the post-independence dispensation, focusing on how this transition complicates notions of home and national belonging. In the second category, I explore Jameela Siddiqi‘s The Feast of the Nine Virgins (1995), Yasmin Alibhai-Brown‘s No Place Like Home (1996) and Shailja Patel‘s Migritude (2010) as post-1990 narratives that grapple with political backlashes that engender migrations and relocations of Asian subjects from East Africa to imperial metropolises. As part of the recognition of the totalising and oppressive capacities of culture, the three authors, writing from both within and without Indianness, invite the diaspora to take stock of its role in the fermentation of political backlashes against its presence in East Africa. AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie studie fokus op geselekteerde narratiewe deur skrywers van Indiër-oorsprong wat tussen 1960 en 2010 in Suid-Afrika en Oos-Afrika ontstaan om uitbeeldings van migrerings en verskuiwings vanaf die einde van die 19e eeu, ná die vestiging van handelskapitalisme, immigrasie in die vroeë 21e eeu na die groot stede van Europa, die VS en Kanada, te ondersoek, met die oog op navorsing na die toename in globale migrasies. Die (post-)koloniale en imperial liggings wat in hierdie narratiewe oorvleuel, beam Vijay Mishra se lesing van diasporiese Indiese narratiewe as twee outonome argiewe wat deur die terme "ou" en "nuwe" diasporas aangedui word. Hierdie proefskrif bestudeer die manier waarop herinneringe benut word, nie alleen in die soeke na legitimisering en burgerskap nie, maar ook om tot 'n beter begrip te kom van die omstandighede wat Asiërs na die imperiale wêreldstede loods. Ek kategoriseer die twee narratiewe volgens die twee lokale en in die volgorde waarin hulle verskyn het en bestudeer Ansuyah R Singh se Behold the Earth Mourns (1960) en Bahadur Tejani se Day After Tomorrow (1971) as die eerste roman wat deur 'n Suid-Afrikaanse en 'n Oos-Afrikaanse skrywe van Indiese herkoms in Engels gepubliseer is, en die wyse waarop hulle onderskeidelik die kwessies van burgerskap en legitimisasie benader. In daaropvolgende verhale van Suid-Afrika, onderskei ek tussen narratiewe at hul onstaan in die apartheidsjare gehad het, naamlik The Hajji and Other Stories deur Ahmed Essop, Jesus is Indian and Other Stories (1989) deur Agnes Sam en Coolie Doctor: An Autobiography by Dr. Goonam deur K. Goonam; uit die post-apartheid era kom The Wedding (2001) deur Imraan Covadia en The Lotus People (2002) deur Aziz Hassim, asook Song of the Atman (2006) deur Ronnie Govender. Ek kyk hoe die verhale in die eerste kategorie spanning beskryf tussen die apartheidstaat — en die gevolglike anti-apartheidnasionalisme in 'n eenheidskeppende "swart" identiteit — om die aandag te vestig op die wyse waarop die tekste sowel apartheid- as anti-apartheid strategieë kompliseer deur tegelykertyd versoeningsmoontlikhede en verdeelheid uit te beeld. Post-apartheid verhale, daarenteen, loof eerder etniese selfbemagtiging met die klem op kulturele outentisiteit in reaksie op die post-apartheid bevordering van 'n "reënboognasie", as om 'n homogene "swartheid" voor te staan. Op dieselfde manier bestudeer ek die daaropvolgende Oos-Afrikaanse verhale onder twee kategorieë. In die eerste kategorie sluit ek In an Brown Mantle (1972) deur Peter Nazareth en The Gunny Sack (1989) deur M.G. Vassanjiin, as twee romans wat Asiërs se koloniale geskiedenis en hul toetrede tot die post-onafhanklikheid bedeling uitbeeld (verbeeld) (imagine), met die klem op die wyse waarop hierdie oorgang begrippe van samehorigheid kompliseer. In die tweede kategorie kyk ek na The Feast of the Nine Virgins (1995) deur Jameela Siddiqi, No Place Like Home (1996) deur Yasmin Alibhai en Migritude (2010) deur Shaila Patel as voorbeelde van post-1990 verhale wat probleme met die politieke teenreaksies en verskuiwings van Asiër-onderdane vanuit Oos-Afrika na wêreldstede aanspreek. As deel van die erkenning van die totaliserende en onderdrukkende kapasiteit van kultuur, vra die drie skrywers – as Indiërs en as wêreldburgers – die diaspora om sy rol in die opstook van politieke teenreaksie teen sy teenwoordigheid in Oos-Afrika onder oënskou te neem.

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Osaghae, Esosa O. "Mythic reconstruction : a study of Australian Aboriginal and African literatures /." Access via Murdoch University Digital Theses Project, 2006. http://wwwlib.murdoch.edu.au/adt/browse/view/adt-MU20070928.143608.

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Potgieter, Carla. "Reading rubbish: pre-apartheid to post-apartheid South African kitsch." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/1782.

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Thesis (MA (English Studies)--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis is concerned with kitsch as cultural phenomena, which it will approach as a specific ‘aspect’, or ‘product’ of modernity. In doing so, this thesis aims to interrogate the notion of modernity, through an analysis of kitsch. In the first place, modernity can be thought as a collection of progressive material changes, usually associated with the onset of the industrial revolution. In this sense, it is easy to establish kitsch as a typical product of modernity, as the latter literally provided the objective conditions of possibility for the production of cheap, easily reproducible industrial goods, with which kitsch is often associated. In the second place, more than a set of material changes however, modernity also entailed a concomitant series of cultural values, the rational, scientific worldview associated with the onset of the Enlightenment. The thesis will therefore also consider how kitsch can be regarded as a direct expression of these values, in as much as the characteristic falseness and conformity of kitsch might be seen as a typical product of this rational, utilitarian worldview. In the third place, modernity also refers to the combined effect of these material conditions and cultural values. Kitsch will be considered, then, also in relation to this ‘life-world’. Importantly, the thesis seeks to demonstrate how the inherent contradictions of modernity become particularly apparent in kitsch. The connection between colonialism and the Enlightenment is nothing new. Indeed, the colonial project was driven by the notion that the West was responsible for the “modernization” and “upliftment” of the rest of the world. However, the idea of modernity as a universal, ideologically neutral concept is deeply problematic. Indeed, this can also be considered as one of the contradictions inherent in modernity. By looking at South African kitsch, this thesis will examine the possibility that, as a typical product of modernity produced in a local context, it can reveal much about the manifestations or ‘trajectory’ of modernity outside the metropolitan centres, where it is usually located. This will be explored by examining, on the one hand, the local ‘trajectory’ of the discourse of modernity, and, secondly, to the place assigned to people within the creation of these local modernities AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die onderwerp van hierdie tesis is kitsch as ’n kulturele verskynsel, wat dit as volg benader. Eerstens word daar gevra of dit moontlik is om kitsch as een van die mees tipiese ‘produkte’ van moderniteit te beskou. Die bogenoemde vraagstelling maak dit dus moontlik om moderniteit te ondersoek deur ‘n analise van kitsch. In hierdie tesis, word moderniteit as volg benader: ten eerste, die materiële veranderings in terme van die produksie proses wat gewoonlik met die industriële revolusie geassosieer word; en tweedens, die rasionele, wetenskaplike, kommersiële en utilitêre lewensbeskouing ingelei deur die ‘Verligting’ (of sogenaamde Enlightenment) in die sewentiende eeu. Meer as net ’n versameling fisiese en filosofiese omwentelings, verwys moderniteit egter ook ten derdens na die gekombineerde impak van die bogenoemde in terme van die effek van tegnologie op kultuur, en hoe dit die menslike ‘leefwêreld’ betekenisvol beïnvloed en vervorm. Die bogenoemde skep dus ‘n raamwerk waarbinne kitsch benader kan word. Ten eerste is dit maklik om ‘n verband tussen kitsch en tegnologiese ontwikkelinge, wat dit moontlik maak om vinnige reproduksies van ‘n lae gehalte te vervaardig, te trek. Maar soos beskou vanuit ‘n meer filosofiese perspektief, kan die valsheid en patroonmatigheid van kitsch teruggetrek word na rasioneel utilitaristies wêreldbeskouing van die ‘Verligting’, wat deur die neig na abstrakte, universele waarhede, dikwels vervlakking lei en ook spesifieke etiese gevolge het. Derdens, wanneer daar na die impak van modernisasie op die leefwêreld gekyk word, sal faktore soos die opkoms van die middelklas en sekularisasie ook in ag geneem word. Deur die bogenoemde te ondersoek, sal daar dan ook gedemonstreer word dat die teenstrydighede wat noodwendig deel vorm van die konsep van moderniteit self, in kitsch duidelik sigbaar word, juis in die manier hoe kitsch hierdie teenstrydighede probeer verberg. Díe drie areas dan in ag geneem, is dit verder nodig om ‘n vierde definisie in te sluit om die ondersoek van moderniteit, soos dit in hierdie tesis benader word, te verdiep. Die idee dat kolonialisme en moderniteit ten diepste verbind is, is niks nuuts nie. Die gedagte dat die Weste juis die onontwikkelde kolonies moes “ophef” en “moderniseer” was inderdaad dikwels die ideologiese beweegrede vir die koloniale projek. Maar by nadere ondersoek blyk dit onwaarskynlik dat moderniteit bloot ‘n ideologies neutrale konsep is, wat oral eenvormige resultate sou behaal. Inderdaad, laasgenoemde kan ook as een van hierdie sogenaamde “teenstrydighede” inherent tot die konsep van moderniteit beskou word. Dus, deur na kitsch te kyk wat spesifiek in ‘n Suid-Afrikaanse konteks ontstaan het, wil hierdie tesis ook die moontlik ondersoek dat plaaslike kitsch (as tipiese produk van moderniteit) ons iets meer kan vertel oor die spesifieke verloop en gevolge van hierdie sogenaamde “projek van moderniteit” binne ‘n plaaslike konteks. Dit sal gedoen word deur die volgende twee vraagstukke aan te spreek, aan die hand van plaaslike vorme van kitsch. Eerstens sal daar aandag aan die spesifieke “verloop” en manifestasies van die diskoers van moderniteit in ‘n plaaslike konteks ondersoek word. Tweedens, gaan hierdie tesis ook aandag gee aan die spesifieke plek wat aan verskillende groepe mense binne hierdie plaaslike vorme van moderniteit toegeken word. So ‘n ondersoek sal dan op die plaaslike manifestasies van moderniteit konsentreer, om die aanname dat moderniteit oral eenvormige resultate en vooruitgang sou bereik, ongeldig te verklaar. Die idee van “moderniteit” as universele en eenvormige konsep breek dus letterlik uit mekaar, soos dit met die idee van geografiese spesifieke weergawes van moderniteit gekonfronteer word.

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Nabutanyi, Edgar Fred. "Representations of troubled childhoods in selected post-1990 African fiction in English." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/79874.

