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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'African poetry'
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Ogunyemi, Christopher Babatunde. "Various voices in African poetry : analysis of poems of black Africa." Thesis, Högskolan Dalarna, Litteraturvetenskap, 2007. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:du-2767.
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Adu-Gyamfi, Yaw. "Orality in writing, its cultural and political function in Anglophone African, African-Caribbean, and African-Canadian poetry." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape9/PQDD_0027/NQ37868.pdf.
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Devereux, Stephen. "Post–exilic an old South African returns to the new South Africa." University of Western Cape, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/11394/7934.
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Magister Artium - MAThis portfolio of poems, prose poems and short fiction pieces is quasi-autobiographical and tracks the trajectory of my life, from childhood in Cape Town (‘pre-exilic’) to emigration abroad (‘exilic’) and return to Cape Town in late middle age (‘post-exilic’). Themes explored include the deceptive nature of memory and the risk of imbuing a childhood recollected in later life with affective or narrative nostalgia; the psychologically dislocating nature of exile on personal identity and notions of home; and Cape Town as both an imaginary construct and a multi-layered reality: specifically, ‘my’ Cape Town – now as well as half a century ago – and ‘other’ Cape Towns, reflecting a diversity of highly unequal experiences within this city. The dominant mode of expression chosen to explore these largely personal themes is confessional.
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MacDonald, T. Spreelin. "Steve Biko and Black Consciousness in Post-Apartheid South African Poetry." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1273169552.
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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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Karassellos, Michael Anthony. "Critical approaches to Soweto poetry : dilemmas in an emergent literature." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1989. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/18830.
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A review of contemporary South African and European critical approaches 'to "Soweto poetry" is undertaken to evaluate their efficacy in addressing the diverse and complex dynamics evident in the poetry. A wide selection of poetry from the 1970's and early 1980's is used to argue that none of the critical models provide an adequate methodology free from both pseudo-cultural or ideological assumptions, and "reader-grid"(imposition of external categories upon the poems).From this point of entry, three groups of critics with similar approaches are assessed in relation to Soweto poetry. The second chapter illustrates the deficiency in critical method- ology of the first group of critics, who rely on a politicizing approach. Their critique presupposes a coherent shift in the nature of Black Consciousness poetry in the 1970's, which is shown to be vague and problematic, especially when they attempt to categorize Soweto poetry into "consistently thematic" divisions. In the third chapter, it is argued that ideological approaches to Soweto poetry are impressionistic assessments that depend heavily on the subordination of aesthetic determinants to materialistic concerns. The critics in this second group draw a dubious distinction between bourgeois and "worker poetry" and ignore the inter- play between the two styles. Pluralized mergings within other epistemological spectrums are also ignored, showing an obsessive materialist bias. The fourth chapter examines the linguistic approach of the third group of critics. It is argued that they evaluate the poetry in terms of a defined critical terminology which assumes an established set of evaluative criteria exist. This is seen to be empiricist and deficient in wider social concerns. In the final chapter, it is submitted that each of the critical approaches examined foregrounds its own methodology, often ignoring the cohabitation of different systems of thought. In conclusion it is argued that a critical approach can only aspire to the formulation of a "black aesthetic" if it traces the mosaic of cultural borrowings, detours and connections that permeate Soweto poetry. Michel Serres, with his post-deconstructionist "approach", is presented as the closest aspirant. Bibliography: pages 117-123.
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Tait, Charles Norman. "Die verjaardagvers-ritueel in Breyten Breytenbach se oeuvre." Thesis, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10948/5076.
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This study investigates the subgenre of the birthday poem within Breyten Breytenbach’s poetical oeuvre. Throughout the now half a century of his poetic production the writer has repeatedly written poems for himself on his birthday on 16 September of each new year (as well as a smaller number to his wife and close friends) The writing of birthday poems becomes a ritualist poetical act throughout the poet’s life and poetical oeuvre, one that has served many purposes over the years of Breytenbach’s increasingly nomadic existence. This study’s scope spans fifty years of poetical output, starting with the poet’s debut anthology, Die ysterkoei moet sweet (1964), including all the anthologies up to the publication of vyf-en-veertig skemeraandsange uit die eenbeendanser se werkruimte (2014). A small literary history is offered at the outset of the tradition of the birthday poem, based in classical Roman times (Argetsinger,K 1992) and following through to modern times. After describing the reasons for the sometimes challenging task of identifying birthday poems (unmarked by dates, having to rely on inference deduced from the content, and the like), the poems are analyzed with a particular focus on their nature and function within the larger context of the poet’s oeuvre. The research is organized according to the separate phases traceable in Breyten Breytenbach’s oeuvre (Van Vuuren 2011: 46–56), describing the steadily shifting themes and motifs of the subgenre throughout each of the four phases (pre-prison, prison, post-prison and late work phases). It was found that the birthday poems cohere as a subgenre within the oeuvre. Breytenbach’s birthday poems have a distinctive character and certain identifiable qualities (ritualistic characteristics such as reflection on the self within the present, reflection on time past, evaluating the situation and self on the particular birthday. Placed against the specific context in which the poet finds himself, with a poetical and autobiographical way forward implied in the given milieu and context, psychological insights are utilized where applicable, especially in the prison birthday poems and the late work birthday poems. A remarkable new insight gained through this study is the nature of he “reminiscence bump” (Janssen, Haque 2014) which older people experience, and is identified also in Breytenbach’s late work birthday poems. This adds to and refines the understanding of the nature of late work in Breytenbach’s poetical oeuvre. A final insight gained from the research is that description and comprehension of this smaller corpus of birthday poems (roughly thirty identified at present) may also be used as an entry into understanding of the nature of the poet’s large oeuvre (comprising twenty collections of poetry, containing around 1,600 poems between 1964 and 2014), as they represent each stage of development in Breyten Breytenbach’s oeuvre.
