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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Authors, English - 20th century - Biography'
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1
Li, Boting, and 李博婷. "Leonard Woolf: towards a literarybiography." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2010. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B45697735.
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Killinger, Margaret O'Neal. "Helen Knothe Nearing: A Biography." Fogler Library, University of Maine, 2004. http://www.library.umaine.edu/theses/pdf/KillingerMON2004.pdf.
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Modzelewski, Ann Shirley. "Internal dialogues: Construction of the self in The Woman Warrior." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2003. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/2468.
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This thesis considers past autobiographical theory and questions whether it addresses the autobiography of the female writer. Autobiographies of Harriet Jacobs, Margaret Sanger, and Maxine Hong Kingston are examined to reveal their polyvocality, use of the autobiographical "I", and rhetorical strategies maintained in order to create a close relationship with the reader. Particular attention is paid to Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of dialogism and Sidonie Smith's autobiographical "I."
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Zhang, Yanping, and 张燕萍. ""Of human bondage": Somerset Maugham in China." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2011. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B45846728.
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Kirton, Teneille. "Racial exploitation and double oppression in selected Bessie Head and Doris Lessing texts." Thesis, University of Fort Hare, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10353/232.
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During the era of discrimination and disparity in Southern Africa, racial inequality silenced many black writers. It was the white authors that dominated the literary environment presenting their biased views on social and political concerns; the black authors standpoints were seen as unimportant and they were deemed inferior to the white authors. Consequently, it was particularly difficult for black writers to voice their experiences of living in a society riddled with oppression, prejudice and unequal opportunities. The purpose of this study is to critically compare selected texts by African authors Doris Lessing and Bessie Head, which depict the political and social struggles within Southern African society during the era of unequal opportunities. Lessing and Head’s works present incidents of life experiences in Southern Africa from two contrasting viewpoints. The selected texts explored are: The Grass is Singing and “The Old Chief Mshlanga” by Doris Lessing, a white author, in contrast and comparison to the texts: A Question of Power and “The Collector of Treasures” by Bessie Head, a coloured author. The research for this thesis is conducted from an ethnic literary perspective with careful consideration to critical race theory and cultural studies. From this perspective, the focus of the study is on the struggles that affected both the victim and perpetrator during the apartheid era as well as on the idea that those in power determined what was deemed acceptable and unacceptable, behaviourally and ideologically. Specifically, the plight experienced by the female characters living in a patriarchal society, and the segregation and racial inequality faced by the characters of colour is explored by analysing these characters’ influences, pressures and societal manipulations and constraints in the texts. Thus, this study will provide a more in-depth understanding of Southern African society during the apartheid era and the strategic use of literature to spotlight the subjugation and disparity.
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Hans, Birgit. "Surrounded: The fiction of D'Arcy McNickle." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/184452.
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This study of D'Arcy McNickle (1904-1977) focuses primarily on his literary work: his two novels, The Surrounded (1936) and Wind from an Enemy Sky (1978), the manuscript versions of the two novels, and his short fiction. McNickle regarded fiction as a vehicle to explore his own identity as an American Indian. Of mixed French-Cree-American ancestry McNickle grew up on the Flathead Reservation in western Montana. Cut off from the Reservation and its traditions by a rather unhappy childhood, he struggled throughout his life to reestablish the severed bonds to his roots. In addition to this personal involvement in his fiction, McNickle also considered fiction a proper medium for writing tribal history, one that could include such diverse materials as oral tradition, literature, history, anthropology, etc. The first three chapters of the dissertation provide some background information on the Flathead tribal history, as well as the problems and prejudices McNickle encountered while growing up as a "breed," which led to a rejection of his American Indian heritage. This section ends with a consideration of his pivotal years in New York City when he started to rethink his earlier experiences and took the first step on his journey back to his tribal roots. The middle section, chapter four, gives a brief summary of McNickle's activities during the years he was involved with federal Indian policy. Even though McNickle did not work on any new fiction during those years, he continued his journey in a more detached way through non-fiction and biography. The last two chapters of the dissertation, the final stage of his journey, analyzes McNickle's disassociation from the abstract policies of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and how he turned to fiction once more in order to complete the painful but successful journey back to his tribal roots.
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Hoenle, Sandra Vivian Berta. "Walter Benjamin : the production of an intellectual figure." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape3/PQDD_0021/NQ48647.pdf.
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Mbatsha, Thembisa. "A critical analysis of the screen adaptation of Saule’s Unyana womntu." Thesis, University of Fort Hare, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10353/d1018674.
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This research will concentrate on various aspects of the screen adaptation of “Unyana womntu” (Saule, 1989). This study comprises of six chapters. In Chapter 1 of this study, the research aims and objectives are formulated. The research methods that are to be followed will involve a thorough reading of the written text, as well as a comprehensive repetitive viewing of all the episodes of the screen version. In the final part of Chapter 1, background information is provided on the personal life of the author as well as on his contributions to the African literary tradition. Background information on the production of the screen version is also provided. In the Chapter 2, the theoretical aspects of the phenomenon of literary adaptation are discussed. This discussion provides a framework for the analysis of the adaptation of “Unyana womntu” (Saule, 1989) in the remaining chapters of this study. The aim of this chapter is to identify and discuss the most important principles which come into play when the written text is adapted into a screen production. Since the screen production belongs to the genre of the performing arts, this chapter is introduced with a discussion on the performing arts and on the drama, in particular. The section will be concluded with a discussion on the different sub-types of the drama which can be found, including the screen production. The main emphasis is on an analysis of the basic features and principles of the drama in screen format. Since the screen play Unyana Womntu (1998) is based upon a novel by the same title, the literary features of the novel are to be discussed here as well. The specific features of the Xhosa novel will also receive attention.
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Hill, Geoffrey Burt. "'A breeding-ground of authors' : South East Asia in British fiction, 1945-1960." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2014. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.708370.
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Muchena, Kudakwashe Christopher. "Dambudzo Marechera: a psychobiographical study." Thesis, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10948/d1020777.
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Marechera the Zimbabwean writer, poet and novelist emerged in the late 1970s as a new voice in African literature, but his writing career lasted less than a decade. It was his iconoclastic, dense style that expressed the psychological disintegration prevalent in Africa during this period and challenged the central beliefs of both the nationalist and post-independence eras. Defying the limitations of nationality, race and culture, Marechera’s writing explores universal issues, particularly urban existence in the late twentieth century. Marechera’s life and work were closely linked. His outspoken views and unorthodox lifestyle brought him into frequent conflict with the authorities and contributed to him being perceived as a cult figure. Through his work and personality he became a major inspiration and role model for the younger generation of writers in Zimbabwe and other African countries. The present study is a psychobiographical case study with the primary aim being to explore and describe the personality development of Dambudzo Marechera (1952-1987) using Alfred Adler’s theory of Individual Psychology. It was through the use of a theory of psychological development that a better understanding of Marechera’s personality, based on his cultural and historical background was achieved and a new interpretation and explanation was reported. The findings of the study can be generalised to the theory of individual psychology through the process of analytical generalization.
