Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Postcolonial literary theory'

This thesis investigates identity and postcolonial nationalism as expressed in selected Iraqi and Algerian historical novels published after 1960. The study examines eight novels: Assia Djebar's Children of the New World (1962), Muhsin al-Ramli's Scattered Crumbs (2000), Yasmina Khadra's The Sirens of Baghdad (2008), Ali Bader's The Tobacco Keeper (2011), Abdul-Aziz Gramoule's Za'eem al-Aqaliyah al-Sahiqah [Leader of the Overwhelming Minority] (2005), Khadair al-Zaidi's Valyoom Asharah [Valium 10] (2015), Rashid Boudjedra's The Barbary Figs (2012) and Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad (2013).Through a critical analysis of the selected data, the study investigates how historical fiction can create and legitimatize nationalist discourse on the one hand and counter hegemonic discourses on the other hand. The thesis also explores how, and to what extent, the critical awareness and blindness of postcolonial nationalism contributes to social and cultural formations in a pan-Arabic context, and how nationalist leaders exploit and oppress their citizens. The thesis also explores - through its investigation of literary texts - the perpetuation of Western cultural imperialism in Iraq and Algeria through the imposition of modern cultural apparatus such as nationalism, the religious/secular distinction and military action such as the War on Terror. It concludes that postcolonial nationalism extends colonial imperialism both ideologically and discursively. Postcolonial nationalist regimes in Iraq and Algeria have divided and exploited citizens by perpetuating Western concepts of nationhood and identity. By examining literary responses to postcolonial nationalist states, my critique explores its divisive and exploitative practices and explores authors' imagined alternative visions for more peaceful multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, and multi-religious societies.

The aim of this essay is to provide a perspective on literature inculpating colonialism using postcolonial literary theory and method. The subject material incorporates four novels studied during the literature modules for the English course at Högskolan Gävle (HIG). The four novels combine to highlight various issues that affect the Self-identity through hybridization and colonial discourse as well as the detrimental nature of the colonial project for indigenous value systems during the period of colonialism. There is also application of theories and concepts raised in academic literature from within and outside the curriculum of HIG. The use of the postcolonial literary methodology provides a critical perspective of the aforementioned literature while implementing theories associated with that movement such as hybridity and the redefining of borders as well as focusing on the social, cultural, political and religious impact of the coloniser’s activities in the colonies as raised in the novels.  The most significant findings of this essay include the roles of isolation and disconnection within the colonial project and the subsequential effects on the colonised and their descendants. There are findings and observations of the level of strategic application of universalistic colonial discourse and the intrinsic application of the language used in the objectification of the indigenous and the subjugation of their value systems. The role of perception is also highlighted including findings on the social implications for the colonies inhabitants, both dissident and conformist, raised within the chosen literature and this essay. The essay also examines the application of various strands of literary theory incorporated within postcolonialism including poststructuralism and psychoanalytic criticism as well as anthropology material.  The conclusion of this essay culminates with the conflicting interpretations of progress as a universalism that counters the theories of postcolonialists and poststructuralists and their subsequent refusal to succumb to literature’s prevalence. The subjectivity of the postcolonial literary theorist and the self-imposed parameters restrict the interpretation of the colonial and postcolonial literature. The aforementioned progress defined by improved standards of health, education and social justice is lacking in presence in both the postcolonial literature and the accompanying literary theory counterpart. Subsequently, the disconnected voice of isolation and the split/double identity take precedence over higher standards of living and the appreciation of access to improved human rights and social justice within postcolonial society.

This essay examines the use of literary theory when teaching literature before higher education. The objective isto see how and if the integration of literary theory facilitates students’ engagement with and understanding of literature. The study is conducted with the qualitative method of interviews. Four teachers, certified for upper secondary school, were deemed appropriate to interview about their current use of literary theory, as well as their attitudes towards an increased use of literary theory. Besides the data collected through interviews, this study finds its theoretical foundation in the literary theories feminist, Marxist and postcolonial theory as well as in the Swedish curriculum for English at upper secondary level. Presently, the teachers do not use literary theory distinctly; however, they do consider the use of literary theory together with literature to be beneficial for the students’ understanding of literature and the world around them. Teachers stated that while some students only will grasp the idea of the theories, other students will be able to use and apply them. The curriculum supports the use of literary theory in the core values for students of upper secondary level.