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Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2013. ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The study explores representations of troubled childhoods in post-1990 African narratives. Defining troubled childhoods as the experiences of children exposed to different forms of violations including physical, psychological, sexual and emotional abuse, the study reflects on depictions of such experiences in a selection of contemporary African fictional texts in English. The study‘s central thesis is that, while particular authors‘ deployment of affective writing techniques offers implicit analysis of troubled childhoods, the knowledge about this reality that such literary texts produce and place in the public sphere resonates with readers because of the narrative textures that both make knowledge concerning such childhoods accessible and create a sense of the urgent plight of such children. They render troubled childhoods grieveable. The study delineates three attributes of the selected texts that explain why such fictions can be considered significant from both social and aesthetic perspectives: namely, their foregrounding of intertwined vectors of violation and/or vulnerability; their skilful use of multi-layered narrative voices and their creation of specific posttraumatic damage and survival tropes. The four main thesis chapters are organised thematically rather than conceptually or theoretically, because representations of troubled childhoods are contextually and experientially entangled. Using Maria Pia Lara‘s notion of ―illocutionary force‖ and specific aspects of trauma and affect theory, the study focuses centrally on how the units of narration construct persuasive and convincing depictions of troubled childhoods while using fiction to convene platforms for reflection on the phenomena of child victims of war violence, abusive parenting, sexual predation and sexual violation. AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die studie ondersoek voorstellings van gekwelde kinder-ervaringswêrelde in post-1990 narratiewe deur skrywers van Afrika. Gekwelde kinder-ervaringswêrelde word gedefinieer as die ondervindinge van kinders wat blootgestel is aan verskillende vorms van skending, insluitend fisiese, psigologiese, seksuele en emosionele skending. Met hierdie definisie in gedagte reflekteer die studie op gelselekteerde uitbeeldings van sulke ervarings in hedendaagse Afrika-fiksie in Engels. Die studie se sentrale tesis is dat, terwyl sekere outeurs se ontplooiïng van affektiewe skryftegnieke implisiete analise van gekwelde kinder-ervaringswêrelde bied, resoneer die kennis oor hierdie realiteit wat sulke literêre tekste oplewer en in die publieke sfeer plaas met die leespubliek omdat die struktuur van die narratiewe die verskynsel van kwellende kinder-ervarings onthul en bewustheid van die dringende aard van die verskynsel bemoontlik. Sulke kinderlewens word op hierdie manier treurbaar [grievable] gemaak. Die studie delinieer drie eienskappe van die gekose tekste wat verduidelik waarom hierdie tekste vanuit beide sosiale en estetiese perspektiewe as beduidend beskou kan word, naamlik die verstrengelde vektors van verkragting en kwesbaarheid wat hulle op die voorgrond bring, hul bekwame gebruik van veellagige narratiewe stemme en hul skepping van spesifieke posttraumatiese skade- en oorlewingstrope. Die vier middelste tesis-hoofstukke is tematies in plaas van konsepsueel of teoreties georganiseer, omdat voorstellings van gekwelde kinder-ervaringswêrelde kontekstueel- en ervaringsverstrik is. Met die gebruik van Maria Pia Lara se begrip van illocutionary force en spesifieke aspekte van trauma- en inwerkingsteorie fokus die studie hoofsaaklik op hoe die narratiewe eenhede oorhalende en oortuigende afbeeldings van gekwelde kinder-ervaringswêrelde konstrueer terwyl hulle fiksie gebruik om platforms vir refleksie op die fenomeen van kinderslagoffers van oorlogsgeweld, misbruikende ouerskap en seksuele- predasie en verkragting byeen te bring.

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Gharehgozlou, Bahareh. "A Study of Persian-English Literary Translation Flows:Texts and Paratexts in Three Historical Contexts." Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1532555559014889.

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Jonas, Siphokazi. "Behind the desk : encountering Shakespeare in South African education." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13116.

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Includes bibliographical references. While the place of Shakespeare in South Africa has never seriously seemed under threat, particularly outside of academia, the high school syllabus over the last two decades has told a different story. Where the teaching of Shakespeare’s plays has been compulsory in the past, this has changed to such an extent that many schools, where English is taught as a First Additional Language, no longer offer Shakespeare to their learners. Of the plethora of reasons given why this is the case, this thesis is more interested in the role that certain encounters have played in such a shift. The two encounters under question are between the text and the learner, and the text and the contemporary South African context. The reason for this focus is because of the way in which the curriculum is used to articulate ideas about the nation and the subject. The process of constitution is then facilitated through the learner’s encounter with the text in the classroom. This investigation stretches as far back as the inception of English studies in South Africa to education under apartheid, and concludes by analysing examinations emerging out of the post apartheid curriculum. By considering some of the contentious voices that have appropriated Shakespeare to their own end, the project considers how such spaces may be opened up within the current school curriculum. Such an undertaking would require a shift in approaches to teaching Shakespeare, allowing post apartheid learners to engage with a Shakespeare who engages with their context.

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Cornwell, Gareth. "Ambiguous contagion the discourse of race in South African English writing, 1890-1930." Thesis, Rhodes University, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002269.

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This study explores representations of race and racial difference in the writing of white South Africans in English, between the years, approximately, of 1890 and 1930. The first chapter essays a theoretical and historical investigation of the concept of race and offers a narrative of the rise of Western racialism. Its conclusion, that race has functioned as a vehicle of displacement for other forms of difference in the competition for advantage among social groups, is qualified in Chapter Two by the postulate of an anthropologial absolute, the "ethnic imperative", to help account for the strategic emergence of racialism in specific historical circumstances. The role of the ethnic imperative in the moral economy of colonial South Africa in the years 1890-1930 is examined through the analysis of three representative texts. In Chapter Three, a wide range of primary material is canvassed for prevailing views on the "Native Question", the perceived social threat posed by the half-caste, and the "Black Peril", culminating in the detailed examination of a fictional text. A particular concern in both Chapters Two and Three is the imagery of disease and contagion in terms of which racial contact is typically represented. The following chapter situates the literary works discussed in the study in the context of the South African literary tradition, then uses the example of selected short stories to indicate some narratological problems encountered by the writer with a racialist agenda within the medium of realist fiction. Chapters Five and Six investigate, through the close reading of selected novels, thematic concerns rooted in the intersection of the discourse of race with those of gender and social class. The final chapter reveals how William Plomer's novel, Turbott Wolfe, represents a volatile synthesis of a standard discourse on social class, an acknowledgement of the ethnic imperative, the imagery of contagion, and a principled repudiation of racialism, in a multi-faceted, modernist, and partially self-aware fashion. The more salient conclusions reached by this study concern the inadequacy of purely materialist analysis to account for the phenomenon of racialism, the historically determined link between racial attitudes and sexuality, and the manifest incompatibility of racial ideology with the liberal humanism inscribed in the formal requirements of the realist work of fiction.

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Wright, L. S. "'Iron on iron': Modernism engaging apartheid in some South African Railway Poems." Routledge, 2011. http://eprints.ru.ac.za/2208/1/Iron_on_Iron_for_ESiA.pdf.

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Abstract Modernism tends to be criticised, internationally, as politically conservative. The objection is often valid, although the charge says little about the quality of artistic achievement involved. This article argues that the alliance between Modernism and political conservatism is by no means a necessary one, and that there are instances where modernist vision has been used to convey substantive political insight, effective social critique and solid resistance. To illustrate the contrast,the article juxtaposes the abstract Modernism associated with Ben Nicholson and World War 2, with a neglected strain of South African railway poetry which uses modernist techniques to effect a powerful critique of South Africa’s apartheid dispensation. The article sustains a distinction between universalising modernist art that requires ethical work from its audiences to achieve artistic completion, and art in which modernist vision performs the requisite ethical work within its own formal constraints. Four very different South African railway poems, by Dennis Brutus, John Hendrickse, Alan Paton, and Leonard Koza, are examined and contextualised to demonstrate ways in which a modernist vision has been used to portray the social disruptions caused by apartheid. Modernist techniques are used to turn railway experience into a metonym for massive social disruption,without betraying the social reality of the transport technology involved.

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Currie, Iain. "White writings : colonialism and modernism in South African literature since 1970." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1992. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/21613.

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This dissertation develops from the contention that a significant body of the literary activity of white South Africans since the 1970s can be characterised as a form of modernism. This characterisation devolves less upon the formal attributes of a body of literary writing than upon the particular position it occupies In the cultural sphere during this period . That position is one of political and cultural marginality. White writing is distanced from both the official culture of the state and an emergent populist culture associated with the urban social collectivities that begin to play an increasingly important role in the political life of South African society during the 1970s. In an introductory section, a comparison is drawn between the responses to social marginality within South African white writing and the reconsiderations of the political mission of literature by Jean-Paul Sartre and Roland Barthes, formulated in post - War France. The first chapter sets out a brief description of the cri sis that besets the South African social formation during the 1970s. The racial logic upon which the South African economy and social order is subtended comes under attack from two related sources. The first is the growing economic and political instability of the racial-capitalist system, while the second is renewed resistance to the manifest racially-ordered inequalities sponsored by that system. As discussed in the second chapter, this gathering crisis of their society impells white writers and intellectuals to question and revise long-held paradigms of thought and practices of representation, drawing on the resources of comparable revisions of established paradigms taking place in western thought. Equally, these writers and intellectuals become concerned with the critical re-examination of established accounts of the ethical vocation and social function of intellectual and literary work. But white writers and intellectuals were, in the polarised political conditions of the 1970s, unable to find a home in emergent internal opposition organisations predicated, for the most part, on versions of an anti- colonial nationalism. In the third chapter, consideration is given to the critique that begins to circulate in the period, of the associations of the South African literary and literary-critical establishment with the interests of white hegemony. This critique leads white writers such as Nadine Gordimer and JM Coetzee to reject a literary tradition found to be rooted in a colonial past and embodying colonial assumptions that are no longer tenable. This rejection of their cultural patrimony leads white writers to seek new ways of imagining the relationship between their writing and their society, as well as new forms capable of representing that altered relationship. At the same time however, this critical reflection upon the coloniality of established literary practices and forms, distances white writing from the populist and realist concerns of writers associated with emergent oppositional cultural formations . Developments during the 1970s serve to make the cultural sphere an important zone of political contestation. In the fourth chapter some of the tactics and manoeuvres in this contest are disc us sed. White writers adopt a modernist defence of their relative isolation from political actuality and their failure to conform to the requirements of a socially-committed literature. The development of a body of committed literature by black writers is discussed. However, the formal inconsistency of this literature ' s relationship to " realism" indicates that in the South African situation, "realism" and "modernism" are less a matter of the formal characteristics of a given body of literary work than a description of the differentiations in the audience, social function and ambitions of white and black writing. The dissertation is therefore aimed at pro vi ding an account of the historical ground that gives rise to this racial division of literature and literary activity in South Africa. Such an account serves to historicise and contextualise the various positions on commitment, artistic responsibility, the politicisation of art and the question of the capacity of cultural organisations to prescribe the form or content of artistic production, which are the subject of controversy in present-day South Africa.

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Dodd, Alexandra Jane. "Secular séance: Post-Victorian embodiment in contemporary South African art." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/12814.