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Balanescu, Mihai S. "Metamorphoses and ritualism in Harlem Renaissance poetry." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.368177.
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Nolutshungu, Simphiwe. "Sunrays in a chilly winter." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1017777.
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In both my English and IsiXhosa poetry, my themes are love, politics, and the social issues of rural communities, and include my own life experiences, both good and bad. My poems are mainly short narrative accounts of township life. Although they do have a broad educational purpose, they do not preach to the reader. In IsiXhosa, my poetic forms are influenced by the works of J J R Jolobe, W N Mbovane, P T Mtuze, and my English poems by Pablo Neruda, Mafika Pascal Gwala, Garcia Lorca and others.Intliziyo yona izimele gxebe ifihlakele Iyimfihlo, kumagumbi omphefumlo. Iyafunxa, ifukame kulo magumbi amxinwa. Iingcango, mba! Zivaliwe! Maxa wambi zide zixel’ isisila senkukhu, sona sibonwa mhla ligquthayo. Vul’ amehlo ubaz’ iindlebe uchul’ ukunyathela. Yiza ndikubambe ngesandla, sivul’ iingcango! Masivul’ iingcango zentliziyo yam, sikrobe ngaphakathi! Masithi ntla‐ntla kumagumb’ amathathu kuphela! Masithi ntla‐ntla, kwelepolitiki yakwaXhosa, Kaloku nam ndingumXhosa! Masithi ntla‐ntla kwelifukame, i.z.i.x.i.n.g.a.x.i n.o.b.u.n.c.w.a.n.e. b.o.t.h.a.n.d.o, kaloku nam ndinemithamb’ ebalek’ igaz’ eliqhumayo! Ucango lokugqibela lukungenisa kwigumbi elinezidl’ umzi, Kaloku nam ndizalwa kulo mzi wakwaXhoooooosa!
This thesis is presented in two parts: English and isiXhosa.
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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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Kaschula, Russell H. "The transitional role of the Xhosa oral poet in contemporary South African society." Thesis, Rhodes University, 1991. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002085.
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This thesis outlines the changing role of the Xhosa imbongi in contemporary South African society. The changing socio-economic and political scenario in South Africa, and the way in which the imbongi is adapting in order to accommodate new pressures created by these changes, form an integral part of this thesis. The effects of education and increasing literacy on the tradition are outlined. The interaction between oral and written forms is explored in chapter 2. The role of the imbongi within the religious sphere is included in chapter 3. Xhosa preachers within the independent churches often make use of the styles and techniques associated with oral poetry. Iimbongi who are not necessarily preachers also operate within this context. The relationship between the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the African National Congress and iimbongi has also been researched and forms part of chapters 4, 5, and the epilogue. The modern imbongi is drawn towards powerful organisations offering alternative leadership to many of the traditional chiefs. In the epilogue collected poetry is analysed in the context of Mandela's visit to Transkei in April 1990. Interviews have been conducted with chiefs, iimbongi attached to chiefs as well as those attached to different organisations. Poetry has been collected and analysed. In chapter 5, three case studies of modern iimbongi are included. The problems facing these iimbongi in their different contexts, as well as the power bases from which they draw, are outlined. Finally, an alternative definition of the imbongi is offered in the conclusion
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Ahmad, Anjail Rashida. "Only violet can rupture like this /." free to MU campus, to others for purchase, 2003. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/mo/fullcit?p3099606.
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Mota, Maria Nilda de Carvalho. "Lirismo de libertação: uma leitura de poemas africanos e afrobrasileiros." Universidade de São Paulo, 2011. http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/8/8156/tde-15042011-110616/.
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A dissertação apresenta uma leitura comparativa de poemas da moçambicana Noémia de Souza, do angolano Agostinho Neto, do brasileiro Landê Onawale e do grupo de rap maranhense Clã Nordestino. Partindo do pressuposto de que os poemas estudados relacionam-se a contextos de guerra, o trabalho propõe o conceito de lirismo de libertação, pautado na articulação das dimensões ética e estética dos textos.The dissertation presents a comparative reading of poems of Mozambican Noémia de Souza, the Angolan Agostinho Neto, the Brazilian Landê Onawale and rap group Clã Nordestino of Maranhão. Assuming that the poems studies relato to the context of war, the paper proposes the concept of emancipation lyricism, based on the articulation of the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of texts.
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Pinnock, William. ""To learn how to speak": a study of Jeremy Cronin's poetry." Thesis, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10948/d1021038.
