Dissertations / Theses on the topic '1919-1971 Criticism and interpretation'

xiv, 141 p. : ill. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.
Twentieth-century British figurative painter Francis Bacon (1909-1992) is perhaps best known for his near-obsessive series of papal paintings inspired by Diego Velazquez' renowned portrait Pope Innocent X (1650) and created over the course of Bacon's entire artistic career. The artist's working process plays a crucial role in understanding this celebrated and varied series. Bacon deliberately avoided Velazquez' "original" portrait, preferring instead to work with photographic reproductions of the piece alongside a large collection of seemingly disparate visual material in his chaotic studio at 7 Reece Mews (South Kensington, London, England). This thesis proposes that Bacon explored issues of mechanization, fragmentation, and repetition through these visual juxtapositions in order to offer a critique of artistic and religious institutions.
Committee in Charge: Dr. Kate Mondloch, Chair; Dr. Lauren G. Kilroy; Dr. Ellen Rees

Langdon Gilkey's theological method distinguishes three stages of the theological enterprise, namely, prolegomenon, constructive theology and theology of culture. In this dissertation we employ this threefold division as an organizing principle for the exposition and evaluation of Gilkey's thought. We propose further, however, that the whole project is best understood if seen primarily in terms of the third stage. Consequently the dissertation focuses on Gilkey's theology of culture and interprets his prolegomenon and constructive theology in terms of their foundational relevance to his theology of modernity in decline. Interpreted in this way the project as a whole displays a coherent interrelatedness. That coherence also means, however, that ambiguity and weak arguments in both the prolegomenon and constructive theology are reflected in the theology of culture. These deficiencies notwithstanding, Gilkey's theology of culture provides us with an analysis and diagnosis of modernity that plumbs to the religious depths of that culture. Such analysis is necessary for all cultures but especially for cultures in decline.

This thesis introduces a skeletal representation of the "kind" of individual Doris Lessing promotes in her work. Organized around five semantic qualifiers, this analysis explores a number of Lessing's works belonging to several literary categories for evidence of the appearance of the daring, self-aware, public, engaged, and vocal individual. It argues that Lessing, as a humanist, is committed to individual personal actualization but that this is tempered with her personnally held views about what is valuable and enriching human experience. It concludes that as author of fictional tales, autobiographical texts as well as political essays, she designs the path of self-development she considers worthy of mention.

This thesis examines the development of the political outlook of the German author and revolutionary politician, Ernst Toller. It begins by looking at Toller's early years and explains how his experience as a front-line soldier during the First World war transformed his views, causing him to reject the conservative-nationalist ethos he had grown up with and to become, in his own description, a revolutionary pacifist. It then looks at his involvement in the revolutionary events which took place in Bavaria at the end of the First World War, the so-called Räterepublik, examines how they affected his understanding of social and political reality and traces their artistic reflection in the plays he wrote in the following period. A recurrent theme in Toller's political thinking throughout the years of the Weimar Republic was the idea of an Einheitsfront, a defence block of workers' organisations, which he advocated as the only means of halting the rise of National Socialism. Unfortunately, Toller's appeals to the main workers' parties to form such a block went unheard, yet they are significant all the same in that they reveal the acute political insight of a man whom many of his contemporaries dismissed as a hopeless utopian. Interestingly, and a point often missed in studies of his politics, Toller abandoned the Einheitsfront after he went into exile in 1933 and came to favour instead the creation of a Volksfront a broad, cross-party anti-fascist coalition which the Soviet Union vigorously promoted all through the 1930s until the signing of the Stalin-Hitler Pact in 1940. Toller's support for this idea, in part a corollary of his support for the Soviet Union itself, had a profound impact on his political outlook in exile, and caused him to close his eyes to the repression suffered by the opponents of the Stalin regime both inside and outside Russia, and, most significantly, led him to ignore the nascent socialist revolution which flourished in Spain after the defeat of Franco's coup d'etat in 1936. This study examines in some detail, therefore, Toller's involvement in the Volksfront, redefines his attitude towards Communist Russia and shows how his efforts to suppress his revolutionary beliefs and to become instead a mere anti-fascist affected his creative spirit during his years of exile.