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Includes bibliographical references. In this thesis I explore selected bodies of work by five contemporary South African artists that resuscitate nineteenth - century aesthetic tropes in ways that productively reimagine South Africa’s traumatic colonial inheritance. I investigate the aesthetic strategies and thematic concerns employed by Mary Sibande, Nicholas Hlobo, Mwenya Kabwe, Kathryn Smith and Santu Mofokeng, and argue that the common tactic of engagement is a focus on the body as the prime site of cognition and "the aesthetic as a form of embodiment, mode of being-in-the-world" (Merleau - Ponty). It is by means of the body that the divisive colonial fictions around race and gender were intimately inscribed and it is by means of the body, in all its performative and sensual capacities, that they are currently being symbolically undone and re-scripted. In my introduction, I develop a syncretic, interdisciplinary discourse to enable my close critical readings of these post - Victorian artworks. My question concerns the mode with which these artists have reached into the past to resurrect the nineteenth - century aesthetic trope or fragment, and what their acts of symbolic retrieval achieve in the public realm of the present. What is specific to these artists mode of "counter - archival" (Merewether ) engagement with the colonial past? I argue that these works perform a similar function to the nineteenth - century séance and to African ancestral rites and dialogue, putting viewers in touch with the most haunting aspects of our shared and separate histories as South Africans and as humans. In this sense, they might be understood both as recuperations of currently repressed forms of cultural hybridity and embodied visual conversations with the unfinished identity struggles of the artists’ ancestors. The excessive, uncanny or burlesque formal qualities of these works insist on the incapacity of mimetic, social documentary forms to contain the sustained ferocious absurdity of subjective experience in a "post - traumatic", "post - colonial", "post - apartheid" culture. The "post" in these terms does not denote a concession to sequential logic or linear temporality, but rather what Achille Mbembe terms an "interlocking of presents, pasts and futures". This "interlocking" is made manifest by the current transmission of these works, which visually, physically embody a sense of subjectivity as temporality. If the body and the senses are the means though which we not only apprehend the world in the present, but through which the past is objectively an d subjectively enshrined, then it is by means of the ossified archive of that same sensory body that the damage of the past can be released and knowledge/history re - imagined. Without erasing or denying South Africa’s well - documented history of violent categorisation, the hypothetical tenor of these works instantiates an alternate culture of love , intimacy, desire and inter - connectedness that once was and still can be.

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Roux, Daniël. "Presenting the prison : the South African prison autobiography under apartheid." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/8099.

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Includes bibliographical references (leaves 280-290). This thesis investigates a range of South African autobiographical accounts of imprisonment, most of them by political prisoners under apartheid. Its principal focus is on the ways in which the prison as physical and ideological space intersects with a conscious literary construction of identity. The argument is that in these accounts, the prison features as both object and subject: it appears as one of the objects of description, a referent among others in a structured succession of events, but in fact it also serves as the very frame that enables and structures the consciousness that speaks about - and from within - the prison. In other words, the prison is one of the important coercive instruments that governed the forms of consciousness, literary and otherwise, that emerged in South Africa under apartheid. A broader topic engaged by this discussion is therefore also the role played by materially based disciplinary structures in the emergence of autobiographical literary forms.

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Earl, Jennifer. "The influence of African folktales on Sylvia Path's 'Ariel voice'." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/12847.

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Includes bibliographical references. In this study I trace the influence of Paul Radin’s collection of African folktales on Sylvia Plath’s Ariel poems. Elements from these tales have been identified by various critics in Plath’s “Poem for a Birthday” sequence which, according to Hughes, she wrote around the same time as she was reading the African tales. However, the importance of the tales to her later poetry has not yet been fully explored in Plath criticism. “Poem for a Birthday” marks an important stage in the emergence of what has become known as Plath’s “Ariel voice” and it is my contention that the influence of the African tales is significantly present even in this later work. The Ariel poems manifest a preoccupation with motherhood which merges thematically with creative fruitfulness. I examine how Plath adopts and uses the concept of “the African” in Ariel to represent repressed aspects of the human psyche which must emerge into consciousness in order for creative expression to attain a level of deep resonance. This engagement is repeatedly presented as a vital “primitive” force emerging from beneath a stony silent reality. The Africanfolktales provided Plath with a novel set of imagery and resources with which to portray this explorative process. I therefore explore Plath’s interest in “primitivism”. I also argue that the orality of the African tales inspired Plath to focus on the oral nature of her later writing. I hope in this study to free Plath’s Ariel voice from the shadow of her suicide. More importantly, I hope to show that her own collection of Ariel poems represented an important moment in her creative development that envisaged a vital spirit of possibility, activated dramatically by an engagement with Radin’s African tales.

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Pentolfe-Aegerter, Lindsay Alexandra. ""You have met the woman; you have struck the rock" : Southern African women's writing as resistance /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1992. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9526.

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Hunter, Eva Shireen. "A sense of place in selected African works by Doris Lessing read in conjunction with novels of education by contemporary white South African women writers." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 1990. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/8369.

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Bibliography: leaves 211-217. This study provides a more intensive reading of certain works by Doris Lessing set in Southern Africa than has yet been attempted, and reads them,• for the first time, in conjunction with a particular literary lineage within Southern African letters, the novel of education by white women. The works by Lessing chosen for discussion are: two short stories, "The Old Chief Mshlanga" (1951) and "Sunrise on the Veld" (1951), the first two volumes of the Children of Violence series, Martha Quest (1952) and A Proper Marriage (1954), and Lessing's autobiographical account of a return visit to Rhodesia in 1956, Going Home (1957). Those by the other Southern African women writers--all of which, with the exception of Gordimer's The Lying Days have received virtually no critical attention to date--are: Nadine Gordimer's The Lying Days (1953)', Jillian Becker's The Virgins• (1976), Carolyn Slaughter's Dreams of the Kalahari (1981), Lynn Freed's Home Ground (1986), E.M. / MacPhail's Phoebe and Nio (1987), and Menan du Plessis's A State of Fear (1983).

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Lipenga, Ken Junior. "Narrative enablement : constructions of disability in contemporary African imaginaries." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/86304.

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Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis examines depictions of disability in selected African films, novels and memoirs. Central to the thesis is the concept of narrative enablement, which is discussed as a property that texts have for enabling the recognition of disability by the reader or viewer. In the thesis, I investigate the ways in which narrative enablement manifests in the texts. The motivation for the study comes from the recognition of several trends in current literary disability studies. Firstly, the study attempts to expand the theoretical base of current literary disability studies, which consists of ideas formed from a narrow epistemic archive. Similarly, the study also recognises that scholarship in the field mostly relies on a limited canon of texts, almost wholly drawn from the Western world. This study therefore allows a glimpse at an under-acknowledged archive of disability representation, which is then used to suggest the possibility of alternative ways of understanding disablement on the African continent and globally. The first chapter is meant as an entry point into some of the complex lives depicted in the thesis. In this chapter, I explore the intersection that the texts draw between disability and masculinity, illustrating the way this intersection evokes questions about how we understand the relationship between the two concepts. In the second chapter, I examine the way socio-political violence on the continent is represented as a cause of both disablement and disenablement. This chapter is an exploration of how disability is enmeshed with other social realities in people’s lives. The term disenablement is employed in order to capture the presentation of disablement amidst various forms of violent oppression. As it is portrayed in the majority of the texts studied in the thesis, disablement is a factor of social attitudes. My third chapter examines how these texts create dis/ability zones, areas where the reader/viewer witnesses the fluidity of socially constructed disablement in particular societies. As it is portrayed in the texts, and discussed in the thesis, this zone is a space where disabled characters encounter the ableist world. It is a space that allows the destabilization of entrenched notions about disability, and consequent recognition of disabled characters. The most explicit manifestation of narrative enablement occurs through creative intervention, which is the focus in the fourth chapter. In this chapter, I examine the role of various forms of creativity as they are enacted by the characters, arguing that they are manifestations of the characters making use of narrative enablement. In the texts, the disabled characters use unique modes of storytelling – not exclusively verbal – to narrate their story, but also to assert their belonging to particular familial, cultural, as well as national worlds. AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis ondersoek uitbeeldings van gestremdheid in geselekteerde films, romans en memoirs uit Afrika. Die konsep van narratiewe bemagtiging – ‘n konsep wat ondersoek word as ‘n kapasiteit van tekste wat die erkenning van gestremdheid bemoontlik vir die leser of kyker – staan sentraal in hierdie studie. In my tesis ondersoek ek die maniere waarop narratiewe bemagtiging in die tekste manifesteer. Die beweegrede vir hierdie studie kom uit die realisering van verskeie strominge in kontemporêre letterkundige gestremdheidstudies. In die eerste plek onderneem hierdie studie die taak om die teoretiese basis van huidige literêre gestremdheidstudies, wat bestaan uit idees wat op hul beurt uit ‘n enge epistemiese argief gevorm is, uit te brei. Op soortgelyke wyse erken die studie dat akademiese navorsing binne hierdie studieveld meestal berus op ‘n relatief klein kanon van tekste, feitlik geheel-en-al uit die Westerse wêreld. Hierdie studie bied dus ‘n kyk op ‘n onder-erkende argief van gestremdheidsvoorstellings, wat op sy beurt gebruik word om die moontlikheid van alternatiewe maniere waarop gestremdheid binne Afrika asook wêreldwyd begryp kan word, aan te toon. Die doel van die eerste hoofstuk is om ‘n intreepunt te skep waardeur sommige van die komplekse ervaringswêrelde wat in die tesis ondersoek word, betree kan word. In hierdie hoofstuk ondersoek ek die oorvleuelings tussen gestremdheid en manlikheid wat deur die tekste uitgebeeld word, om sodoende aan te toon dat hierdie oorvleueling vrae oproep in verband met hoe ons die verhouding tussen hierdie twee konsepte kan verstaan. In my tweede hoofstuk ondersoek ek die manier waarop sosio-politieke geweld op die kontinent uitgebeeld word as ‘n oorsaak van gestremdheid sowel as van ontmagtiging. Hierdie hoofstuk ondersoek die wyses waarop gestremdheid verwikkeld is met ander sosiale werklikhede in mense se lewens. Die term disenablement [hier: ‘ontmagtiging’] word gebruik om die uitbeelding van gestremdheid midde-in verskillende vorme van gewelddadige onderdrukking vas te vang. Soos uitgebeeld in die meeste van die tekste wat in die studie ondersoek word, is gestremdheid ‘n aspek van sosiale houdinge. My derde hoofstuk ondersoek hoe die gekose tekste areas van be/ontmagtiging skep; gebiede waar die leser/kyker die vloeibaarheid van sosiaal-gekonstrueerde ontmagtiging in spesifieke gemeenskappe waarneem. Soos uitgebeeld in die tekste en soos wat die studie die saak bespreek, is hierdie zone ‘n gebied waarbinne gestremde persone die bemagtigde wêreld ervaar. Dit is ‘n area waarbinne die versteuring van vasgelegde konsepte van gestremdheid, en gevolglike erkenning van gestremde persone, kan plaasvind. Die mees eksplisiete ontplooiïng van narratiewe bemagtiging gebeur deur middel van skeppende intervensies, wat die fokus vorm van my vierde hoofstuk. In hierdie hoostuk ondersoek ek die rol wat gespeel word deur verskillende vorme van kreatiwiteit soos beoefen deur die karakters, in die loop van my argument dat hiedie skeppingsvorme voorbeeelde is van hoe narratiewe bemagtiging plaasvind. In die tekste gebruik die gestremde karakters unieke metodes van vertelling – nie uitsluitlik verbaal nie – om hulle verhale te vertel, maar ook om aan te toon dat en hoe hulle aan partikuliere familiale, kulturele en nasionale wêrelde behoort.