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In the chapters that follow, the porous boundary between the public and the private in Jeremy Cronin’s poetry is investigated in his three collections, Inside (1983), Even the Dead: Poems, Parables and a Jeremiad (1996) and More Than a Casual Contact (2006). I argue two particular Marxist theorists are central to reading Cronin’s poetry: Bertolt Brecht, and his notion of the Verfremdungseffekt, and Walter Benjamin and his work on historical materialism, primarily the essay On the Concept of History / Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940). Both theorists focus on the work of art in a historically contextualized manner, which extends the challenge to the boundary between the public and the private. Their work is underpinned by the desire to draw out hidden narratives occluded under the grand narratives of history and capitalist ideas of progress. I argue that these are the major preoccupations in Cronin’s oeuvre as well. As such Cronin’s poetry may be seen to write against a perspective that proposes a linear conceptualisation of history. The poetry therefore challenges the notion that art speaks of ‘universal truths.’ Such ideas of History and Truth, if viewed uncritically, allow for a tendency to conceive of the past as unchanging, which subconsciously promotes the idea that social and political realities are merely logical evolutionary steps. I argue that Cronin’s poetry is thus purposefully interruptive in the way that it confronts the damaging consequences of the linear conceptualisation of history and the universal truth it promotes. His work attempts to find new ways of connection and expression through learning from South Africa’s violent past. The significance of understanding each other and the historical environment as opposed to imposing perspectives that underwrite the symbolic order requires the transformation rather than the simple transferral of power, and is a central focus throughout Cronin’s oeuvre. This position suggests that while the struggle for political freedom may be over, the necessity to rethink how South Africans relate to each other is only beginning. Chapter One will focus on positioning Cronin, the poet and public figure, in South African literature and literary criticism. In this regard, two general trends have operated as critical paradigms in the study of South African poetry, namely Formalism (or ‘prac crit’) and a Marxist inflected materialism, which have in many ways perpetuated the division between the private and the public. This has resulted in poetry being read with an exclusive focus on either one of these two aspects, overlooking the possibilities of dialogue that may take place between them. Cronin’s perspective on these polarised responses will be discussed, which will illustrate the similarity of his position to Ndebele’s notion of the ‘ordinary’ which suggests a way beyond these binaries. This will lead to a discussion of how South African poets responded to the transition phase, suggesting that the elements of the polarisation still remained. Considering the major influences and paradigms when reading Cronin’s oeuvre provides a foundation for the following three chapters. These include Cronin’s use of Romanticism, Bertolt Brecht and the V-Effekt and Walter Benjamin’s perspectives on historical materialism. In addition to these three theoretical paradigms, the relevance of Pablo Neruda’s poetry to Cronin’s work is also foregrounded. In Chapter Two, the focus will be on Cronin’s first collection of poetry, Inside, concentrating on Cronin’s use of language as a way of constructing poetry in the sparseness of the prison experience. This will show an abiding preoccupation of learning to speak in a language that considers the material context out of which it emerges. In this regard, the poems “Poem-Shrike” “Prologue” and “Cave-site” are analysed. In addition, one of the central poems in Cronin’s oeuvre, “To learn how to speak […],” will be examined in order to illustrate how the poet extends this project on a meta-poetic level, asking for South African poets to ‘learn how to speak’ in the voices of South African experience and histories. I will show how this is linked to Cronin’s “Walking on Air” which illustrates how the V-Effeckt recovers the small private histories through re-telling the life story of James Matthews, a fellow prisoner incarcerated for his anti-apartheid activism, revealing how this story is intimately connected to the public sphere. In Chapter Three, Cronin’s second collection: Even the Dead: Poems, Parables and a Jeremiad will be examined. In the poem “Three Reasons for a Mixed, Umrabulo, Round-the-Corner Poetry” Cronin resists inherited Western poetic conventions by incorporating and subverting versions of the Romantic aesthetic, arguing for poetry to be immersed in South African multi-lingual and multi-cultural experiences. “Even the Dead” reveals how Cronin uses Walter Benjamin’s perspectives on historical materialism to confront amnesia. In terms of the themes established in “To learn how to speak […]”, the poem “Moorage” demonstrates how the public and private can never be separated in Cronin’s work. The final section of this chapter will examine how Cronin responds to Pablo Neruda’s poems “I am explaining a few things” and “The Education of a Chieftain,” and how these poems challenge narratives that privilege the ‘great leader’ instead of the so-called smaller individuals’ stories. Chapter Four examines selections from Cronin’s third collection, focusing on Cronin’s use of the automobile, charting an ambiguous trajectory through the ‘new’ South Africa. The examination of the poems “Where to begin?”, “Switchback” and “End of the century - which is why wipers,” all attempt to include individuals left on the margins of the narrative of global freeways and neo-liberal capitalist progress. The poems present an interrogation of how ‘vision’ is constructed. This will show that the poetry responds to the experiences of the marginalised under these grand narratives in a primarily fragmentary and interruptive manner. This in effect constitutes the culmination of Cronin’s poetic journey and the search for new ways of envisaging South Africa’s future and finding a new language with which to speak it.
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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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Ringani, G. N. "Nxopaxopo wa vutlhokovetseri byo phofula bya J.M Magaisa." Thesis, University of Limpopo, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10386/1413.
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Thesis (M.A. (African Languages)) --University of Limpopo, 2014The main aim of this study is to evaluate protest poetry in Mihloti (1981) and Xikolokolo nguvu ya Pitori (1987) by J.M. Magaisa with special references to theme, subject matter and the use of figures of speech.. Chapter 1 indicates the aim of the study, motivation, statement of the problem, research methodology, literature review and the key concepts which are used in this research. Chapter 2 explains the themes of the protest poetry in Magaisa’s poetry. In some explanation of the themes, some of the figures of speech have been used with the aim of making readers to understand his poetry. Chapter 3 indicates the modes of expression in Magaisa’ protest poetry. Some of the figures of speech and difficult terms have been explained in this chapter make people to understand them. Chapter 4 is the general conclusion which indicates the findings of the research and recommendations for further researches.
The University of Limpopo and C.S.D.
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Birch, Alannah. "A study of Roy Campbell as a South African modernist poet." Thesis, University of the Western Cape, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/11394/4823.
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>Doctor Literarum - DLitRoy Campbell was once a key figure in the South African literary canon. In recent years, his poetry has faded from view and only intermittent studies of his work have appeared. However, as the canon of South African literature is redefined, I argue it is fruitful to consider Campbell and his work in a different light. This thesis aims to re-read both the legend of the literary personality of Roy Campbell, and his prose and poetry written during the period of “high” modernism in England (the 1920s and 1930s), more closely in relation to modernist concerns about language, meaning, selfhood and community. It argues that his notorious, purportedly colonial, “hypermasculine” personae, and his poetic and personal explorations of “selfhood”, offer him a point of reference in a rapidly changing literary and social environment. Campbell lived between South Africa and England, and later Provence and Spain, and this displacement resonated with the modernist theme of “exile” as a necessary condition for the artist. I will suggest that, like the Oxford dandies whom he befriended, Campbell’s masculinist self-styling was a reaction against a particular set of patriarchal traditions, both English and colonial South African, to which he was the putative heir. His poetry reflects his interest in the theme of the “outsider” as belonging to a certain masculinist literary “tradition”. But he also transforms this theme in accordance with a “modernist” sensibility.
