Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Historical fiction, Italian History and criticism'
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Canton, Licia. "The question of identity in Italian-Canadian fiction." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1997. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp02/NQ43473.pdf.
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Niemeyer, Lisa. "Writing German historical fiction in an age of change, 1848-1871." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.609458.
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Kocela, Christopher. "Fetishism as historical practice in postmodern American fiction." Thesis, McGill University, 2002. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=38213.
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This study contends that postmodern American fiction dramatizes an important shift of philosophical perspective on the fetish in keeping with recent theories of fetishism as a cultural practice. This shift is defined by the refusal to accept the traditional Western condemnation of the fetishist as primitive or perverse, and by the effort to affirm more productive uses for fetishism as a theoretical concept spanning the disciplines of psychoanalysis, Marxian social theory, and anthropology. Analyzing the depiction of fetishistic practices in selected contemporary American novels, the dissertation utilizes fetish theory in order to clarify the unique textual and historiographic features of postmodernist fiction. It also emphasizes the way in which conventional ideas about history and teleology are necessarily challenged by an affirmative orientation toward the fetish. Part One of the dissertation, comprising the first two chapters, traces the lineage of Western thinking about fetishism from Hegel, Marx, and Freud to Derrida, Baudrillard, and Jameson, among others. Recognizing that traditional theories attribute the symbolic power of the fetish to its mystification of historical origins, Part One posits that poststructuralist and postmodernist contributions to the subject enable, but do not develop, an alternative concept of fetishism as a practice with constructive historical potential. Part Two of the study seeks to develop this historical potential with reference to prominent descriptive models of postmodernist fiction, and through close readings of five contemporary American authors: Thomas Pynchon, Kathy Acker, Robert Coover, John Hawkes, and Don DeLillo. The four chapters of Part Two each examine the fictional representation of fetishism within a different theoretical framework, focusing on, respectively: temporality and objectivity in postmodern fiction theory; the interrelation between psychoanalytic theory and female fetishism in novels by Pynchon and Acker
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Lin, Qingxin, and 林慶新. "Brushing history against the grain: constructing the Chinese new historical fiction as an oppositionaldiscourse." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2001. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B3124337X.
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趙米卿 and Mai-hing Chui. "A study of the Ming and Qing historical novels related toYue Fei." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1999. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B38803835.
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Samperi-Mangan, Jacqueline. "Narrativa della Svizzera italiana dal '60 a oggi." Thesis, McGill University, 1999. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=36700.
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This study provides an overview of the literature of the Italian-speaking regions of Switzerland. It presents well-known authors but also lesser-known writers who have made an important contribution to the literature of the Ticino and Grigioni cantons. Dating from the 1960s to the present, the corpus bears witness to a remarkable vitality and innovative spirit, which on occasion overflow political borders and find their way into the much larger Italian market. The dynamism of local publishers has contributed to focusing attention on the high quality and importance of the literature produced by Swiss authors writing in Italian. The distinctive character of this literature lies in the unique combination of disparate factors. Italian language, Swiss culture, and European concerns interact with emotional ties to the local communities in a rich social context marked by past misery and a present characterized by advanced capitalism.The choice of authors is based on the desire to trace the evolution of narrative literature during the last four decades and present a wide range of themes and styles. In addition to the renowned Giovanni Orelli, this study considers the equally important works of writers such as Alberto Nessi, Claudio Nembrini, Anna Felder, Elda Guidinetti, Silvana Lattmann, Ennio Maccagno, among others. Very young writers whose first efforts are shaping the future of Swiss literature in Italian are also examined.
A special chapter is devoted to women writers. The goal is to identify the style and set of themes which distinguish their contribution from that of their colleagues. The study also discusses the importance of their presence on the literary scene after a time, not so far in the past, when women were confined to writing, in dialect, diaries and letters to relatives who had emigrated.
The discussion of the corpus is prefaced by a detailed presentation of the geographical, social and political context which often determines the literary outcome. The importance of this context has also influenced the way in which the texts are approached. The narratives studied reflect and interpret the problems society was facing at a particular time, as well as the intellectual movements that characterize each period. A chronological presentation of each individual author would have fragmented the dynamic background from which his or her works emerge and within which such works must be located. The name of an author will therefore resurface in different contexts when one of his or her works is discussed in connection with the given period or intellectual movement under examination. The literary history of each author, however, can be easily reconstructed through an attentive reading. What emerges at the end of the study is a widened field of knowledge for Italian studies, whose object can no longer be seen to coincide with the literary production within the borders of the Italian state.