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Andrews, Grant. "Representations of fatherhood and paternal narrative power in South African English literature." University of the Western Cape, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/11394/4848.

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Philosophiae Doctor - PhD This study explores the different ways that South African novels have represented fatherhood across historical periods, from the dawn of apartheid to the post-transitional moment. It is argued that there is a link between narrative power and the father, especially in the way that the father figure is given authority and is central to dominant narratives which support pervasive ideologies. The study introduces the concept of paternal narratives, which are narratives that support the power of the father within patriarchal systems and societies, and which the father is usually given control of. This lens will be applied to prominent South African literature in English, including early texts such as Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country, Nadine Gordimer’s Burger’s Daughter and J. M. Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country, where the father’s authority is strongly emphasised, and where resisting the paternal narratives often leads to identity struggles for sons and daughters. Later texts, published during the transition from apartheid, often deconstruct the narrative power of fathers more overtly, namely Mark Behr’s The Smell of Apples, Zakes Mda’s Ways of Dying and K. Sello Duiker’s The Quiet Violence of Dreams. More recent novels, published in “post-transitional” South Africa, are radical in their approach to father figures: fathers are often shown to be spectral and dying, and their control of narratives is almost completely lost, such as in Lisa Fugard’s Skinner’s Drift, Mark Behr’s Kings of the Water, Zoë Wicomb’s Playing in the Light and Zukiswa Wanner’s Men of the South. Exploring these shifting representations is a useful way to unearth how ideological and social shifts in South Africa affect the types of representations produced, and how fatherhoods are being reimagined.

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Rafapa, Lesibana Jacobus. "The representation of African humanism in the narrative writings of Es'kia Mphahlele." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/1128.

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Thesis (DLitt (English))--University of Stellenbosch, 2005. The introductory chapter of this thesis – in which I place Mphahlele's works within the Afrocentric, postcolonial theoretical context within which he wrote – consists of three sections that explain the three different ways in which I contextualise my investigation of the ways in which Mphahlele represents his concept of African humanism in his narrative writings. In section 1.1 I detail the historical background and context within which Mphahlele's philosophy of African humanism will be shown to have evolved, alongside my analysis of a selected few of his poems and all of his narrative writings, articulated in the main body of the thesis. I approach this introductory sketching of the historical context by tracing the development over time of antecedent concepts articulated by other writers, followed by a chronological tracing of the progressive, successive articulations of the idea of African humanism in Mphahlele’s own discursive writing . This is followed in section 1.2 by an outline of the theoretical notions or concepts from various sources by means of which the analysis is executed, some of which are Edward Said's notion of "the integrated vision", Fanon's idea of "national culture" and Bhabha's metonymic notion of "mimicry". Section 1.3 dwells on a description of the conceptual approach I use throughout the thesis – that of viewing literature as anchored in the empirical milieu constituting the referential framework of its subject matter. In this section I also highlight the analytical method of scrutinising Mphahlele's works from the sociolinguistic point of view that links dialogue and the symbols yielded by fiction to the local cultural orientation of the people for whom artefacts were composed. The organisation of the later chapters of this thesis according to literary genre is also explained and rationalised in section 1.3.

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Cumpsty, Rebekah. "Emerging HIV communities and self : the representation of self and community in South African HIV/AIDS literature." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/12371.

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Includes bibliographical references (leaves 73-75). HIV/AIDS is a prominent part of contemporary South African experience that has found expression in many forms, one of which is literature. This thesis analyses the relation between self and community as it is represented in South African HIV/AIDS literature. The argument of the thesis is underpinned by a dual theoretical strand.

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Baderoon, Gabeba. "Oblique figures : representations of Islam in South African media and culture." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/7965.

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Includes bibliographical references. In 1996 stories in South African newspapers about the group Pagad articulated a new vision of Islam. In this thesis I conduct a long reading of the ways in which Islam has been represented in South Africa to provide a context for analysing the Pagad stories. Drawing on Edward Said's Orientalism and later elaborations that emphasise gender, the thesis is attentive to the latent weight of fantasies of 'race' on non-fictional representations. In the introduction I look at the use of the offensive word 'kaffir' in colonial South Africa and contend that, in the context of slavery and the displacement of indigenous people, the proliferating use of the term functioned to recast indigeneity as misplaced and unfit, facilitating settler claims to the land. Through the example of this deformation of a word originally drawn from Islam, I show how the meanings and experiences of Islam are transformed by specific circumstances and histories. Islam arrived in South Africa when Dutch colonists brought slaves and servants to the Cape from 1658. The context of slavery and colonial settlement is crucial to the way Islam has been represented in South Africa. Muslim slaves were characterized as industrious, placid and picturesque. I contend in analyses of nineteenth century landscape paintings that the figure of the 'Malay' played a role in discursively securing a settler identity in the Cape Colony. This occurred through their 'oblique' positioning near the edge of the frame, where they appear to certify the boundaries of the settled space of the colony. I follow these readings of the picturesque vision of Islam by exploring instances of its underside - the discourse of oriental fanaticism.

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Fick, Angelo Carlo. "Limited possibilities : agency and subaltern subjectivity in four South African allegories." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/17940.

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Bibliography: pages. 197-211. This thesis examines the representation of the negotiation of black women's subjectivity in four South African allegorical novels. Using aspects of postmodern discourse, and feminist and postcolonial literary and cultural theories on identity formation and subjectivity, I propose that it is in the allegorical mode that the four writers are able to offer black women as female gendered subalterns the space to negotiate subjectivity and to assert agency. Given the history of sexism, racism and imperialism in South Africa, the politics of place impact crucially on the practice of writing literature, so that the tensions between the representation of others and self-representation becomes crucial in identity formation. Through the four texts, I propose that there is a spectrum of practices, and that each offers different possibilities for black women's subject formation: from the most limiting liberal discourses, through the interrogation of those discourses, to an autobiographical moment of self-reclamation.

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Koussouhon, Leonard Assogba. "Enhancing English literacy skills through literature : a linguistics-oriented Francophone African perspective /." Access Digital Full Text version, 1995. http://pocketknowledge.tc.columbia.edu/home.php/bybib/11791500.

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Thesis (Ed.D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University, 1995. Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Clifford A. Hill. Dissertation Committee: Jo Anne Kleifgen. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 160-169).

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Nintai, Moses Nunyi. "Mapping transference : problems of African literature and translation from French into English." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1993. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/36074/.

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Although a number of African literary works have been translated from French into English since the middle of this century, research and debate on their translation has remained scanty, fragmentary, and scattered in diverse learned journals and other short publications. This thesis seeks to broaden the scope of research by mapping out aspects of transference in translation in terms of analysis and transfer strategies that have been, or could be, used. A selection of major translated works have been compared with their originals, to give textual examples indicative of transfer strategies. Current issues in African literature as well as typical features of the literature in French and English have been explored in order to examine differences between them and English and French literatures. The implications of these differences (at the levels of content, cultural setting, peculiar use of English and French, and the target audience) for translation are considered, and a brief historical survey of the translation of African literature provides insights into how translators have approached, and continue to approach, literary texts as well as cope with their target readership. Furthermore, dominant trends in literary translation studies (mainly in the West) are explored to determine if, and in what ways, they relate to translation studies in Africa. The analysis of transfer strategies focuses on the distinctive features of francophone African literary texts, drawing on relevant Western literary translation theories and models, on African literary theory and criticism, as well as on other disciplines likely contribute to an informed understanding of the texts. Finally, a case study applies the analysis to a text which is translated, and transfer strategies discussed.

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Geertsema, Johan Hendrik. "Irony and otherness : a study of some recent South African narrative fiction." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/17592.

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Bibliography: pages 277-290. This study considers the relation between irony and otherness. Chapter 2 shows that there is little agreement on the politics of irony in critical discussions. Nevertheless, irony and otherness do appear to be linked in many of these discussions. Chapter 3 offers a consideration of Emmanuel Levinas's conception of ethics in terms of his understanding of the other as face and trace. The tendency of language to foreclose on otherness by reducing it must be interrupted, while otherness must, nonetheless, be Said. The chapter concludes with an attempt to relate Levinas's conception of otherness - as the interruption of conceptualising otherness - to Paul de Man's conception of irony as permanent parabasis in terms of the tropes of prosopopoeia and catachresis. Any representation of the other must be interrupted continually as it is a prosopopoeia of otherness (in that it gives otherness a face) and therefore a catachresis (for the other has no face and must be given one). The task with which the (reading) self is faced is ironic in that it consists at once of positing and interrupting the face given to the other. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 are attempts at reading the interplay of irony and otherness in selected recent South African fiction. Van Heerden's Kikoejoe, as an allegory of the refusal to narrativise otherness, is read as being caught in the double bind of irony; Matlou's Life at Home is read as a text intimating an otherness at the heart of domesticity and within the reader; and, finally, Coetzee's Age of Iron is read as a text in which confession is the nexus of the relation between irony and otherness. This study brackets the political in order to examine the relationship between irony and otherness from the vantage point of Levinas's 'conception' of the other. The task remains to consider whether it is possible to approach irony ethically, or ethics ironically, and to consider the political ramifications of the relation between irony and otherness postulated in this study.

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Steiner, Christina. "Translated people, translated texts : language and migration in some contemporary African fiction." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/8100.

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Includes bibliographical references (leaves 209-215) This thesis examines contemporary migration narratives by four African writers living in the diaspora and writing in English: Leila Aboulela and Jamal Mahjoub from the Sudan, now living in Scotland and Spain respectively and Abdulrazak Gurnah and Moyez G. Vassanji from Tanzania now residing in the UK and Canada. Focusing on how language operates in relation to both culture and identity, this study foregrounds the complexities of migration as cultural translation. Cultural translation is a concept which locates itself in postcolonial literary theory as well as translation studies. The manipulation of English in such a way as to signify translated experience is crucial in this regard. The thesis focuses on a particular angle on cultural translation for each writer under discussion: translation of Islam and the strategic use of nostalgia in Leila Aboulela's texts; translation and the production of scholarly knowledge in Jamal Mahjoub's novels; translation and storytelling in Abdulrazak Gurnah's fiction; and finally translation between the individual and old and new communities in Vassanji's work. The conclusion of the thesis brings all four writer's texts into conversation across these angles. What emerges from this discussion across the chapter boundaries is that cultural translation rests on ongoing complex processes of transformation determined by idiosyncratic factors like individual personality as well as social categories like nationality, race, class and gender. The thesis thus contributes to the understanding of migration as a common condition of the postcolonial world as well as offering a detailed look at particular travellers and their unique journeys.

