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Jadezweni, Mhlobo Wabantwana. "Aspects of isiXhosa poetry with special reference to poems produced about women." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006364.
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This study investigates the use of modern and izibongo (praise poetry) techniques in representing women in selected isiXhosa poems. The main interest of the study is to determine whether the same techniques to depict men are used when writing about women. It is also the interest of the study to ascertain how gender issues are dealt with in the selected poems. Seminal studies on izibongo by eminent scholars in this field show a serious lack of critique and little recognition of women in African languages’ poetry in general and in isiXhosa in particular. Pioneering studies in Nguni poetry about women have thus recommended that serious studies on poetry about women be undertaken. The analyses of selected poems by established isiXhosa poets show that modern poetry conventions are significantly used together with izibongo techniques. These techniques are used without any gender differentiation, which is another point of interest of this study. There are however instances where images specific to women are used. Such use has however not been found to be demeaning of women in any way. Poems where modern poetry forms and conventions are used tend to deal with subjects who have international or an urban area background. Even though the modern poetry conventions are used with izibongo techniques the presence of the modern literary conventions is prominent. This is the case particularly with poems about women in politics. That some female poet seems to accept some cultural practices that are viewed to be undermining the status of women does not take away the voice of protest against this oppression by some of the selected poets. These two voices, one of acceptance and the other one of protest are used as a basis for a debate around a need for a literary theory that addresses the question of African culture with special reference to isiXhosa poetry about women. The success of the selected poets with both modern and izibongo techniques is a good sign for the development of isiXhosa poetry in general and isiXhosa poetry about women. It is strongly recommended that continued research of a serious nature concerning poetry about, and produced by women, be undertaken.
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Watson, Stephen. ""Bitten-off things protruding" : the limitations of South African English poetry post-1948." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/22545.
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Bibliography: p. 362-393.In this thesis, the discussion of South African English poetry is undertaken in terms of critical questions to which the body of work, to date, has not been subjected. In the nineteen-seventies and -eighties, several anthologies of South African English poetry were published which, despite their differing foci, attested to the strength, innovation, and international stature of the work. Their editors made claims which emphasised both the importance of Sowetan poetry and the emancipation of white poetry, particularly in the last three decades, from the legacy of a stultifying colonial past. This thesis sets out to examine the validity of these critical evaluations. The impetus for such an examination is threefold. Firstly, in comparison with a world literature, South African English poetry has had little impact on the kinds of aesthetic questions which have led to the radical work of international figures like Milosz, Walcott, Neruda. Secondly, South African English poetry tends to be bifurcated by critical analysis, both locally and internationally, into the work of black poets and the work of white poets. Despite the realities of social history which have indeed dichotomised the human experience of South Africa in racial terms, this dichotomy does not seem the most fertile assumption from which to approach the achievement of a nation's poetry. Thirdly, as a poet himself, the writer of this thesis embarked upon the scholarly analysis of a poetic ancestry to which his own work looked ,in vain for location. The re-examination of the roots and value of South African English poetry begins in the thesis with the dilemmas posed by a legacy of romanticism in its displaced relation to a British colony. From this point the discussion argues that this legacy is visible in the unsatisfactory work of liberal poets in the nineteen-seventies and eighties, and argues that such choices cannot be nourishing to a South African cultural originality. Turning to the work most forcefully emphasised as culturally original - i.e. the work of the Soweto poets in the nineteen-seventies and after - the thesis explores this poetry's claims to stylistic and conceptual innovation. The poetry of the late eighties is then examined in relation to its desire to support, and even to drive, anti-apartheid philosophy and practice. The conclusions of the final chapter, presaged throughout the entire argument, suggest that earlier critical estimations of South African English poetry ignore crucial aspects of what has usually been meant by a fully achieved poetic tradition and that such neglect amounts to the betrayal of the very meaning of the term "poem".
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Underwood, Jan. "Revolution, connectedness and kinwork : women's poetry in Nicaragua." Thesis, McGill University, 1989. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=61970.
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Nkatingi, R. O. "Nxopoxopo wa switlhokovetselo leswi ndhunduzelaka vavasati eka xitsonga." Thesis, University of Limpopo, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10386/1415.
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Huang, Qiaole 1976. "Writing from within a women's community : Gu Taiqing (1799-1877) and her poetry." Thesis, McGill University, 2004. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=81496.
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This thesis examines the life and poetry of the woman poet Gu Taiqing (1799-1877) within the context of a community of gentry women in mid-nineteenth century Beijing. This group of women was a "community" in the sense that their contact, sociability, friendship and poetry writing were meaningfully intertwined in their lives. The thesis is divided into three interconnected chapters. Two separate biographical accounts of Gu Taiqing's life---one centered around the relationship with her husband, and the second around her relationship with her female friends---are reconstructed in the first chapter. This biographical chapter underlines the importance of situating Gu in the women's community to understand her life and poetry. The second is comprised of a reconstruction of this women's community, delineating its members and distinctive features. In the third chapter, a close-reading of Gu's poems in relation to the women's community focuses on the themes of xian (leisure), parting, and friendship. This chapter shows how each of these themes are represented by Gu and how her representations are closely related to the experiences of this women's group.
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Goremusandu, Tania. "Gender possibilities in the African context as explored by Mariama Ba's So long a letter, Neshani Andrea's The purple violet of Oshaantu and Sindiwe Magona's Beauty gift." Thesis, University of Fort Hare, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10353/6469.
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Gender oppression has been a significant discussion to the development of gender, cultural and feminist theories. The primary focus of this study is to investigate how patriarchal traditions, colonialism, and religious oppression force women to struggle under constrictions oppositional to empowerment. Thus, the project provides a comparative analysis of three texts from different African postcolonial societies by three African female writers: Mariama Bâ, Neshani Andreas and Sindiwe Magona. The author‟s biographies and historical context of their novels will be analyzed, as well as a summary of their stories will be included in order to provide the context for gender criticism. These writer‟s work; So Long a Letter, The Purple Violet of Oshaantu and Beauty‟s Gift depict patriarchal, cultural and religious laws which exist in Senegal, Namibia and South Africa, respectively, that limit the position of women. Therefore, this study will interrogate the experience of African women as inscribed in these selected texts, uncovering the literary expressions of gender oppression as well as the possibilities of empowerment. The selected texts will be analyzed through the lens of Gender studies, African feminism and Cultural studies. From these theories, the focus of the study is on the struggles of the female characters living in patriarchal societies as well as on the idea that gender is constructed socially and culturally in the African context. In conclusion, the emergence of these renowned female African writers together with the emancipation of African countries from colonial supremacy has opened a space for women to compensate and correct the stereotyped female images in African literature and post- colonial societies. Most contemporary African writers like Buchi Emecheta, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Sindiwe Magona, Mariama Bâ and Neshani Andreas have shown that women are seeking to attain empowerment. As a result, this study can be viewed as an opportunity to highlight such experiences by continuing to interrogate the writings of African women writers and to explore their gender-based themes so as to inform and or inspire the implementation of women empowerment. It will broaden and encourage further academic discussion in the field of Cultural studies and gender criticism of women‟s literature within the African context.
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劉陽河. "清代女性詩詞的日常化書寫研究= A study of women's poetry on everyday life in the Qing dynasty." HKBU Institutional Repository, 2018. https://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_oa/570.
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閨秀是清代文壇的一股新興力量，她們以獨特的女性寫作風格和視角為清代文學乃至整個中國文學注入了新鮮的水源。清代閨秀作家相較於前代，在詩詞創作方面出現一個不容忽視的特點，即在前代女作家重複傳遞的閨情閨怨之外，開拓了對日常生活的書寫。然而目前學界未有圍繞清代閨秀詩詞日常生活書寫的專著，涉及清代閨秀詩詞日常化的論文也十分稀少。有見於此，本文圍繞「清代閨秀如何書寫日常生活」這一問題展開論述，試圖彌補前人之不足。本文包含七章，除第一章「緒論」及第七章「結論」之外，二至六章的主要內容分別如下: 第二章主要通過史料文獻還原清代女性的日常生活樣貌。清代閨秀的日常生活，既有中饋理家和侍親課子等方面對於婦德的順從，又有讀書吟詠和閨外行旅等傳統婦德之外的內容。第三章以清代女性詠物詩詞為重點研究文本，主要分析詠物詩詞中大量湧現的日常化吟詠對象；同時探討詠物詩詞的日常化寫作手法和情志表達。第四章重點分析自清代才大量出現的女性家務詩詞。一方面與男性文人筆下對勞動女性的書寫作對比研究，另一方面探討家務書寫對於閨秀的意義。第五章從三個方面對清代閨秀書寫日常生活的方式進行梳理，包括拓展選材範圍、增添日記元素和關注現實生活。第六章考察清代女性詩詞日常化的原因。清代女性詩詞出現日常化的趨勢，是創作主體的改變、儒家禮儀道德規範的引導，以及文壇風氣等多重因素共同作用的結果。Elite women writers (guixiu 閨秀)were are vitalizing force in the literary field of the Qing Dynasty. With their unique gendered writing style and perspective, they brought fresh blood to Qing Dynasty literature, and in a broader sense, to Chinese literature as well. Compared with the previous generations, Qing elite women writers had a prominent feature in their writing of poetry. That is, in addition to the lyrical themes already repeatedly dealt with by earlier female writers, they started writing about their daily life. However, no monograph has been published on the writing of daily life in Qing elite women's poetry and little has been discovered on how their attention turned to the writing of daily life. This thesis fills this research gap through addressing the following question: how did Qing elite women write about everyday life? This article is divided into seven chapters, flanked by an introduction in Chapter One and a conclusion in Chapter Seven. Abstracts of Chapters Two to Six are as follows: Chapter Two outlines a reconstruction of the daily life of women in the Qing Dynasty through historical texts. It touches upon the expansion of Qing elite women's living space through comparison with previous generations. Besides taking on familial and parental responsibilities, Qing elite women expanded their living space by writing poetry and traveling. Chapter Three focuses on poems on objects (yongwu shici詠物詩詞) written by women in the Qing Dynasty. It analyzes the daily objects that appeared in a large number of poems. It also discusses the writing techniques and artistic expressions of these poems. Chapter Four focuses on women's poems on housework, a genre which did not appear until the Qing Dynasty. On the one hand, the chapter compares such poems with working women depicted by male literati; on the other hand, it discusses the significance of writing about housework for elite women of the time. Chapter Five organizes the approach Qing elite female writers had taken in writing about daily life from three aspects, namely, broadening their scope of topic selection, adding diary-like elements to their works and showing interests in family livelihood. The Sixth Chapter investigates the reasons behind the popularization of writing about daily life in Qing women's poetry. This trend is the result of a number of reasons: the change of writing subject, the guiding of Confucian moral norms and the climate of the literary circle at the time.