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Zajac, Ronald J. (Ronald John). "The Dystopian city in British and US science fiction, 1960-1975 : urban chronotopes as models of historical closure." Thesis, McGill University, 1992. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=61046.
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In much dystopian SF, the city models a society which represses the protagonist's sense of historical time, replacing it with a sense of "private" time affecting isolated individuals. This phenomenon appears in dystopian SF novels of 1960-75--including Thomas M. Disch's 334, John Brunner's The Jagged Orbit, Philip K. Dick's Martian Time-Slip, J. G. Ballard's High-Rise, and Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren--as well as some precursors--including Wells, Zamyatin's We, Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. In these novels the cities also reveal in their chronotopic arrangement the degree to which revolutionary forces can oppose the dystopian order. While the earlier dystopias see revolution crushed by despotic state power, those of 1960-75 see it thwarted by the dehumanizing effects of capitalism. The period from 1960-75 ends in resignation to an existence in which individual action can no longer effect political change, at best tempered by irony (Disch, Delany).
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Hui, Lai-ka Jodie, and 許麗卡. "Postmodern passion in historiographic metafiction: an analysis of four texts." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2005. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B32021483.
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Aecherli, Claire-Line. "L'opera di Vittorini : uno studio strutturale." Thesis, McGill University, 1985. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=66020.
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Hughes, Helen Muriel. "Changes in historical romance, 1890s to the 1980s : the development of the genre from Stanley Weyman to Georgette Heyer and her successors." Thesis, University of Bradford, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/10454/4224.
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Penazzi, Leonardo. "The fellow (novel) ; and Australian historical fiction, debating the perceived past (dissertation)." University of Western Australia. School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2008. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2008.0070.
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Novel The Fellow What is knowledge? Who should own it? Why is it used? Who can use it? Is knowledge power, or is it an illusion? These are some of the questions addressed in The Fellow. At the time of Australian federation, the year 1901, while a nation is being drawn into unity, one of its primary educational institutions is being drawn into disunity when an outsider challenges the secure world of The University of Melbourne. Arriving in Melbourne after spending much of his life travelling around Australia, an old Jack-of-all-trades bushman finds his way into the inner sanctum of The University of Melbourne. Not only a man of considerable and varied skill, he is also a man who is widely read and self-educated. However, he applies his knowledge in practical ways, based on what he has experienced in the
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Crossland, R. Bert (Rodney Bert). "A Content Analysis of Children's Historical Fiction Written about World War II." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1996. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc279151/.
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The purpose of this study was to investigate the evolution of children's historical fiction dealing with World War II in order to describe the changes that have occurred over the past 50 years. Two questions were asked in the study: (1) Has the characterization of protagonists portrayed in historical fiction about World War H evolved since 1943? and (2) Have the accounts of the events of World War H portrayed in historical fiction evolved since 1943? Content analysis was used as the method of collecting data. The sample consisted of 86 novels written from 1943 to 1993. Upon completing the reading and coding, the researcher discussed the categories and questions posed. As part of analysis, the discussion of the novels in each period was accompanied with an overview of trends in children's literature and events affecting society. The analysis led to the following conclusions: 1. Authors were impacted by changes in the social and political climate, as evidenced by the changes in the gender of the protagonists, an increase of violence, and the inclusion of women. 2. Novels written during the 1980s and 1990s were written with a stronger American perspective. 3. At the time that an increase of violence was seen in American society, descriptions of World War II events and protagonists' actions became more violent and more graphic. 4. Though the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war with Japan, an inadequacy still exists in the number of novels that provide readers with details related to the atomic bombs. Though much of World War II was fought in the Pacific Rim, a deficiency remains in the number of novels set in Pacific Rim countries. Recommendations for further research include performing a study that examines other genres, analyzing the changes observed in the portrayal of protagonists. A study could be conducted to analyze the author's ethnicity and relationship to the war and determine if differences exist.
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Corilow, Priscila Malfatti Vieira 1983. "Se um viajante numa noite de inverno = o romanesco e o ensaismo em Italo Calvino." [s.n.], 2010. http://repositorio.unicamp.br/jspui/handle/REPOSIP/270292.