This study examined four different settings in Selma Lagerlof’s novel Jerusalem, part I and II. The aim of the study was to analyse the narrative perspective in the four selected scenes of the novel, and also to investigate whether the narrator’s tone in any of the passages could be said to express orientalism. The material consisted of four text passages describing the novel’s two main geographical locations (the district of Dalarna and the Holy Land). Literary theories used for the study were narratology and postcolonial theory. The applied method to analyse the passages was to use the selection of semantic and syntactic markers compiled by Staffan Hellberg (1985) for stylistic analysis of the narrator’s perspective in Swedish narrative texts. The results of the study show that the overall narrative perspective in the scenes are non-focalized, and that the most frequently featured stylistic markers consist of words and phrases expressing value. A summery of the most frequently used stylistic markers show that it is possible to divide the narrative tone into four categories, as the “presenting”, “sympathizing”, “demonstrating” and “educating” narrator. The results also indicate that orientalism is evident in the two analysed passages from Jerusalem, part II.

The Swedish school has grown multicultural due to the recent years' migration and globalization of society. This place higher demands on the school's responsibility to educate students who are accepting and understanding towards each other, no matter their cultural and ethnic backgrounds. With application of postcolonial theory and its features; alterity, identity and racial prejudice to C.N Adichie's novel Americanah, it is argued that the inclusion of postcolonial literature in the EFL classroom may help students in developing an understanding for democratic values, and in exploring their roles in a diverse environment.

This thesis examines the nature and value of metafictional practices in the careers of postwar novelists. Discussions of metafiction have been central to accounts of postwar literature. Where debates in the 1980s and 1990s about metafiction tended to make claims about its distinctive political and theoretical power, recent work in the study of institutions has folded metafiction into the routine operation of the literary field, and attacked previous claims to distinctive value. In this thesis I both historicize self-reflexive literary practices in the literary field, an element largely absent from the earlier scholarship, and present historically determinate claims about the value of these practices, an element I suggest is missing from the more recent work. To do so, I turn to the study of autobiography, specifically Philippe Lejeune's concept of 'autobiographical space.' In the first chapter, I explore how J. M. Coetzee develops academic literary criticism in his fiction. In the second chapter, I examine how Janet Frame responds to both the demands of a national literature and biographical inquiry into her life. In the third chapter, I address how Philip Roth handles the relationship between the politics of identity and the postwar novel. Self-reflexive practices, I show throughout, are ways of writing that were encouraged by particular formations in the literary field and were handled by writers through more or less explicit treatments of autobiographical space. I argue, though, that while these practices can be remarkably inventive, they carry no guarantees for political, theoretical, or aesthetic value.

Este trabalho se dedica a Os Sertões (1902), de Euclides da Cunha, Native Son (1940), de Richard Wright, e Cidade de Deus (1997), de Paulo Lins. Buscando construir-se uma leitura crítica criativa, esta tese utiliza o método comparativo de forma a possibilitar que novos aspectos das obras surjam, assim como os elementos hegemônicos e contra-hegemônicos que as constituem, e as suas fortunas críticas. Partindo do entendimento de que os textos críticos e literários sempre se situam num campo maior, político, o presente estudo visa compreender as relações estabelecidas entre as obras, a crítica, a nação e o Estado. Com esse objetivo, além dos textos de Euclides, Wright e Lins, e de algum das respectivas críticas, outras disciplinas e seus teóricos serão mobilizados; entre eles (mas não só): Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Ranajit Guha, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari e Jacques Derrida.
This dissertation looks at the work of Euclides da Cunha\'s Os Sertões (1902), Richard Wright\'s Native Son (1940) and Paulo Lins\'s Cidade de Deus (1997). It seeks to be a creative reading of the books and their critical fortune by way of a comparative approach, ultimately allowing new aspects, such as hegemonic and counter-hegemonic elements, to come to the fore. The basis of this study is that literary and critical texts are all inserted in a greater political field. This research draws upon neighboring disciplines and theorists such as: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Ranajit Guha, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari and Jacques Derrida.