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Mostert, Andre. "Developing a systematic model for the capturing and use of African oral poetry: the Bongani Sitole experience." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002154.
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Oral traditions and oral literature have long contributed to human communication. The advent of arguably the most important technology, the written word, altered human ability to create and develop. However, this development for all its potential and scope created one of the most insidious dichotomies. As the written word developed so too the oral word became devalued and pushed to the fringes of societal development. One of the unfortunate outcomes has been a focus on the nomenclatures associated with orality and oral tradition, which although of importance, has skewed where the focus could and should have been located, namely, how to support and maintain the oral word and its innate value to human society in the face of what has become rampant technological developments. It is now ironic that technology is creating a fecund environment for a rebirth of orality. The study aims to mobilize technauriture as a paradigm in order to further embed orality and oral traditions to coherently embrace this changing technological environment. The central tenet of the study is that in order to enhance the status of orality the innate value embodied in indigenous knowledge systems must be recognized. Using the work of Bongani Sitole, an oral poet, as a backdrop the study will demonstrate a basic model that can act as a foundation for the effective integration of orality into contemporary structures. This is based on work that I published in the Journal of African Contemporary Studies (2009). Given the obvious multi-disciplinary nature of the material the work covers a wide cross section of the debate, from questions of epistemology and knowledge in general in terms of oral traditions, through the consciousness and technical landscapes, via the experience with Sitole’s material to issues of copyright and ownership. This work has also been submitted for publication together with my supervisor as a co-author. The study intends to consolidate the technauriture debate and lay a solid foundation to support further study.
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Hacksley, Reginald Gregory. "The poetry of N.H. Brettell : a critical edition." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008072.
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This thesis presents for the first time a critical reading edition of all known poems by N. H. Brettell. It makes no claim to being definitive, nor does it attempt to establish a final text. It represents merely the best thinking of the editor. Brettell printed and circulated his poetry primarily in hand-made illustrated volumes in a process reminiscent of the scribal publication of the seventeenth century. Only 137 of his 206 extant poems were commercially published during his lifetime. In this study all known printed versions of Brettell's poetry whether in privately printed or commercially published form were examined. All variant readings were recorded and are shown. Wherever possible the relationships between texts are also noted. The poems in this edition are ordered in each case according to the version in the latest datable privately produced collection. The commentary and critical introduction were compiled with the general reader in mind. No previous familiarity with southern African fauna and flora is assumed: animals, birds and insects are described and their scientific names supplied. Expressions current in ordinary British or South African English and present in non-specialist dictionaries are not glossed, but archaic and dialectal forms felt to require explication are briefly explained. So too are less familiar South African dialectal expressions which have been assimilated into the South African English lexicon. Intertextual, Christian and mythological references, both African and Western, are annotated in an attempt to make such references accessible to readers who may not share Brettell's cultural background. The intention is to close the changing distance between the text and the audience. An essay discussing the merits, potential and limitations of electronic scholarly editing is included as part of the textual introduction. A CD-Rom containing Brettell's watercolour illustrations in his privately produced collections and audio-clips of him reading his poetry accompanies this thesis.
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Adams, Nordette N. "An Old Woman Bumped Her on Canal." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2016. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2210.
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This work is a collection of poems revolving around black or African-American identity and the intersection of feminist consciousness with racial struggle. An examination of the unknown or forgotten black woman runs through this work as well as connection to a mother figure. The poems also reflect the influence of place, particularly New Orleans, its history, its culture, and its present evolution post-Hurricane Katrina. The collection's preface includes development of a unique poetics that considers identity theories and models of the subject in light of poetic voice. The poems use caesura heavily, rhyme, and sonic echo. Poets who have influenced the author include Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, Ai, and Lucille Clifton.
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De, Saxe Marian. "Sing Me a Song of History: South African Poets and Singers in Exile, 1900–1990." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7760.
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In this thesis I argue that poetry, for the South African poets and singers in exile in the period 1900–1990, was a highly symbolic agent which crossed the divide between verbal discourse and poetic form. Poetry embodied altruistic gestures and trusted encounters which became social agencies of change, reconciliation and hope due to historical exigencies, political imperatives and individual courage and sacrifices. By naming the condition of exile within literary representations of movement, travel and the diaspora, I am asking whether poetic representations of the South African exile validates a positioning of exiles‘ literary archives as a late modernist, ontological concern. I propose that this poetry, exilic poetry, intersects at all times with an altruistic intent that reinvigorates our ideas of humanism or humanisms. I consider the development and relevance of literary theories in South Africa and ruminate on the prose of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Paul Gilroy and Jacques Derrida in relation to the role of poetry in politics. By placing geo- and indeed bio-politics in our frame, we can comprehend the meaning of apartheid in terms of multiple philosophical positions which privilege the major disruptions, the main ― "isms" of our time: colonialism, humanism and the body politics that have arisen as a result of immense conflict. Apartheid was one such disruption, the after-effects of which are still new as South African histories are being torn apart and rewritten. Through all this, the poets talking to the people rewrote and wrote histories which we are still reading and writing. My thesis has considered whether there were specificities about South African exile which are revealed by looking at the relationship of poetry to exile. I have argued that these poems fall between the real and the imagined as trusted encounters, not as stories. Ultimately exiled writers and singers found the ecstasy of life in their poems or songs and in the fact of being alive, and in this sense they retained a sense of intense individuality despite their collective purpose. There is still much work to be done on the cultural mobility and transculturation that infuses these works with such a rich sense of altruistic, historical purpose.
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Robinson, Brendon Kimbale. "No other world: the poetry of Don Maclennan." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002264.