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Orientador: Maria Betania AmorosoDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas. Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem
Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-15T11:43:10Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Corilow_PriscilaMalfattiVieira_M.pdf: 812273 bytes, checksum: 96c4a204d00972f582c9d0d598271349 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010
Resumo: Italo Calvino publica Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore em 1979, após um considerável período de reflexão sobre as discussões relacionadas ao romance como gênero no cenário cultural europeu, em especial a partir das teorizações de Roland Barthes e das experimentações do grupo OULIPO (Ouvroir de Littératture Potentielle). Nessa obra, o caráter metaliterário se destaca à primeira vista. Os mecanismos envolvidos no ato de narrar e seus agentes, leitores e autores, são ostensivamente encenados nesse "hiperromance", como o denominou seu escritor. Em função das peculiaridades de sua construção, essa obra tem sido submetida a análises que buscam identificar o funcionamento da interação autor-obra-receptor, a "função autor" e a "função leitor", estabelecer teorias da leitura através do romance ou estudá-lo a partir de metodologias semiológicas e pós-estruturalistas. Esses trabalhos têm consolidado uma imagem exclusiva de Italo Calvino como escritor pósmoderno por excelência, dedicado prioritariamente à reflexão sobre os processos lógicolingüísticos e estruturais envolvidos na fatura do texto literário. Partindo de premissas diversas, apoiadas em um modus operandi reconhecível no trabalho de críticos italianos como Asor Rosa, Alfonso Berardinelli, Mario Barenghi, Gian Carlo Ferretti entre outros, procuramos seguir de perto o entrelaçamento entre a ficção e a reflexão crítica na obra citada, através da leitura e análise dos ensaios, notas, entrevistas, artigos jornalísticos do próprio escritor bem como da crítica italiana que recepcionou sua obra. Buscamos assim produzir uma análise do romance que fosse capaz de revelar outra dimensão do escritor: a do intelectual que, através da mediação da literatura, reflete sobre a pertinência do gênero romance em momentos diversos da cultura e da sociedade, principalmente italianas
Abstract: Italo Calvino published Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore in 1979, after he had gone throw for a reflexive period, when he think about issues related with the romance as a literary genre that at the same time had concerned the cultural sphere of Europeans in the decades of fifty and sixty, when this matter was broadly discussed. Those discussions became even more frequent after Roland Barthes theorizing and the OULIPO (Ouvroir de Littératture Potentielle) experimentation's. In Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore the metaliterary approach is a strength feature since the first contact. The mechanisms involved in the narration act and its agents, the reader and the author, are both ostensibly staged in this hyperromance, like its author called it. According to peculiarities of its construction, this work has been subjected to analysis that seek to identify the operation of the author-work-receptor interaction, the "author function" and the "reader function", besides to establish readingtheories through the romance or to study it from the semiological and poststructuralist methodology. This works had consolidated an exclusive image of Italo Calvino as a postmodern writer par excellence, whom had devoted primarily to understand the logicallinguistic and structural processes, which are involved in the making of the literary text. We seek to follow closely the interlacing between the fiction and the critical thought in the mentioned work, based on various assumptions that are supported by a modus operandi recognizable in the works of italian critics like Asor Rosa, Alfonso Berardinelli, Mario Barenghi, Gian Carlo Ferretti and others. This search was also made through the reading and analyzing of Calvino's essays, notes, interviews and journalistic articles and the italian critic which welcomed his work. Therefore, we attempted a romance's analysis that was capable of revealing another dimension of the writer: an intellectual, who through the mediation of the literature, thought about the romance genre relevance in various moments of culture and society, mainly the italian ones
Mestrado
Teoria e Critica Literaria
Mestre em Teoria e História Literária
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Brink, Lucille. "Geskiedenis vasgevang in ’n net van fiksie : Harry Mulisch se Siegfried as postmodernistiese historiese roman." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/1632.
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Thesis (MA (Afrikaans and Dutch))—University of Stellenbosch, 2006.During an interview, the author Rudolf Herter in Harry Mulisch’s novel Siegfried states that Hitler would only be comprehended if an imaginative experiment is conducted by capturing him in a net of fiction. This is indeed what Mulisch does in this novel. The combination of historical and fictional data resulting from this strategy is typical of the conventional historical novel, while Siegfried also manifests modernist characteristics. In this study, however, special attention is paid to aspects such as metafictionality, selfreflexivity, subjectivity and an emphasis on ideology which Siegfried shares with other postmodern historical novels, with specific reference to Linda Hutcheon’s view on historiographic metafiction and Lies Wesseling’s definition of uchronian fiction. The focus in this study lies, inter alia, on the ways in which Mulisch utilizes open spaces in history and fits the fictitious data like pieces into the puzzle of the history of the Second World War in general and specific events surrounding Hitler in particular. Mulisch’s play with autobiographical data in the novel further diminishes the boundaries between fact and fiction. Of particular importance is the metafictional statements about the nature of history which Mulisch delivers in the process. Not only the political side of history, but also its subjective and one-sided nature is emphasised. Finally a question is posed about Mulisch’s intentions and aspirations in writing another novel about Hitler, who as a character in this novel awakens sympathy on the one hand and on the other is demonized as inhuman with superhuman qualities. This demonstrates the problems involved in gaining insight into the real Hitler. My opinion is that, in the final instance, Mulisch intentionally magnifies the enigma surrounding Hitler in his characterization of the man who can be regarded as one of the most destructive people of the 20th century.