In this dissertation I intend to apply postcolonial theory to primary pedagogical and administrative concerns of the writing program administrator. Writing Program Administrators, or WPAs, take their responsibilities seriously, remaining cognizant of both the negative and positive repercussions of the pedagogical decisions that take shape in the scores of composition classrooms they administer. This dissertation intends to infuse the WPA position with the ethos of scholarly praxis by historicizing and contextualizing the field of composition, and by placing the teaching of writing within the historical memory of slavery and colonialism. Sound WPA research is theoretically informed, systematic, principled inquiry that works toward producing strong writing programs. This dissertation provides such inquiry, drawing the field's attention to the reality of postcoloniality and presenting an understanding of the work of composition as informed by and complicit in the history of racialized forms of oppression. From this context, the dissertation analyzes three major issues faced by the WPA: the debate over standardized discourse, the influence of the job market on pedagogical decisions, and the (de)politicizing of the composition classroom. In the following sections, these issues will be related directly to critical theories from postcolonial and composition studies that assist in articulating the issues of identity politics, hegemonic struggle, interpellation and interpolation, subaltern voice, and hybridity that are so crucial to writing program pedagogy and administration in the postcolonial age, for it is my argument that the writing classroom is a crucial site of contention in which the politics of identity are manifested as students appropriate and are appropriated by discourse.

This thesis examines elements of the conceptualization of literature within literary studies and literary production in a UK context, considering the concept of exclusionary practices based on the negligence of intersectional categories of identity such as race, gender, class, sexuality, etc., in the practice of understanding and interpreting literature. The methodologies I employ are close reading of various narratives, such as literary texts, as well as a narrative analysis aimed at a holistic understanding of my material. The second part of this thesis envisions a decolonised approach to literature in which we situate our positionalities when we read and interpret literary works. I demonstrate this through the analysis of several poems, informed by decolonial concepts and sensibilities. The results show that the maintenance of these exclusionary practices advances a grand-narrative of Western civilisation, ignoring the multiple sites people inhabit both from within, and outside, the West and that these practices are effectively harmful. I argue that through the project of decolonising literature there is a possibility of disrupting the perpetual macro-narrative of Western domination and universality.

This life history study examines how the changes in language and literacy policy in lower grades impacted on teachers’ classroom practices from independence in 1957 to 2014. As a result of British colonial rule, English is the official language in Ghana and other sub-Saharan African countries; English is also used in many schools, yet most young children enter school with no prior knowledge of the English language. Consequently, the language of instruction in lower grades has always been a contested issue. There are some who prefer the use of local language and see the use of English as inculcating Western values and culture in the African, thus depriving children of the knowledge of African traditional values. On the other hand, those in favour of English, argue that the use of local language was a means of providing inferior education to Africans by colonial governments. These differing views have led to changes in the language policy for lower grades since the country’s independence in 1957. Although there have been a number of studies on the language policy in lower grade, there is a gap in the literature on understanding how colonial rule and Western education influences the language/s used in Ghanaian schools to support children’s literacy development. In addition, there is little or no research to understand how policy changes in language and literacy have affected lower grade teachers’ classroom practices. This study therefore adopts a postcolonial theoretical perspective and has used in-depth interviews to collect data from seven lower grades teachers on the use of different language and literacy policies over the past six decades. The findings suggest that teachers’ personal values, beliefs and teacher training play a significant role in their attitudes towards language and literacy policy and their classroom practices. Though teaching in the local language helped in classroom interaction, making children more active, the study found that teachers’ knowledge of local language was hampered by the fact that local language was an optional subject in Senior High School. The English-only policy was seen as being responsible for children’s inability to understand and communicate freely in class, thereby making teaching difficult for teachers. The findings also show that, though the National Literacy Acceleration Programme (NALAP) was seen as a positive move to make children literate in both local language and English, the question of the use of a particular local language and the place of English in lower grades remains unresolved. This study concludes that young children’s literacy development depends to a large extent on an individual teacher’s language expertise in the local languages and English and their ability in using and teaching both efficiently in the classroom.