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Mitchell, Gregory Paul. "A psychobiographical study of John Henry Newman." Thesis, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10948/d1021145.
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This study is a psychobiographical study, aiming to explore and describe the life of John Henry Newman (1801-1890), a theologian, priest, and cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, through the application of Erik Erikson’s theory of Psychosocial Development. Newman is a significant figure in the English-speaking Christian world and his life and thought remains of interest and importance, particularly in the fields of philosophy, theology, ecclesiology and education. Newman was beatified in 2010 and therefore this study also considers the hagiographical nature of biographical data. This study utilises a qualitative single case study approach and the subject was selected through purposive sampling based on interest value. Data were collected from primary and secondary sources to enhance validity. The data were analysed by organising and reducing information obtained regarding Newman’s life and then displaying it for discussion. The study considers Newman’s life, reconstructed from birth, through adolescence and adulthood to his death and also considers his posthumous legacy. The main themes of discussion revolve around Newman’s development of his religious identity and his life as a churchman and an academic. It considers how a psychosocially functional individual such as Newman manifests certain dystonic, maladaptive or malignant tendencies such as doubt, shame, guilt and overextension, and how these impact the formation of religious identity and the experience of God and the spiritual life. Basic trust, celibate intimacy and generativity emerged as three significant areas of importance in the Newman’s life and identity. The study highlighted the value of psychobiographical studies and of Erikson’s theory in understanding development. Recommendations for future research in this field are made in the hope of further uncovering and understanding personality, religious identity and psychosocial development.
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Greenshields, Mary Clare, and University of Lethbridge Faculty of Arts and Science. "The Amazon in the drawing room : Natalie Clifford Barney's Parisian salon, 1909-1970 / Mary Clare Greenshields." Thesis, Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of English, c2010, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10133/2606.
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This thesis is organised into two chapters and an appendix. The first chapter explores the significant American expatriate movement in France in the early part of the twentieth century, in an effort to answer the question ―Why France?‖ The second chapter examines the life and work of Natalie Clifford Barney, an American expatriate writer in Paris, who wrote predominantly in French and ran an important weekly salon for over sixty years. Specifically, her aesthetic and subject matter, her life, and her fraught publishing history are considered. The appendix is a translation of Barney's 1910 book of aphorisms entitled Éparpillements.v, 110 leaves ; 29 cm
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Lloyd, Johannah M. "The province of art : the aesthetic in the advent of modernism to London, 1910-1914." Thesis, McGill University, 1987. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=63769.
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Sun, Christine Yunn-Yu. "The construction of "Chinese" cultural identity : English-language writing by Australian and other authors with Chinese ancestry." Monash University, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, 2004. http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/5438.
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Bennett, Sarah. "The American contexts of Irish poetry, 1950-present." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.669957.
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Chan, Lai-on, and 陳麗安. "New enemies: women writers and the First World War." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2004. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B38628703.
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Gaudette, Stacey Leigh, and University of Lethbridge Faculty of Arts and Science. "Genêt unmasked : examining the autobiographical in Janet Flanner." Thesis, Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Faculty of Arts and Science, 2006, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10133/531.
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This thesis examines Janet Flanner, an expatriate writer whose fiction and
journalism have been essential to the development of American literary modernism in
that her work, taken together, comprises a remarkable autobiographical document which
records her own unique experience of the period while simultaneously contributing to its
particular aesthetic mission. Although recent discussions have opened debate as to how a
variety of discourses can be read as autobiographical, Flanner’s fifty years worth of
cultural, political, and personal observation requires an analysis which incorporates
traditional and contemporary theories concerning life-writing. Essentially,
autobiographical scholarship must continue to push the boundaries of analysis, focusing
on the interactions and reactions between the outer world and the inner self. This thesis,
therefore, will situate Janet Flanner as an important writer whose experience among the
modernist literary community in Europe informs, and is recorded in, her writing.v, 93 leaves ; 29 cm.
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Gossage, Ann. "Between the lines : the representation of Canadian women in English-language novels written by women in the 1930s." Thesis, McGill University, 1996. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=24085.
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This thesis examines the role of Canadian women as presented in English language novels of the 1930s written by women authors. Within the context of the Great Depression it focuses on issues that are central to women's daily lives such as work, love, marriage and motherhood. It also isolates recurring themes in the novels and attempts to understand the authors' messages within their social context. Social reform, politics and gender relationships are among the subjects explored.
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Hopper, Keith. "Imagining otherwise : Neil Jordan's counter-narratives." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.669873.
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Macbeth, Georgia School of Theatre Film & Dance UNSW. "A Plurality of Identities: Ulster Protestantism in Contemporary Northern Irish Drama." Awarded by:University of New South Wales. School of Theatre, Film and Dance, 1999. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/33257.
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This thesis examines the ways in which Ulster Protestant identity has been explored in contemporary Northern Irish drama. The insecurity of the political and cultural status of Ulster Protestants from the Home Rule Crises up until Partition led to the construction and maintenance of a distinct and unified Ulster Protestant identity. This identity was defined by concepts such as loyalty, industriousness and ???Britishness???. It was also defined by a perceived opposite ??? the Catholicism, disloyalty and ???Irishness??? of the Republic. When the Orange State began to fragment in the late 1960s and early 1970s, so did notions of this singular Ulster Protestant identity. With the onset of the Troubles in 1969 came a parallel questioning and subversion of this identity in Northern Irish drama. This was a process which started with Sam Thompson???s Over the Bridge in 1960, but which began in earnest with Stewart Parker???s Spokesong in 1975. This thesis examines Parker???s approach and subsequent approaches by other dramatists to the question of Ulster Protestant identity. It begins with the antithetical pronouncements of Field Day Theatre Company, which were based in an inherently Northern Nationalist ideology. Here, the Ulster Protestant community was largely ignored or essentialised. Against this Northern Nationalist ideology represented by Field Day have come broadly revisionist approaches, reflecting the broader cultural context of this thesis. Ulster Protestant identity has been explored through issues of history and myth, ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality. More recent explorations of Ulster Protestantism have also added to this diversity by presenting the little acknowledged viewpoint of extreme loyalism. Dramatists examined in this thesis include Stewart Parker, Christina Reid, Frank McGuinness, Bill Morrison, Ron Hutchinson, Marie Jones, Graham Reid, Robin Glendinning and Gary Mitchell. The work of Charabanc Theatre Company is also discussed. What results from their efforts is a diverse and complex Ulster Protestant community. This thesis argues that the concept of a singular Ulster Protestant identity, defined by its loyalty and Britishness, is fragmented, leading to a plurality of Ulster Protestant identities.
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McBride, Barbara L. "Joseph Knecht's pattern of awakening in Hermann Hesse's The glass bead game." Scholarly Commons, 1995. https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uop_etds/2284.