The American Projectivist verse of Jack Spicer, Charles Olson, and Robert Duncan contains within its poetics many epistemological assumptions shared by quantum physics. These assumptions exist in three broad categories: perception, process, and wholeness. In physics, the epistemology of perception has been profoundly altered by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Relation, which creates a symbiotic relationship between the observer and the observed. At least one photon of light is necessary to observe an electron; one photon is sufficient to alter the electron's momentum or position; therefore, a physicist affects an electron's "fate" in the act of observing it. Similarly, in Projectivist poetics, the perceptions of the reader are often enlisted to help "compose" the poem which is offered to him in "pieces," or, as in Robert Duncan's poetry especially, in self-reflexive segments. By "self-reflexive," we further mean that the Projectivist poem often "mirrors itself" as an electron "mirrors itself" as wave or as particle, while it is paradoxically both. A Projectivist poem may pause halfway through and "unravel" itself, i.e., study its own etymology. The reader thus must participate in "putting the poem back together," as the physicist participates in the phenomena he observes. The second epistemological model in physics and poetry stresses becoming, rather than being. Matter at the subatomic level has been defined as energy-in-flux. Similarly, the Projectivist poems of Charles Olson especially often exist as "fields" with no syntactical beginnings or endings. Moreover, the "I" of the Maximus Poems is often seen in a perpetual process of becoming the world of spacetime in the poems, creating a system similar to the being-and-becoming model of particle-and-field in quantum mechanics. Third, wholeness is a premise governing poetry and physics separately and together. Jack Spicer's thematics blend matter and consciousness, as "love and death matter/Matter as wave and particle." Similarly, Robert Duncan's poetics describes a "dancing organization between personal and cosmic identity." In physics, wholeness is seen primarily in an "implicate order" which attempts to overturn the old paradigms of fragmentation and connect matter and consciousness, including language, as interrelated systems of information.

Everything about fascism is aesthetic: this is what our thesis aims to demonstrate, based on the example of interwar French Fascism (1919--1939). It studies both discourses, symbolic practices, and literary texts, in order to show the multiple aspects of fascism's aesthetic dimension. Two theories, discourse analysis and sociocriticism, have guided us and permitted us to explain the interaction between aesthetics and ideology.
Our thesis is divided in three parts, each one devoted to one of fascism's central themes: the leader, the youth, and the group. In our first chapter, we examine the charismatic leader's many faces, among which are the poet and the warrior. We then show that fascism's discourse on heroism makes of the epic hero an ideological model and that, in its turn, this ideological hero greatly influenced Pierre Drieu la Rochelle's representation of the hero. But, as we indicate, Drieu's novels reveal that the cult of the hero is both a glorification of the self and a self-hatred. In our second chapter we examine fascism's cult of youth such as it was in Italy and Germany, after which we have demonstrated that, in a way, French fascism was an extreme radicalization of the contemporary French discourse on youth. Then, we analyse one of Robert Brasillach's novels which brings to the fore the dark side of fascism's cult of youth: its death drive.
In our last chapter, we unearth the aesthetic principles underlying fascism's political spectacle, principles that we also find at the heart of Drieu's texts. We consequently state that Drieu has adopted fascism's aesthetic years before he realized he had fascist ideas. Going a little further yet, we stipulate that Drieu thus reveals that the aesthetic was one of the main roads towards fascism. We then establish, in our final conclusion, a synthetic description of fascist aesthetics: an aesthetics of pathos, exhibition, sublime, violence, and death.