I den här studien analyseras 16 kvinnors självframställningar i antologin Sverige – en (o)besvarad kärlekshistoria ur ett postkolonialt feministiskt perspektiv där mellanförskap och identitet är centrala teman. Syftet med analysen är att finna hur den besvarade alternativt obesvarade kärleken till Sverige blir synliga i författarnas texter och hur det har påverkat dem. Texterna har jämförts med varandra för att finna olika mönster. Framträdande mönster är kritiken av dikotomiskt tänkande, ett tankesätt som har försatt kvinnorna i ett mellanförskap där majoriteten av dem inte känner en besvarad kärlek från Sverige. Kvinnorna har haft olika sätt att hantera sitt mellanförskap. För somliga av dem har det inneburit problem med att känna tillhörighet och för andra har mellanförskapet varit positivt eftersom det har blivit en styrka att se sin identitet som mångkulturell. Vidare ger studien förslag på hur undervisningen på olika sätt kan stärka elever i mellanförskap genom bland annat gemensam litteraturläsning med postkolonial feministisk teori som utgångspunkt.

A elaboração deste trabalho foi motivada pela percepção de que as vozes de indivíduos subalternizados, embora muitas vezes explicitadas no texto literário, passam freqüentemente despercebidas no processo analítico desses textos. A crença de que isto se deve não a uma negligência preconcebida, mas antes a uma colonização das [nossas] perspectivas cognitivas (QUIJANO, 2005, p.237), motivou-nos, conseqüentemente, a realizar um trabalho de natureza propositiva. Um trabalho, cabe dizer, que torne legível, para o estudioso de literatura, um arcabouço teórico capaz de auxiliá-lo na estruturação de análises literárias que abracem uma perspectiva descolonizada. E que assim sendo, auxilie o leitor e/ou crítico literário a transcender o enfoque dado à caracterização da opressão que demarca a existência subalternizada, ao potencializar a atenção para com as estratégias de resistência postas em movimento, pelo indivíduo marginalizado, para garantir as condições necessárias à sua sobrevivência. Desse modo, e entendendo a desconstrução das subalternidades como opção ético-políticoepistemológica, tratamos de recuperar a perspectiva bakhtiniana do outro; os conceitos de Relação e de Crioulização, propostos por Édouard Glissant; as reflexões sobre o homo situs e os sítios simbólicos de pertencimento, elaboradas por Hassan Zaoual; e a razão cosmopolita proposta por Boaventura de Sousa Santos. Isto se deu, porque o consenso intelectual percebido nos textos teóricos considerados quanto à existência, à capacidade e ao valor do papel de pessoas historicamente outremizadas mostrou-se adequado ao modelo teórico que desejávamos propor. Mas também porque nossa intenção era a de somar em conjunto os esforços das diferentes disciplinas acadêmicas, para interpretar e documentar diferenças e construir pontos de vista plurais (DIAS, 1998, p.128). Cumpre, ainda, dizer que o desenvolvimento desta dissertação se apoiou no intuito de contribuir para com a difusão da noção de existência subalterna, memoravelmente trabalhada por Spivak nos anos 1980, e recentemente transcendida por pesquisadores latino-americanos, quando se atêm ao exame da colonialidade do poder e de uma geopolítica do conhecimento, e por intelectuais portugueses ao considerarem os estudos e movimentos desenvolvidos a partir do Sul Global.
By recognizing that the voices of subaltern characters were often overlooked in the study of literary texts, we decided to carry out a theoretical work that could assist the student of literature to structure his/her literary analysis by following a decolonized perspective. We wanted the scholar of literature to transcend the focus on the characterization of the oppression that marks the subaltern existence by paying more attention to the strategies of resistance carried out by marginalized individuals in a way to ensure the necessary conditions for their survival. Thus, we decide to consider the Bakhtinian perspective of the other; the concepts of Relation and of Creolization, considered by Edouard Glissant; the concepts of homo situs and of symbolic sites of belonging, developed by Hassan Zaoual, and the idea of a cosmopolitan reason, as it is proposed by Boaventura de Sousa Santos. This was done because the intellectual consensus revealed in these texts, regarding the existence, the capacity and the value of the role of subaltern people was adequate to the theoretical model that we wanted to propose. It is also important to mention that the development of this work contributed to the diffusion of the concept of subaltern existence, remarkably crafted by Spivak in 1980s, and recently surpassed by Latin American researchers, when they stick to the examination of the coloniality of power and of a geopolitics of knowledge, and by Portuguese intellectuals when they tend to consider the studies and the resistance movements developed from the South.