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This is a study of the poetry of Don Maclennan in four chapters. Chapter One explores the poetry's deep involvement with the immediate world, and with the being that encounters it. Chapter Two examines the corpus's mistrust of abstract thought, and its suggestions for alternative ways of intepreting (or at least approaching an interpretation of) our existential situation. Chapter Three deals with Maclennan's writing on the subject of death, while the final chapter looks at the response of the poetry to the fact of death: put simply, this is to learn to love the situation we are in, and to record our thoughts for future generations, thus reaching beyond death to share with others the necessarily unique experience of our one and only life.
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Fogarty, William. "Local Languages: The Forms of Speech in Contemporary Poetry." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/19662.
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Robert Frost’s legendary description of “the sound of sense” to define his poetics has for decades sounded like little more than common sense. His idea is now taken to be fairly straightforward: the inflections of an utterance resulting from the tension between demotic speech and poetic form indicate its purport. However, our accepted notion of Frost’s formulation as simply the marriage of form and meaning misconstrues what is potentially revolutionary in it: if everyday speech and verse form generate tension, then Frost has described a method for mediating between reality, represented by speech, and art, represented by verse form. The merger is not passive: the sound of sense occurs when Frost “drag[s] and break[s] the intonation across the metre.” And yet Frost places speech and verse form in a working relationship. It is the argument of this dissertation that poets reckon with what is often understood as discord between poetry and reality by putting into correspondence forms of speech and the forms of poetry. The poets I examine–Seamus Heaney, Gwendolyn Brooks, Tony Harrison, and Lucille Clifton–are concerned with their positions in local communities that range from the family unit to ethnic, religious, racial, economic, and sexual groups, and they marshal forms of speech in poetic form to speak from those locales and to counter the drag and break of those located social and political realities. They utilize what I call their “local languages”–the speech of their particular communities that situates them geographically in local contexts and politically in social constructs–in various ways: they employ them as raw material; they thematize them; they invent idiosyncratic “local” languages to undermine expectations about the communities that speak those languages; they devise generalized languages out of standard and nonstandard constructions to speak not just to and from specific locations but to speak more broadly about human experience. How, these poets ask, can poetry respond to atrocities, deprivations, divisions, and disturbances without becoming programmatic or propagandistic and without reinforcing false preconceptions about the kinds of language suitable for poetry? They answer that question with the living speech of their immediate worlds.
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Beyers, Marike. "How to open the door." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011502.
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A collection of mostly lyrical poems. The poems explore moments of experience and thought relating to longing and belonging, in terms of relations, memory and place. The poems are mostly short and intense. Silence and implied meanings are often as important as what is said; shadows are evoked to recall substance. Though short, the poems are not tightly closed – on the contrary, meanings proliferate in the process of exploration
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Vivier, Lincky Elmé. "One leg at a time." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1012945.
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This collection of poems explores the boundaries between certainty and uncertainty, between the desire for meaning and the destabilisation of meaning. The content encompasses everyday life, love and loss, and the ambiguities are reflected in the forms used, so that, for instance, the linear continuity of narrative and the musicality of the lyric may be juxtaposed with the fragmented and imagistic leaps of the associative poem.
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Bila, Freddy Vonani. "Grieving forests." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020880.
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This is a collection of village narrative poems mainly set in rural Limpopo that searches into the complexity of the past and how historical events impact on the present. Although the poems are imagined along the Marxist dialectic, they’re fresh imaginative creations featuring a strong element of surprise, spiritual mysticism, experimenting with form, delving into unknown poetic avenues, creating new music, exploring new sounds and taking risks. The long and intense poem, Ancestral wealth, which is a tribute to the poet’s father, reflects on death and its impact through the effective application of various stylistic elements and poetic devices, thus immortalising the life of a rural South African. Overall the poems, including retrospective and experimental ones, condemn the free market economic system and all that it seems to necessitate: the degradation of ecology, indifference to human suffering and the alienation of vulnerable social groups.
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Bamjee, Saaleha. "My grandmother breaks her hip." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020881.
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A collection of narrative and confessional poems. The poems are mostly short, cinematic, physical, imagistic: moments in time. They explore the poet’s own life, body, memories, and family relationships, and the tensions between power, duty, love and faith. Several poems concern the navigation of meaning and belonging in a time when international urban culture often clashes with tradition.
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Salifu, Abdulai. "Names that prick : royal praise names in Dagbon, northern Ghana /." [Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2008. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3344619.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, 2008.Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Oct. 6, 2009). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-02, Section: A, page: 0649. Advisers: John H. McDowell; Hasan M. El-Shamy.
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Maahlamela, David wa. "The hoof-printed rock." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013076.
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Many of these poems, although written in English, are inspired by Sepedi idioms and proverbs. Some invoke township and village life, others the observations and questions that come from writing poetry and experiences of travelling to different countries to read my poems. Others dwell on the political transformation in South Africa, or its absence, and on my own spiritual transformation.
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Kaze, Douglas Eric. "The environmental imagination in Arthur Nortje’s poetry." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/58024.
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This thesis seeks to contribute to the conversations in the humanities about the treatment of the physical environment in the context of a global ecological fragility and increased scholarly interest in the poetry of Arthur Nortje, a South African poet who wrote in the 1960s. While previous studies on Nortje concentrate on the political, psychic and technical aspects of his poetry, this study particularly explores the representations of the environment in Nortj e’s poetic imagination. Writing in the dark period of apartheid in South Africa’s history, Nortje’s poetry articulates a strong interest in the physical environment against the backdrop of official racialization of space and his personal nomadic life and exile. The poetry abounds with constant intersections of nature and culture (industrialism, urbanity and the quotidian), a sense of place and a deep sense of dislocation. The poems, therefore, present a platform from which to reevaluate conventional ecocritical ideas about nature, place-attachment and environmental consciousness. Drawing mainly on Felix Guattari’s ideas of three ecologies and transversality along with other theories, I conduct the study through what I call a transversal postcolonial environmental criticism, which considers the ecological value of the kind of assemblages that Nortje’s works represent. The first chapter focuses on conceptualizing a postcolonial approach to the environment based on Guattari’s concept of transversality to lay the theoretical foundation for the whole work. The second chapter analyses Nortje’s poetic imagination of place and displacement through his treatment of the private-public tension and the motif of exile. While the third chapter examines Nortje’s depiction of nature as both an everyday and urban phenomenon, the fourth chapter turns to his direct treatment of environmental crises handled through his imagination of the Canadian urban spaces, exile memory of apartheid geography, war and ecocide and the human body as a subject of environmental degradation. The fifth chapter, which is the conclusion, takes a brief look at the implication of Nortje’s complex treatment of the environment on postcolonial environmentalism.