Thesis (MDram)--University of Stellenbosch, 2011.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die literêre interteks staan sentraal tot die teks-analitiese proses en die gevolglike ontsluiting van betekenis binne die oeuvre van Sarah Kane, maar in die huidige besprekings van haar werk, word hierdie interteks alleenlik tot literatuur soos die roman, die gedig en die teaterteks beperk. Die gevolg is dat daar ‘n totale verontagsaming van die neerslag van die liriek as nóg ‘n tipe literêre interteks is. Beide James Macdonald (in Fisher 2001b) en Iain Fisher (2001b) dui daarop dat lirieke van heelparty orkeste - o.a. Joy Division, Radiohead, Nirvana en die Beatles - in Kane se werk nagespeur kan word, maar geeneen blyk ondersoek na die moontlike redes vir die ontlening daarvan óf hoe dit die betekeniswaarde van haar werk informeer, in te stel nie. Deur op Still en Worton (1990:1-2) se teorie dat die leser van ‘n teks sy/haar eie intertekste op daardie teks van toepassing kan maak in ‘n poging om die betekenis daarvan te ontsluit (selfs al word betrokke intertekste nie noodwendig deur die skrywer erken nie), te trek, word daarop gedui waar en hoe verskeie lirieke van voorgenoemde vier orkeste hul neerslag in vier van Kane se dramas, Phaedra’s Love, Cleansed, Crave en 4.48 Psychosis vind. Na gelang van Michael Riffaterre (1990:58) se teorie omtrent “connectives” (in hierdie geval die lirieke wat Kane se tekste met liedjies uit die populêre kultuur verbind) en hoe ‘n deeglike voorkennis daaromtrent die leser daartoe in staat stel om te bepaal of betrokke “connective” wel die teenwoordigheid van ‘n interteks daarstel al dan nie, word ‘n deeglike studie van elkeen van die lirieke gedoen. Daarna word verskeie raakpunte tussen hierdie lirieke en Kane se tekste uitgewys, hetsy dit met onderwerpmateriaal of tematiek verband hou, sodat ge-argumenteer word dat hierdie lirieke wel as intertekste beskou kan word. Vervolgens word die betekenisse van die onderskeie lirieke op Kane se dramas (spesifiek die tematiek daarvan) van toepassing gemaak en daar word ge-argumenteer dat hierdie intertekste óf bestaande beskouings daarvan ondersteun en moontlik daarop uitbrei óf dat dit tot radikaal nuwe insigte omtrent haar werk aanleiding gee, sodat nuwe en oorspronklike benaderings tot tematiek en karakters in die toekoms gevolg sou kon word. Uiteindelik illustreer ek aan die hand van my meestersproduksie empty (2010) hoe ek my benadering tot die neerslag van die liriek as interteks in Kane se werk op genoemde produksie van toepassing gemaak het, sodat die betekenis daarvan ook na gelang van die liriek as interteks duidelik word.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The intertextual relationship between Kane’s own work and those literary sources she derives ideas and adopts words from, plays a vital part in the textual analysis of her oeuvre. However, current discussions about and analyses of this intertextual relationship only focus on the novel, the poem and the play as literary intertexts and their subsequent influence on the interpretation of her work. This results in a complete disregard for the lyric’s use as another type of literary intertext (where the lyric is to be understood as the written and not the sung word). James Macdonald (in Fisher 2001b) and Iain Fisher (2001b) both refer to the presence of lyrics from various bands - among them Joy Division, Radiohead, Nirvana and The Beatles - in Kane’s work, but neither of them preoccupy themselves with the further investigation as to why these lyrics have been borrowed or how they inform the interpretation of her work. Drawing on Still and Worton’s (1990:1-2) theory that “the reader’s experience of some practice or theory unknown to the author may lead to a fresh interpretation” of any given text he/she reads (i.e. where the reader applies the knowledge about his/her own intertexts in an attempt to decipher the meaning of the text he/she is currently reading or studying), a clear indication of where and how various lyrics from aforementioned bands can be found in four of Kane’s dramas: Phaedra’s Love, Cleansed, Crave and 4.48 Psychosis. Based on Michael Riffaterre’s (1990:58) theory of “connectives” (in this case those lyrics which establish a connection between Kane’s plays and songs from popular culture) and how proper foreknowledge about these “connectives” can help in determining whether they do establish an intertextual relationship between the play and the song(s) or not, a thorough study of every lyric is undertaken and various similarities between them and Kane’s plays are highlighted. Based on these similarities (whether it be with regard to themes, subject matter or characterization), arguments are made that these lyrics should be viewed as intertexts, and the meanings and analyses of these lyrics are subsequently applied to Kane’s work. In the end these literary intertexts either support existing views and interpretations of her work, or they lead to radically new insights about the work, so that new, innovative and original approaches can henceforth be followed with regard to themes and characterization in her work. Finally I use my own master’s production, empty (2010), as an example to illustrate how I applied the research I have done about the lyric as an intertext in Kane’s work, on my own work and how these various lyrics help to give a better understanding of the play.

Writers of fiction have long since relied on love, romance, and desire to drive the plots of their work, yet some postcolonial authors use romance and interpersonal relationships to illustrate the larger political and social forces that affect their relatively marginalized experiences in a global context. To illustrate this literary strategy, I have chosen to discuss four novels written in the twenty-first century by Pakistani authors: Tbe Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, Trespassing by Uzma Aslam Khan, The Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam, and Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie. With the geographical origin of these writers as a common starting place from which to compare and contrast their perspectives on global politics, their understandings of gender, and their perceptions of how the public and the private constitute and intersect each other, I will use postcolonial theory to dissect the treatment of romance in their respective novels.
v, 85 leaves ; 29 cm

Kobayashi Takiji's (1903-1933) Kanikōsen (The Crab Cannery Ship, 1929), the outstanding work from the proletarian literary movement, experienced an influx of new adaptations into various mediums during the years that preceded and followed the "Kanikōsen boom" of 2008. This thesis focuses on two manga adaptations that provide readers with starkly different takes on the original story. Using theories by Scott McCloud and Azuma Hiroki, I first attempt to draw parallels between the form of manga and that of the novel. Then, I examine the manner in which the most explicitly political content of the novel is adapted into the manga versions. Through this examination of form and content, it becomes apparent that, despite their differences, both adaptations reinforce a vague, individualist-humanist ideology that undermines the notions of class consciousness and class struggle that are central to the narrative of Kanikōsen. This diminishing of the explicitly "Red" aspects of the original reflects the Japanese public's general aversion to politics that has persisted since the early 1970's until this day.