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McDougall, Kathleen Lorne. "Discipline and savagery : the spectacle of the post-apartheid South African school." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/11072.

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Bibliography: leaves 194-203. In describing and evaluating a South African semiotic of order and disorder, this dissertation traces representations of school discipline through examples of colonial and apartheid to key contemporary discursive practices. In this interdisciplinary dissertation three contemporary sets of texts are analysed: the department of education policy document, Alternatives to corporal punishment (2001), news articles on school disruption from the Business Day, Mail & Guardian and the Sowetan newspapers (1996-2002), and photographs on delinquency and discipline taken by a group of Cape Town public secondary school students.

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Gaylard, Rob. "Writing black : the South African short story by black writers /." Thesis, Link to the online version, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10019/3224.

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Markar, Nazreena Imran. "Sisters to Scheherazade : revisioned histories of gender and nation in postcolonial African and Asian women's literature." Thesis, Queen Mary, University of London, 2005. http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/1753.

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Traversing geographical boundaries and cultural locations, and using a comparative, crosscultural framework, this thesis examines and critiques a selected range of women's writings from postcolonial Africa and Asia. It foregrounds the works of Assia Djebar, Mariama Ba, Ama Ata Aidoo, Nayantara Sahgal and Attia Hosain and outlines the processes through which women writers decentre imperialist, patriarchal underpinnings of the grand recit, defy conventions of autobiographical practice, make sense of a feminized past and revision a different collective personal history that has emancipatory potential for women and other oppressed groups. Referring to Eurocentric "male-stream" histories that have systematically thrust women to the margins, the study illustrates through a variety of literary texts and genres the complex ways in which past histories have obliterated women's presence and voiceconsciousness. While appraising diverse textual strategies of narratives, it discusses the "fictional" nature of historical work and the underlying ideologies framing supposedly "truthful" archival records; the ambivalent role of the historian; the gaps and fissures in historical memory; and the significance of history as a palimpsest. By excavating subsumed histories and "spectres" of the past, the study assesses the way specific texts reconstruct totalizing masculinist chronicles and counterpoise them with alternative feminine inscriptions that are multi-layered and polyphonic, and sometimes also fragmented, "silent" and inconclusive. Additionally, the thesis demonstrates how the process of overwriting the palimpsest has situated women in pivotal positions to articulate issues relevant to a dialogue between gender and nation/atism. The strategic role women have undertaken in decolonization processes worldwide, the ambivalent attitude of male nationalists to women's concerns after independence, and the multiple dilemmas confronting women in a globalized neoimperial world scenario are central to this discussion. Here, the thesis also probes the implications of veiling for Muslim women of contemporary times, sex-segregation based on an antiquated ideology of purdah, women's (limited) access to public space, and the question of agency and women's voice-consciousness. The study highlights current global conditions (such as modern migrations and economic transnationalism) and multiple categories of race, class, gender and ethnicity that intersect in complex ways to represent the Otherized identities of women.

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Thurman, Christopher James. "Guy Butler from a post-apartheid perspective : reassessing a South African literary life." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/8102.

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Includes bibliographical references. Guy Butler was a substantial public figure in South Africa over the second half of the twentieth century: performer of chameleon literary roles (professor, poet, playwright, autobiographer and historian), as well as cultural politician and opponent of apartheid legislation. Nevertheless, his is not a familiar name to the majority of South Africans, and where he is known, Butler remains a problematic figure. On the one hand, he has been criticised for expressing dated or even "colonial" ideas, or for lacking radical political conviction; on the other hand, he is often seen as a "grand old man" in South African literature rather than as a writer for a new generation of readers. These views do not take into account those elements in Butler's writing that were (and still are) subversive, intellectually compelling and of enduring literary value; nor do they consider the complex private man behind the public persona. Butler's response to the South African situation presents us with a challenge - to acknowledge frankly those elements in his life and work that distance him from us, without losing sight of the significance they hold. The current study makes use of Butler's private correspondence and unpublished material from the National English Literary Museum archives in Grahamstown, and combines the biographical insight gained from this documentation with criticism of his published work in every genre to offer a more balanced explication of Butler's life and work than has yet been achieved.

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Smit, Sarah Johanna. "At home in Fanon: Queer romance and mixed solidarities in contemporary African fiction." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/23021.

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Throughout the recent iterations of student activism that have gripped South African universities, Frantz Fanon has been continuously disinterred. But the figure of Fanon often remains both abstract and plural within its articulations - interpretations of his body of work performing sometimes only partial allegiances to the whole. This means that centralising a Fanon within political discourse stands to reproduce the losses implicated in his mythification, rather than to recover new critical imports in his work. In other words, the simplification of Fanonist rhetoric fails to deal with the "un-political" dimensions of Fanon. As such the more troubling of Fanon's work, namely Black Skin, White Masks (1952), is often left un-interrogated, while The Wretched of the Earth (1961) is read like a manifesto for purposive change. Black Skin, White Masks it seems is deemed "not radical enough" because of what appears to be a problematic preoccupation with 'love and understanding.' In the following intervention, I argue that what makes this centrality of 'love and understanding' so unpalatable to radical activists is a misappropriation of Fanon's formulation of desire. This is in part, I believe, one of the flaws of Fanon setting up the dynamic of racialised desire within cisgender, heteronormative models for potential interracial relationships - "The Woman of Colour and the White Man" and "The Man of Colour and the White Woman." Hence, I consider what queering these relationships does to the way in which we read the political dimensions of Black Skin, White Masks, and whether or not this allays the allegory of revolutionary solidarity of the generic teleology of the heteronormative romance. The object of this thesis is to elucidate what possibilities for political solidarity are generated through the queered dynamic of interracial love, explored in the literature of the contemporary African diaspora. New African writers take seriously what Fanon recognised as "The Pitfalls of National Consciousness," by emptying out the category of the nation and engaging with the intersections of a trans-national, trans-gender and trans-racial politics. To demonstrate the ways in which a queer analysis of interracial romance might reimagine a raced identity politics, I analyse novels produced by members of the contemporary African diaspora, whose works deal with mixed race identity. Through my reading of Helen Oyeyemi's The Icarus Girl (2005) and Boy, Snow, Bird (2014), Yewande Omotoso's Bom Boy (2011), and Chris Abani's The Secret History of Las Vegas (2014), I hope to demonstrate that contemporary African literature is concerned with the formation of an identity that estranges the category of blackness from itself through its entanglement with a queer identity politics.

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Oppelt, Riaan N. "C. Louis Leipoldt and the making of a South African modernism." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/80232.

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Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2013. ENGLISH ABSTRACT: C. Louis Leipoldt had, in his lifetime and after his death, a celebrated reputation as an important Afrikaans poet in South Africa. He remains most remembered for his contribution to the growth of Afrikaans literature and for the significance of his poetry in helping to establish Afrikaans literature in the early part of the twentieth century in South Africa. He is also mostly remembered for his recipe books and food and wine guides, as well as his career as a paediatrician. Between 1980 and 2001, scholarly work was done to offer a reappraisal of Leipoldt’s literary works. During this period, previously unpublished material written by Leipoldt was made publicly available. Three novels by Leipoldt, written in English, were published at irregular intervals between 1980 and 2001. The novels cast Leipoldt in a different light, suggesting that as an English-language writer he was against many of the ideas he was associated with when viewed as an Afrikaans-language writer. These ideas, for the most part, linked Leipoldt to the Afrikaner nationalist project of the twentieth century and co-opted him to Afrikaner nationalist policies of racial segregation based on the campaigning for group identity. The three English-language novels, collectively making up the Valley trilogy, not only reveal Leipoldt’s opposition to the nationalist project but also draw attention to some of his other work in Afrikaans, in which this same ideological opposition may be noted. In this thesis I argue that Leipoldt’s Valley trilogy, as well as some of his other, Afrikaans works, not only refute the nationalist project but offer a reading of South African modernity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This reading of historical events in South Africa that reveals the trajectory of the country’s modernity is strongly indicative of a unique literary modernism. It is my argument that Leipoldt’s Valley trilogy shows a modernist critique of the historical events it presents. Because the concept of a South African modernism in literature has not yet been fully defined, it is also an aim of this thesis to propose that Leipoldt’s works contribute a broad but sustained literary outlook that covers his own lifespan (1880-1947) as well as the historical period he examines in the Valley trilogy (the late 1830s -the late 1920s/early 1930s). This literary outlook, I argue, is a modernist outlook, but also a transplantation of a Western understanding of what modernism is to the South African context in which there are crucial differences. This thesis hopes to arrive at an outcome that binds Leipoldt’s anti-nationalism to his literary critique of the modernity he explores in the Valley trilogy, thereby proving that Leipoldt could be read as a South African literary modernist. AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: C. Louis Leipoldt het in sy leeftyd en na sy dood 'n gevierde reputasie behou as 'n belangrike Afrikaanse digter in Suid-Afrika. Hy word die meeste onthou vir sy bydrae tot die groei van die Afrikaanse letterkunde en die belangrikeheid van sy poësie tot die Afrikaanse letterkunde, se stigting in die vroë deel van die twintigste eeu in Suid-Afrika. Hy word meestal ook onthou vir sy resepteboeke en kos en wyn gidse, sowel as vir sy loopbaan as 'n pediater. Tussen 1980 en 2001, is navorsingswerk gedoen om ‘n herwaardering van Leipoldt se literêre werk aan te bied. Gedurende hierdie tydperk was voorheen ongepubliseerde material geskryf deur Leipoldt publiek sigbaar gestel. Drie romans deur Leipoldt, wat in Engels geskryf is, is gepubliseer op ongereelde tussenposes tussen 1980 en 2001. Die romans stel Leipoldt in ‘n ander lig, wat daarop dui dat as 'n Engelse skrywer was hy gekant teen baie van die idees waarmee hy geassosieer was toe hy as 'n Afrikaanstalige skrywer beskou was. Hierdie idees het grootendeels vir Leipoldt gekoppel aan die Afrikaner-nasionalistiese projek van die twintigste eeu en het hom gekoöpteer tot Afrikaner nasionalistiese beleide van rasse-segregasie gegrond op die veldtog vir groepidentiteit. Die drie Engelstalige romans, gesamentlik die Valley-trilogie, openbaar nie net Leipoldt se teenkanting van die nasionalistiese projek nie, maar vestig ook aandag op sommige van sy ander werk in Afrikaans waarin hierdie selfde ideologiese opposisie aangeteken kan word. In hierdie tesis voer ek aan dat Leipoldt se Valley-trilogie, sowel as sommige van sy ander, Afrikaans werke, nie net die nasionalistiese projek weerlê nie, maar ook ‘n lesing aanbied van Suid-Afrikaanse moderniteit in die negentiende en twintigste eeus. Hierdie lesing van historiese gebeure in Suid-Afrika wat die trajek van die land se moderniteit openbaar is sterk aanduidend van 'n unieke literêre modernisme. Dit is my redenering dat Leipoldt se Valley-trilogie 'n modernistiese kritiek toon van die historiese gebeurtenisse wat dit aanbied. Omdat die konsep van 'n Suid-Afrikaanse modernisme in die letterkunde nog nie ten volle gedefineer is nie, is dit ook 'n doel van hierdie tesis om voor te stel dat Leipoldt se werke 'n breë maar volgehoue literêre kritiek bydra wat sy eie leeftyd dek (1880-1947) asook die historiese tydperk wat hy ondersoek in die Valley-trilogie (die laat 1830s tot die laat 1920s/vroë 1930s). Hierdie literêre vooruitsig, redeneer ek, is 'n modernistiese vooruitsig, maar ook 'n oorplanting van 'n Westerse begrip van wat die modernisme is tot die Suid-Afrikaanse konteks waarin daar belangrike verskille is. Hierdie tesis hoop tot 'n uitkoms wat Leipoldt se anti-nasionalisme bind tot aan sy literêre kritiek van die moderniteit wat hy ondersoek in die Valley-trilogie, en daardeur bewys dat Leipoldt gelees kan word word as 'n Suid-Afrikaanse literêre modernis

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Van, Vuuren Sonja. "South African satire : a study of Zakes Mda's The Madonna of Excelsior." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/16455.