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The purpose of this thesis is to establish the pattern of Joseph Knecht's awakening in Hermann Hesse's The Glass Bead Game. Based on the premise that Knecht, unlike Hesse's previous protagonists, is an integrated individual living within a disintegrated and segregated environment, a secondary intent of this paper is to examine the paradox of Knecht's Castalian existence. Each chapter concentrates on a stage of Knecht's development, both formally as a Castalian, and psychologically as an individual who is committed to serving the highest authority. This authority is not the rigid, one-dimensional Castalia but rather the dynamic force which governs all life. Knecht compares himself to music and perceives his life as a process of becoming. As he ascends the ladder of Castalian hierarchy, Knecht's own consciousness develops through the intervention of several antithetical figures who challenge him to reconcile the subjective nature of Truth and the transience of all forms. When he can no longer justify serving an Order which is governed by the pretense of perfection and permanence, Knecht feels obligated to warn Castalia of its own temporality and to resign his position as Magister Ludi. Knecht's leap beyond Castalia and into the deadly lake at Belpunt serves two purposes; not only does he take the first step toward integrating Castalia and the outside world, but he fulfills his own life by sacrificing himself to his pupil Tito.
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Heywood, David. "British combatant writers of the Spanish civil war." Thesis, McGill University, 1988. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=61706.
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Ryan, Catriona Majella. "Border states in the writings of Tom MacIntyre : a paleo-postmodern perspective." Thesis, Swansea University, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.678339.
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Wang, Bo. "Inventing a Discourse of Resistance: Rhetorical Women in Early Twentieth-Century China." Diss., Tucson, Arizona : University of Arizona, 2005. http://etd.library.arizona.edu/etd/GetFileServlet?file=file:///data1/pdf/etd/azu%5Fetd%5F1188%5F1%5Fm.pdf&type=application/pdf.
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Witen, Michelle Lynn. "Perceiving in registers : the condition of absolute music in James Joyce's Ulysses and Finnegans Wake." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.669882.
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Leff, Carol Willa. "Bosman as Verbindingsteken: Hybridities in the Writing of Herman Charles Bosman." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013163.
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This thesis is concerned with how hybridity is created and interpreted by Herman Charles Bosman in his fiction and non-fiction. Bosman was a gifted writer and raconteur who captured the historical, socio-political context of his time by translating Afrikaans culture for the edification and pleasure of an English readership. Hennie Aucamp summed up this linguistic and cultural translation by pointing out that Bosman was a writer who acted as a “verbindingsteken” or hyphen (65) between Afrikaans and English. His texts contain many voices, and are therefore essentially hybrid. Firstly, by drawing on aspects of postcolonial theory, the terms ‘hybridity’, ‘culture’ and ‘identity’, are discussed. Homi Bhabha’s notion of ‘hybridity’ is the conceptual lens through which Bosman’s texts are viewed, and aspects of Mikhail Bakhtin’s cultural theory also serve the same function. Thereafter, biographies of Bosman are discussed in an effort to understand his hyphenated identity. Following this, specific attention is paid to a selection of Bosman’s essays, short stories, and a novel. Scholarly opinions aid interpretation of levels of hybridity in Bosman’s work. In analysing Bosman’s texts critically, it becomes clear that he believed in a united South Africa that acknowledged and accepted all races. However, analysis also reveals that there are some inconsistencies in Bosman’s personal views, as expressed particularly in his essays. His short stories do not contain the same contradictions. Critical analysis of the novel Willemsdorp attests that cultural hybridity is not always viewed as celebratory. It can also be a painful space where identities are split, living both inside and outside their environment, and subsequently marginalized. Bosman’s texts, although published decades ago, remain relevant today in post-apartheid South Africa as much of his writing can be seen as a record of historical events. His short stories and novels capture a confluence of languages, people and cultures. His essays illustrate a deep commitment to promoting South African culture and literature. When reading Bosman one is constantly reminded that differences are not only to be acknowledged, but embraced, in what he prophetically imagined as a hybrid, post-apartheid South African society.
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Mangan, John Timothy. "Bertolt Brechts Exilleben und Parallelen zur Entstehung des Werkes Leben des Galilei." PDXScholar, 1996. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/5255.
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When Bertolt Brecht flees Nazi Germany in 1933 he spends fourteen years in exile where he writes some of his most significant works, among them, Leben des Galilei. In his Leben des Galilei, Brecht explores the relationship between the individual and society. Using the historical Galileo Galilei as context, Brecht elucidates the responsibility that scientists must accept for how their discoveries are put to use. With his Galilei figur, Brecht expresses his belief that scientific advancement should be employed for the societal advancement of the common person. Brecht wrote three versions of his Galilei work, each showing significant parallels to Brecht's experiences during the corresponding time period of his exile. This thesis will illustrate these parallels. It will first show that the Galilei thematic is to be found in the very first years of Brecht's exile. It then deals with the influences surrounding the writing of the first version while Brecht is in Denmark. The second part of the thesis focuses on Brecht's exile in America and the resulting second version of his Galilei work. Here, working with Charles Laughton on an English translation of the work, Brecht's Galilei undergoes a fundamental change. Brecht attempts to alter the positive perception of the first version's Galileo who cleverly outwits the Inquisition and secretly has his work the Discorsi smuggled out of Italy. Brecht now wants to portray Galileo as a traitor of the people, who missed his chance to help the common people overcome the suppression they were subjected to. This change is strongly influenced by Brecht's experiences in America and the dawning of the Atomic Age. The last section of the thesis deals with Brecht's return to Europe and the third version of Leben des Galilei written in East Berlin. This is a result of translating the American version into German and the addition of scenes and individual elements cut from the first version to make it more appropriate for American audiences. Brecht maintains and tries to heighten the negative portrayal of Galileo as traitor of the common people.
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Domareki, Mary. "La Voix Defie: Une Etude de L'oeuvre Autobiographique de Claire Martin - The Voice that Defied: A Study of the Autobiographical Works of Claire Martin." Fogler Library, University of Maine, 2004. http://www.library.umaine.edu/theses/pdf/DomarekiM2004.pdf.
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Jin, Xiaotian, and 金小天. "A generation 'betwixt and between': youth, gender and modernity in 1920s and 30s middlebrow women's writing." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2010. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B45814934.
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Reyes, Karen Stoner. "Finding a new voice : the Oregon writing community between the world wars." PDXScholar, 1986. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/3602.
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The period of 1919 to 1939 was a significant one for the development of the literature of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. The literary work produced in the region prior to the first world war was greatly influenced by the "Genteel tradition" of the late nineteenth century. By 1939, however, the literature of Oregon and the region had emerged from the outdated literary standards of the pre-war period and had found a new, realistic, natural voice, strongly regional in nature and rooted in the modern American tradition.
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Glover, Jayne Ashleigh. ""A complex and delicate web" : a comparative study of selected speculative novels by Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. Le Guin, Doris Lessing and Marge Piercy." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002241.