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Smit, Lizelle. "Narrating (her)story : South African women’s life writing (1854-1948)." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/97034.
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Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University. 2015ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Seeking to explore modes of self-representation in women’s life writing and the ways in which these subjects manipulate the autobiographical ‘I’ to write about gender, the body, race and ethnic related issues, this thesis interrogates the autobiographies of three renegade women whose works were birthed out of the de/colonial South African context between 1854-1948. The chosen texts are: Marina King’s Sunrise to Evening Star: My Seventy Years in South Africa (1935), Melina Rorke’s Melina Rorke: Her Amazing Experiences in the Stormy Nineties of South-African History (1938), and two memoirs by Petronella van Heerden, Kerssnuitsels (1962) and Die 16de Koppie (1965). My analysis is underpinned by relevant life writing and feminist criticism, such as the notion of female autobiographical “embodiment” (239) and the ‘I’s reliance on “relationality” (248) as discussed in the work of Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson (Reading Autobiography). I further draw on Judith Butler’s concept of “performativity” (Bodies that Matter 234) in my analysis in order to suggest that there is a performative aspect to the female ‘I’ in these texts. The aim of this thesis is to illustrate how these self-representations of women can be read as counter-conventional, speaking out against stereotypical perceptions and conventions of their time and in literatures (fiction and criticism) which cast women as tractable, compliant pertaining to patriarchal oversight, as narrow-minded and apathetic regarding achieving notoriety and prominence beyond their ascribed position in their separate societies. I argue that these works are representative of alternative female subjectivities and are examples of South African women’s life writing which lie ‘dusty’ and forgotten in archives; voices that are worthy of further scholarly research which would draw the stories of women’s lives back into the literary consciousness.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: In ‘n poging om metodes van self-uitbeelding te bespreek en die manier waarop die ‘ek’ van vroulike ego-tekste manipuleer om sodoende te skryf oor geslagsrolle, die liggaam, ras en ander etniese kwessies, ondersoek hierdie verhandeling die outbiografieë van drie onkonvensionele vrouens se werk, gebore vanuit die de/koloniale konteks in Suid-Afrika tussen 1854-1948. Die ego-tekste wat in hierdie navorsingstuk ondersoek word, sluit in: Marina King se Sunrise to Evening Star: My Seventy Years in South Africa (1935), Melina Rorke se Melina Rorke: Her Amazing Experiences in the Stormy Nineties of South-African History (1938), en twee memoirs geskryf deur Petronella van Heerden, Kerssnuitsels (1962) en Die 16de Koppie (1965). My analise word ondersteun deur relevante kritici van feministiese en outobiografiese velde. Ek bespreek onder andere die idee dat die vroulike ‘ek’ liggaamlik “vergestalt” (239) is in outobiografie, asook die ‘ek’ se afhanklikheid van “relasionaliteit” (248) soos uiteengesit in die werk van Sidonie Smith en Julia Watson (Reading Autobiography). Verder stel ek voor, met verwysing na Judith Butler, dat daar ‘n “performative” (Bodies that Matter 234) aspek na vore kom in die vroulike ‘ek’ van Suid- Afrikaanse outobiografie. Die doel van hierdie tesis is om uit te lig dat hierdie selfvoorstellings van vroue gelees kan word as kontra-konvensioneel; dat die stereotipiese uitbeelding van vroue as skroomhartig, nougeset, gedweë ten opsigte van patriargale oorsig, en willoos om meer te vermag as wat hul onderskeie gemeenskappe vir hul voorskryf, weerspreek word deur hierdie ego-tekste. Die doel is om sodanige outobiografiese vertellings en -uitbeeldings te vergelyk en sodoende uiteenlopende vroulike subjektiwiteite gedurende die periode 1854-1948 te belig. Ek verwys deurlopend na voorbeelde van ander gemarginaliseerde Suid-Afrikaanse vroulike ego-tekse om aan te dui dat daar weliswaar ‘n magdom ‘vergete’ en ‘stof-bedekte’ vrouetekste geskryf is in die afgebakende periode. Ek voor aan dat die ‘stem’ van die vroulike ‘ek’ allermins stagneer het, en dat verdere bestudering waarskynlik nodig is.
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Xu, Sufeng. "Lotus flowers rising from the dark mud : late Ming courtesans and their poetry." Thesis, McGill University, 2007. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=102831.
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The dissertation examines the close but overlooked relationship between male poetry societies and the sharp rise of literary courtesans in the late Ming. I attempt to identify a particular group of men who devoted exclusive efforts to the promotion of courtesan culture, that is, urban dwellers of prosperous Jiangnan, who fashioned themselves as retired literati, devoting themselves to art, recreation, and self-invention, instead of government office. I also offer a new interpretation for the decline of courtesan culture after the Ming-Qing transition.Chapter 1 provides an overview of the social-cultural context in which late Ming courtesans flourished. I emphasize office-holding as losing its appeal for late Ming nonconformists who sought other alternative means of self-realization. Chapter 2 examines the importance of poetry by courtesans in literati culture as demonstrated by their visible inclusion in late Ming and early Qing anthologies of women's writings. Chapter 3 examines the life and poetry of individual courtesans through three case studies. Together, these three chapters illustrate the strong identification between nonconformist literati and the courtesans they extolled at both collective and individual levels.
In Chapter 4, by focusing on the context and texts of the poetry collection of the courtesan Chen Susu and on writings about her, I illustrate the efforts by both male and female literati in the early Qing to reproduce the cultural glory of late Ming courtesans. However, despite their cooperative efforts, courtesans became inevitably marginalized in literati culture as talented women of the gentry flourished.
This dissertation as a whole explores how male literati and courtesans responded to the social and literary milieu of late Ming Jiangnan to shed light on aspects of the intersection of self and society in this floating world. This courtesan culture was a counterculture in that: (1) it was deep-rooted in male poetry societies, a cultural space that was formed in opposition to government office; (2) in valuing romantic relationship and friendship, the promoters of this culture deliberately deemphasized the most primary human relations as defined in the Confucian tradition; (3) this culture conditioned, motivated, and promoted serious relationships between literati and courtesans, which fundamentally undermined orthodox values.
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Knazan, Jennifer. "A vague and lovely thing : gender, cultural identity and performativity in contemporary poetry by Russian women." Thesis, McGill University, 2008. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=112402.
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Poetry by Russian women which has been published since the fall of the Soviet Union reveals that the quest to explore female identity and experience is no longer inviolable in Russian literature. This thesis examines female personae, gender and cultural identity in the work of Russian poets Nina Iskrenko (1951--1994), Tatiana Voltskaia (b. 1960), and Iuliia Kunina (b. 1966). Although the poetics of these writers' texts are broad-ranging, all of their work takes up the subjects of gender and cultural identity. Their poems explore identity as a discursive practice, rather than a fixed construct within the strictures of authoritative metanarratives' binary oppositions (male/female, feminine/masculine, Russian/non-Russian). This lends their poetry to postmodern analysis, an approach that heretofore has rarely been applied to poetry by Russian women. Within this theoretical framework, Judith Butler's formulation of "performativity" and Mikhail Epstein's theory of "transculturalism" are particularly well-suited to the task, as each entails non-essentialist conceptions of identity. Donna Haraway's formulation of "woman" as cyborg" is also a fitting theoretical complement, as it suggests the hybridization of identity, as well as the increasing role of the Internet in contemporary and future developments in Russian literature. The rapid changes in the late- and post-Soviet cultural landscape have engendered in contemporary poetry by Russian women powerful, new expressions of gender and cultural identity, which are resulting in startling subversions of authoritative discourses while at the same time forging coalitional "transmodern" identities.
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Li, Xiaorong 1969. "Rewriting the inner chambers : the boudoir in Ming-Qing women's poetry." Thesis, McGill University, 2006. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=100645.
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My dissertation takes the social and symbolic location of women---the inner chambers [guige or gui]---as a point of departure to examine Ming-Qing women's unique approach to the writing of poetry. In Ming-Qing China, women continued to be assigned to the inner, domestic sphere by Confucian social and gender norms. The inner chambers were not only a physically and socially bounded space within which women were supposed to live, but also a discursive site for the construction of femininity in both ideological and literary discourses. The term gui embraces a nexus of meanings: the material frame of the women's chambers; a defining social boundary of women's roles and place; and a conventional topos evoking feminine beauty and pathos in literary imagination. Working with the literary context of boudoir poetics, yet also considering other indispensable levels of meanings epitomized in the cultural signifier guige, my dissertation demonstrates how Ming-Qing women poets re-conceive the boudoir as a distinctive textual territory encoded with their subjective perspectives and experiences. Compared with the poetic convention, the boudoir as inscribed in Ming-Qing women's texts is far more complex as its depiction is informed by nuances in their historical, social and individual experiences.
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Birge, Amy Anastasia. ""Mislike Me not for My Complexion": Shakespearean Intertextuality in the Works of Nineteenth-Century African-American Women." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1996. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc278175/.
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Caliban, the ultimate figure of linguistic and racial indeterminacy in The Tempest, became for African-American writers a symbol of colonial fears of rebellion against oppression and southern fears of black male sexual aggression. My dissertation thus explores what I call the "Calibanic Quadrangle" in essays and novels by Anna Julia Cooper, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins. The figure of Caliban allows these authors to inflect the sentimental structure of the novel, to elevate Calibanic utterance to what Cooper calls "crude grandeur and exalted poesy," and to reveal the undercurrent of anxiety in nineteenth-century American attempts to draw rigid racial boundaries. The Calibanic Quadrangle enables this thorough critique because it allows the black woman writer to depict the oppression of the "Other," southern fears of black sexuality, the division between early black and white women's issues, and the enduring innocence of the progressive, educated, black female hero ~ all within the legitimized boundaries of the Shakespearean text, which provides literary authority to the minority writer. I call the resulting Shakespearean intertextuality a Quadrangle because in each of these African-American works a Caliban figure, a black man or "tragic mulatto" who was once "petted" and educated, struggles within a hostile environment of slavery and racism ruled by the Prospero figure, the wielder of "white magic," who controls reproduction, fears miscegenation, and enforces racial hierarchy. The Miranda figure, associated with the womb and threatened by the specter of miscegenation, advocates slavery and perpetuates the hostile structure. The Ariel figure, graceful and ephemeral, usually the "tragic mulatta" and a slave, desires her freedom and complements the Caliban figure. Each novel signals the presence of the paradigm by naming at least one character from The Tempest (Caliban in Cooper's A Voice from the South; "Mirandy" in Harper's Iola Leroy; Prospero in Hopkins's Contending Forces; and Ariel in Hopkins's Hagar's Daughter).