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Thesis (MA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2004. ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis analyses Zakes Mda’s The Madonna of Excelsior from three different points of view, namely post-colonial, feminist and satirical. The latter constitutes the main interpretation of the novel and serves as a link with the other two discourses – the key argument being that satire is not a solipsistic form of art, and thus a satirical text should not be considered on its own, but should rather be interpreted in conjunction with other cultural discourses. This thesis is of the opinion that one needs all three of the named viewpoints in order to fully comprehend and appreciate the depth of Mda’s satire and his comments on South African society. His novel contains several candid comments on the political situation of South Africa in both the apartheid and the democratic eras, and his tongue-in-cheek observations force the reader to consider his novel from a political and a satirical angle. As apartheid is a form of colonialism and South Africa carries several scars from colonial times (such as diasporic conditions and multi-cultural identity crises, to name a few of those discussed), this thesis analyses Mda’s political commentary in terms of post-colonial discourse. Due to Mda’s use of female protagonists, this thesis also considers a feminist interpretation as necessary for a better understanding of the novel: through the use of feminist discourse, the violence that is committed against some of the female characters in the novel is interpreted as a way of enforcing colonial power relations. Chapters two, three and four respectively each discuss one of these interpretations: post-colonial, feminist and satirical, whilst chapter one is devoted to defining the art of satire. AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis analiseer Zakes Mda se The Madonna of Excelsior vanuit drie verskillende oogpunte, naamlik die postkoloniale, feministiese and satiriese. Laasgenoemde konstitueer die hoofinterpretasie van die teks, en vorm ook ‘n skakel met die ander twee diskoerse. Die hoofargument van die tesis is dat satire nie ‘n kunsvorm is wat alleen bestaan nie, en dus behoort ‘n mens nie ‘n satiriese teks in isolasie te oordink nie, maar so ‘n teks moet geïnterpreteer word in verbinding met ander diskoerse. Hierdie tesis glo dat al drie van die genoemde oogpunte noodsaaklik is om Mda se satiriese kommentaar en aanmerkings oor die Suid-Afrikaanse gemeenskap werklik te verstaan en waardeer. Daar is etlike openhartige aanmerkings in die teks wat die politiese situasie van Suid-Afrika in beide die apartheid en die demokratiese eras aanspreek, en Mda se skertsende kommentaar dwing die leser om die teks te oordink van ‘n politiese, asook ‘n satiriese, gesigspunt. Aangesien apartheid ‘n vorm van kolonialisme is, en Suid-Afrika verskeie littekens van koloniale tye dra (soos disporas en multi-kulturele krisisse, om maar ‘n paar te noem), analiseer hierdie tesis Mda se politiese aanmerkings in terme van ‘n postkoloniale interpretasie. Mda se gebruik van vroulike hoofkarakters veroorsaak dat hierdie tesis ook a feministiese interpretasie benuttig vir ‘n betere begrip van die teks: deur die gebruik van ‘n feministiese diskoers kan ‘n mens die geweld wat teen sommige van die vroulike karakters gepleeg word sien as ‘n manier om koloniale magsverhoudinge af te dwing. Hoofstukke twee, drie en vier bespreek elk een van hierdie oogpunte: postkoloniaal, feminisme en satiere, terwyl hoofstuk een die satiriese kuns probeer definieer.

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O'Neil, Justine Eileen. "?Reciprocity is everything?: The Female Journey to Elective Bonding in African-American Literature." NCSU, 2006. http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/theses/available/etd-04222006-172341/.

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This thesis identifies the severe impact of compulsory heterosexuality in the African-American community. In particular, I explore the ways in which compulsory heterosexuality is tied to the legacy of slavery and how it damages Black female subjectivity as well as Black love relationships. I focus on three novels by African-American women ? Gayl Jones?s Corregidora (1975), Opal Palmer Adisa?s It Begins with Tears (1997) and Pearl Cleage?s What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day (1997) ? to illustrate the struggle that Black women face when subjected to sexual and emotional restrictions. I submit that the opposition to compulsory heterosexuality is elective bonding, in which women demand agency in all relationships. Chapter one discusses the authors? portrayals of how compulsory heterosexuality causes a repression of female desire, particularly when women structure their sexual lives around male satisfaction and reproduction. Chapter two focuses on the power of compulsory heterosexuality to obstruct female bonding from women?s lives, mainly by promoting female competition for the male gaze. Finally, chapter three outlines the steps necessary to escape the limitations of compulsory heterosexuality and to enter into elective bonding. My research suggests that effective elective bonding depends largely on building female community. Elective bonding ultimately prepares women to be active agents in all relationships, particularly those with men, in which they denounce compulsory heterosexuality and demand reciprocity. In this project, I posit that female bonding is the medium through which women can escape the sexual and emotional limitations of compulsory heterosexuality.

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Tromans, Philip. "Advertising America : the printing, publication, and promotion of English New World books, 1553-1600." Thesis, De Montfort University, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/2086/12484.

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This thesis explores how the paratexts to and physical features of English Tudor books about the New World presented the books’ content to their original readers. The contribution this thesis makes to knowledge is threefold. First, the field of study of English travel and colonial literature lacks a bibliographically informed account of how the books’ constitutive elements of type and paper affect meaning. Widespread use of modern editions of the few accessible texts effaces the originals’ rich aesthetic, structural and tactile forms and fails to comprehensively historicise the production and intentions of the books. The careful, contextualised examinations of typefounts and composition included in this thesis go beyond what has been previously done and suggest agendas for further, necessary and illuminating bibliographical work. Second, the thesis presents the first comprehensively investigative survey of how the paratextual elements of the books marketed the New World to Tudor England. It goes beyond John Parker’s fifty-year-old _Books to Build an Empire_ (1965) by considering the full range of forty-three editions’ paratextual apparatus, not just prefaces, proems and dedications. It is simultaneously a counterbalance to the narrow focus on Richard Hakluyt’s anthological _Principal Navigations_ (1598-1600). The thesis begins the much-needed recovery of the conceptual and publication histories of both the constitutive texts reprinted in _Principal Navigations_ and those not included in Hakluyt’s anthology that are nontheless relevant to the history of the genre. Third, this survey that challenges a still powerful teleology: that the publications were unequivocally books to build an empire. Many of these books were in fact marketed as recreational reads. As the paratextual, structural and material features of many of the books this thesis looks at are under-explored and under-reported, close examination of multiple exemplars was necessary to ensure that this thesis is a representative and reliable record of the marketing strategies used to promote Tudor books about America.

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Kamali, Leila Francesca. "Spectres of the shore : the memory of Africa in contemporary African-American and Black British fiction." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2007. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/4110/.

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This study considers the approach in recent African-American and Black British fiction toward the cultural memory of Africa. Following a brief consideration of the relationship between contemporary conceptions of African-American and Black British cultural identities, I examine the ways in which the imaginative journeys and geographies, evoked by the ideals of Africa and 'Africanness', are employed in the negotiation of historical memory, and in the endeavour to situate black identity in the context of contemporary American and British society. My discussion addresses these questions, initially, in four novels by African-American writers: Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo (1972), Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon (1977), Alice Walker's The Color Purple (1983), and John Edgar Wideman's Philadelphia Fire (1990). I argue that African-American writers situate a memory of an African past within an African-American present, through a form of historical memory which is sensitive not only to tradition, but also to the practice of 'possession'. This fluid form of memory, characteristic of a voodoo tradition, and also, these writers suggest, of a diversity of African-American artforms, allows knowledge of African tradition to be situated within the American present, but is broadly denied by an American trend of forgetfulness toward the past, and devalued by institutionalised racism. African-American texts present uses of language in which the linguistic and the pre-linguistic realms are felt to be continuous with one another, in response to an American language which is centrally occupied by the fraught relationship between black and white Americans. The second half of this study examines the memory of Africa in three Black British works, including Caryl Phillips's Crossing the River (1991), S.1. Martin's Incomparable World (1996), and Bernardine Evaristo's Lara (1997). I suggest here that Black British authors employ the cultural memory of Africa not as an inheritance which is connected to a known 'tradition', but as one of a diverse number of inheritances which are negotiated as part of the process of situating identity as flexible, individual, and unfinished. The memory of Africa is figured as frozen in the past, along with a range of other cultural inheritances, which are taken up and redramatised in the present as part of an attempt to recover the inherent diversity at the heart of an oppressive British fiction of linearity, and of uniform 'whiteness'. Where Britain, historically, has been silent on Britain's black presence, Black British writers simply speak into that silence. Emerging from this fruitful comparison between the two literatures is a sense of the contrasting approaches which are made by black writers toward notions of tradition and the performance of identity, in the context of two very different national histories, and as part of fundamental strategies of survival employed in contemporary social settings. These dramatisations are interrogated against continuous issues of race and racism, but also as diverse solutions for identity where national contexts bear a contrasting significance in an age which is increasingly globalised, and in which imperial power has shifted, and continues to shift, between Britain and America.

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Klein, Deborah Rochelle. "Negotiating femininity, ethnicity and history : representations of Ruth First in South African struggle narratives." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/19000.