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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Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico - CNPq
This work aims to understand the capacity to be alone from the psychoanalytic perspective of D. Winnicott, thus seeking the importance of this theoretical formulation for human maturation and, consequently, showing its relevance to the clinic. In our clinical experience, we find many people who fear being alone and are always in search of someone or something to do. And very often we listen to these individuals who, when alone, do not know what to do, feel lost, helpless, so they prefer to work without rest to feel alive. This led us to interest in the study of the capacity to be alone in the light of Winnicottian psychoanalytic thinking. For this, in view of the classical principle of hermeneutics, in which each concept of an author must be elucidated in the totality of his work, one sought the comprehension of the capacity to be alone in the whole psychoanalytic thought of D. W. Winnicott. In this way, we tried to contextualize the starting point of the Winnicottian psychoanalytic vision and global comprehension of its psychoanalytic perspective, emphasizing some concepts, such as: the human animal, the experience animal, the ego and id, his notion of Instinct and drive, that of false and true self, that of ego (egorelatedness), the paradox, that of favorable environment, and especially its fundamental theory of human emotional maturation. We emphasize these concepts, therefore, as they support the understanding of the study theme. From this, we sought to reflect on the ability to be alone and to explain the understanding of this original Winnicottian formulation, served as a clinical case attended and described by Winnicott himself, the so-called case B. From the theory of emotional maturity of DW Winnicott, the ability to be alone is associated with an important initial moment of human development: the essential solitude. With evolving from the integrative process of the individual, five fundamental themes need to be established for him to experience being alone, as ability: first, the status of a unitary identity; Acquisition of a personality and a personal identity (true self); Third, the organization of the egoic nucleus that makes possible to experience a personal environment; Fourth, personal development facilitated by the maternal environment and, finally, the recognition and incorporation of maternal (mother-environment) care as a good object. Thus, in Winnicott's perspective, being alone as a capacity is a highly sophisticated phenomenon, in which the individual enjoying emotional health can experience, with all confidence in himself and in the environment in which he is inserted, being with himself, calmly, Being able to rest, relax without losing contact with shared reality and, moreover, live their interpersonal relationships, be it friendship or loving, with personal sense, experiencing them as real and valiant
Este trabalho tem como objetivo compreender a capacidade de estar só desde a perspectiva psicanalítica de D. W. Winnicott, buscando, assim, a importância dessa formulação teórica para o amadurecimento humano e, consequentemente, mostrando a sua relevância para a clínica. Em nossa experiência clínica, encontramos muitas pessoas que temem estar sós e sempre estão em busca de alguém ou de algo para fazer. E, com muita frequência, escutamos desses indivíduos que, quando estão sós, não sabem o que fazer, sentem-se perdidos, desamparados, por isso, preferem trabalhar sem descanso para se sentirem vivos. Isso nos levou a nos interessar pelo estudo da capacidade de estar só à luz do pensamento psicanalítico winnicottiano. Para tanto, tendo em vista o princípio clássico da hermenêutica, no qual cada conceito de um autor deve ser elucidado na totalidade de sua obra, buscamos a compreensão da capacidade de estar só no conjunto do pensamento psicanalítico de D. W . Winnicott. Desse modo, procuramos contextualizar o ponto de partida da visão psicanalítica winnicottiana e compreensão global de sua perspectiva psicanalítica, enfatizando alguns conceitos, tais como: o de animal humano, o de experiência, o de ego e de id, a sua noção de instinto e de pulsão, o de falso e verdadeiro si-mesmo, o de relação de ego (egorelatedness), o paradoxo, o de ambiente favorável, e, especialmente, a sua fundamental teoria do amadurecimento emocional humano. Destacamos tais conceitos, pois, eles sustentam o entendimento do tema do estudo. A partir disso, procuramos refletir sobre a capacidade de estar só e, para explicitar a compreensão desta original formulação winnicottiana, servimos de um caso clínico atendido e descrito pelo próprio Winnicott, o denominado caso B. A partir da teoria do amadurecimento emocional de D. W. Winnicott, a capacidade de estar só se associa a um importante momento inicial do desenvolvimento humano: a solidão essencial. Com evoluir do processo integrativo do indivíduo, cinco temas fundamentais necessitam ser estabelecidos para que ele experimente o estar só como capacidade: primeiro, o estatuto de um identidade unitária, segundo, a aquisição de uma personalidade e uma identidade pessoal (si-mesmo verdadeiro), terceiro, a organização do núcleo egoico, que possibilita experimentar um ambiente pessoal, quarto, o desenvolvimento pessoal facilitado pelo ambiente materno e, por último, o reconhecimento e a incorporação dos cuidados maternos (mãe-ambiente) como um objeto bom. Assim, na perspectiva winnicottiana, o estar só, como capacidade, constitui um fenômeno altamente sofisticado, em que o indivíduo, gozando de saúde emocional, pode experimentar, com toda confiança em si e no ambiente em que está inserido, o estar consigo mesmo, tranquilamente, sendo capaz de descansar, relaxar sem perder o contato com a realidade compartilhada e, além disso, viver as suas relações interpessoais, seja de amizade ou amorosas, com sentido pessoal, experimentando-as como real e valorosas