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Kaminski, Margot. "Challenging a literary myth, long poems by early Canadian women." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/tape15/PQDD_0024/MQ37562.pdf.
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Bokoda, Alfred Telelé. "The poetry of David Livingstone Phakamile Yali-Manisi." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1994. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/17400.
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Bibliography: pages 217-232.Yali-Manisi, a Xhosa writer, performs and writes traditional praise poetry (izibongo) and modern poems (isihobe) and can, therefore, be regarded as a bard because he also performs his poetry. One can safely place him in the interphase as he combines performance and writing. The influence of oral poems and other oral genres can be perceived in his works as some of his works are a product of performances which were recorded, transcribed and translated into English. The dissertation, among other things, examines the way in which Yali-Manisi's work has been influenced by such manipulations. In this study we examine lzibongo Zeenkosi ZamaXhosa, lmfazwe kaMianjeni, Yaphum'igqina and other individually recorded poems. His poetry is characterised by an interaction between tradition and innovation. The impact of traditional poetic canon on the poet, the way of exploiting traditional devices are the most outstanding characteristics concerning his poetry. His optimistic disposition towards the future of the South African political situation leaves one with the impression that he envisages an end to the Black-White political dichotomy. Yali-Manisi manipulates literary forms to articulate specific socio-political and cultural attitudes which are dominant among the majority of South Africans. His writings coincide with some of the major political changes in South Africa. In his recent works, he is explicit and protests against Apartheid structures especially in Transkei and Ciskei. In his earlier works he could not articulate the feelings of his people as an imbongi because of the fear of censorship and themes of protests had to be handled with extreme caution if one's manuscripts were to be published at all. He often alludes to national oppression of the majority by the minority and instigates the former to be politically conscious. In some instances (e.g. in his historical poems) he seeks to correct inaccuracies which are presented in history books. Thus showing the listener/reader another side of the coin. He displays very keen interest and deep knowledge of natural phenomena such as seasons of the year and the behaviour of animals during each period. Poems about historical figures are characterised by certain allusions which refer to realities and events in the life of the 'praised one' or his forefathers. This helps to shed light on the present situation. Although fictitious adaptations of genuine events have been done, an element of reality is still prevalent.
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Mde, Vukani. ""Effulgent in the firmament" the politics of representation and the politics of reception in South Africa's 'poetry of commitment', 1968-1983." Thesis, University of Port Elizabeth, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/10948/288.
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This dissertation re-examines an era in the production and reception of English language poetry in South Africa by black writers. Intellectually the 1970's was the Black Consciousness phase of South African history and very few aspects of life in the country were untouched by the intellectual movement led by Steve Biko and other young black student leaders. The aesthetic and literary output of the time, like all other facets of South African life, exhibited the influence and pressures brought to bear by Black Consciousness. Moreover, the Black Consciousness poets introduced the most vibrant and innovative phase for English language poetry produced in South Africa. It is my contention, however, that such vibrancy and innovation has consistently been compromised by unsympathetic, often hostile, and almost-always ill-informed criticism. The dissertation offers a critique of the academic and journalistic practice of criticism in South Africa. I argue that critical practice in South Africa has been engaged throughout the twentieth century in the discursive enforcement of ‘discipline’. In his Discipline and Punish (1977) the French post-structuralist philosopher Michel Foucault demonstrated how power is wielded against oppressed/suppressed groups through self regulated proscriptions, and argued that power is a discursive rather than a corporeal phenomenon. My dissertation follows Foucault in reading the critical reception of Black Consciousness poetry as the practice of disciplinary power. The dissertation also engages critically with the poetry of Oswald Mtshali, Mongane Serote and Sipho Sepamla, and argues that their work is the inscription of black subjectivity into the literary and cultural mainstream. It situates their work within wider 6 societal debates and definitions of ‘blackness’. In this regard use is made again of Michel Foucault’s insights and methodology of discourse analysis as shown in The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972). I argue that Oswald Mtshali’s work is a failed attempt at a dissection of apartheid and colonialism from a broadly Christian and humanist perspective. In my reading of Mongane Serote I explore the relationship between women’s bodies and the practice of representation. It is my contention that Serote is most concerned with claims of belonging, and this is shown through his extensive use of the trope of ‘Mother’. My discussion of the poetry of Sipho Sepamla focuses on language and (self- )representation, particularly the use of practices of naming in constructing subjectivity. My contention is that Sepamla ultimately abandons attempts at representation in favour of oppositional self-construction in language. In the concluding chapter I defend the thesis that the politics of discipline have prevented the broad critical establishment from gaining access to these discursive constructions of blackness in the committed poetry of South Africa.
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Bird, Lori. "Beauty in Bronzeville." Fogler Library, University of Maine, 2004. http://www.library.umaine.edu/theses/pdf/BirdL2004.pdf.
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Hogue, Cynthia Anne. "Figuring woman (out): Feminine subjectivity in the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore, and H.D." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1990. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/185054.
Full textAbstract:
Historically, women have not been "speaking subjects" but "spoken objects" in Western culture--the ground on which male-dominated constructions have been erected. In literature, women have been conventionally held as the silent and silenced other. Lyric poetry especially has idealized not only the entrenched figures of masculine subject/feminine object, but poetry itself as the site of prophecy, vision, Truth. Most dramatically in lyric poetry then, the issue of women as subjects has been collapsed into Woman as object, that figure who has been the sacrifice necessary for the production of lyric "song" and the consolidation of the unified masculine voice. It has thus been difficult for women poets to take up the position of speaking subject, most particularly because of women's problematic relationship to Woman. Recent feminist theorists have explored female subjectivity, how women put into hegemonic discourse "a possible operation of the feminine." This dissertation analyzes that possibility in poetry as exemplified in the works of Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore, and H.D. I contend that these paradigmatic American poets constitute speaking subjects in their poetry that both figure Woman conventionally and reconfigure it, i.e. subvert the stability of those representations, thereby disturbing our view. I argue that this double identification produces, in effect, a divided or split subjectivity that is enabling for the female speaker. As an alternative to the traditionally specularized figure of Woman then, such a position opens up distinctly counter-hegemonic spaces in which to constitute the female subject, rendering problematic readerly consumption of the image of Woman as a totality. I explore the attempts to represent women's difference differently--the tenuous accession to, rejection of, or play with the lyric "I" in these poets' works. Dickinson, Moore, and H.D. reconfigure Woman and inscribe female speakers as grammatically and rhetorically, but not necessarily visually, present, thereby frustrating patriarchal economies of mastery and possession.
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Carrière, Marie J. "Poetics of the other, five feminist writers from English Canada and Quebec." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape9/PQDD_0015/NQ45662.pdf.
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Wolfe, Andrea P. "Black mothers and the nation : claiming space and crafting signification for the black maternal body in American women's narratives of slavery, reconstruction, and segregation, 1852-2001." CardinalScholar 1.0, 2010. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1560845.
Full textAbstract:
“Black Mothers and the Nation” tracks the ways that texts produced by United States women throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries position the black maternal body as subversive to the white patriarchal power structure for which it labored and that has acted in many ways to abject it from the national body. This study points to the ways in which the black mother’s subversive potential has been repeatedly, violently, and surreptitiously circumscribed in some quarters even as it succeeds in others. Several important thematic threads run throughout the chapters of this study, sometimes appearing in clear relationship to the texts discussed and sometimes underwriting their analysis in less obvious ways: the functioning of the black maternal body to both support the construction of and undermine white womanhood in slavery and in the years beyond; the reclamation of the maternal body as a site of subversion and nurturance as well as erotic empowerment; the resistance of black mother figures to oppressive discourses surrounding their bodies and reproduction; and, finally, the figurative and literal location of the black mother in a national body politic that has simultaneously used and abjected it over the course of centuries. Using these lenses, this study focuses on a grouping of women’s literature that depicts slavery and its legacy for black women and their bodies. The narratives discussed in this study explore the intersections of the issues outlined above in order to get at meaningful expressions of black maternal identity. By their very nature as representations of historical record and regional and national realities, these texts speak to the problematic placement of black maternal bodies within the nation, beginning in the antebellum era and continuing through the present; in other words, these slavery, Reconstruction, and segregation narratives connect personal and physical experiences of maternity to the national body.The subordination of embodied power : sentimental representations of the black maternal body in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's cabin and Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the life of a slave girl -- Recuperating the body : the black mother's reclamation of embodied presence and her reintegration into the black community in Pauline Hopkins's Contending forces and Toni Morrison's Beloved -- The narrative power of the black maternal body : resisting and exceeding visual economies of discipline in Margaret Walker's Jubilee and Sherley Anne Williams's Dessa Rose -- Mapping black motherhood onto the nation : the black maternal body and the body politic in Lillian Smith's Strange fruit and Alice Randall's The wind done gone -- Michelle Obama in context.
Access to thesis permanently restricted to Ball State community only
Department of English
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Compion, Marlette. "'n Ondersoek na Scheherazade as moontlike voorganger in 'n vroulike verteltradisie in enkele Afrikaanse literêre tekste." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/2024.