Internationalisation is high on the agenda of Higher Education in the UK, with the promotion of the students’ intercultural capabilities seen as key for their future careers and lives as global citizens. Within this agenda international study visits are considered beneficial for student teachers, giving those with limited exposure to cultural diversity an opportunity to learn first-hand about education in other countries. Taking a postmodern approach and using Facet Methodology, the research investigated the extent to which the pattern of study visits in a School of Education in a University in the South West of England was conducive to promoting the intercultural capabilities of the participants. Drawing on perspectives from Bourdieu and postcolonial theory, analysis of the University policies on Internationalisation and Teaching and Learning revealed a variety of positions towards international study visits and interviews with Associate Deans of a Faculty explored how far these were being manifested for the different professional disciplines of Education, Health and Social Care. The perspectives, views and attitudes of the student and tutor participants on a range of study visits were then captured through focus groups, interviews and writing frames. The study found that neither the students nor the tutors showed an awareness of the nature and importance of intercultural capabilities and therefore the approaches to study visits were patchy in developing them. It suggests that though such visits can be beneficial in promoting such capabilities in the participants, they will only do so consistently if there is in place a transformational pedagogy, informed by postcolonial theory, and implemented by knowledgeable tutors. This approach would include a planned programme of pre-trip, in-trip and post-trip activities encouraging reflection upon experiences, whether positive or disturbing, based upon an explicit contract with students to engage in intercultural learning as a central aspect of the visit.

Muslims have the starring role in the mass media’s curriculum on otherness, which circulates in-between local and global contexts to powerfully constitute subjectivities. This study inquires into what it is like to be a female, Muslim student in Ontario, in this post 9/11 discursive context. Seven young Muslim women share stories of their high schooling experiences and their sense of identity in interviews and focus group sessions. They also respond to images of Muslim females in the print media, offering perspectives on the intersections of visual media discourses with their lived experience. This interdisciplinary project draws from cultural studies, postcolonial feminist theory, and post-reconceptualist curriculum theorizing. Working with auto/ethno/graphy, my own subjectivity is also brought into the study to trouble researcher-as-knower and acknowledge that personal histories are implicated in larger social, cultural, and historical processes. Using bricolage, I compose a hybrid text with multiple layers of meaning by juxtapositing theory, image, and narrative, leaving spaces for the reader’s own biography to become entangled with what is emerging in the text. Issues raised include veiling obsession, Islamophobia, absences in the school curriculum, and mass media as curriculum. Muslim females navigate a complex discursive terrain and their identity negotiations are varied. These include creating Muslim spaces in their schools, wearing hijab to assert their Muslim identity, and downplaying their religious identity at school. I argue for the need to engage students and teacher candidates in complicated conversations on difference via auto/ethno/graphy, pedagogies of tension, and epistemologies of doubt. Educators and researchers might also consider the possibilities of linking visual media literacy with social justice issues.