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Murray, Paul Leonard. "The historiographic metafiction of Etienne van Heerden." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/53120.
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Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2002.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis investigates the possibility that there are other ways in which to represent the past, not just the traditional way as practised by historians. For instance, other forms such as historical fiction in the historical novel, and therefore, narrative, can act as an important conduit for conveying historical meaning. Through the examination of the historiographic metafiction of the South African writer, Etienne Van Heerden, this study has concluded that through a reading of both the author's belletristic and theoretical texts, readers interested in history and literature will gain some understanding of the problems that come with writing up the past. At the same time, they will gain some knowledge of a different way of writing about South African history, because the author portrays the historical events in a refreshing, vivid and imaginative way. However, it needs to be said from the outset that in no way is the writer of this thesis neglecting the merits of traditional history or advocating its abolition, which is, ultimately, the scientific way of representing the past and remains sacred and paramount for the historian, both amateur and professional.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis ondersoek die moontlikheid dat die verlede volgens ander sienswyses voorgestel kan word en nie slegs volgens die tradisionele sienswyses van historici nie. Daar is byvoorbeeld ander vorme, soos historiese fiksie wat in historiese novelles gebruik word, en daarom kan die narratief as 'n belangrike kanaal dien om historiese betekenis mee oor te dra. Deur 'n ondersoek van die historiese metafiksie van die Suid-Afrikaanse skrywer, Etienne van Heerden, kom hierdie studie tot die gevolgtrekking dat deur die lees van beide die skrywer se belletristiese en teoretiese tekste, lesers wat in die geskiedenis en literatuur belangstel, 'n begrip sal kry van die problematiek wat gepaard gaan met die skryf van geskiedenis. Terselfdertyd sal hulle 'n begrip kry van 'n alternatiewe skryf van die Suid-Afrikaanse geskiedenis, omdat die skrywer historiese gegewens in 'n verfrissende, helder en verbeeldingryke wyse oordra. Dit moet egter beklemtoon word dat die skrywer van hierdie tesis geensins die meriete van tradisionele geskiedskrywing negeer of die afskaffing daarvan voorstaan nie, aangesien die wetenskaplike voorstelling van die verlede kosbaar en van kardinale belang vir beide amateur en professionele historici bly.
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Habel, Chad Sean, and chad habel@gmail com. "Ancestral Narratives in History and Fiction: Transforming Identities." Flinders University. Humanities, 2006. http://catalogue.flinders.edu.au./local/adt/public/adt-SFU20071108.133216.
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This thesis is an exploration of ancestral narratives in the fiction of Thomas Keneally and Christopher Koch. Initially, ancestry in literature creates an historical relationship which articulates the link between the past and the present. In this sense ancestry functions as a type of cultural memory where various issues of inheritance can be negotiated. However, the real value of ancestral narratives lies in their power to aid in the construction of both personal and communal identities. They have the potential to transform these identities, to transgress natural boundaries and to reshape conventional identities in the light of historical experience.
For Keneally, ancestral narratives depict national forbears who narrate the nation into being. His earlier fictions present ancestors of the nation within a mythic and symbolic framework to outline Australian national identity. This identity is static, oppositional, and characterized by the delineation of boundaries which set nations apart from one another. However, Keneallys more recent work transforms this conventional construction of national identity. It depicts an Irish-Australian diasporic identity which is hyphenated and transgressive: it transcends the conventional notion of nations as separate entities pitted against one another. In this way Keneallys ancestral narratives enact the potential for transforming identity through ancestral narrative.
On the other hand, Kochs work is primarily concerned with the intergenerational trauma causes by losing or forgetting ones ancestral narrative. His novels are concerned with male gender identity and the fragmentation which characterizes a self-destructive idea of maleness. While Keneallys characters recover their lost ancestries in an effort to reshape their idea of what it is to be Australian, Kochs main protagonist lives in ignorance of his ancestors life. He is thus unable to take the opportunity to transform his masculinity due to the pervasive cultural amnesia surrounding his family history and its role in Tasmanias past.