Full textAbstract:
Thesis (MA (Afrikaans and Dutch))—University of Stellenbosch, 2005.The aim of this study is to investigate the position that has been allocated to women authors by literary theorists. Some literary theorists are of the opinion that the action of writing can be compared to fatherhood, ownership and being a creator, all of which are male dominated images. Women writers have historically been marginalized by literary theorists, since there is a perception that women cannot write because they are not male. Harold Bloom has postulated that a male writer looks to a precursor in order to write and find his own voice. Before the writer can claim his own, original voice, he must enter into an Oedipal battle with the precusor, and, figuratively speaking, ‘kill’ him in his writing. According to Gilbert & Gubar, who serve here as representatives of the feminist literary theorists, women writers make use of monsterlike figures which serve as metaphors for the inner battle they have to endure to put pen to paper. The problem, however, is that women writers have no (female) precursors to look to. Elaine Showalter postulates 4 models that women writers may use in search of a female precursor or female body of writing, but she does not offer a clear solution. I am of the opinion that women writers can identity with a female figure or role model. The figure that I propose is Scheherazade, a storytelling character from the Thousand and One Nights, who told stories for a thousand and one nights in order for escape death. I identify a few texts from international literature that make use of this figure, whether as a character in the text, a metaphor for the female character who tells stories or as a metaphor for the author herself. This study focuses on texts from 3 genres in Afrikaans literature, namely children’s stories, short stories and a novel. It appears from the analysis of the texts that women writers have successfully made use of the Scheherazade character, to address issues concerning the social role and position allocated to women by a patriarchial society. Along with this women writers’ search and longing for a voice of their own and their own identity gets highlighted with the use of a Scheherazade-like female character who tells stories. Lastly it became clear that this figure is also being used by women writers to contemplate the dynamics of writing and to contextualise the role that self-doubt and self-actualisation play in telling and writing stories. Scheherazade thus becomes a vehicle for finding a voice as well as agency.
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Becker, Charity Dawn. "Constructing the mother-tongue, language in the poetry of Dionne Brand, Claire Harris, and Marlene Nourbese Philip." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape9/PQDD_0016/MQ54604.pdf.
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Cossíos, Susana. "El kitsch en la poesía femenina de los 90 : Ana Rossetti y Rocío Silva Santisteban." Thesis, McGill University, 2000. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=30155.
Full textAbstract:
The last years of the twentieth century have been characterized by an increased presence of women in Hispanic poetry, who inevitably brought forth a new poetic language. Typical of this new expression are the Spaniard Ana Rossetti and the Peruvian Rocio Silva Santisteban, who give free rein to their emotions and desires in their poetic texts, which reflect love as both eroticism and joyful sexuality. In their poetry the body becomes the instrument for the fulfillment of desire and the production of erotic states. Thus, love is despised almost innocently but through the use of Kitsch as pop songs and advertising slogans, love is rehabilitated and the pleasure-death relation is seen in multiple perspectives.
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Erickson, Stacy M. "Animals-as-Trope in the Selected Fiction of Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1999. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2227/.
Full textAbstract:
In this dissertation, I show how 20th century African-American women writers such as Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison utilize animals-as-trope in order to illustrate the writers' humanity and literary vision. In the texts that I have selected, I have found that animals-as-trope functions in two important ways: the first function of animal as trope is a pragmatic one, which serves to express the humanity of African Americans; and the second function of animal tropes in African-American women's fiction is relational and expresses these writers' "ethic of caring" that stems from their folk and womanist world view. Found primarily in slave narratives and in domestic fiction of the 19th and early 20th centuries, pragmatic animal metaphors and/or similes provide direct analogies between the treatment of African-Americans and animals. Here, these writers often engage in rhetoric that challenges pro-slavery apologists, who attempted to disprove the humanity of African-Americans by portraying them as animals fit to be enslaved. Animals, therefore, become the metaphor of both the abolitionist and the slavery apologist for all that is not human. The second function of animals-as-trope in the fiction of African-American women writers goes beyond the pragmatic goal of proving African-Americans's common humanity, even though one could argue that this goal is still present in contemporary African-American fiction. Animals-as-trope also functions to express the African-American woman writer's understanding that 1) all oppressions stem from the same source; 2) that the division between nature/culture is a false onethat a universal connection exists between all living creatures; and 3) that an ethic of caring, or relational epistemology, can be extended to include non-human animals. Twentieth-century African-American writers such as Hurston, Walker, and Morrison participate in what anthropologists term, "neototemism," which is the contemporary view that humankind is part of nature, or a vision that Morrison would most likely attribute to the "folk." This perspective places their celebration of the continuous relations between humans and animals within a spiritual, indeed, tribal, cosmological construction. What makes these particular writers primarily different from their literary mothers, however, is a stronger sense that they are reclaiming the past, both an African and African-American history. What I hope to contribute with this dissertation is a new perspective of African-American women writers' literary tradition via their usage of animals as an expression of their "ethic of caring" and their awareness that all oppression stems from a single source.
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Ten, Hacken Hilde. "Self-definition through poetry in the work of Gloria Fuertes and Pilar Paz Pasamar in the period 1950-1970." Thesis, St Andrews, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/421.
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Drodge, Susan. "The feminist romantic, the revisionary rhetoric of Double negative, Naked poems, and Gyno-text." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1996. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/nq25770.pdf.
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Letcher, Valerie Helen. "Trespassing beyond the borders Harriet Ward as writer and commentator on the Eastern Cape frontier." Thesis, Rhodes University, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002283.
Full textAbstract:
The aim of this thesis is to provide an introduction to the work of writer and journalist Harriet Ward, resident in the Eastern Cape from 1842 to 1848. She was a prolific correspondent to various periodicals published both in South Africa and in London. It would be true to say, to judge from the evidence, that she fulfilled a need felt by the British public for information on life and events in South Africa, and that she became the trusted guide of the middle-class reader. Her range covers reports from the frontiers of war, journalistic articles, memoirs, short stories, novels, autobiography, and editions of other writers' work. After the publication of her articles on the Seventh Frontier War (1846-7), she was recognised and respected as a commentator on the situation at the Eastern Cape, an unusual role for a woman at this time. She was also amongst the foremost victorian women writers published from the early eighteen forties until the end of the eighteen-fifties. Harriet Ward has left a vivid historical and sociological account of the Cape frontier, and her observations and judgements provide a hitherto virtually unknown perspective on an important part of South African history and letters. What makes her even more interesting, as this study seeks to show, is that she was far from conventional in her response to her new environment, both as as a woman and as a representative of a colonialist power. The record she has left of her thoughts on the people, landscape and situations of the time has the capacity to surprise the post-colonial literary critic and historian. Her struggle to find a discursive mode in which to express her consciousness of the oppression, patriarchal and colonial, of the marginalised, whether woman, indigene, Afrikaner, or creole, reveals a significantly transgressive or subversive response to the issues of the day. In re-discovering Harriet Ward, we are forced to reassess our assumptions regarding the period of colonial history to which she was a witness.
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Munoz, Cabrera Patricia. "Journeying: narratives of female empowerment in Gayl Jones's and Toni Morrison's ficton." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/210259.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation discusses Gayl Jones’s and Toni Morrison’s characterisation of black women’s journeying towards empowered subjectivity and agency. Through comparative analysis of eight fictional works, I explore the writers’ idea of female freedom and emancipation, the structures of power affecting the transition from oppressed towards liberated subject positions, and the literary techniques through which the authors facilitate these seminal trajectories.
My research addresses a corpus comprised of three novels and one book-long poem by Gayl Jones, as well as four novels by Toni Morrison. These two writers emerge in the US literary scene during the 1970s, one of the decades of the second black women’s renaissance (1970s, 1980s). This period witnessed unprecedented developments in US black literature and feminist theorising. In the domain of African American letters, it witnessed the emergence of a host of black women writers such as Gayl Jones and Toni Morrison. This period also marks a turning point in the reconfiguration of African American literature, as several unknown or misplaced literary works by pioneering black women writers were discovered, shifting the chronology of African American literature.
Moreover, the second black women's renaissance marks a paradigmatic development in black feminist theorising on womanhood and subjectivity. Many black feminist scholars and activists challenged what they perceived to be the homogenising female subject conceptualised by US white middle-class feminism and the androcentricity of the subject proclaimed by the Black Aesthetic Movement. They claimed that, in focusing solely on gender and patriarchal oppression, white feminism had overlooked the salience of the race/class nexus, while focus by the Black Aesthetic Movement on racism had overlooked the salience of gender and heterosexual discrimination.
In this dissertation, I discuss the works of Gayl Jones and Toni Morrison in the context of seminal debates on the nature of the female subject and the racial and gender politics affecting the construction of empowered subjectivities in black women's fiction.
Through the metaphor of journeying towards female empowerment, I show how Gayl Jones and Toni Morrison engage in imaginative returns to the past in an attempt to relocate black women as literary subjects of primary importance. I also show how, in the works selected for discussion, a complex idea of modern female subjectivities emerges from the writers' re-examination of the oppressive material and psychological circumstances under which pioneering black women lived, the common practice of sexual exploitation with which they had to contend, and the struggle to assert the dignity of their womanhood beyond the parameters of the white-defined “ideological discourse of true womanhood” (Carby, 1987: 25).
Doctorat en philosophie et lettres, Orientation langue et littérature
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished
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Lockett, Cecily Joan. "Stranger in your midst : a study of South African women's poetry in English." Thesis, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/10413/8766.
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This thesis represents the first extended study of South African poetry in English from
a gender perspective. It is conceived in two parts: firstly, a deconstructive analysis of
the dominant tradition of South African English poetry in order to reveal its masculine
or androcentric base; and secondly, the reconstruction of an alternative gynocentric
tradition that gives primacy to women and the feminine in poetry.
The first section consists of an examination of the ways in which the feminine has
been. excluded from the poetic tradition in historical terms by means of social and
economic constraints on women. The study begins with a brief reference to the
beginnings of cultural gender discrimination in British poetry, from which South
African English poetry derives, and then moves to a more extended consideration of
the ways in which this discrimination has manifested itself in the South African context
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This is followed by an analysis of the
"poetics of exclusion", the ways in which the tradition genders itself as masculine by
defining its central speaking position or subjectivity as male and masculine, and so
excludes women and the feminine.
The second section commences with the reconstruction or recovery of a
gynocentric tradition of women's poetry in English in South Africa by means of a gynocritical "map" or survey, followed by a discussion of the nature of the feminine discourse or "poetics" required to provide the critical context for this poetry. The
preliminary "map" is given greater detail by in-depth discussion of the women poets considered to be major contributors to the gynocentric tradition: Mary Morison Webster, Elisabeth Eybers, Tania van Zyl, Adele Naude, Ruth Miller, Ingrid Jonker
and Eva Bezwoda. The study ends with an examination of the work of contemporary women poets in South Africa, especially the black women poets of the 1970s and '80s, and the poets - both black women and white women - who wrote from exile in the 1980s.Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1993.
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Kgalane, Gloria Vangile. "Black South African women's poetry (1970-1991) : a critical survey." Thesis, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10210/6649.