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An exploration of South African historiography through the prism of representations of activist writer Ruth First (1925-1982) forms the focus of this thesis. Ignored in South African canonical histories during the apartheid era, Ruth First is frequently portrayed as an icon of the struggle in current accounts about the past. The dissertation is ordered by five central discussions: gender, political activism, Jewishness, maternal behaviour and the role of the individual in the community. With reference to her non-fiction writing, autobiographical accounts by her daughters and her contemporaries, photographic exhibitions and transcriptions of amnesty hearings to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (amongst other works), I trace Ruth First's presentation of identity through communications of dress, posture and language. I examine too the production of her image across time in South African culture. Imprisoned under the infamous Ninety-Day law in 1963, Ruth First subsequently wrote a memoir titled 117 Days: An Account of Confinement and Interrogation under South African Ninety-Day Detention Law (1965), which became known as a classic of the genre. Caught between her commitments to racial equality and a life of social privilege, between the demands of motherhood and her sociological research work in Africa, between performances of a white femininity and the suppressed ramifications of a difficult ethnic past, Ruth First shuttles between unsatisfactory subject positions. I propose here that Ruth First strains against the representative mantle which she is made to wear in post-apartheid tributes to the past, and which she herself sometimes donned as a lifetime member of the South African Communist Party, and later the African National Congress. As the daughter of poor Yiddish-speaking Jews from Lithuania, I propose that Ruth First is marked by a history of dislocation, immigration and revolutionary activity which she refused to acknowledge. I undertake my own historiographical exercise through which I re-situate Ruth First within an alternate heritage of Jewish activist women. An understanding of the historiographical process as a series of continuous adjustments of the past to politicized positions in the present underlies my examination. Includes bibliographical references (p. 308-326).

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Jackson, Akia. "The mobility of memory and shame: African American and Afro-Caribbean women’s fiction 1980’s-1990’s." Diss., University of Iowa, 2019. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/6962.

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The purpose of this dissertation is to understand the mixed legacy of shame. I work through the interrelationship between productive shame and debilitating shame and a character’s journey through this spectrum. In my research, I define shame not in the pejorative, but rather I repurpose the term to show its beneficiality in reshaping Black female characters during the period of Black Arts and Power Movements in America and the Caribbean. Essentially, my dissertation will argue that although debilitative shame seems overwhelmingly negative for the female characters, gradually they come to reassess this shame as a positive asset that helps them reevaluate societal and nationalistic expectations associated with their Blackness. I seek to redefine the globalized multiple dimensions of shame that Black authors confront throughout their novels because shame involves an often painful, sudden awareness of the self and trauma previously endured. Thus, the fluidity of Black transnational experiences frame my interrogation of the impact of colonialism and post-colonialism on the cultural history and collective shame of Afro-diasporic descended characters in Morrison’s Tar Baby (1981), Kincaid’s Annie John (1985), Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven (1987), and Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994). My project complicates mobility by dissecting the disconnections that arise from separation from homelands, family, and cultural familiarity. I analyze the four novels through an ordered methodology of migration, disruption, discontinuity, and the renaming debilitative shame as a positive asset. This methodology informs my argument on the middle ground and Black female characters occupying multiple identities in their movement through different nation-states and empires.

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Guldimann, Colette. ""A symbol of the New African" : Drum magazine, popular culture and the formation of black urban subjectivity in 1950s South Africa." Thesis, Queen Mary, University of London, 2003. http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/1814.

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This thesis examines the emergence of black urban subjectivity in South Africa during the 1950s, focussing on the ways in which popular American genres were utilised in the construction of black urban identities that served as a means of resistance to apartheid. At the centre of this process was Drum magazine: founded in South Africa in 1951 , it became the largest selling magazine on the African continent in 1956. Drum's success was due to the way in which it enabled the relocation of black identity from the "traditional" towards the "modern'. The 1940s gave rise to widespread migration of black South Africans from rural to urban areas and this newly urbanised community was seeking models of black urban identity. Yet the Nationalist government was attempting to curtail the emergence of a black urban proletariat, which posed a threat to white political supremacy. Through apartheid legislation black identity was constructed as essentially tribal and rural. As a means of resisting this, urbanised black South Africans turned to, and appropriated, readily available forms of American culture. Drum published Americanised images and stories: gangsters, black detectives, black comic heroes, and pulp romances. This popular material appeared alongside some of the finest investigative journalism ever published. While Drum magazine is widely acknowledged as having provided a platform for the emergence of black South African writing in English, its popular content has been dismissed by critics as apolitical escapism, imitation and capitulation to American culture. This thesis challenges the dismissal of the popular that has dominated analyses of Drum since the 1960s, arguing that such a position denies the agency of local writers and audiences. My analysis reveals that American forms were adopted in critically discerning ways and chosen for their ability to convey local meaning and create positions from which to resist apartheid

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Moudouma, Moudouma Sydoine. "Intra- and inter-continental migrations and diaspora in contemporary African fiction." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/80117.

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Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2013. ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The focus of this dissertation is the examination of the relationship between space and identity in recent narratives of migration, in contemporary African literature. Migrant narratives suggest that there is a correlation between identity formation and the types of boundaries and borders migrants engage with in their various attempts to find new homes away from their old ones. Be it voluntary or involuntary, the process of migrating from a familial place transforms the individual who has to negotiate new social formations; and tensions often accrue from the confrontation between one’s culture and the culture of the receiving society. Return migration to the supposed country of origin is an equally important trajectory dealt with in African migrant literature. The reverse narrative stipulates similar tensions between one’s diasporic culture – the culture of the diasporic space – and the culture of the homeland. Thus, intra- and inter-continental migrations and diaspora is a bifurcated inquiry that examines both outward and return migrations. These movements reveal the ways in which Africans make sense of their Africanity and their place in the world. The concepts of “border”, “boundary” and “borderland” are useful to examine notions of difference and separation both within the nation-state and in relation to transnational, intra-African as well as inter-continental exchanges. I focus more fully on these notions in the texts that examine migrations within Africa, both outward and return movements. This study is not only interested in the physical features of borders, boundaries or borderlands, but also on their consequences for the processes of identity formation and translation, and how they can help to reveal the social and historical characteristics of diasporic formations. What undergirds much of the analysis is the assumption that the negotiation of belonging and space cannot be separated from the crossing or breaching of borders and boundaries; and that these negotiations entail attempts to enter the borderland, which is a zone of exchange, crisscrossing networks, dissolution of notions of singularity and exclusive identities. AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die fokus van hierdie proefskrif is ‘n ondersoek na die verhouding tussen ruimte en identiteit in onlangse migrasie-narratiewe in kontemporêre Afrika-literatuur. Migrasienarratiewe dui op ’n korrelasie tussen identiteitsvorming en die soorte skeidings en grense waarmee migrante gemoeid raak in hulle onderskeie pogings om nuwe tuistes weg van die oues te vind. Hetsy willekeurig of gedwonge, die migrasieproses weg van ’n familiale plek verander die individu wat nuwe sosiale formasies moet oorkom, en spanning neem dikwels toe weens die konfrontasie tussen die eie kultuur en dié van die ontvangersamelewing. Migrasie terug na die sogenaamde land van herkoms is net so ’n belangrike onderwerp in Afrika-migrasieliteratuur. Die terugkeernarratief stipuleer dat daar ooreenkomstige spanning heers tussen ’n persoon se diasporiese kultuur – die kultuur van die diaspora-ruimte – en die kultuur van die land van oorsprong. Die ondersoek na intra- en interkontinentale migrasies en diasporas is dus ’n tweeledige proses wat uitwaartse sowel as terugkerende migrasies beskou. Hierdie bewegings openbaar die ware maniere waarop Afrikane sin maak uit hulle Afrikaniteit en hulle plek in die wêreld. Die konsepte van “grens”, “grenslyn” en “grensgebied” is nuttig wanneer die begrippe van verskil en verwydering ondersoek word binne die nasiestaat asook in verhouding tot transnasionale, intra-Afrika en interkontinentale wisseling. Ek fokus meer volledig op hierdie begrippe in die tekste wat ondersoek instel na migrasie binne Afrika, beide uitwaartse en terugkerende bewegings. Hierdie studie gaan nie net oor die fisiese kenmerke van grense, grenslyne en grensgebiede nie, maar bestudeer ook die gevolge daarvan op die prosesse van identiteitsvorming en vertaling, en die manier waarop hulle kan help om die sosiale en historiese eienskappe van diasporiese formasies te openbaar. ’n Groot deel van die analise word ondersteun deur die aanname dat die onderhandeling tussen tuishoort en ruimte nie geskei kan word van die oorsteek of deurbreek van grense en grenslyne nie, en dat hierdie onderhandelinge lei tot pogings om die grensgebied te betree, waar die grensgebied gekenmerk word deur wisseling, kruising van netwerke en die verwording van begrippe soos sonderlingheid en eksklusiewe identiteite.

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Rees, Jennifer. "Masculinity and sexuality in South African border war literature." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/5451.

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Thesis (MA (English))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010. ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis explores masculinity and sexuality, hegemonic and “deviant” in the nation state of the old apartheid South Africa, by addressing aspects of fatherhood, boyhood and motherhood in white, predominantly Afrikaans family narratives. In doing this, I explore the ways in which the young boys in texts such as The Smell of Apples (1995), by Mark Behr, and moffie (2006), by André Carl van der Merwe, are systematically groomed to become the ideal stereotype of masculinity at the time: rugged, intelligent, successful and heterosexual. The main focus of this thesis is to explore the ideologies inherent in constructing the white, Afrikaner man, his woman and their family. This will be done with specific reference to the time frame between the early 1970s to the fall of the apartheid regime in the early 1990s, focussing on the young white boys who are sent to do military training and oftentimes, a stint on the border between Angola and the then South-West Africa, in order to keep the so-called threat of communism at bay. I explore what happens when this white-centred patriarchal hegemony is broken down, threatened or resisted when “deviance” in the form of homosexuality occurs. A second focus of this thesis is that of “deviance” in the army. I analyse “deviance” in three novels, moffie (2006) by André Carl van der Merwe, The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs (1991) by Damon Galgut and Kings of the Water (2009) by Mark Behr. These novels foreground “deviance” and I make use of them in exploring the punishment, or “consequences” of being homosexual or “deviant” in the highly masculine environs of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) army. I also examine the muted yet, I argue, resistant voices of female characters in these novels. This thesis concludes by briefly noting the aftermath of this war, the after-effects of a white, hegemonic, conservative ruling party at the helm of a divided, war-faring country on its soldiers, who are now middle-aged men. AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis ondersoek manlikheid en seksualiteit, hegemonie en “afwykings” in die staat van ou apartheid Suid-Afrika deur te verwys na aspekte van vaderskap, seunwees en moederskap in blanke, oorwegend Afrikaanse gesinsvertellings. Eerstens sal daar ondersoek ingestel word na die wyses waarop jong seuns in tekste soos The Smell of Apples (1995) deur Mark Behr en moffie (2006) deur André Carl van der Merwe stelselmatig gekweek word tot die ideale stereotipe van manlikheid in die era: ongetem, intelligent, suksesvol en heteroseksueel. Die hoofklem van hierdie tesis is om die denkwyses onderliggend aan die konstruksie van die blanke Afrikaner man, sy vrou en hulle gesin, te verken. Dit sal bewerkstellig word deur na die tydperk vanaf die vroeë 1970s tot en met die ondergang van die apartheidsbewind in die vroeë 1990s te verwys, met spesifieke klem op jeugdige blanke seuns wat gestuur is vir militêre opleiding en dikwels ook diensplig aan die grens tussen Angola en destydse Suid-Wes Afrika om die oënskynlike kommunistiese aanslag af te weer. Daar word verken wat plaasvind wanneer hierdie blank-gesentreerde, patriargale oorwig afgebreek, bedreig of teengestaan word deur “afwykings” soos die voorkoms van homoseksualiteit. ‘n Tweede fokuspunt van hierdie tesis is die “afwykings” in die weermag. Die volgende drie “afwykingsromans” word ontleed: moffie (2006), The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs (1991) deur Damon Galgut en Kings of the Water (2009) deur Mark Behr. Hierdie romans ondervang die idee van “afwykings” en word gebruik in die ondersoek na die straf of gevolge van homoseksueel of “afwykend” wees in die uitsluitlik manlike omgewing geskep deur die SANW-opleiding. Daar word ook ondersoek ingestel na die stilgemaakte; dog, soos aangetoon word, versettende stemme van vroulike karakters in die romans. Hierdie tesis sluit af deur vlugtig te verwys na die nasleep van die oorlog en die gevolge van ’n blanke, heersende, konserwatiewe party aan die stuur van ’n verdeelde, oorlogvoerende land op sy soldate wat tans middeljarige mans is.