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This thesis examines selected speculative novels by Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. Le Guin, Doris Lessing and Marge Piercy. It argues that a specifiable ecological ethic can be traced in their work – an ethic which is explored by them through the tensions between utopian and dystopian discourses. The first part of the thesis begins by theorising the concept of an ecological ethic of respect for the Other through current ecological philosophies, such as those developed by Val Plumwood. Thereafter, it contextualises the novels within the broader field of science fiction, and speculative fiction in particular, arguing that the shift from a critical utopian to a critical dystopian style evinces their changing treatment of this ecological ethic within their work. The remainder of the thesis is divided into two parts, each providing close readings of chosen novels in the light of this argument. Part Two provides a reading of Le Guin’s early Hainish novels, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Word for World is Forest and The Dispossessed, followed by an examination of Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time, Lessing’s The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five, and Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. The third, and final, part of the thesis consists of individual chapters analysing the later speculative novels of each author. Piercy’s He, She and It, Le Guin’s The Telling, and Atwood’s Oryx and Crake are all scrutinised, as are Lessing’s two recent ‘Ifrik’ novels. This thesis shows, then, that speculative fiction is able to realise through fiction many of the ideals of ecological thinkers. Furthermore, the increasing dystopianism of these novels reflects the greater urgency with which the problem of Othering needs to be addressed in the light of the present global ecological crisis.
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Boettcher, Anna Margarete. "Through Women's Eyes: Contemporary Women's Fiction about the Old West." PDXScholar, 1995. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/4966.
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The myth of the West is still very much alive in contemporary America. Lately, there has been a resurgence of new Western movies, TV series, and fiction. Until recently the West has been the exclusive domain of the quintessential masculine man. Women characters have featured only in the margins of the Western hero's tale. Contemporary Western fiction by women, however, offers new perspectives. Women's writing about the Old and New West introduces strong female protagonists and gives voice to characters that are muted or ignored by traditional Western literature and history. Western scholarship has largely been polarized by two approaches. First, the myth and symbol school of Turner, Smith, and followers celebrated American exceptionalism and rugged male individualism on the Western frontier. Second, the reaction against these theories draws attention to the West's legacy of racism, sexism and violence. The purpose of the present study is to collapse these theoretical fences and open a dialogue between conflicting theoretical positions and contemporay Western fiction. Molly Gloss's 1989 The Jump-Off Creek and Karen Joy Fowler's 1991 Sarah Canary selfcritically re-write the Old West. This study has attempted to explore the following questions: How can one re-write history in the context of a postmodern culture? How can "woman," the quintessential "Other" escape a modernist history (and thus avoid charges of essentialism) when she has not been in this history to begin with? In this study I analyze how these two contemporary feminist authors, Molly Gloss, and Karen Joy Fowler, face the dual challenge of writing themselves into a history that has traditionally excluded them, while at the same time deconstructing this very historical concept of the West. Fowler's and Gloss's use of diverse narrative strategies to upset a monolithic concept of history-- emphasizing the importance of multiple stories of the Old West-- is discussed in detail.
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O'Connor, Clémence. "'Pour garder l'impossible intact' : the poetry of Heather Dohollau." Thesis, St Andrews, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/791.
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Lombard, Erica. "The profits of the past : nostalgic white writing of post-apartheid South Africa." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:bb2c9ae1-e551-4931-9a44-3197fdc6e010.
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Drawing on relevant theory from memory studies, literary criticism, sociology, reception studies and book history, this thesis examines the prevalence of nostalgia in white South African writing of the post-apartheid period. It identifies the numerous and remarkably conventional texts by white authors that proliferated in this time which might be described as nostalgic, arguing that these constitute a key genre of post-apartheid South African literature. In seeking to offer an explanation for why these nostalgic forms predominated in this period, this study takes into consideration the full "communications circuit" of a book i.e. the life-cycle of a book from production to consumption. Consequently, it employs an interdisciplinary framework to examine nostalgic literature from the perspectives of both the producers and consumers of texts. It is argued, ultimately, that post-apartheid nostalgic writing was particularly involved in the protection of certain formulations and structures of whiteness at individual, collective and institutional levels. The argument unfolds in three phases, each of which explores the value of nostalgia and nostalgic white writing in a different but related sphere: namely, literature, memory, and the market. The first phase of the argument provides a literary critical reading of the generic hallmarks of these novels, considering a range of representative texts, including works by Mark Behr, André Brink, Justin Cartwright, J. M. Coetzee, Lisa Fugard, Christopher Hope, Jo-Anne Richards, and Rachel Zadok. The second examines the allure of nostalgia and nostalgic books for the writers and readers of this literature, drawing on sociological studies of post-apartheid white South African identity and reader-response theory to analyse a selection of online and print reviews by readers. In the third phase, the thesis utilises a book historical approach to investigate the influence of various literary markets and the publishing industry, both local and global, in shaping the nostalgia trend.
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Hoffman, Megan. "Women writing women : gender and representation in British 'Golden Age' crime fiction." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/11910.
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In this thesis, I examine representations of women and gender in British ‘Golden Age' crime fiction by writers including Margery Allingham, Christianna Brand, Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L. Sayers, Josephine Tey and Patricia Wentworth. I argue that portrayals of women in these narratives are ambivalent, both advocating a modern, active model of femininity, while also displaying with their resolutions an emphasis on domesticity and on maintaining a heteronormative order, and that this ambivalence provides a means to deal with anxieties about women's place in society. This thesis is divided thematically, beginning with a chapter on historical context which provides an overview of the period's key social tensions. Chapter II explores depictions of women who do not conform to the heteronormative order, such as spinsters, lesbians and ‘fallen' women. Chapter III looks at the ways in which the courtships and marriages of detective couples attempt to negotiate the ideal of companionate marriage and the pressures of a ‘cult of domesticity'. Chapter IV considers the ways in which depictions of women in schools, universities and the workplace are used to explore the tensions between an expanding role in the public sphere and the demand to inhabit traditionally domestic roles. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the image of female victims' and female killers' bodies and the ways in which such depictions can be seen to expose issues of gender, class and identity. Through its examination of a wide variety of texts and writers in the period 1920 to the late 1940s, this thesis investigates the ambivalent nature of modes of femininity depicted in Golden Age crime fiction written by women, and argues that seemingly conservative resolutions are often attempts to provide a ‘modern-yet-safe' solution to the conflicts raised in the texts.