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M.A.This dissertation investigates the work of black women poets in South Africa during the period 1970 - 1991, within the context of race and gender politics. The period 1970 - 1991 represents the approximately two decades in which black poetry became recognised as an important development in South African literary studies. Although several studies of the work of black male poets have been written, hitherto no substantial study of the writings of black women poets, in particular, has been undertaken. Although relatively few black women poets published their work during this era, when compared to their male counterparts, this critical survey will attempt to give a broad overview of the poetry black women produced. Focusing on poetry written in English, this dissertation will argue that the majority of black women poets writing during this period harnessed their writing to the anti-Apartheid or liberation struggle in South Africa. Many of these poets regarded their writing as a 'cultural weapon' which could contribute to political transformation, and although few regarded themselves as 'feminist' poets, their poetry reveals a deep concern with gender oppression as well as racial and class oppression. Chapter one, the introduction, focuses on the way in which black South African women poets have been largely ignored, neglected and 'silenced' by the majority of critics. This chapter will also consider some of the factors that may have prevented more black women from producing and publishing poetry: social factors such as education, literacy and access to publication will be explored. The second chapter explores the emergence of South African 'protest poetry', and focuses on the poetry of Jennifer Davids and Gladys Thomas in relation to the 'protest' tradition. It will be argued that while poet Gladys Thomas defined her writing in terms of 'protest' literature, Jennifer Davids produced a more introspective, personal poetry that was primarily concerned with the difficulties of 'finding an individual voice' in the South African environment. The third chapter focuses on the more intensified phase of 'protest poetry' which was produced after 1976 by the growing culture of literary activism in the black townships, and will show how women poets write of the suffering specific to township women. This chapter will also focus on an analysis of gender oppression within the poets' own homes and communities, as well as celebrations of political activities by women. In particular, this chapter concentrates on women's poetry published in the literary magazine, Staffrider, established to promote the work of black writers. The Trade Union Movement was a major influence on literary production during this time, as we shall see from the 'worker poetry' produced by many women in the 1980s. Chapter four will concentrate on the poetry produced by black South African women in exile, most of whom were active in the ANC. It will be argued that rather than producing introspective poetry about the condition of exile, these women harnessed their writing to `the struggle'. This poetry can broadly be defined as 'resistance' or 'liberation' poetry. Some of these poets also explore the issue of gender in relation to liberation politics.
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Mdluli, Sisana R. (Sisana Rachel). "A reflective perspective of women leadership in Nguni oral poetic forms." Thesis, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/13174.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis utilizes the theory of feminism in all its implied branches in an attempt to critically review the subtle and sometimes deliberate subjugation of women in general and South Africa in particular. This occurs, in spite of the fact that there are laws in place that are meant to discourage women abuse. Juxtaposing this is the perspective conception of women, looking at themselves as subjects of virtue who deserve equal treatment to any other human being. It is through some oral forms that this reflection could be tested. Praise poetry, in the hands of a creative artist opens up a world of human emotions that could not be easily seen or felt, and yet it can simultaneously be used to manipulate situations. Language therefore could be seen as a powerful double-edged instrument. The patriarchal system, in this thesis, is exposed as that holy ideology turned unholy to achieve condescending agendas against women. The thin light of respect demonstrated by the traditionalist thinking is made to disappear into thin air, especially when contaminated by Western ideas.
It is the resoluteness and the fair obstinacy of some both traditional and modern women that determinedly stood up to conscientise the world in terms of respect for human life irrespective. In this research, an exploration of literary elements within four Nguni languages, that is Siswati, isiZulu, isiNdebele, and isiXhosa reveals the singularity of purpose, for these elements to be manipulated to achieve domineering intentions. Be that as it may, tibongo (praise poems/ praises) of outstanding women who have served in traditional leadership in these language groups give reason to challenge any idea that women should by virtue be relegated to the back seat. Through these tibongo it becomes apparent that because of the women leaders’ stubborn fairness and unparalleled foresight, they have become personifications of democratic values and as such, role models and symbolic hope not only for the empowerment of women, but also for their total liberation from all negative perceptions and oppressions.African Languages
D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)
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Scott, Claire. ""How do I understand myself in this text-tortured land?" : identity, belonging and textuality in Antjie Krog's A change of tongue, Down to my last skin and Body bereft." Thesis, 2006.
Find full textAbstract:
This thesis explores the question, “What literary strategies can be employed to allow as many people as possible to identify themselves positively with South Africa as a nation and a country?”. I focus in particular on the possibilities for identification open to white South African women, engaging with Antjie Krog's English texts, A Change of Tongue, Down to My Last Skin and Body Bereft.
I seek to identify the textual strategies, such as a fluid structure, shifts between genre and a multiplicity of points of view, which Krog employs to examine this topic, and to highlight the ways in which the literary text is able to facilitate a fuller engagement with issues of difference and belonging in society than other discursive forms. I also consider several theoretical concepts, namely supplementarity, displacement and diaspora, that I believe offer useful ways of understanding the transformation of individual subjectivity within a transitional society.
I then explore the ways in which women identify with, and thereby create their own space within, the nation. I investigate the ways in which Krog represents women in A Change of Tongue, and discuss how Krog uses „the body‟ as a theoretical site and a performative medium through which to explore the possibilities, and the limitations, for identification with the nation facing white South African women. I also propose that by writing „the body‟, Krog foregrounds her own act of writing thereby highlighting the construction and representation of her „self‟ through the text.
I proceed to consider Krog's use of poetry as a textual strategy that enables her to explore the nuances of these themes in ways which prose does not allow. I propose that lyric poetry, as a mode of expression which emphasises the allusive, the imaginative or the affective, has a capacity to render in language those experiences, emotions and sensations that are often considered intangible or elusive. Through a selection of poems from Down to My Last Skin and Body Bereft, I examine the way in which Krog constantly re-writes the themes of belonging and identity, as well as interrogate Krog's use of poetry as a strategy that permits both the writer and the reader access to new ways of understanding experiences, in particular the way apparently ephemeral experiences can be rooted in the body. I also briefly consider the significance of the act of translation in relation to the reading of Krog's poems.
I conclude by suggesting that in A Change of Tongue, Down to My Last Skin and Body Bereft Krog engages with the project of “[writing] the white female experience back into the body of South African literature” (Jacobson “No Woman” 18), and in so doing offers possible ways in which white South African women can claim a sense of belonging within society as well as ways in which they can challenge, resist, re-construct and create their identities both as women, and as South Africans.Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2006.
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"明末清初女性詞選: 《眾香詞》研究." 2004. http://library.cuhk.edu.hk/record=b5896147.
Full textAbstract:
馮慧心."2004年7月".
論文(哲學碩士)--香港中文大學, 2004.
參考文獻 (leaves 495-520).
附中英文摘要.
"2004 nian 7 yue".
Feng Huixin.
Lun wen (zhe xue shuo shi)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue, 2004.
Can kao wen xian (leaves 495-520).
Fu Zhong Ying wen zhai yao.
引言 --- p.1
Chapter 第一章 --- 結論 --- p.4
Chapter 第一節 --- 古代女性文學研究回顧 --- p.4
Chapter 一、 --- 女性文學史的發展 --- p.4
Chapter 二、 --- 西方漢學界的女性文學研究 --- p.8
Chapter 三、 --- 明清女性文學的研究 --- p.10
Chapter 四、 --- 女性詞作的研究 --- p.12
Chapter 第二節 --- 女性文學的資料發掘與整理 --- p.13
Chapter 第三節 --- 《眾香詞》硏究回顧 --- p.15
Chapter 第四節 --- 《眾香詞》研究的意義、理論及方法 --- p.20
Chapter 一、 --- 研究意義 --- p.20
Chapter 二、 --- 研究範關及方法 --- p.22
Chapter 三、 --- 女性主義的啟示及應用 --- p.24
Chapter 第二章 --- 《眾香詞》的編選背景:明末清初的時代背景與文學發展 --- p.34
Chapter 第一節 --- 明末以來女性解放思潮 --- p.34
Chapter 第二節 --- 出版業及郵政業的發達 --- p.38
Chapter 第三節 --- 明清女性文學的發展 --- p.42
Chapter 第四節 --- 明清女性選集的繁榮 --- p.46
Chapter 第五節 --- 明末以來的詞學發展及清詞中興 --- p.48
Chapter 第六節 --- 明清易代的離亂感慨 --- p.52
Chapter 第三章 --- 《眾香詞》述介 --- p.55
Chapter 第一節 --- 現今所見《眾香詞》版本 --- p.55
Chapter 一、 --- 清代海陽彤雲軒鈔本 --- p.55
Chapter 二、 --- 清康熙錦樹堂刊本 --- p.58
Chapter 三、 --- 癸酉(1933年)董氏誦芬室重校本 --- p.62
Chapter 四、 --- 1996年鄭競重校本 --- p.63
Chapter 第二節 --- 《眾香詞》流傳概況 --- p.65
Chapter 第三節 --- 《眾香詞》末善之處 --- p.68