Cette étude porte sur le fait littéraire afro-antillais de l’ère coloniale (1920-1960). Il s’agit d’examiner les stratégies des agents à partir des cas de René Maran, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire, Édouard Glissant et Mongo Beti et de percevoir comment ils se définissent leur identité littéraire et sociale.

Pour ce faire, notre démarche s’articule en deux temps :(1) examiner les conditions de possibilité d’un champ littéraire afro-antillais à Paris (colonisation française et ses effets, configuration d’un champ littéraire pré-institutionnalisé, etc.) ;(2) analyser les processus de consolidation du champ, ainsi que les luttes internes qui opposent deux tendances émergentes représentées d’abord par Senghor et Césaire, ensuite par Beti et Glissant, dont les prises de position littéraires mettent en œuvre des « modèles empiriques » ;ceux-ci régulent et unifient leurs rapports au monde et à l’Afrique.

This study relates to afro-carribean literature in colonial period (1920-1960). We want to examine the strategies of agents like René Maran, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire, Édouard Glissant and Mongo Beti ;and we want to understand how they invente literary and social identity.

Our approach is structured in two steps: we shall analyse (1) the conditions for an afro-carribean literary field to appear in Paris (french colonialism and its consequences, configuration of literay field.) ;(2) the consolidation of this field and the internal struggles between two tendances represented by Senghor and Césaire, by Glissant and Beti whose literary practice shows the “empirical model” that regularizes and consolidates their relation with the world and Africa.
Doctorat en philosophie et lettres, Orientation langue et littérature
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This dissertation explores how the contemporary Anglophone novel asks its readers to imagine and respond to disposable life as it emerges in our present-day biopolitical landscape. As the project frames it, disposable life is not just life that is disposed of; it is life whose disposal is routine and unremarkable, even socially and legally sanctioned for such purposes as human consumption, scientific knowledge-production, and economic and political gain. In the novels considered, disposability is tied to excess--to the "too many" who cannot be counted, much less individuated on a case-by-case basis.

This project argues that the contemporary novel forces a global readership to confront the mechanisms of devaluing life that are part of everyday existence. And while the factory-farmed animal serves as the example of disposable life par excellence, this project frames disposability as a form of normalized violence that has the power to operate across species lines to affect the human as well. Accordingly, each chapter examines the contemporary condition of disposability via a different figure of disposable life: the nonhuman (the animal in J. M. Coetzee's The Lives of Animals and Disgrace), the replicated human (the clone in David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go), the woman (in Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy), and the postcolonial subject (the victim of industrial disaster in Indra Sinha's Animal's People and political violence in Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost). Chapter by chapter, the dissertation demonstrates how the contemporary novel both exposes the logic and operations of disposability, and, by mobilizing literary techniques like intertextual play and uncanny narration, offers up a set of distinctively literary solutions to it.

The dissertation argues that the contemporary novel disrupts the workings of disposability by teaching its audience to read differently--whether, for instance, by destabilizing the reader's sense of mastery over the text or by effecting paradigm shifts in the ethical frameworks the reader brings to bear on the encounter with the literary work. Taken together, the novels discussed in this dissertation move their readership away from a sympathetic imagination based on the potential substitutability of the self for the other and toward a form of readerly engagement that insists on preserving the other's irreducible difference. Ultimately, this project argues, these modes of reading bring those so-called disposable lives, which are abjected by dominant social, economic, and political frameworks, squarely back into the realm of ethical consideration.