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Kareem, Lana. "The Glow of a Panther : Tupac Amaru Shakur’s Poetry and the Politics of African-American Culture." Thesis, Södertörns högskola, Institutionen för kultur och lärande, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-34343.
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African-American oppression has a history of violence and torment. It is a topic that is still prominent in today’s society with pop culture being one of the mediums aiding in spreading its awareness. Even though pop culture faces criticism about the portrayal of women, artists still use their platform to highlight issues that concern the African-American community. Tupac Amaru Shakur was a well-known artist that used his platform to depict African- American discrimination in society. Through his poetry he raised the issues of black oppression, white supremacy, police brutality while maintaining a stereotypical view of women. It is why this essay will use a critical race theory with a gender perspective to examine three poems by Shakur, “Liberty Needs Glasses”, “Can U See the Pride in The Panther”, and “How Can We Be Free”. The essay analyses the way these poems carry political currency in the service of African-American culture.
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Gambahaya, Zifikile. "An analysis of the social vision of post-independence Zimbabwean writers with special reference to Shona and Ndebele poetry." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/9678.
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Includes bibliographical references.This dissertation analyses creative trends in Shona and Ndebele poetry published after the attainment of political independence in 1980. The research tries to establish the close link between poems in the two national languages and post-independence Zimbabwean history in order to examine the link between creative writing and nationalism, which is the context in which creativity takes place, an attempt is made to outline major trends in nationalist history vis-a-vis colonialism. Having set the background for analysis, the research focuses on texts that are published in the context of the apparent cultural renaissance that is ushered by the apparent victory of African nationalism over colonialism. The texts are analysed in the context of the dialectic of nationalism and colonialism.
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Harris, Jason. "notes on survival, despite." Cleveland State University / OhioLINK, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=csu1538055935588345.
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Stevens, Mariss Patricia. ""Symbiosis or death" an ecocritical examination of Douglas Livingstone's poetry." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002254.
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As the quotation in the title of this thesis indicates, Douglas Livingstone states that unless humankind can learn to live in mutuality with the rest of the natural world, the human race faces extinction. Using the relatively new critical approach of ecological literary criticism (ecocriticism) this thesis explores Livingstone's preoccupation with "symbiosis or death" and shows that the predominant theme in his ecologically-orientated poetry is one of ecological despair. Countering this is a tentative thread of hope. Possible resolution lies in the human capacity to attain compassion and wisdom through the judicious use of science, creativity, the power of art and the power of love. Livingstone's ecological preoccupation is thus informed by the universal themes which have pervaded literature since its recorded beginnings. The first chapter examines the concepts of ecology and literary ecocriticism, followed by a chapter on the life and work of Douglas Livingstone, and a review of the critical response to the five collections of poetry which predate A Littoral Zone, his final work. The remaining four chapters offer an analysis of his ecologically-orientated poetry, with the majority of the space given to an examination of A Littoral Zone. The following ecological themes are used in the analysis of the poems: evolutionary theory, humankind's relationship to nature, ecological equilibrium, and ecological destruction. The latter two themes are shown to represent Livingstone's view of the ideal and the real, or the opposites of hope and despair. The analysis interweaves an argument with the existing critical response to this collection. This thesis demonstrates that Livingstone's crucial message – the need for humankind to attain ecological sensibility or “the knowledge of right living” (Ellen Swallow) and so obviate its certain extinction – has largely been ignored in previous critical works.
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Neigh, Janet Marina. "Rhythmic Literacy: Poetry, Reading and Public Voices in Black Atlantic Poetics." Diss., Temple University Libraries, 2010. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/83661.
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EnglishPh.D.
"Rhythmic Literacy: Poetry, Reading and Public Voices in Black Atlantic Poetics" analyzes the poetry of the African American Langston Hughes and the Jamaican Louise Bennett during the 1940s. Through an examination of the unique similarities of their poetic projects, namely their engagement of performance to build their audiences, their experiments with poetic personae to represent vernacular social voices, their doubleness as national and transnational figures, their circulation of poetry in radio and print journalism and their use of poetry as pedagogy to promote reading, this dissertation establishes a new perspective on the role of poetry in decolonizing language practices. While Hughes and Bennett are often celebrated for their representation of oral language and folk culture, this project reframes these critical discussions by drawing attention to how they engage performance to foster an embodied form of reading that draws on Creole knowledge systems, which I term rhythmic literacy. Growing up in the U.S and Jamaica in the early twentieth century, Hughes and Bennett were both subjected to a similar Anglophone transatlantic schoolroom poetry tradition, which they contend with as one of their only available poetic models. I argue that memorization and recitation practices play a formative role in the development of their poetic projects. As an enactment and metaphor for the dynamics of colonial control, this form of mimicry demonstrates to them the power of embodied performance to reclaim language from dominant forces. This dissertation reveals how black Atlantic poetics refashions the institutional uses of poetry in early twentieth-century U.S and British colonial education for the purposes of decolonization.
Temple University--Theses
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Sullivan, Louella. "Bitten." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1017778.