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O'Farrell, Kevin. "Joyce after Nietzsche : irony and the will to truth." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:3de0686a-b70f-433c-ae20-9de7d554b08e.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis explores and evaluates the work of James Joyce using the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche. It does so not only by examining Joyce's knowledge of Nietzsche's writings, but also through demonstrating how effectively they can illuminate Joyce's themes and techniques, and aid in a general reconceptualisation of his literary project. My analysis draws on several of Nietzsche's key concepts - perspectivism, ressentiment, the will to power - and applies them to Joyce's work. The main idea I use however is the will to truth. I argue that Joyce's primary concern as an artist was the depiction of what he saw as the truth of contemporary existence, in Dublin and more generally. This aim determines his technē, the origin and form of his work of art. Various manifestations of irony, a key element of Joyce's technique, help illustrate the importance of this will to truth. This understanding of his work eliminates the false division between form and content and through an emphasis on Joyce's artistry and philosophy, rather than the historical context in which he wrote (that is, on the author rather than the man), allows for a truly critical assessment. The five chapters that follow my introduction are chronologically ordered. They examine the early works, Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and especially Ulysses, in considerable detail and from various angles. Though careful to respect the individuality of each, my analyses find a common thread of realism uniting the three major works of prose fiction; beginning with the French naturalism of the short stories, moving on to a new development of perspectival irony and a unique mode of allegory in his first novel, and ending in what Joyce called 'the new realism' of his epic. My study then explains how and why realism is problematised in the later chapters of Ulysses as the will to truth comes to question itself. The thesis concludes with an assessment of Finnegans Wake, considering how it marks a radical departure from Joyce's earlier practice, and why I regard it a failure.
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Schaller, Karen Ann. "The Bowen affect : the short fiction of Elizabeth Bowen and the case for re-reading emotion." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2011. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/6950/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis argues that the short fiction of Elizabeth Bowen is acutely preoccupied with reading emotion. Despite the growth of Bowen criticism, her stories remain understudied and this project proposes that their marginal status corresponds to this preoccupation. Through a close engagement with the literary representations of emotion at work in selected Bowen's stories, read alongside Bowen criticism, short story theory, and work on emotion, however, I show how her stories not only anticipate, but radically disrupt, current emotion theory. Recent theorisations of, and research on, emotion and affect across the disciplines tend to rely on the readability of emotion, emphasising the interpretation of specific emotions and reviving practices of affective criticism. Yet Bowen‟s short fiction foregrounds emotion‟s textuality: rather than allow us to read emotion „in‟ literature, I argue that her stories theorise the literariness of emotion. The project begins by suggesting a correspondence between her stories‟ engagement with emotion and their status, both within her literary oeuvre and in Bowen scholarship, to suggest that the complexity of her short fiction is often under-represented by occluding the deconstructions emotion mobilises. This enables us to map critical debates amongst Bowen scholars about the radicality of Bowen‟s fiction onto wider narratives about emotion and critical resistances to its textuality. I go on to undertake close readings of selected stories to show how Bowen‟s short fiction destabilises, rather than reinforces, the geographies of subjectivity, reality, time, and materiality to which emotion is presumed to belong. This project extends Bowen criticism that observes the ways her work anticipates psychoanalytical and Derridean readings, but through its focus on the short story it offers the second focused study of Bowen‟s short fiction, and the first study of her short fiction to be informed by critical emotion theory. Not only does this thesis carve out a new territory within Bowen scholarship, but it offers a timely contribution to problems in thinking emotion and affect in literary criticism and theory. More broadly, it is my hope that my reading of Bowen demonstrates the necessity of attending to the textuality of emotion in the reading and theorisation of emotion across the disciplines.
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Rock, Brian. "Irish nationalism and postcolonial modernity : the 'minor' literature and authorial selves of Brian O'Nolan." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/2495.
Full textAbstract:
In the immediate post-independence period, forms of state-sponsored Irish nationalism were pre-occupied with exclusive cultural markers based on the Irish language, mythology and folk traditions. Because of this, a postcolonial examination of how such nationalist forms of identity were fetishised is necessary in order to critique the continuing process of decolonization in Ireland. This dissertation investigates Brian O’Nolan’s engagement with dominant colonial and nationalist literary discourses in his fiction and journalism. Deleuze and Guattari define a ‘minor’ writer’s role as one which deterritorializes major languages in order to negotiate textual spaces which question the assumptions of dominant groups. Considering this concept has been applied to postcolonial studies due to the theorists’ linguistic and political concerns, this dissertation explores the ‘minor’ literary practice of Brian O’Nolan’s authorial personae and writing techniques. Through the employment of Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the deterritorialization of language alongside Walter Benjamin’s models of the flâneur and translation, and Claude Lévi-Strauss’s concept of bricolage, this thesis examines the complex forms of postcolonial narrative agency and discursive political resistance in O’Nolan’s work. While O’Nolan is often read in biographical terms or within the frameworks of literary modernism and postmodernism, this thesis aims to demonstrate the politically ambivalent nature of his writing through his creation of liminal authorial selves and heterogeneous narrative forms. As a bi-lingual author, O’Nolan is linguistically ‘in-between’ languages and, because of this, he deterritorializes both historical and literary associations of the Irish and English languages to produce parodic and comic versions of national and linguistic identity. His satiric novel An Béal Bocht exposes, through his use of an array of materials, how Irish folk and peasant culture have been fetishized within colonial and nationalist frameworks. In order to avoid such restricting forms of identity, O’Nolan positions his own authorial self within a multitude of pseudonyms which refuse a clear, assimilable subjectivity and political position. Because of this, O’Nolan’s authorial voice in his journalism is read as an allusive flâneur figure. Equally, O’Nolan deterritorializes Irish mythology in At Swim-Two-Birds as a form of palimpsestic translation and rhizomatic re-mapping of a number of literary traditions which reflect the Irish nation while in The Third Policeman O’Nolan deconstructs notions of empirical subjectivity and academic and scientific epistemological knowledge. This results in an infinite form of fantastical writing which exposes the limited codes of Irish national culture and identity without reterritorializing such identities. Because O’Nolan’s ‘minor’ literary challenge is reflective of the on-going crisis of Ireland’s incomplete decolonization, this thesis employs the concept of ‘minor’ literature to read Ireland’s historical past and contemporary modernity through O’Nolan’s multi-voiced and layered narratives.
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Duncan, Dawn E. (Dawn Elaine). "Language and Identity in Post-1800 Irish Drama." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1994. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc277916/.
Full textAbstract:
Using a sociolinguistic and post-colonial approach, I analyze Irish dramas that speak about language and its connection to national identity. In order to provide a systematic and wide-ranging study, I have selected plays written at approximately fifty-year intervals and performed before Irish audiences contemporary to their writing. The writers selected represent various aspects of Irish society--religiously, economically, and geographically--and arguably may be considered the outstanding theatrical Irish voices of their respective generations. Examining works by Alicia LeFanu, Dion Boucicault, W.B. Yeats, and Brian Friel, I argue that the way each of these playwrights deals with language and identity demonstrates successful resistance to the destruction of Irish identity by the dominant language power. The work of J. A. Laponce and Ronald Wardhaugh informs my language dominance theory. Briefly, when one language pushes aside another language, the cultural identity begins to shift. The literature of a nation provides evidence of the shifting perception. Drama, because of its performance qualities, provides the most complex and complete literary evidence. The effect of the performed text upon the audience validates a cultural reception beyond what would be possible with isolated readers. Following a theoretical introduction, I analyze the plays in chronological order. Alicia LeFanu's The Sons of Erin; or, Modern Sentiment (1812) gently pleads for equal treatment in a united Britain. Dion Boucicault's three Irish plays, especially The Colleen Bawn (1860) but also Arrah-na-Pogue (1864) and The Shaughraun (1875), satirically conceal rebellious nationalist tendencies under the cloak of melodrama. W. B. Yeats's The Countess Cathleen (1899) reveals his romantic hope for healing the national identity through the powers of language. However, The Only Jealousy of Emer (1919) and The Death of Cuchulain (1939) reveal an increasing distrust of language to mythically heal Ireland. Brian Friel's Translations (1980), supported by The Communication Cord (1982) and Making History (1988), demonstrates a post-colonial move to manipulate history in order to tell the Irish side of a British story, constructing in the process an Irish identity that is postnational.