Chapter 第四節 --- 《眾香詞》之編集動機 --- p.73
Chapter 一、 --- "為女性文學正名,使之經典化、正統化" --- p.73
Chapter 二、 --- 為女性詞壇寫史、以女性詞作寫史 --- p.75
Chapter 第四章 --- 《眾香詞》之編輯集團：清廷權貴與遺民幕客 --- p.80
Chapter 第一節 --- 編輯集團成員 --- p.80
Chapter 第二節 --- 徐樹敏、錢岳兩位編者的角色 --- p.83
Chapter 第三節 --- 編輯集團的地域 --- p.88
Chapter 第四節 --- 成書的分期與編輯集團 --- p.90
Chapter 第五節 --- 編輯集團成員的參與角色 --- p.93
Chapter 第六節 --- 清廷權貴與明室遺民：編輯集團的組合 --- p.98
Chapter 第五章 --- 《眾香詞》的編集體例 --- p.103
Chapter 第一節 --- 六卷之排列及特色´ؤ´ؤ以身份地位爲經 --- p.114
Chapter 第二節 --- 六卷內部之排列及特色´ؤ´ؤ以名望成就、生活年代爲緯 --- p.110
Chapter 第三節 --- 六卷之內容特色 --- p.115
Chapter 第四節 --- 六卷之相互連繫 --- p.120
Chapter 第六章 --- 《眾香詞》之採輯範圍及選詞特色 --- p.124
Chapter 第一節 --- 眾香詞人之時空跨度´ؤ´ؤ明末清初、江南爲主之女詞人 --- p.124
Chapter 第二節 --- 尊崇名門閨秀 --- p.128
Chapter 第三節 --- 稱賞青樓歌妓 --- p.130
Chapter 第四節 --- 務實可信：傳奇詞人、女鬼、女仙不載 --- p.134
Chapter 第五節 --- 「姑存其人以廣大意」：爲女詞人留名寫史 --- p.137
Chapter 第六節 --- 選錄遺民意識之作：明清易代的女性感受 --- p.140
Chapter 第七節 --- 爲秦淮名妓立傳：《數集》與晚明的「文化懷舊」 --- p.151
Chapter 第八節 --- 「不敢謾加評語」 ：不作圈點，意欲客觀 --- p.155
Chapter 第九節 --- 《草堂》之豔冶與貞孝節烈之作並行不悖 --- p.157
Chapter 第十節 --- 女性文人的傳統形象：迴文機巧、自憐身世、才女薄命 --- p.160
Chapter 第十一節 --- 《眾香詞´Ø凡例》與王士祿《燃脂集例》 --- p.165
Chapter 第七章 --- 眾香詞人及其詞作分析：私域女性(private women)´ؤ´ؤ閨秀 --- p.171
Chapter 第一節 --- 身份背景：名門望族、閨秀圈子、儒家教育 --- p.172
Chapter 第二節 --- 閨秀詞作分析 --- p.178
Chapter 一、 --- 詞調形式 --- p.178
Chapter 二、 --- 主題內容 --- p.182
Chapter 1. --- 歷史興亡、社會時局´ؤ´ؤ家國交織的女性處境 --- p.182
Chapter 2. --- 家族親情´ؤ´ؤ豐富的女性倫理角色 --- p.190
Chapter 3. --- 羈旅思ˇёإ´ؤ´ؤ歸寧之思 --- p.197
Chapter 4. --- 女性情誼´ؤ´ؤ男女關係以外的情感渴求 --- p.201
Chapter 5. --- 相思閨怨、寄夫憶夫´ؤ´ؤ文學伴侶式的婚姻 --- p.205
Chapter 6. --- 生活體驗´ؤ´ؤ居家性（domesticity)與日常性(dailiness) --- p.209
Chapter 7. --- 述懷自許´ؤ´ؤ自我建構（self-construction)、主體性(subjectivity) 的呈現 --- p.213
Chapter 8. --- 詠物´ؤ´ؤ細膩精緻的女性筆觸 --- p.217
Chapter 9. --- 應酬和韻´ؤ´ؤ突破女性的交遊圈子 --- p.222
Chapter 10. --- 題畫題像´ؤ´ؤ女性身份與照鏡自喻 --- p.226
Chapter 第三節 --- 閨秀詞作之藝術特色 --- p.230
Chapter 1. --- 纖巧細緻、典雅含蓄 --- p.230
Chapter 2. --- 以謝道韞爲楷模、取法李清照 --- p.232
Chapter 3. --- 女性關懷：嫦娥、七夕、女性歷史人物 --- p.236
Chapter 第八章 --- 眾香詞人及其詞作分析：「公眾女性」（Public women)´ؤ歌妓 --- p.241
Chapter 第一節 --- 身份背景：歌舞技藝、社交自由、國家興亡的符碼 --- p.241
Chapter 第二節 --- 歌妓詞作分析 --- p.246
Chapter 一、 --- 詞調形式 --- p.246
Chapter 二、 --- 主題內容 --- p.246
Chapter 1. --- 相思懷人´ؤ´ؤ青樓愛情的追逐 --- p.247
Chapter 2. --- 唱酬贈答´ؤ´ؤ歌妓的社交圈子 --- p.250
Chapter 3. --- 傷春悲秋、好景難永´ؤ´ؤ飄零身世的不安與憂慮 --- p.254
Chapter 4. --- 身世之感´ؤ´ؤ不堪零落、自傷失節 --- p.256
Chapter 5. --- 詠物狀物´ؤ´ؤ飄零無主之苦 --- p.258
Chapter 6. --- 生活瑣事及觸感´ؤ´ؤ「日常性」（dailiness)及「瑣屑性」 (fragmentary) --- p.260
Chapter 第三節 --- 歌妓詞作之藝術特色 --- p.262
Chapter 1. --- 率性自然、熱情放浪：擺脫道德束縛的感情書寫 --- p.262
Chapter 2. --- 預設對象、直呼對象：以「私密性」抗衡「公眾性」 --- p.264
Chapter 3. --- 語言淺白、口語化：真率直接的書寫筆法 --- p.266
Chapter 第四節 --- 閨秀與歌妓詞之比較分析 --- p.270
Chapter 1. --- 題材 --- p.270
Chapter 2. --- 語言風格 --- p.271
Chapter 3. --- 情感表達、筆法書寫 --- p.272
Chapter 第九章 --- 結論 --- p.273
Chapter 一、 --- 閨秀及青樓´ؤ´ؤ女性文學的兩大傳統 --- p.273
Chapter 二、 --- 明末清初的女詞人與詞壇關係 --- p.274
Chapter 三、 --- 女詞人在男性傳統下之妥協與對抗 --- p.274
Chapter 四、 --- 《眾香詞》之藝術價値與定位 --- p.275
附錄
附錄一 《眾香詞》三個版本所收詞人詞作比較 --- p.277
附錄二 《眾香詞》錦樹堂本與富之江本所收詞作之比較 --- p.292
附錄三 眾香詞人之字號、籍貫、作品集 --- p.304
附錄四 眾香詞人的家世背景 --- p.316
附錄五 眾香詞人之女性家族成員 --- p.331
附錄六 眾香詞人之生活年代 --- p.336
附錄七 眾香詞編輯集團成員資料 --- p.348
附錄八 從詞人小傳所見《眾香詞》引錄資料來源 --- p.365
附錄九 其他選本所見眾香詞人詞作數目 --- p.378
附錄十 選本中所見六集比例 --- p.390
附錄十一明末清初女性選集之編集體例及特點 --- p.392
附錄十二 《眾香詞》各集所用詞牌統計 --- p.401
附錄十三《眾香詞》所選迴文及遊戲之作 --- p.411
附錄十四清代詩話、詞話、文人筆記等所見眾香詞人評論 --- p.413
附錄十五眾香詞人文集之撰序者及與其他文人之關係 --- p.466
附錄十六眾香詞人之唱酬關係表 --- p.480
參考書目 --- p.491
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Mashige, Mashudu Churchill. "Politics and aesthetics in contemporary black South African poetry." Thesis, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10210/7166.
Full textAbstract:
M.A.In this dissertation an examination is made of the different strands of contemporary South African protest and resistance poetry. This is done by way of analysing selected poems to highlight the relationship which exists between politics and aesthetics and to illustrate that the two concepts are not mutually exclusive. A brief history of written African protest and resistance poetry is provided in an attempt to put this poetry within its historical context and to trace its influences and development. The poems are then examined with the express aim of identifying and understanding their themes and the socio-political contexts from which they emanate. These contexts are then shown to have important implications in so far as the aesthetics of protest and resistance poetry is concerned. The dissertation highlights the fact that for this poetry to be fully appreciated, there is a need to recognize the particular circumstances which surround it. This recognition is essential because these circumstances are instrumental in the shaping of the poetry and the formation of an aesthetics of protest and resistance. An examination of whether this type of poetry has any socio-political relevance and literary significance to contemporary South Africa is made.
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Ramokgano, Petunia Dikeledi. "Tshekaseko ya tse dingwe tsa direto tsa B. M. T. Makobe go lebeletswe teori ya sekai." Diss., 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/11602/434.
Full text
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Machaba, Rirhandzu Lillian. "The portrayal of women in Xitsonga literature with special reference to South African novels, poems and proverbs." Thesis, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/5542.
Full textAbstract:
The new dawn that brought about democracy in South Africa in 1994 and the social and political experiences have since changed the expectations of women’s roles in society. Literature is the important part of this experience because it mirrors and interprets the experience from the point of view of those who write about it. This study, therefore, attempts to examine the image of women in Xitsonga literature, to investigate whether there is a link in the expected cultural roles of Vatsonga women and their roles as characters in Xitsonga literature; and whether there is a shift in the way women characters are portrayed to represent the current social and political reality.
The study employs African feminist literary criticism as a tool in critically analysing the various literary genres. It also adopts purposive sampling of Xitsonga novels, poetry and proverbs that have women characters in them and analyse how these women characters have been portrayed. The naming of female characters is examined in relation to their roles in the texts and the titles of the texts are also investigated and critically analysed to establish whether they portray any gender stereotypes. The themes of the selected texts are also examined to establish if there is any gender biasness. Both male and female-authored texts have been investigated to explore whether male authors depict women differently from their female counterparts.
The study concludes that there is gender-biasness in the manner in which women characters are depicted that do not reflect the current political and social order, however, some women authors, unlike their male counterparts do not reflect gender-biasness in their depiction of female characters.African Languages
D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)
36
Christison, Grant. "African Jerusalem : the vision of Robert Grendon." Thesis, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10413/2172.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis discovers the spiritual and aesthetic vision of poet-journalist Robert Grendon (c. 1867–1949), a man of Irish-Herero parentage. It situates him in the wider Swedenborgian discourse regarding African ‘regeneration’. While preserving the overall diachronic continuity of a literary biography, it treats his principal thematic preoccupations synchronically. The objective has been to show the imaginative ways in which he employs his rich and diverse religio-philosophical background to account for South Africa’s social problems, to pass judgement upon the principal players, and to point out an alternative path to a brighter future. Chapter 1 looks at Emanuel Swedenborg’s mystical revelations on the heightened spiritual proclivity of the ‘celestial’ African, and the consequences of New Jerusalem’s descent over the heart of Africa, which Swedenborg believed to be taking place, undetected by Europeans, around 1770. It also examines how those pronouncements were received in Europe, America, and—most particularly—in Africa. Chapter 2 examines the circumstances surrounding Grendon’s birth and childhood in what is today Namibia. It takes note of a family tradition that Joseph Grendon married a daughter of Maharero, a prominent Herero chief, and it looks at Robert Grendon’s views on ‘miscegenation’. Chapter 3 deals with Grendon’s schooling at Zonnebloem College, Cape Town. Chapter 4 describes his cultural, sporting, and political activities in Kimberley and Uitenhage in the 1890s, bringing to light his editorship of Coloured South African in 1899. It also considers his conception of ‘progress’. Chapter 5 looks at some early poems, including the domestic verse-drama, ‘Melia and Pietro’ (1897–98). It also contextualizes a single, surviving editorial from Coloured South African. Chapter 6 treats Grendon’s tour de force, the epic poem, Paul Kruger’s Dream (1902), as well as his personal involvement in the South African War, and his spiritualized account of the ‘Struggle for Supremacy’ in South Africa. Chapter 7 relates to Grendon’s fruitful Natal period, 1900–05: his headmastership of the Edendale Training Institute and of Ohlange College, and his editorship of Ilanga’s English columns during the foreign absence of the editor-in-chief, John L. Dube, from February 1904 to May 1905. Chapter 8 analyzes some of the shorter and medium-length poems written in Natal, 1901–04. Chapter 9 is a close examination of the poem, ‘Pro Aliis Damnati’, showing its Swedenborgian basis, and how it dramatizes Swedenborg’s concept of ‘scortatory’ love. Chapter 10 describes Grendon’s early years in Swaziland from 1905. Chapter 11 deals with his period as editor of Abantu-Batho in Johannesburg, 1915–16. Chapter 12 describes his last years in Swaziland, and his relationship with the Swazi royal family.Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2007.