Dissertation

This thesis deploys Homi Bhabha's perspective of postcolonial literary theory as a critical procedure to examine particular instances of fiction, as well as reportage on Botswana. Its unifying interest is to pinpoint the shifting nature or reality of Botswana and, by extension, of African identities. To that end, I use Bhabha's concept of liminality to inform the work of writers such as Unity Dow, Alexander McCall Smith, and instances of reportage (by Rupert Isaacson and Caitlin Davies), from the 1990s to date. The aims of the thesis are, among other things, to establish the extent to which Homi Bhabha's appropriation of the term liminality (which derives from Victor Turner's notion of limen for inbetweenness), and its application in the postcolonial context inflects the reading of the above works whose main motifs include the following: a contestation of any views which privilege one culture above another, challenging a jingoistic rootedness in one culture, and promoting an awareness of the existence of several, interlocking or even clashing realities which finally produce multiple meanings, values and identities. In short, it is proposed that identity is not a given but rather a product of a lived reality and therefore a social construct, something always in process. The thesis begins by theorizing liminality in Chapter 1 within the context of Homi Bhabha's understanding and interrogation of the colonial discourse. This is followed by the contextualization of liminality through the reading of, firstly, the fiction of Unity Dow in Chapters 2 and 3, and then the "detective" fiction of Alexander McCall Smith in Chapters 4 and 5. In the discussion of these works, I also touch on instances of reportage which relate to the lives of the authors. In the case of Smith's "detective" fiction, for example, reportage refers to his incorporation of actual historical events and personages whose impact, I argue, suggests the liminality of culture. In Chapter 6, the idea of reportage varies slightly to denote works of fiction in which there is a great deal of historical fact. Thus Rupert Isaacson's The Healing Land: A Kalahari Journey and Caitlin Davies' Place of Reeds are treated as works of reportage in line with Truman Capote's application of that term. What comes out most evidently in this study is the shifting idea of (Botswana/African) identity. It should be noted that rather than present an all-embracing account of the fiction on Botswana, the study only looks at the selected examples of writing and reportage.
University of South Africa National Research Foundation
English Studies
D. Litt. et Phil. (English)

This thesis will explore how writers of nineteenth-century Irish horror fiction, namely short stories and novels, used their works to express the social, cultural, and political events of the period. My thesis will employ a New Historicist approach to discuss the effects of colonialism on the writings, as well as archetypal criticism to analyse the mythic origins of the relevant metaphors. The structuralism of Tzvetan Todorov will be used to discuss the notion of the works' appeal as supernatural or possibly realistic works. The theory of Mikhail Bakhtin is used to discuss the writers' linguistic choices because such theory focuses on how language can lead to conflicts amongst social groups. The introduction is followed by Chapter One, "Ireland as England's Fantasy." This chapter discusses Ireland's literary stereotype as a fantasyland. The chapter also gives an overview of Ireland's history of occupation and then contrasts the bucolic, magical Ireland of fiction and the bleak social conditions of much of nineteenth-century Ireland. Chapter Two, "Mythic Origins", analyses the use of myth in nineteenth-century horror stories. The chapter discusses the merging of Christianity and Celtic myth; I then discuss the early Irish belief in evil spirits in myths that eventually inspired horror literature. Chapter Three, "Church versus Big House, Unionist versus Nationalist," analyses how the conflicts of Church/Irish Catholicism vs. Big House/Anglo-Irish landlordism, proBritish Unionist vs. pro-Irish Nationalist are manifested in the tales. In this chapter, I argue that many Anglo-Irish writers present stern anti-Catholic attitudes, while both Anglo-Irish and Catholic writers use the genre as political propaganda. Yet the authors tend to display Home Rule or anti-Home Rule attitudes rather than religious loyalties in their stories. The final chapter of the thesis, "A Heteroglossia of British and Irish Linguistic and Literary Forms," deals with the use of language and national literary styles in Irish literature of this period. I discuss Bakhtin's notion of heteroglossia and its applications to the Irish novel; such a discussion because nineteenth-century Ireland was linguistically Balkanised, with Irish Gaelic, Hibemo-English, and British English all in use. This chapter is followed by a conclusion.
English
M. Lit. et Phil. (English)