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The presente research aimed to design a clipping of the Winnicottian contribution to the analytical use of the dream, along the initial stages of emotional development prior to the repressed unconscious. As specific objectives, it was studied: a) the dream as an experience of integration, constitution and communication of the individual with himself and with the other; b) the provision of this experience within the context of the analytical setting; and c) the analytical use of the dream inscribed in the process of maturation. In the methodology, it was used: 1) the bibliographical research to: a) contextualize the Winnicottian contribution on the analytical use of the dream in the psychoanalytic literature; b) revisit the Winnicottian theoretical foundation; and c) to select Winnicottian texts whose clinical accounts illustrate the use of the dream and allow a recognition of subsidies to the analytical clinic; 2) research-listening and research-investigative in the clinical fragments of a psychoanalytic case, with which reflected on the analytical use of the dream with the borderline patient. The project was based on the Winnicottian theoretical / clinical conception to support the proposal that, in the initial phases of maturation process, the dream and the experiences of to play have their roots in the imaginative elaboration of body functioning and are fundamentally in the integration and in story of the self and, besides the cultural experiences, open a space of intertwining and enrichment of the human being's life
A presente pesquisa buscou realizar o delineamento de um recorte da contribuição winnicottiana ao uso analítico do sonho junto às fases iniciais do desenvolvimento emocional anteriores ao inconsciente reprimido. Como objetivos específicos, estudou: a) o sonho enquanto uma experiência de integração, constituição e de comunicação do indivíduo consigo mesmo e com o outro; b) a provisão dessa experiência dentro do contexto do setting analítico e c) o uso analítico do sonho inscrito no processo do amadurecimento. Na metodologia, utilizou: 1) a pesquisa bibliográfica para: a) contextualizar a contribuição winnicottiana sobre o uso analítico do sonho na literatura psicanalítica; b) revisitar a fundamentação teórica winnicottiana; e c) selecionar textos winnicottianos cujos relatos clínicos ilustram o uso do sonho e permitem um reconhecimento de subsídios à clínica analítica; 2) a pesquisa-escuta e a investigativa nos fragmentos clínicos de um atendimento psicanalítico, com os quais refletiu sobre o uso analítico do sonho junto ao paciente borderline. O projeto apoiou-se na concepção teórica/clínica winnicottiana para fundamentar a proposta de que, nas fases iniciais do amadurecimento, o sonho e as experiências do brincar têm suas raízes na elaboração imaginativa das funções corporais e encontram-se fundamentalmente na integração e historiação do si-mesmo e, juntamente com as experiências culturais, abrem um espaço de entrelaçamento e enriquecimento do viver do ser humano