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Dlamini, Phindile Alice. "The impact of Siswati L1 on the acquisition of academic english by tertiary students in Swaziland." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/26203.

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Research has pointed to the influence of the first language (L1) in the acquisition of the second (L2). In this study I investigate the interface between siSwati as an L1 and the acquisition of Academic English by students of the tertiary institutions of Swaziland. I examine five theoretical frameworks which are germane to L2 acquisition – error analysis, interdependency, transfer, interlanguage and fossilization. I discuss how these frameworks can help explain the low levels of proficiency in Academic English among learners in tertiary institution in Swaziland. In my research I employ qualitative research methods – questionnaires with both students and lecturers on initial and subsequent encounters with reading and writing both in the L1 (siSwati) and the L2 (English) – as well as quantitative research methods including statistical analyses of demographic and biographic data. In addition, in order to gauge the impact of the L1 on the L2 I analyse written texts of first and final year students at a number of tertiary institutions in Swaziland. Findings reveal that the students' L1 does, to some extent, interfere with their ability to properly acquire Academic English but cannot entirely explain the students' failure to acquire competency or near native proficiency in Academic English. Other militating factors include early educational environments which were not conducive to stimulating bilingualism, poor supply of text resources in both the L1 and the L2, the lack of a culture of reading in either the L1 or L2, the remoteness of English mother-tongue contexts, peripheral normativity practices in the institutions and indeed the emergence and development of a new variety of English in Swaziland. My own assessment criteria were critiqued during the course of this study and suggestions were made as to the validity of some of my assumptions about what constitutes "correct English". This insight should necessitate a new study on how English competency is assessed in Swaziland and to what it extent it is in line with contemporary views of what constitutes Standard English. It is hoped that the findings of this study will inform current debates on language teaching and assessment in tertiary institutions in Swaziland and also highlight areas of concern for academic programmes that focus on developing language and writing skills. Finally, I recommend that it is literacy in the L1 that needs to be addressed at the grass-roots route level in order for transfer to the L2 to occur successfully. Ultimately I conclude that efficient acquisition of Academic English can only be achieved when cognitive abilities have been properly developed in the L1.

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Coetsee, Jarryd. "Separate and warring selves : identity crises in Africa in Shiva Naipaul's "North of South: an African journey"." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/2016.

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Thesis (MA (English Studies))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This project seeks to analyze the representation of identities in Shiva Naipaul's travel narrative North of South: An African Journey (1978) as encoded in the binaries of primitive / traditional; civilized / modern; settler / native; civic / tribal and neo-colonial / liberated. By analyzing this select series of identities, this project aims to explore the fractured nature of identity as constructed in the post-colony. It will argue that the identities are rendered unstable by the ungrounded nature of the post-colonial space in which they are located. Naipaul concludes his travel narrative by qualifying the postcolonial situation as an abortion of Western civilization in the trope of Conrad's Kurtz. Naipaul implies that any identity in Africa is a simulacrum, a phantom double, a copy of something that was not there to begin with. He attempts to articulate the diverse cultures that he encounters as though he were apart from them without recognizing that he is essentially and inextricably a part of the various cultural articulations themselves. It is easy to criticize Naipaul, therefore, as a non-starter. With the advantages of hindsight, however, it is possible for the contemporary reader to recognize these instabilities as evidence of the post-modern phenomenon in which reality is not an absolute. As a modernist writer, Naipaul's efforts to understand these instabilities of identity as an articulation of culture are circumvented by a Sisyphean struggle wherein he attempts to establish a sense of ontological alterity in the narrative yet implicates himself, as well as his invocation of archival literature and hence his ultimate position of disillusionment, hopelessness and doom. AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie projek poog om die verteenwoordiging van identiteite in Shiva Naipaul se reisverhaal, North of South: An African Journey (1978), gekodeerd met die binere van die primitiewe / tradisionele ; beskaafde / moderne; setlaars / inheemse; staats / etniese; en neo-kolonialisme / vryheid, te analiseer. Deur die analise van die gekose reeks identiteite, neig die studie om die gebroke aard van identiteit in In post-koloniale omgewing te ondersoek, en te redeneer dat die identiteite bemoeilik word deur die ongegronde natuur van die postkoloniale ruimte waarin hulle voorkom. Naipaul omvat North of South om die post-kolonialistiese situasie te kwalifiseer as In aborsie van die Westerse beskawing in die metafoor van Conrad se Kurtz. Naipaul impliseer dat enige identiteit in Afrika In simulacrum is, In spookbeeld, 'n kopie van iets wat nooit was nie. Hy poog om die menigte kulture wat hy ondervind te omskryf asof hy van hulle verwyder is, sonder om te besef dat hy volledig deel uitmaak van die geleding van hierdie kulture, en dit is daarvolgens maklik om Naipaul as 'n mislukking te kritiseer. Met die duidelikheid van In moderne leser se terugblik is dit wei moontlik om hierdie onkonsekwenthede as bewyse te sien van die post-modernistiese verskynsel waarin realiteit nie In absoluut is nie. As In modernistiese skrywer is Naipaul se bemoeienis om hierdie onbestendigheid van identiteit as 'n omskrywing van kultuur te verstaan belemmer deur 'n Sisyphiesestryd waarin hy poog om In sin van die andersheid van die aard van die werklikheid in die storielyn te vestig, maar tog impliseer hy homself asook sy gebruik van argiefmateriaal, en vandaar sy uiteindelike posisie van ontnugtering, hopeloosheid en verwoesting.

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Boehmer, Elleke Deirdre. "Mothers of Africa : representations of nation and gender in post-colonial African literature." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1991. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:83a022a0-e965-4dc3-b88f-267ff6903b6a.

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A protean doctrine, claiming cultural pride and demanding self-expression for those who espouse it, nationalism yet casts its defining symbols and reserves its privileges and powers according to gendered criteria. Nationalism, if seen as symbolically constructed, may be interpreted as a gendered discourse in which subjects in history and also in literature are assumed to be male. Especially in the Manichean worlds of colonial and newly post-colonial societies, nationalist narratives - such as those produced at the time of African independence - read as family dramas in which honour and duty are patrilineally bequeathed, and national sons honour iconic mothers. The invisibilities in nationalist discourse, often left obscure in the interests of an ironic 'liberation', may be redressed both through the displacement of dominant subject positions in literature - where 'non-nationals' tell their own fictions - and through the remoulding of inherited tropes and symbolic scenarios. In this way new plots are written into history; nationalist romances give way to literary fictions. An investigation of the status of nationalism as symbolic language of gender, this thesis concentrates first on the inscription of nationalist icons in post-colonial African literature and on the gendered tropic patterns which govern that inscription. Writers considered include Peter Abrahams, Leopold Senghor, Camara Laye, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o. The iconic role of artist as nationalist hero is explored in particular in a discussion of essays and plays by Wole Soyinka. In its latter half, the thesis looks at African women's writing - novels by Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta, Mariama Bâ and Bessie Head - and the work of a second generation of African writers, considering the ways in which this literature has begun to rescript the dramas of nationalism, to redream its visions of wholeness and healing.

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Coetzee, Ethrésia. "Growing Queer: youth temporality and the ethics of group sex in contemporary Moroccan & South African literature." Master's thesis, Faculty of Humanities, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/31349.

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Towards the end of October 2018, news stories surfaced about a targeted crackdown on gay people in Tanzania. Regional Commissioner of Dar es Salam, Paul Makonda, announced plans to form a government taskforce that would be devoted to pursuing and prosecuting LGBTIQ people, or those perceived to be on the spectrum (Amnesty International, “Tanzania”). This current onslaught on LGBTIQ citizens has already seen 10 men arrested, ostensibly for participating in a same-sex wedding (Ibid). While the Tanzanian foreign ministry distanced itself from the Regional Commissioner’s remarks (Burke), others have framed Makonda’s actions as a natural extension of president John Magufuli’s “morality crusade” (Amnesty International, “Tanzania”). After being elected to office in 2015, Magufuli achieved international acclaim for this 'thrift and intolerance for corruption’ (Paget). However, Magufuli’s “morality crusade” quickly spiralled into authoritarianism, with a clampdown on freedom of speech and on opposition to his party, Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM) (Ibid). The party has governed Tanzania since its independence in 1961 (O’Gorman 317). As Ahearne notes, it has become a situation where 'any opposition is seen as “against the nation”’ since it has become 'clear that Magufuli is following a nationalist agenda.’ Homophobic campaigns have been a common feature since Magufuli was elected in 2015, and sodomy still carries a prison sentence of up to 30 years in Tanzania (Burke). The current “morality crusade” is not that unusual, in other words, and it imagines sexual and gender minorities as outside the nation-state, as not quite citizens. This discourse is not new, and simply echoes similar declarations and crackdowns in other African countries that frame sexual and gender minorities as non-citizens.

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Wolfgang, Bonnie J. "The silence of the forest : a translation from French to English with analysis and literature review." Virtual Press, 1996. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1033635.

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The Central African Republic is a small country located in the center of Africa. It is a very young nation in terms of political independence, but as the CAR emerges as a nation, it has begun to produce valuable authors who write for the French speaking world. This thesis is an attempt to bring part of the CAR's literature to the United States.Le Silence de la Foret was written by Etienne Goyemide and not only describes the culture of the mainstream population of the CAR, but also that of Pygmies. Although the book is a novel, the cultural aspects are not fictitious. This thesis is a translation of Goyemide's novel into English so that it can be made accessible to the English speaking world.The process of translating such a literary work required and increased knowledge and understanding of both French and English. In attempting to capture the style and tone of the author, careful attention was given to such aspects as tense, syntactic structures, register and vocabulary. A chapter of the thesis is devoted to describing the problems encountered during translation and the reasoning for the translations chosen. Department of English

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'African literature (english), bibliography'

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