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My poetry investigates the extraordinary in the everyday, exploring my life as a mother and wife, to find the quiet truths that lie there. Using fresh ways of describing familiar experiences, the poems describe tiny, almost-missed moments and voices that have shaped me. Throughout the collection, I imagine my younger selves commenting on my current self and vice versa. Ultimately, my poems use simple words and clean lines to evoke how I feel (and how I want the reader to feel) in each of the moments they describe.
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Jansen, Jan. "De draaiende put een studie naar de relatie tussen het Sunjata-epos en de samenleving in de Haut-Niger (Mali) /." Leiden : Onderzoekschool CNWS, 1995. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/34727305.html.
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Upton, Corbett Earl 1970. "Canon and corpus: The making of American poetry." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/11286.
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viii, 233 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.This dissertation argues that certain iconic poems have shaped the canon of American poetry. Not merely "canonical" in the usual sense, iconic poems enjoy a special cultural sanction and influence; they have become discourses themselves, generating our notions about American poetry. By "iconic" I mean extraordinarily famous works like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride," Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself," and Claude McKay's "If We Must Die," that do not merely reside in the national memory but that have determined each poet's reception and thus have shaped the history of American poetry. Through case studies, I examine longstanding assumptions about these poets and the literary histories and myths surrounding their legendary texts. In carefully historicized readings of these and other iconic poems, I elucidate the pressure a single poem can exert on a poet's reputation and on American poetry broadly. I study the iconic poem in the context of the poet's corpus to demonstrate its role within the poet's oeuvre and the role assigned to it by canon makers. By tracing a poem's reception, I aim to identify the national, periodic, political, and formal boundaries these poems enforce and the distortions they create. Because iconic poems often direct and justify our inclusions and exclusions, they are of particular use in clarifying persistent obstacles to the canon reformation work of the last thirty years. While anthologies have become more inclusive in their selections and self-conscious about their ideological motives, many of the practices regarding individual poets and poems have remained unchanged over the last fifty years. Even as we include more poets in the canon, we often ironically do so by isolating a particular portion of the career, impulse in the work, or even a single poem, narrowing rather than expanding the horizon of our national literature. Through close readings situated in historical and cultural contexts, I illustrate the varying effects of iconic poems on the poet, other poems, and literary history.
Committee in charge: Dr. Karen J. Ford, Chair; Dr. John T. Gage, Member; Dr. Ernesto J. Martinez, Member; Dr. Leah W. Middlebrook, Outside Member
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Maye, Sylvia Renee. "Fade to Black." University of Dayton / OhioLINK, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=dayton1354302272.
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Zotwana, Sydney Zanemvula. "Literature between two worlds : the first fifty years of the Xhosa novel and poetry." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/18253.
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The main preoccupation in this thesis is to illustrate that, although there is no doubt that the missionaries deserve all the praise that they have been showered with, for their role in the development of Xhosa literature, there is a sense in which they can be said to have contributed as much also to its underdevelopment. It is my view that Xhosa literature has had a very unfortunate history, because of having an origin that is located in the history of Christianization. This history has haunted Xhosa literary creativity from its early beginnings to the present. The success of the mission to convert them to Christianity was anchored on the principle of total alienation of the Xhosa from their world-view: from their culture, from their religion, from their chiefs, from their literary art, and even from their homes. The intention was to turn them into new beings - Christian and loyal subjects of the British Crown - and to make them not only reject, but also despise their past. Therefore Western-style education for the Blacks in South Africa did not come out of any sense of altruism on the part of those by whom it was introduced. It was the interests of its initiators and their country that had to be served by the education of the Blacks. It was in this context that Xhosa literature was born. It was produced to promote the interests of the Christian church and therefore those of the British Crown. Its production was controlled by the missionaries, the owners of the publishing houses, but it was produced by the Christian and literate Xhosa most of whom had studied in mission schools. It was produced to crush the past and any aspirations that were in conflict with those of the Christian church and the British imperial designs. In short, it was a literature against its people. However, the Christian and literate Xhosa was never accepted as the equal of the other British subjects who were White. He was excluded from all law-making mechanisms and was affected by the many Native Laws that were passed, as badly as his non-Christian brothers and sisters. He witnessed land dispossession and all the other atrocities perpetrated by White rulers. His literary art had been harnessed to legitimize and perpetrate this situation and he dared not use his art to change it. It is in the light of this context that this thesis contends that Xhosa literature is between two worlds. It is argued that Xhosa literature, because of the writers' dilemma created by their position between these two conflicting universes, has been forced to be mute in the face of the Black people's experiences of oppression, and therefore to be indifferent to the Black people's struggles to resist colonization and to liberate themselves from this oppression. It is however, pointed out that some works are characterised by the writers' attempts to grapple with this dilemma. Finally this thesis advocates complete liberation of literary artists from state control, indirect though it may be, and also a change in the teaching and analysis of Xhosa literature.
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Dowling, Tessa. "The forms, functions and techniques of Xhosa humour." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/17456.
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Bibliography: pages 259-274.In this thesis I examine the way in which Xhosa speakers create humour, what forms (e.g. satire, irony, punning, parody) they favour in both oral and textual literature, and the genres in which these forms are delivered and executed. The functions of Xhosa humour, both during and after apartheid, are examined, as is its role in challenging, contesting and reaffirming traditional notions of society and culture. The particular techniques Xhosa comedians and comic writers use in order to elicit humour are explored with specific reference to the way in which the phonological complexity of this language is exploited for humorous effect. Oral literature sources include collections of praise poems, folktales and proverbs, while anecdotal humour is drawn from recent interviews conducted with domestic workers. My analysis of humour in literary texts initially focuses on the classic works of G.B. Sinxo and S.M. Burns-Ncamashe, and then goes on to refer to contemporary works such as those of P.T. Mtuze. The study on the techniques of Xhosa humour uses as its theoretical base Walter Nash's The language of humour (1985), while that on the functions of Xhosa humour owes much to the work of sociologists such as Michael Mulkay and Chris Powell and George E.C. Paton. The study reveals the fact that Xhosa oral humour is personal and playful - at times obscene - but can also be critical. In texts it explores the comedy of characters as well as the irony of socio-political realities. In both oral and textual discourses the phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics of Xhosa are exploited to create a humour which is richly patterned and finely crafted. In South Africa humour often served to liberate people from the oppressive atmosphere of apartheid. At the same time humour has always had a stabilizing role in Xhosa cultural life, providing a means of controlling deviants and misfits.