This dissertation examines Nadine Gordimer’s Burger’s Daughter, Rachel Zadok’s Gem Squash Tokoloshe, and Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing. It focuses on the development of each of the protagonists’ identities in three realms: the individual, the familial and the societal. Additionally, it is concerned with the specific socio-political contexts in which the novels are set. It employs psychoanalytic and historical materialist frameworks in order to engage with the disparate areas of identity with which it is concerned. The introduction establishes the analytical perspective of the dissertation and explores the network of theoretical frames on which the dissertation relies. Additionally, it contextualises each of the novels, within their historical contexts, as well as in relation to the theory. The first chapter examines Nadine Gordimer’s Burger’s Daughter. It focuses on the protagonist’s assertion of an identity independent of her father’s role as a political activist, and her eventual acceptance of the universal difficulty in negotiating a life which is both private and political. The second chapter, on Rachel Zadok’s Gem Squash Tokoloshe, examines the relationship between the protagonist’s traumatic experiences as a child and her inability to assert an identity as an adult. The similarities between the protagonist’s attempts to address her traumas and thereby create herself anew and South Africa’s employment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a means to acknowledge and engage with its traumatic history is of import. The third chapter which deals with Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing traces the life of its protagonist, whose identifications remain childish as a result of having witnessed her parents’ difficult relationship. Her understanding of the world is informed by a rigid, binary understanding, which is ultimately disrupted by her relationship with a black employee. She is incapable of readjusting her frame of reference, however, and ultimately goes mad. I conclude that, while my focus has been on personal, familial and social identifications, the standard terms in which identity is examined, namely, race, class, and gender, are present in each of the three tiers of identity with which I have been concerned.

Terror in the African Anglophone novels of Chinua Achebe, Doris Lessing, J.M. Coetzee and Laila Lalami originated as a consequence of a breakdown in the family structure. Traditionally, conventional patriarchy, in addition to securing the psychological and material needs of the family, has served as one of the building blocks of tribes and nations. Since the father figure within narrative is allegorized as a metonym of the state, the absence of patriarchal authority represents the disintegration of the link between individuals and national institutions. Consequently, characters may also turn to committing acts of terror as a rejection of the dominant national ideology. This dissertation aims to demonstrate how the breakdown of the family and the conventional gendering of roles may give rise to terrorist violence in the African setting. To recontextualize the persistence of the Conradian definition of terror as an Anglo-European phenomenon brought to Africa, I contrast the ways in which the breakdown of the family affects both indigenous and Anglo-European households in Africa across generations. I suggest that, under the reinvention of older gender norms, the unfulfilling Anglo-European patriarchy exposes Anglo-European women to indigenous violence. Moreover, I theorize that the absence of patriarchal authority leads indigenous families to seek substitutions in the form of alternative family institutions, such as religious and political organizations, that conflict with the national ideology. Furthermore, against the backdrop of globalized capitalism, commodity fetishism emerges as a substitute to compensate for the absent father figure. Therefore, this project demonstrates the indisputable relationship between the breakdown of the family structure and individual acts of terror that aim at the fulfillment of capitalist fetish or individual desire, and at the expense of national security. Finally, the rhetorical dimension of terror against family and women in Africa will be proven to be the allegorized norm of globalized terror in the twenty-first century.

This research aims to illuminate how and why war challenges the limits of poetic representation, through an analysis of non-combatant poetry of the Second World War. It is motivated by the question: how can one portray, represent, or talk about war? Literature on war poetry tends to concentrate on the combatant poets of the First World War, or their influence, while literature on the Second World War tends to focus on prose as the only expression of literary war experience. With a historicist approach, this thesis advances our understanding of both the Second World War, and our inherited notions of 'war poetry,' by parsing its historiography, and investigating the role critical appraisals have played in marginalising this area of poetic response. This thesis examines four poets as case studies in this field of research-W.H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, Dylan Thomas, and Stevie Smith-and evaluates them on both their individual explorations of poetic tone, faith systems, linguistic innovations, subversive performativity, and their collective trajectory towards a commitment to represent the war in their poetry. The findings from this research illustrate how too many critical appraisals have minimised or misrepresented Second World War poetry, and how the poets responded with a self-reflexivity that bespoke a deeper concern with how war is remembered and represented. The significance of these findings is breaking down the notion of objective fact in poetic representations of war, which are ineluctably subjective texts. These findings also offer insight into the 'failure' of poetry to represent war as a necessary part of war representation and prompt a rethinking of who has the 'right' experience-or simply the right-to talk about war.

For his first work composed without Schoenberg's supervision, Berg chose to set five short poems by his friend and intellectual idol, the controversial poet Peter Altenberg. Carrying the title Filnf Orchesterlieder nach Ansichtskarten-Texten von Peter Altenberg (1912), the cycle is at once aphoristic (with respect to the songs' duration) and titanic (with respect to their orchestration and motivic density). But the title invites the question: what imagery might the composer have hoped to illustrate with these musical postcards? This thesis investigates text-music relations in Berg's opus 4 with the objective of showing that the music's structure, far from being semantically neutral, participates actively in the création of rich poetic imagery anchored in the socio-cultural context of turn-of-the-century Vienna. Previous studies focus on the work's cyclic motives its interval-cycle substructure. The present study focuses on text-music relations and voice leading - the contrapuntal and harmonie procedures which govern the music's surface and determine its deep structure. It is shown that the voice-leading structures of the individual lieder - in both local detail and at a more broadly conceptual level - give form, meaning, and nuance to the poetic image that emerges in each song, and help define the different facets—physical, emotional, and spiritual — of the protagonist that inhabits them.