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Rine, Abigail. "Words incarnate : contemporary women’s fiction as religious revision." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/1961.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis investigates the prevalence of religious themes in the work of several prominent contemporary women writers—Margaret Atwood, Michèle Roberts, Alice Walker and A.L. Kennedy. Relying on Luce Irigaray’s recent theorisations of the religious and its relationship to feminine subjectivity, this research considers the subversive potential of engaging with religious discourse through literature, and contributes to burgeoning criticism of feminist revisionary writing. The novels analysed in this thesis show, often in violent detail, that the way the religious dimension has been conceptualised and articulated enforces negative views of female sexuality, justifies violence against the body, alienates women from autonomous creative expression and paralyses the development of a subjectivity in the feminine. Rather than looking at women’s religious revision primarily as a means of asserting female authority, as previous studies have done, I argue that these writers, in addition to critiquing patriarchal religion, articulate ways of being and knowing that subvert the binary logic that dominates Western religious discourse. Chapter I contextualises this research in Luce Irigaray’s theories and outlines existing work on feminist revisionist literature. The remaining chapters offer close readings of key novels in light of these theories: Chapter II examines Atwood’s interrogation of oppositional logic in religious discourse through her novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Chapter III explores two novels by Roberts that expose the violence inherent in religious discourse and deconstruct the subjection of the (female) body to the (masculine) Word. Chapters IV and V analyse the fiction of Kennedy and Walker respectively, revealing how their novels confront the religious denigration of feminine sexuality and refigure the connection between eroticism and divinity. Evident in each of these fictional accounts is a forceful critique of religious discourse, as well as an attempt to more closely reconcile foundational religious oppositions between divinity and humanity, flesh and spirit, and body and Word.
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Weiler, Sylvia. "Jean Amérys Ethik der Erinnerung: die Materialisierung des Geistes im Körper." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/210403.
Full textAbstract:
In dieser Dissertation wird Jean Amérys Ethik der Erinnerung auf ihre philosophischen, politischen und literarischen Implikationen hin untersucht. Dabei wird sie als ein moegliches philosophisches Fundament fuer den westdeutschen Auschwitz-Diskurs und die westdeutsche Nachkriegsliteratur vorgestellt. Ihre Besonderheiten gewinnen auf der Grundlage eines Vergleichs von Amérys erinnerungspolitischen Positionen mit jenen Theodor W. Adornos Kontur, der allgemein als der philosophische Begruender der deutschen Literatur nach 1945 gilt. Beide Intellektuelle denken ausgehend von ihrer Verfolgungserfahrung als Juden deutscher (Adorno) bzw. oesterreichischer (Améry) Herkunft. Doch anders als Adorno, dem 1938 die Emigration nach Amerika gelang, wurde Améry als politischer Widerstandskaempfer gefoltert und nach Auschwitz deportiert. Vor diesem Hintergrund geht es um die Frage nach der erkenntnistheoretischen Bedeutung der koerperlichen Erfahrung der Vernichtung beim Versuch, ein der Zaesur Auschwitz angemessenes Denken zu begruenden. Hierzu werden erstmals Amérys Anleihen bei dem Phaenomenologen Maurice Merleau-Ponty systematisch analysiert. Wie er geht auch Améry davon aus, dass die koerperliche Wahrnehmung eines Menschen in entscheidender Form ueber sein Engagement in Kultur und Gesellschaft mitbestimmt.Im Rahmen der Forschungsarbeit werden saemtliche Werke Amérys beruecksichtigt, inklusive seiner zum Teil noch unveroeffentlichten Nachlass-Arbeiten. Sie ist in drei Teile aufgegliedert, in denen jeweils eine der Werkepochen, die Améry auf seinem Werdegang als politischer Schriftsteller durchlaeuft, zentral steht: sein politisches Erwachen 1934/35 in Wien, seine ersten Schreibversuche nach der Befreiung aus dem Konzentrationslager Bergen-Belsen zwischen 1945 und 1949, und zuletzt die Ethik der Erinnerung des kanonischen Améry, die er in zwei Werkepochen erarbeitet hat, in denen er sich jeweils unterschiedlichen Fragestellungen widmet.(1966-1974 und 1974-1978).
Aus der Literaturzeitschrift "Die Bruecke", die der 22jaehrige 1934 gemeinsam mit einem Freund herausgab, und Amérys Jugendroman "Die Schiffbruechigen" werden in den ersten beiden Kapiteln die fruehen philosophischen und aestetischen Urspruenge von Amérys Ethik eroertert. Im folgenden Kapitel rueckt die Vernichtungserfahrung des Autors in den Brennpunkt. Die Parameter ihrer ersten literarischen Verarbeitung in seinen Schriften aus der unmittelbaren Nachkriegszeit werden herausgestellt, die Améry in seinem Spaetwerk weitergedacht hat. Auf den vorangehenden Forschungsergebnissen aufbauend wird im letzten Kapitel Amérys Ethik der Erinnerung im Vergleich zu jener Theodor W. Adornos erarbeitet. Ihr phaenomenologisches Fundament wird dem geschichtsphilosophischen Fundament des Adornoschen Denkens gegenuebergestellt. Dabei wird gezeigt, dass nicht nur Amérys Denken, sondern auch seine Aesthetik phaenomenologisch ausgerichtet ist. Durch die Analysen in diesem Hauptteil der Dissertation, in dem erstmals alle Essay-Baende auf ihren erinnerungspolitischen Gehalt im Zusammenspiel untersucht wurden, wird Amérys Beitrag zur Begruendung einer postmodernen Ethik und der Gattung der Shoah-Literatur einsehbar.
Doctorat en Langues et lettres
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished
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Midgley, Henry Peter. "Author, ideology and publisher a symbiotic relationship : Lovedale Missionary Press and early Black writing in South Africa: with specific reference to the critical writings of H.I.E. Dlomo." Thesis, Rhodes University, 1994. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002284.