37
Schleppe, Beatriz Eugenia. "Empowering new identities in postcolonial literature by Francophone women writers." Thesis, 2003. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/fullcit?p3116178.
Full text
38
Adesanmi, Pius. "Constructions of subalternity in African women’s writing in French." Thesis, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/13303.
Full textAbstract:
The central assumption of this study is that the awareness of a historically
constructed, culturally sanctioned condition of subalternity is at the heart of the fictional
production of Francophone African women writers. Subalternity here is viewed as a
narrative and spatial continuum inside which African women have to negotiate issues
relating to subjecthood and identity, both marked by gender and colonialism. Various
definitions of 'the subaltern' are relevant, ranging from Antonio Gramsci's to those of the
South Asian Subaltern Studies group, and to John Beverley's and Fredric Jameson's
discussions. Jameson's emphasis on subalternity as "the feelings of mental inferiority nad
habits of subservience and obedience which... develop in situations of domination - most
dramatically in the experience of colonized peoples" (Jameson, 1981) is crucial, because
it demonstrates the constructedness of that ontological condition.
The approach adopted here aims to include gender as a category in a discourse
that often excludes it, and to bring social science-oriented concepts into dialogue with
literary theory and criticism. Combined with a discussion of Africa-influenced versions
of feminist theory (stiwanism, negofeminism, motherism), Subaltern studies provides a
space for the emergence of a south-south postcolonial debate that can throw new light on
writing by African women. Fictional works by Therese Kuoh-Moukoury, Mariama Ba,
Aminata Maiga Ka, Angele Rawiri, Philomene Bassek, Evelyne Mpoudi-Ngolle, Regina
Yaou, Fatou Keita, and Abibatou Traore are read as conveying the various stages of
consciousness on the part of the subaltern. Kuoh-Moukoury's Rencontres essentielles
(1969), Maiga Ka's La voie du salut (1985), and Bassek's La tache de sang (1990)
exemplify a first stage of consciousness in which the subaltern woman submits passively
to oppressive patriarchal, cultural and religious prescriptions. Ba's Une si longue lettre
(1979), Mpoudi Ngolle's Sous La cendre le feu (1990) and Rawiri's Fureurs et cris de
femmes (1989) present a more assertive, rebellious heroine whose efforts are undermined
by a resilient social context. Finally, Traore's Sidagamie (1998), Kei'ta's Rebelle (1998)
and Yaou's Le prix de la revoke (1997) address the possibility of a sustained African
women's struggle resulting not only in transient personal and isolated victories but also in
an enduring social transformation governed by the ethos of gender equality.
39
Mawela, Agnes. "The depiction of women characters in selected Venda novels." Diss., 1994. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/18182.
Full textAbstract:
This study is a comparison of female characters portrayed by different authors in selected
Venda novels.
Chapter One comprises the aim of the study, approach, life history of authors, comments on
their work, a short summary of the selected novels, cultural fulfilment of a Venda woman, and
the scope and composition of chapters.
Chapter Two deals with characterization. The definition and methods of characterization are
discussed in this chapter. The merits and demerits of various methods of character portrayal
are also examined in some detail.
Chapter Three discusses the different female characters portrayed in the selected novels.
Chapter Four comprises a comparison of female characters in the selected novels.
Chapter Five is the general conclusion to this studyAfrican Languages
M.A. (African languages)
40
Nobin, Brian Edward. "A study of the Afro-American oral tradition with special reference to the formal aspects of the poetry of spirituals." Thesis, 1991. http://hdl.handle.net/10413/6340.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation is a study of the Afro-American oral tradition with special reference to the formal aspects of the poetry of spirituals. In the introduction. an attempt has been made to take a look at the value of oral tradition; the interplay between oral and written tradition; the use made of orality in a society that was denied conventional literacy; the concept and the definition of the term, “spiritual". The organization of the rest of the essay is as follows: The sections are divided into four chapters. The first chapter concerns the origins of Afro-American spirituals and the
anthropological foundations of the Afro-American oral style (anthropology of gesture). In addition, an attempt has been made to place the Afro-American oral tradition vis-a-vis the African oral tradition. The second chapter deals with key characteristics in the expressive phase of the Afro-American slave community with special reference to the dynamics of
language usage. In the third chapter, there is consideration in some detail on the Afro-American oral composer and the transmission of the spirituals in an oral style milieu. The fourth chapter investigates stylized expression and is devoted to analyses of mnemotechnical devices within the spirituals.
In the concluding chapter, an attempt has been made to take an overall look at Afro-American sacred poetic achievement. I must point out that it is not my intention to embark on any technical analysis of the music form and configuration of the spirituals - that is beyond the scope of this essay. In
including "representative" samples of spirituals (and portions of spirituals), I do not intend them to be seen as "islands unto themselves" but rather, each spiritual must be seen as part of the whole corpus of Afro-American sacred oral composition. The question may arise: "Why a study of the Afro-American spirituals when there is so much to be studied on the oral traditions of Southern Africa? My response would be that the spirituals fascinate me for I see in them their widespread influence on the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements in South Africa. The Gospel song, so beloved of Pentecostal congregations, is an heir to the Spiritual. An enquiry on the sacred music and performance styles (improvisation, extemporization, dance, handclapping, shouts, etc.) of Pentecostalism will reveal that much of the Afro-American oral style still exists within the fellowship of Black and, venture to say, all Pentecostal churches in South Africa with obvious nuances that vary from denomination to denomination. But, the spirited and lively sacred music is encouraged and preserved.Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1991.
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Dalldorf, Tamaryn J. "The victimisation of genius : Mary Robinson's idealisation of the female author in sensibility literature during the decade of the 1790's." Diss., 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/22689.
Full textAbstract:
Mary Robinson’s perceived entrapment within masculine discourse has led to a somewhat distorted portrayal of this author as ‘victim’: critical focus on how she and eighteenth-century society may have constructed her authorial identity, reflecting her primarily as a historical and cultural product, has contributed indirectly to diminish due recognition of the level of autonomy she attained within her own writing. However, recent political interpretations of Robinson’s work have largely challenged these views, acknowledging her considerable influence within the public realm of the ‘masculine’ Romantic. In this dissertation, I aim to build upon, and argue beyond, those readings which have explored Robinson’s political uses of victimisation, as well as those which have studied her promotion of female authorship. I will argue that, by exploring Robinson’s own portrayal of the female philosopher and author, as well as her manipulation of victimisation within sensibility literature, we may be able to better interrogate modern feminist thinking around the concept of the eighteenth-century female philosopher, and thus begin to situate the value of Robinson’s work within a firmer literary compass. I will focus upon the following novels: Walsingham (2003 b), The False Friend (1799), and The Natural Daughter (2003 a). While I will root my arguments in the abovementioned approach, I will avoid contributing further discussion to Robinson’s use of radical politics and defence or fostering of female authorship. First because these are relatively well explored issues around her writing, and secondly because it is wise to be cautious when affirming Robinson’s radical politics, as ultimately this impulse ties into a modern yearning to portray her as a radical feminist. Robinson certainly adopted a radical political stance in some of her novels; yet, I will argue, we cannot value her writing primarily in terms of its political bent, however tempting this approach may be.English Studies
M.A. (English Studies)
42
Pillay, Ivan Pragasan. ""Could it be madness - this?" : bipolar disorder and the art of containment in the poetry of Emily Dickinson." Thesis, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10413/827.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation engages in a critical analysis of the poetry of Emily Dickinson which, to me, suggests that the poet suffered from a type of manic-depression known specifically in psychiatric parlance as bipolar disorder. I argue that although Dickinson experienced much pain and suffering she learnt, through time, to address, understand and contain adversity - that ultimately, she transformed these experiences into the raw materials for poetic creation. Dickinson's poetic achievements are often obscured by a misunderstanding of her mental and emotional constitution. This thesis provides an alternative to the views of those commentators who maintain that Emily Dickinson was insane, neurotic or delusional. I intend, ultimately, to offer the reader a fresh insight into Emily Dickinson's poetry by reading it from the assumption that she suffered from bipolar disorder.Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2007.
43
Baloyi, E. M. "Nxopaxopo wa nkucetelo wa ndhavuko eka vutlhokovetseri bya Magaisa, J.M. na Marhanele, M.M. ehenhla ka vavasati." Thesis, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10386/3311.
Full textAbstract:
Thesis (M.A. (African Languages)) -- University of Limpopo, 2013This research focuses on the analysis of poems on the portrayal of women by the two Xitsonga poets: Magaisa, J.M., Mihloti and Xikolokolo Nguvu, ya Pitori and Marhanele, M.M. Vumunhu bya Phatiwa and Swifaniso swa Vutomi. The main focus will be on the influence of Xitsonga culture on their portrayal of women, basing the argument on what the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa of 1996 says. In Chapter 1, there is a problem statement, aims of the study, rationale for the study, the significance of the study, the methodology, referring to the collection of data, where there is a primary and secondary research methods, scope and delimitation of the study and the literature review. The focus on Chapter 2 is on the explanation of what culture is, that each culture has the good and the bad in it, no culture is static. Chapter 3 focuses on the techniques employed by the poets in their portrayal of women. The focus in Chapter 4 is on the functions of poetry, basing on different eras, that is, the apartheid and democratic South Africa. The analysis of the selected poems will be dealt with in Chapter 5, divided into the married and the unmarried women. Chapter 6 focuses on places where women are discriminated against. Chapter 7 is a conclusion of the dissertation, and also look at what can be done to alleviate this discrimination.