李凱琳.
"2013年9月".
"2013 nian 9 yue".
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 138-146).
Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Abstract in Chinese and English.
Li Kailin.

The changing social consciousness in South Africa during the twentieth century falls within a political-historical framework of events: amongst others, World Wars I and II; the institution of the Apartheid Laws in 1948; the declaration of a South African Republic in 1960; Nelson Mandela's release in 1992. The literary social consciousness of Abrahams, Paton, Mphahlele and Gordimer spans the time before and after 1948. Their novels reflect the changing reality of a country whose racial and social problems both pre-date and will outlive the apartheid ideology. These and other novelists' changing social consciousness is an indication of the development of attitudes and reactions to issues which have their roots in the human and in the economic spheres, as well as in the political, cultural and religious. Their work interprets the history and the change in the South African social consciousness, and also gives some indication of a possible future vision.
English Studies
M.A. (English)

This project asserts that male Naturalist authors were not “hypermasculine” acolytes of strident manhood, but instead offer alternative constructions which they portray as less traumatic and more cohesive than prevailing social notions of normative male behavior. I maintain that the rise of the concept of manhood advocated by Theodore Roosevelt in the early decades of the twentieth century contributed to this misconception, for it generated a discourse of “manly” individualism which became equated with socially acceptable performances of masculinity for many Americans. My first chapter illustrates the gradual evolution of an individualistic, violent, and strident concept of manhood, which I label “strenuous masculinity,” through the rhetoric of Theodore Roosevelt. The second chapter explores the ways in which Stephen Crane’s fiction illuminates the trauma and confusion inherent in strenuous concepts of manhood. Many of Crane’s stories, like “Five White Mice,” demonstrate the failure of individualism, while others, like “The Open Boat,” document a more positive construction of what I call “homosocial manhood.” In my third and final chapter, I attempt to prove that Richard Wright’s early texts showcase a range of possible outcomes of black male attempts to stand up to racial oppression. I document that Uncle Tom’s Children and Native Son both depict a continuum of confrontation, with individual violence on one end of the spectrum and non-violent group protest on the other. Furthermore, because individual resistance is consistently equated with the suffering and death of the protagonists, my project implies that strenuous manhood also fails to provide a site for effectual and sustainable opposition to the negating forces of racial oppression.
Theodore Roosevelt and the transformation of American masculinity -- "The youth leaned heavily on his friend" : alternative constructions of masculinity in Stephen Crane's fiction -- Richard Wright's early fiction as a rejection of the racial oppression of strenuous manhood.
Department of English