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Cuadrado-Femandez, Antonio. "Making 'Sense' : Reading Textual Space in the Contemporary; Anglophone Poetry of 3 South African, Palestinian and Indigenous Australian Writers." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.520421.
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Jones, Ashley M. "Magic City Gospel." FIU Digital Commons, 2015. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1931.
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Magic City Gospel is a collection of poems that explores themes of race and identity with a special focus on racism in the American South. Many of the poems deal directly with the author’s upbringing in Birmingham, Alabama, the Magic City, and the ways in which the history of that geographical place informs the present. Magic City Gospel confronts race and identity through pop culture, history, and the author’s personal experiences as a black, Alabama-born woman. Magic City Gospel is, in part, influenced by the biting, but softly rendered truth and historical commentary of Lucille Clifton, the laid-back and inventive poetry of Terrance Hayes, the biting and unapologetically feminist poetry of Audre Lorde, and the syncopated, exact, musical poetry of Kevin Young. These and other authors like Tim Siebles, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Major Jackson influence poems as they approach the complicated racial and national identity of the author.
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Kranz, Tova E. "Body, Land, and Memory| Counter-Narratives in the Poetry of Minnie Bruce Pratt, Brenda Marie Osbey, and Natasha Trethewey." Thesis, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 2018. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10618383.
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In the South, as William Faulkner famously observed in his 1951 novel Requiem for a Nun, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” The power of historical narrative is not lost on the region’s contemporary writers either, including poets Minnie Bruce Pratt, Brenda Marie Osbey, and Natasha Trethewey. This thesis examines these poets’ works within the context of Southern studies, as well as the ways in which each poet grounds counter-narratives in Southern soil, and communal memories in the region’s marginalized bodies. Establishing these bodies—those of black, mixed-race, and lesbian women in particular—as sources of intensely regionalized knowledge and memory legitimizes the kind of subjective histories from which these poets appear to draw while also establishing a tradition of multiplicity in narrative. Tracing memory’s evolution and preservation in marginalized bodies also casts them as sources of collective memory capable of augmenting or dismantling the white patriarchal master narrative of Southern history.
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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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Brady, Robert J. "O where, o where is the ending? : an examination of black protest poets and poetry, with particular reference to the Black African Diaspora and Aboriginal Australia /." Title page and Contents only, 1998. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09AR/09arb8125.pdf.
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Hagemann, Michael Eric. "Shadows, faces and echoes of an African war: The Rhodesian bush war through the eyes of Chas Lotter – soldier poet." University of the Western Cape, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/11394/5474.
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Philosophiae Doctor - PhDPoetry that is rooted in that most extreme of human experiences, war, continues to grip the public imagination. When the poetry under scrutiny comes from the "losing side" in a colonial war of liberation, important moral and ethical questions arise. In this thesis, I examine the published and unpublished works of Chas Lotter, a soldier who fought in the Rhodesian Army during the Zimbabwean liberation war (1965- 1980). In investigating Lotter's artistic record of this war, I propose that a powerful, socially embedded Rhodesian national mythology was a catalyst for acceptance of, and participation in, the Rhodesian regime's ideological and military aims. A variety of postcolonial theoretical approaches will be used to explore the range of thematic concerns that emerge and to unpack the dilemmas experienced by a soldier-poet who took part in that conflict. Trauma theory, too, will be drawn upon to critically respond to the personal impact that participation in organized violence has upon combatants and non-combatants alike. The production and marketing of this cultural record will also be examined and in the conclusion, I speculate on the changes modern technology and evolving social mores may have on future developments in war literature. Finally, I conclude my case for installing the challenging work of this often conflicted and contradictory soldier-poet as a necessary adjunct to the established canon of Zimbabwean Chimurenga writing.
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Hairston, Dorian. "PRETEND THE BALL IS NAMED JIM CROW." UKnowledge, 2018. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/english_etds/78.
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The poems that form this collection titled, Pretend the Ball is Named Jim Crow, are written in the persona of Negro League Baseball’s Josh Gibson (1911-1947) and those closest to him. Gibson is credited with hitting over 800 home runs in his career and was the first Negro League Baseball Player to be inducted into Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame without ever playing an inning of Major League Baseball.
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Miller-Haughton, Rachel. "Re-Calling the Past: Poetry as Preservation of Black Female Histories." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2017. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/1005.
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This paper discusses the poetry of Audre Lorde and Natasha Trethewey, and the ways in which they bring to attention the often-silenced histories of African American females. Through close readings of Lorde’s poems “Call” and “Coal,” and Trethewey’s “Three Photographs,” these histories are brought to the present with the framework of the words “call” and “re-call.” The paper explores the ways in which Lorde creates a new mythology for understanding her identity as “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” in her innovative, intersectional feminist poetry. This is used as the framework for understanding modern poets like Trethewey, whose identity as a biracial black woman from the American South colors her lyric, more formal work. Lorde uses the vocal, oral tradition of calling as Trethewey relies on visual, gaze-focused recall. Recall is memory and re-call means bringing the hidden past into the future. The paper concludes by saying that all black female writers may participate in their own ways of calling out the truth and remembering what should be forgotten.
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Trudeau, Brianne Nicole. "Towards understanding: the study of Hughes' poetry as the epitome of the expressive, cultural, and political elements of African American literature /." Lynchburg, Va. : Liberty University, 2009. http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu.
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