44
Govinden, Devarakshanam Betty. ""Sister outsiders" : the representation of identity and difference in selected writings by South African Indian women." Thesis, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/10413/9537.
Full text
45
Moolman, Jacobus Philippus. ""Inside the cavity of shame" : a critical presentation of the New Prison Poetry Project (1998), and the spaces of expression and alterity constructed in the writing of the participants." Thesis, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10413/4729.
Full textAbstract:
Chapter One will introduce the central area of exploration of this study and establish the main terms of reference and guidelines of the research.
Chapter Two will deal with the background and history of the project, and will include a discussion on creative writing as therapy in the context of a prison. Chapter Three will present a critical overview of the project's aims and results, as well as an account of the pedagogical methods employed. It will also analyse the work of three members of the writing group: Vusi Mthembu, Themba Vilakazi and Sibusiso Majola. Chapter Four will outline the socio-political context of my primary research material: a collection
of poems written in prison by Bheki Mkhize, Sipho Mkhize and Bhek'themba Mbhele. It will also include a brief biographical account of the three writers, as well as an historical examination of the Seven Days War in Pietermaritzburg in the early nineties. Chapter Five will focus on the three writers' accounts of incarceration, the threat of violence in prison and their resistance through writing to the loss of identity. Chapter Six will deal with the issue of alterity, and the way that the writers represent issues of
identity in their poetry, and create spaces of difference and distinction. It will also focus on intertextuality, and analyse the manner in which the writers negotiate the Western tradition of aesthetics in order to stake claim to their own spaces of difference in the prison. Chapter Seven will conclude the study, and will examine contemporary cultural studies theory
with specific reference to South Africa. It will also include an overview of the proposition of the research, and elaborate the way forward for a popular culture embracing such findings.Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2004.
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Iglesias, Lucinda Amalia. "Recherches formelles dans la nouvelle écriture de deux femmes africaines." Thesis, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/5871.
Full textAbstract:
Ce travail a pour but d' analyser la facon dont deux
romancieres africaines, Veronique Tadjo et Calixthe Beyala,
reussissent a rendre leurs romans plus proches de leurs
experiences personnelles en tant que femmes. En exploitant des
formes innovatrices, elles arrivent a depeindre les complexites
de la condition de la femme. Pour mieux comprendre ces nouveaux
procedes d' ecriture, nous montrerons l' importance de la forme
ainsi que le rapport entre la forme et le contenu dans les romans
A Vol d'oiseau (1986) et Le Petit Prince de Belleville (1992).
Nous commencerons en situant le moment litteraire ou elles
ecrivent dans le courant de la litterature africaine. Dans le
premier chapitre, nous examinerons la forme des deux romans en
nous basant, en partie, sur quelques concepts tires de Esthetique
et theorie du roman de Mikhail Bakhtine. Le deuxieme chapitre
portera sur le rapport entre la forme et son contenu.
Nous pourrons conclure qu' a travers deux formes differentes
l' une de l' autre, Veronique Tadjo et Calixthe Beyala proposent
une solution originale pour l' emancipation des femmes africaines
dans une ecriture variee et dynamique.
47
Marsden, Dorothy Frances. "Changing images : representations of the Southern African black women in works by Bessie Head, Ellen Kuzwayo, Mandla Langa and Mongane Serote." 1994. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/18134.
Full textAbstract:
This study examines representations of Southern African black women
in the works' of two male and two female writers. A comparative
approach is used to review the ways in which the writers
characterise women who labour under intense restrictions in
domestic situations, the workplace, and in political contexts.
Some representations suggest that women have come to terms with
social strictures and have learned to live fulfilled lives despite
them. Other representations are contextualised in creative situations
in which social roles are re-imagined. In the process,
women are removed from conventional object-related gendered
positions. These representations suggest that women have the
capability to achieve personal transcendence rather than accept the
immanence imposed by stereotyped gender relationships and repressive
political structures. The suggestion is made that writers can
change the image of women by centralising them as active subjects,
challenging their exclusion and creating spaces for women to
represent themselvesEnglish Studies
M.A. (English)
48
Bradfield, Shelley-Jean. "An analysis of the theme of oppression in six narratives by South African women writers, 1925-1989." Thesis, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10210/7505.
Full textAbstract:
M.A.This study attempts to trace the interrelationship between literature and its historical contexts in six stories by South African women writers. Six South African writers have been selected because their work foregrounds the theme of oppression and because they are representative of the different groupings of the South African population. In her story "The Sisters", Pauline Smith explores the silencing effects of gender oppression in a patriarchy. In "The Apostasy of Carlina", Bertha Goudvis writes of women-on-women oppression between the white and black races. Jayapraga Reddy explores the complexities of intercultural relationships in "Friends". In "Let Them Eat Pineapples", Lizeka Mda explores the oppressive effects of industrial-development on the tribal system in Transkei. In "Last Look at Paradise Road", Gladys Thomas, like Goudvis before her, focuses on the racial discrimination practised by whites against blacks. Gcina Mhlope reveals women-on-women oppression practised both by white-on-black and black-on-black. A chronological ordering of these short stories reveals certain changes in the extent to which attitudes to oppression are revealed and criticized. This study suggests that while there has not been a significant decrease in the degree of oppression to which South African women have been subjected, the increasing awareness and exposure of gender oppression suggests the promise of self-actualization in the struggle for democracy in South Africa.
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Pasi, Juliet Sylvia. "Theorising the environment in fiction: exploring ecocriticism and ecofeminism in selected black female writers’ works." Thesis, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/23789.
Full textAbstract:
Text in EnglishThis thesis investigates the relationship between humans and the nonhuman world or natural environment in selected literary works by black female writers in colonial and post-colonial Namibia and Zimbabwe. Some Anglo-American scholars have argued that many African writers have resisted the paradigms that inform much of global ecocriticism and have responded to it weakly. They contend that African literary feminist studies have not attracted much mainstream attention yet mainly to raise some issues concerning ecologically oriented literary criticism and writing. Given this unjust criticism, the study posits that there has been a growing interest in ecocriticism and ecofeminism in literary works by African writers, male and female, and they have represented the social, political (colonial and anti-colonial) and economic discourse in their works. The works critiqued are Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions (1988) and The Book of Not (2006), Neshani Andreas’ The Purple Violet of Oshaantu (2001) and No Violet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names (2013). The thrust of this thesis is to draw interconnections between man’s domination of nature and the subjugation and dominance of black women as depicted in different creative works. The texts in this study reveal that the existing Anglo-American framework used by some scholars to define ecocriticism and ecofeminism should open up and develop debates and positions that would allow different ways of reading African literature. The study underscored the possibility of black female creative works to transform the definition of nature writing to allow an expansion and all encompassing interpretation of nature writing. Contrary to the claims by Western scholars that African literature draws its vision of nature writing from the one produced by colonial discourse, this thesis argues that African writers and scholars have always engaged nature and the environment in multiple discourses. This study breaks new ground by showing that the feminist aspects of ecrocriticism are essential to cover the hermeneutic gap created by their exclusion. On closer scrutiny, the study reveals that African women writers have also addressed and highlighted issues that show the link between African women’s roles and their environment.
English Studies
D. Litt. et Phil. (English)
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Sibisi, Zwelithini Leo. "Conscientisation : a motive behind the selected poems of Sepamla, Serote, Gwala and Mtshali." Thesis, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10413/9544.
Full textAbstract:
The thesis looks at how the poets Sepamla, Serote, Gwala and Mtshali (SSGM)
make concerted efforts to demonstrate how different forms of social activities have
sought to whitewash black people in believing myths about themselves. These myths
were perpetuated by the government of apartheid policies and its related
bureaucratic organs like the education system. The fallacies were also
communicated through biased literature and denigrating terminologies. The study
analyses how the selected poems of SSGM set out to conscientize black people to
realise how they had unconsciously accepted certain behaviours. This had led them
to compare themselves to the “privileged cultures” and to strive to be identified with
those who were in power and those who were despised and were therefore
powerless.
The main aim of this study is to demonstrate how the poetry of Sepamla, Serote,
Gwala and Mtshali exposed the extent to which black people had been
psychologically subjected to internalising negative views of who they were. From the
title of the thesis we note a claim that conscientization was the motive behind the
poetry of Sepamla, Serote, Gwala, and Mtshali. This claim was discerned from the
poetry that was analysed. It was also deemed fit to verify this through structured
interviews and questionnaires that were arranged and conducted with the poets.
However the interviews did not include the late Sepamla who had been called to
higher service by the time the research was conducted. The researcher’s
interactions with the poets confirmed the claim that conscientization was indeed the
motive behind their poetry.
Aspects of peoples’ lives which had been targeted as tools for disempowering black
people were experienced in the form of racism, apartheid policies, Bantustan
institutions, and laws, demeaning terminologies, cultural superiority, and prejudiced
beliefs, arts, music, literature, theatre and sport.
An analysis of the poetry under review led to the conclusion that the poetry of SSGM
was not protest poetry as some scholars had claimed. The aim of the poetry was not
to instigate any militancy against oppressors but to make black people aware of their
identity and to affirm them in their resistance against cultural hegemony.
The study makes use of Marxist theories and specifically cites those aspects which
relate to the tools used to analyse the poetry of SSGM. Georg Lukacs’s viewpoint
that literature reflects the social reality of its time is applied to some of the selected
poetry. Eagleton and Althusser talk about the formalization of literature which makes
ideology to become visible to the reader. Gramsci says the task of producing and
disseminating ideology is performed by organic intellectuals. Writers are regarded as
organic intellectuals. In spite of the limiting circumstances the four black writers
whose poetry is being considered, managed to conscientize people around issues
that needed to be opposed or rejected.
This study is significant in so far as it exposed how poetry of black selected writers
conscientized people and indirectly contributed to the liberation of the oppressed in
South Africa. It is suggested that further studies are undertaken to re-assess the role
of literature written by the black writers during the apartheid regime. A special
attention must be given to those literary works that were banned and reasons for
such action by those who were hell bent on subjugating black people. One of the
challenges encountered during the research was that some of the books were out of
print. However, a thorough and persistent search did result in the final access to
those books which were not easily available.Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2013.