The objective of this thesis is to do a comparative analysis of four Romany life-stories in prose from different parts of the world and identify features which may justly be called characteristic of Romany writing. The comparison of Victor Vishnevsky's Memories of a Gypsy, Mikey Walsh's Gypsy Boy and Gypsy Boy on the Run, Andrej Giňa's Paťiv. Ještě víme, co je úcta and Irena Eliášová's Naše osada yields valuable insights into how Romany writers construct their identity and to what extent their current work relates to the existing literary genres. Because of Romany studies' multidisciplinary nature, the extensive introduction lays the theoretical foundations for the analysis. I proceed from the characteristics of Romany studies in general in part 1.2 to the way it was practised during my undergraduate years in Prague as opposed to the Western tradition (part 1.3). Using a case study of the schism Romany studies are currently facing in the Czech Republic, in part 1.4 I attempt to illustrate the more general epistemological challenges the field has been grappling with between essentialist/primordialist and radical constructivist views. As there is a definite scarcity of theoretical literature conceptualising Romany writing, in part 1.5 of the introduction the existing body of work is assessed and found...

This dissertation aims to create a scholarly space where a seventy-five-year-old “special relationship” (1945-2020) between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States is examined from an interdisciplinary comparativist perspective. I posit that a comparative study of Saudi and American fiction goes beyond the limitedness of global geopolitics and proves to uncover some new literary, sociocultural, and historical dimensions of this long history, while shedding some light on others. Saudi writers creatively challenge the inherently static and monolithic image of Saudi Arabia, its culture and people in the West. They also simultaneously unsettle the notion of homogeneity and enable us to gain new insight into self-perception within the local Saudi context by offering a wide scope of genuine engagements with distinctive themes ranging from spatiality, identity, ethnicity, and gender to slavery, religiosity and (post)modernity. On the other side, American authors still show some signs of ambivalence towards the depiction of the Saudi (Muslim/Arab) Other, but they nonetheless also demonstrate serious effort to emancipate their representations from the confining legacy of (neo)Orientalist discourse and oil politics by tackling the concepts of race, alterity, hegemony, radicalism, nomadism and (un)belonging.

Contemporary Canadian prairie women poets write about the mother figure to counter maternal suppression and the homogenization of maternal representations in literature. Critics, like Marianne Hirsch and Andrea O’Reilly, insist that mothers tell their own stories, yet many mothers are unable to. Daughter and mother stories, Jo Malin argues, overlap. The mother “becomes a subject, or rather an ‘intersubject’” in the text (2). Literary depictions of daughter-mother or mother-child intersubjectivities, however, are not confined to auto/biographical or fictional narratives. As a genre and potential site for representing maternal subjectivities, poetry continues to reside on the margins of motherhood studies and literary criticism. In the following chapters, I examine the writing strategies of selected poets and their representations of mothers specific to three transformative occasions: mourning mother-loss, becoming a mother, and reclaiming a maternal lineage. Several daughter-poets adapt the elegy to remember their deceased mothers and to maintain a connection with them. In accord with Tanis MacDonald and Priscila Uppal, these poets resist closure and interrogate the past. Moreover, they counter maternal absence and preserve her subjectivity in their texts. Similarly, a number of mother-poets begin constructing their mother-child (self-other) relationship prior to childbirth. Drawing on Lisa Guenther’s notions of “birth as a gift of the feminine other” and welcoming the stranger (49), as well as Emily Jeremiah’s link between “‘maternal’ mutuality” and writing and reading practices (“Trouble” 13), I investigate poetic strategies for negotiating and engaging with the “other,” the unborn/newborn and the reader. Other poets explore and interweave bits of stories, memories, dreams and inklings into their own motherlines, an identification with their matrilineage. Poetic discourse(s) reveal the limits of language, but also attest to the benefits of extra-linguistic qualities that poetry provides. The poets I study here make room for the interplay of language and what lies beyond language, engaging the reader and augmenting perceptions of the maternal subject. They offer new ways of signifying maternal subjectivities and relationships, and therefore contribute to the ongoing research into the ever-changing relations among maternal and cultural ideologies, mothering and feminisms, and regional women’s literatures.
May 2016