過往研究者主要從主題、文化意涵等角度詮釋臺灣科幻小說的內容，鮮有從宏觀角度探討科幻小說創作與臺灣文學發展的關係。本文以為臺灣科幻小說與臺灣文學的「本土」論述密切相關。科幻小說是源自西方的文學類型(literary genre)，它擅於探討跨越國族的普世議題，臺灣作家往往藉由引介和創作科幻小說，開拓他們創作的「世界視野」，並檢討「本土」論述中的民族主義情結。故此，臺灣科幻小說特別強調文化全球化對作家反思臺灣歷史和地域文化的重要性。在全球化的語境下，作家必須正視外國文化對臺灣「本土」的影響，並積極思考臺灣文學與世界文學共同的創作方向。
為了深入探討臺灣科幻小說對「本土」議題的反思，本文以三位作家的科幻創作為例，具體呈現科幻小說「從『本土』到世界」的發展過程：(一) 七、八十年代期間，張系國(1944- )以科幻小說審視鄉土小說中的民族主義情結，同時追溯對外省籍作家的身份認同極為重要的國共分裂史；(二) 八、九十年代期間，林燿德(1962-1996)以科幻小說檢討「本土」論述的暴力性質，同時以深受日本流行文化影響的年輕作家的立場，回顧日據時期的殖民歷史；(三) 二千年以後，吳明益(1971- )以科幻小說檢視「本土」論述中的族群文化，探討原住民與自然共處的方式，同時超越特定族群的立場，想像南島民族(Austronesian, 即原住民)遷徙的歷史。通過上述三位作家的科幻創作，本文希望指出臺灣科幻小說逐漸超越「本土」論述的局限，彰顯其普世價值。
In the previous studies on Taiwanese science fiction, researches mainly adopted the thematic or cultural approaches among the others to interpret the science fiction. Seldom did they study them macroscopically and investigate the relationship between this kind of creative work and Taiwanese Literature. This thesis proposes that there exists an intertwined relationship between Taiwanese science fiction and the "native" discourse of Taiwanese Literature. Science fiction, as a literary genre, comes from the West and is known for its ability to transcend the boundaries of nation and ethnicity to discuss the universal topics. By introducing this genre and creating this kind of literary works, those writers open up the "globe perspective" in their works and examine the Nationalist sentiment in the "native" discourse. Hence, Taiwanese science fiction places heavy emphasis on the influence of Cultural Globalization upon Taiwanese writers’ reflections on Taiwanese history and culture. Under the context of Globalization, writers must face the influence of foreign cultures on "native" Taiwan and actively contemplate the common direction for creative works in Taiwanese and World Literature.
To further discuss how Taiwanese science fiction’s reflection upon the concept of ‘Native’, this thesis will study the science fiction of three writers to illustrate the Taiwanese science fiction’s development from "Native" to "Global" as follows: (1) In the 70s and 80s, Chang Shi-kuo (b.1944) examines the Nationalist sentiment in Nativist Literature through Science Fiction while he also traces the history of the separation between Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Party, which is of vital importance to the immigrant writers’ identity; (2) Lin Yao-de (1962-1996) explores the violent nature of the "nativist" discourse by science fiction. Meanwhile, under the influence of Japanese popular culture over the young writers, he also reviews Taiwanese History during the Japanese occupation; (3) After the millennium, Wu Ming-yi (b.1971) investigates the ethnic culture in the "native" discourse and examines the aborigine’s ways to cohabit with the nature. He also transcends the boundary of a specific ethnic group to create the imaginative history of relocation of the Austronesian (that is the aborigines). Through examining the science fiction of the above writers, the thesis would illustrate how the Taiwanese science fiction is transcending the limits of the particular "native" discourse and displays its universality.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
何嘉俊.
Parallel title from English abstract.
Thesis (M.Phil.) Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2014.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 143-155).
Abstracts in Chinese and English.
He Jiajun.

Literary representation of character in South Africa is not just problematic but also complicated by racial dynamics, which easily lead to prejudiced portrayal by most writers. Mphahlele's reaction to White writing's "distortion" of the image of Blacks, in his critical texts resulted in his being labelled a protest writer. Concerning his creative writing, he admits that he initially couldn't portray the character of a white person roundedly due to limited acquaintance with him. What he only knows about him and therefore depicts in his early writings is the White stereotype. His acquaintance with the White world through varied interaction gives a leverage that improves his portrayal of the White character. Consequently his later works reflect objective representation of characters from different races. The study therefore concludes that he falls outside the bracket of protest writers, as his literary works prove to transcend the limitations of stereotypical character representation.
Afrikaans and Theory of Literature
M.A. (Theory of Literature)

This is a comparative study of a selection of the works of H.I.E. and R.R.R. Dhlomo in an attempt to specify the ways in which both writers contributed to constructing a sense of African modernity. While the focus will be on the content of the writing, it will include an analysis of the form and style of the literature, as well as the historical and political setting of the work, and of the authors. By employing the theoretical work of Alain Locke, David Attwell and Tim Couzens, I will address the issue of how Herbert and Rolfes Dhlomo negotiate the issue of a Christian modernity, as well as the ambiguous relationship between tradition and modernity. Another matter that I will focus on is that of the differences and similarities of their writing, in terms of aesthetics and their positions vis-a-vis tradition, modernity and the role of the Black subject, among other topics. Some questions that I will address are whether they are both contributing to an African modernity, and in what sense, and whether Rolfes' work complements that of Herbert, and vice versa. This will be done through a close reading of selected works across a range of mediums, from literary texts such as plays, poems and short stories to the print media. In the Introduction I will outline the key theoretical work and definitions that I will make use of in my research, as well as give brief biographies of the two writers under examination. In Chapter One I will make a close reading of selected works of Herbert Dhlomo, and will attempt to show his changing role in the establishment of a sense of an African modernity. In Chapter Two the focus of my work will be selected prose fiction of Rolfes Dhlomo. I will examine the major themes of these works, and show how they pertain to a sense of an African modernity. In Chapter Three I will examine Rolfes Dhlomo's "R. Roamer Esq." column from the Bantu World. I have selected in particular the year 1941, and I will show how Rolfes Dhlomo used satire and topical issues to help in the creation of a sense of African modernity. The Conclusion deals with the findings of my research on the role that Herbert and Rolfes Dhlomo played in the creation of an African modernity in South Africa.
Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2004.