Full textAbstract:
The specific instances of R.H.W. Shepherd and H.I.E. Dhlomo are used in this thesis to investigate some of the many factors that influence the formation of a colonial literature, such as politics, social structures and personal ideals. By isolating the Lovedale Mission Press ~s a "contact zone" - a·place where the cultures of the colonizer and the colonized come into direct contact with each other - it is possible to trace how the interaction between these cultures shaped the writing of a particular African writer, H.I.E. Dhlomo. This is done through an analysis of historical factors that shaped the policy of the Lovedale Mission Press in the twentieth century: the development of liberalism in South Africa, the·role of the missionary in African education, the function ofa liberal magazine such as The South African Outlook and the appointment of an ambitious missionary, R.I.W. Shepherd, to the position of Director of Publications. This necessarily included a study of Shepherd's vision of African literature. On the other hand, this study takes cognisance of the factors that shaped Herbert Dhlomo's vision of literature: the development of African nationalism, the entrenchment of segregation as a politial doctrine, and most importantly, his struggle to have his creative writing published by the Lovedale Press. It is shown how Shepherd's vision of what African literature should entail contrasted with Dhlomo's, and how, as a result, Dhlomo deliberately structured his critical writing as a response to Shepherd's Eurocentric approach to African literature.
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Gilfillan, Lynda 1948. "Theorising the counterhegemonic : a critical study of Black South African autobiography from 1954-1963." Thesis, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/3321.
Full textAbstract:
In this thesis, I examine a critical procedure appropriate to Black South African
autobiography of the 1950s and early 1960s. In particular, I examine these
autobiographies as examples of counterhegemonic writing in which the self counters the
hegemonic apartheid notion of identity, based on racial and cultural purity, and I propose
that the hybrid selves encoded in these narratives have the capacity to inform a new
South African nationhood.
Chapter One necessitates an autocritique, in which I locate my own discourse within the
intersecting discursive strands of Western and local theory, an effort that is guided by the
imperatives that emerge from the autobiographies themselves. In Chapter Two, I suggest
that the postcolonial autos displaces Humanist, and appropriates postmodernist,
conceptions of the "I". Rewriting the terms of the autobiographical pact, the authority of
grapos is re-instated in counternarratives that give privileged status to the bios - to
lives that claim "I AM!" and selves that reconstruct identity. A related concern is the
relationship between autobiographical criticism in South Africa and hegemony.
In the chapters that follow, I examine the various ways in which counterhegemonic selves
are constructed in Tell freedom, Down Second Avenue, Drawn in colour: African
Contrasts and The Ochre People. Peter Abrahams's autobiography is discussed largely
in terms of Frantz Fanon's insights on identity construction and the notion of a "hybrid
I". Es'kia Mphahlek's (re)writing of the self - whose main feature is ambivalence - forms
the focus of Chapter Four. These notions are developed in the final chapter, which
focuses on Noni Jabavu's narratives that encode an "in-between" cultural identity and, as
in the autobiographies of Abrahams and Mphahlele, a metonymic "I".English Studies
D. Litt. et Phil. (English)
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Hertenberger, Renate. "Drei Aspekte zu Leben und Werk Erich Kästners." Thesis, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10210/5728.
Full textAbstract:
M.A."Es gibt nichts Gutes, auger: man tut es!" 1 Diese Worte stammen von einem Mann, der nicht nur als Autor, sondern auch als Mensch heute noch als ein Moralist bezeichnet wird. Seine Werke sollen dazu dienen, den Erwachsenen und den Kindern ein Beispiel der Moralitat zu sein. Wie kommt es, daft ein Mann so hohe moralische AnsprOche stellt? Bei Erich Kastner kann man these AnsprOche auf seine Kindheit zuruckfuhren; seine Mutter war fOr ihn dieser Einflull und sollte es sein Leben lang bleiben. Der Muttertyp taucht in seinen Werken immer wieder auf, und Ida Kastner dient immer als der Magstab, an dem Erich Kastner die Mutter, die in seinen Werken vorkommen, mat.
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Grekul, Lisa. "Re-placing ethnicity : literature in English by Canada’s Ukrainians." Thesis, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/14949.
Full textAbstract:
This study traces the development of prose, poetry, drama, and (creative) nonfiction
written in English by Canadians of Ukrainian descent during the twentieth
century. The thesis argues that, although Ukrainian Canadian literature has been underrepresented
in Canadian and Ukrainian Canadian studies, it makes a substantial
contribution to ongoing debates about the ways in which individuals (re)define their
sense of self, community, history, and home in the process of writing.
Chapter One provides an overview of Ukrainian Canadian history, and outlines
the development of a Ukrainian Canadian literary tradition. Chapter Two examines the
assimilationist rhetoric articulated by such non-Ukrainian Canadian writers as Ralph
Connor, Sinclair Ross, and Margaret Laurence, as well as that of Vera Lysenko (author of
Yellow Boots, 1954, the first English-language novel by a Ukrainian Canadian). Chapter
Three focuses on Maara Haas's novel The Street Where I Live (1976), George Ryga's
play A Letter to My Son (1981), and Andrew Suknaski's poetry (published in Wood
Mountain Poems, 1976; the ghosts call you poor, 1978; and In the Name of Narid, 1981),
and explores these writers' responses to the policies and practices of multiculturalism.
Chapter Four identifies the shift toward transnational or transcultural discourses of
individual- and group-identity formation in Janice Kulyk Keefer's and Myrna Kostash's
writing, especially that which records their travels "back" to Ukraine.
The central argument of the thesis is that if Ukrainian Canadians are to maintain
meaningful ties to their ethnic heritage, they must constantly—if paradoxically—reinvent
themselves as Ukrainians and as Canadians. In examining this paradox, the study draws parallels between Lysenko and Kulyk Keefer, both of whom rely on conventional
narrative techniques in their writing and privilege nation-based models of identity that
marginalize the experiences of ethnic minorities. Haas, Ryga, Suknaski, and Kostash, by
contrast, experiment with multiple languages and genres: shaped, thematically and
formally, by their experiences as hybrid subjects, their texts illustrate that ethnicity is less
product than process; less fixed than fluid; constantly under construction and open to
negotiation. The concluding chapter of the thesis, reflecting on the past and the present
of Ukrainians in Canada, calls for the next generation of writers to continue re-imagining
their communities by pushing the boundaries of existing language and forms.
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Dyer, Rebecca Gayle. "London via the Caribbean migration narratives and the city in postwar British fiction /." 2002. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/fullcit?p3077633.
Full text
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Ngwenya, Thengamehlo Harold. "Ideology and form in South African autobiographical writing : a study of the autobiographies of five South Africa authors." Thesis, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/17577.
Full textAbstract:
Relying on Lucien Goldmann's theory of genetic structuralism, this study
examines the relationship between ideology (world vision) and the
autobiographical form in South African writing. The five autobiographers selected
for discussion represent different social groups in the South African social
formation. The central argument of this thesis is that there is a relationship
between autobiographical self-portraiture and the collective interests, values and
attitudes of particular social groups in South Africa. Therefore, most South
African autobiographies are more concerned with the articulation of collective
consciousness than with the celebration of individual talents and achievements.
Chapter 1 on Peter Abrahams explores the values underpinning the ideology of
liberal humanism and their influence on the process of self-representation within
the mode of autobiography. The second chapter examines the apparently
contradictory conceptions of self-identity in Bloke Modisane's autobiography.
Chapter three focuses on the conflict between Naboth Mokgatle's ethnic loyalty
to the Bafokeng tribe and his newly acquired radical working class consciousness.
The fourth chapter examines the liberal-Christian ideology in Alan Paton's two
volumes of autobiography. The fifth and final chapter explores counter hegemonic
modes of self-definition in Sindiwe Magona's two-volumed autobiography. In all
the five chapters there is an attempt to link the authors' self-presentation to specific
social classes or groups.
The thesis argues for a literary-sociological approach to the analysis of
autobiography and seeks to challenge the deconstructive theoretical perspectives
on autobiography which, by rejecting the validity of humanist assumptions
regarding human subjectivity, deny any possibility of meaningful socio-political
action.English Studies
D.Litt. et Phil. (English)
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Janzen, Beth E. "The boundary between "us" and "them": readers and the non-English word in the fiction of Canadian Mennonite writers." Thesis, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/1805.
Full textAbstract:
This study asks whether the use of non-English words in the novels of Canadian Mennonites perpetuates a cultural binary, and concludes that it does not. The use of the non-English word, rather than enforcing a binary between "us and them", ultimately reveals that cultural boundaries are permeable and unstable. Recent reader-response theory, which sees the reader as always influenced by a context, is central to this inquiry. Analysis of readers' responses in the form of questionnaires constitutes part of the support for my assertions, while an examination of typography, orthography, interlingua, and theme in three novels by Canadian Mennonites provides the balance.
Chapter one lays the theoretical framework for the investigation. It discusses: reader-response theory and the impossibility of accessing a stable textual meaning coincidental with the author's intention, the challenge of the non-English word to the concept of universality, and the distinction between proper “English" and non-institutional "english". Chapter two examines some readers' responses to non-English words and finds that “inside" readers have interpretations in common with "outside” readers, and that variations exist between the interpretations of “inside" readers. A binary model is too simplistic to encompass the range of contexts from which readers read. Chapter three discusses typography, orthography, and interlanguage in relation to (Low) German, and suggests the importance of these features to a discussion of the texts. Chapters four through six examine Rudy Wiebe's The Blue Mountains of China (1970), Anne Konrad's The Blue Jar (1985), and Armin Wiebe's The Salvation of Yasch Siemens (1984) respectively. Each novel's thematic concern with cultural boundaries serves as a framework for interpreting its physical and linguistic features. Chapter seven concludes by examining the influence of my own fragmented identity on the development of my argument, and revisits the issue of authorial intent in our politically less-than-perfect world. A lengthy appendix serves as a pluralistic glossary to the texts, and contains the responses to my questionnaires. A brief section outlines some of the appendix's interesting patterns and trends. An index to the appendix is provided since the appendix is not arranged alphabetically.
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Hyslop, Brianna Elizabeth. "Travel literature reconsidered : mobility and subjectivity in Passenger to Teheran." Thesis, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/ETD-UT-2011-05-3361.
Full textAbstract:
The critical attention that has been given to Vita Sackville-West’s travel literature has primarily focused on the relationships between these texts and the novels of Virginia Woolf on account of the intimate relationship that existed between the two writers. I argue in this paper that Sackville-West’s travel accounts are worthy of study in and of themselves. This report explores the ways that the genre of travel literature was changing in the early twentieth century through Vita Sackville-West’s Passenger to Teheran (1926). Critics such as Marie Louise Pratt have noted that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British travel accounts had been used as a way to transmit technical knowledge of, and authority over, the East. Sackville-West’s text throws this tradition of the genre into question through its focus on the traveler’s subjectivity. Working from Michel de Certeau’s ideas regarding railway travel and incarceration, I want to demonstrate that the traveler’s subjectivity is augmented by her position as a passenger in various modes of mobility. Ultimately I argue that the privileging of imagination and subjectivity over scientific knowledge found in Passenger to Teheran unravels the traditional epistemology of travel writing which positions the traveler as an authority figure on the East, and instead positions Sackville-West as a traveler-aesthete. This shift in the role of the travel writer reveals that while Pratt’s description characterizes some travel writing, Sackville-West’s travel project is more concerned with discovering the creative potential that travel can stimulate in the mind rather than purporting to reveal facts about the outside world.text
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Dowling, Finuala Rachel. "Subversive narrative and thematic strategies : a critical appraisal of Fay Weldon's Fiction." Thesis, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/16680.
Full textAbstract:
Fay Weldon is a popular, prolific author whose oeuvre stretches from 1967 to the present
and includes 20 novels, three collections of short stories and numerous stage, radio and
television plays, scripts and adaptations. This thesis limits itself to her fiction and follows
the chronological course of Weldon's writing career in five chapters.
Fay Weldon's fiction, situated at the intersection of postmodemism and feminism, is
doubly subversive. It both overturns 'reasonable' narrative conventions and wittily
deconstructs the specious terminology used to define women. Weldon's disobedient female
protagonists - madwomen, criminals, outcasts and she-devils - assert the power of the Other.
Gynocentric themes - single parenthood, sisterhood, reproduction, motherhood, sex and
marriage - are transformed by Weldon into uproarious feminist revenge comedy. This she
achieves through an intertextuality which often involves unorthodox typography, genreswopping
and metafictional devices. Moreover, a unique ventriloquism enables her
omniscient first-person narrators to mimic 'Fay Weldon' herself.
Since her narrators are rebels and iconoclasts, Weldon has always been viewed as a
subversive individual worthy of media attention, especially interviews. For this reason, and
because she is a woman writer who struggled initially against social and domestic odds, the
thesis incorporates in its argument the author's biography and public personae.
Chapter One explores the connections between Weldon's first novels - notably Down
Among the Women (1971) - and early liberationist and anthropological feminism. In Chapter
Two, Bakhtin's dialogic imagination and Derrida's differance provide the basis for a
discussion of multiplicity in Weldon's novels of the late 1970s, particularly Praxis (1979),
shortlisted for the Booker prize. Chapter Three tests the limits of a psychoanalytical model
in accounting for Weldon's novels of (m)Otherhood, including The Life and Loves of a SheDevil
(1983).
Theories of humour and carnival inform Chapter Four's analysis of how Weldon's wit
- at its tendentious best in The Heart of the Country (1987) - declines into innocence.
Finally, Chapter Five sees Weldon's flagging literary reputation as the symptom of authorial
exhaustion and retreat from a feminist agenda. This concluding chapter is, however,
ultimately optimistic that the mercurial author's undeniable talents may reassert themselvesEnglish Studies
D.Litt. et Phil. (English)