While Keneally and Koch depict different outcomes in their fictional ancestral narratives they are both deeply concerned with the potential to transform national and gender identities through ancestry.
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Wyrill, Beth Alexandra. "The interface of history and fiction in Russel Brownlee’s Garden of the plagues, Ingrid Winterbach’s To hell With Cronjé, and Etienne van Heerden’s The long silence of Mario Salviati." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1015517.
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Both historiographical and literary practices have undergone revision in recent years in attempting to address the inheritance of nineteenth-century realism. Since the object of realist stylistics, employed in both the writing of fiction and history, is to render authorship authoritative or even invisible, the ideological import of these narratives is often such that the constructedness of the historical record and its absences are veiled. In developments beginning in the 1980s with the advent of ‘New Historicism’ and with the emergence of postmodern literary techniques, the interface of literature and history became of seminal importance, since both were now credited as being products of narrative and discourse, and hence, to varying degrees, of the literary imagination. This movement intersects interestingly with developments in postcolonial studies, since it is the voices of the marginalized and disempowered colonized peoples that are routinely co-opted and excised from nineteenth-century realist histories. These concerns are now being fully explored in the literature of the contemporary post-transitional South African moment, since authors in this country seemingly now feel freed up to look back to histories that precede the immediate traumas of apartheid. The concern, in relation to apartheid developments but also on a broader universal scale, is this: if history is viewed as perpetual emergences of modernities, then one of the great absences in the record is the historical determinants of any given epistemology. The attempt to recreate such an epistemological genealogy is thus simultaneously postcolonial, historiographical, and literary. Russel Brownlee’s Garden of the Plagues (2005), Ingrid Winterbach’s To Hell with Cronjé (2010), and Etienne van Heerden’s The Long Silence of Mario Salviati (2002) attempt to bridge this gap in the recorded sensibilities of any historical moment by representing a ‘lived experience’ of the past, and in the process imaginatively recreating the cultural, historical and psychological locations of the proponents of an emerging modernity. This study concerns itself with the ways in which these authors address the influence of realist historiography through the use of literary innovations that allow for the departure from realist stylistics. Most commonly, all three authors draw on forms of magic realism, but multiple refigurings and recombinations of notions of temporality, narrative, and characterization likewise work to defamiliarize the once stable discourse of history.
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Vázquez-Medina, Olivia. "Cuerpo presente : imaginería corporal, representación histórica y textura narrativa en Yo el Supremo (1974), Noticias del Imperio (1987) y el General en su Laberinto (1989)." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2009. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.670014.
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Walker, Stanwood Sterling. "The classical-historical novel in nineteenth-century Britain." Access restricted to users with UT Austin EID, 2001. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/fullcit?p3036607.
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Prisco, Mario. "Journeys beyond binaries : storytelling and polyphony in the narratives of Gabriella Ghermandi, Igiaba Scego, Ubax Cristina Ali Farah and Amara Lakhous." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/11947.
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In the last two decades, in media and political discourses, Italianness has been increasingly represented as a homogeneous and compact entity, which is intruded on and contaminated by immigrants. In this study, the binary opposition between Italians and migrants is investigated from the perspective of writers who inhabit a liminal space, between at least two cultures, with the main intent to problematize the binary itself and to show its nature of fabrication. On the basis of Said's contrapuntal method, the novels by Ghermandi, Scego, Ali Farah and Lakhous are thought to establish a counterpoint with dominant discourses about Italianness. With the firm belief that discourses about postcolonial Italy must address its colonial past, the works analysed are considered as in dialogue with both colonial and postcolonial discourses. A dialogical relation is established, within the study, between Ghermandi's Regina di fiori e di perle and Flaiano's Tempo di uccidere. Written from the perspectives of the colonized and the colonizers respectively, both novels unveil colonial crimes and faults in Ethiopia, thus being counter-narratives about official representations of Italian colonialism. In Scego's Rhoda and Oltre Babilonia and Ali Farah's Madre piccolo, like threads, the individual stories of Somali exiles intertwine to create a fabric, whose pattern reveals the importance of the legacy of colonialism within contemporary Italy. Mainly situated between Italian and Somali cultures, the protagonists experience traumas, suffering and loss but finally attain a contrapuntal awareness between the two cultural poles. They become conscious of how enriching their in-between position is; they affirm the value of their hybrid identity. With a further zoom into postcolonial Italy, Lakhous' Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a piazza Vittorio and Divorzio all'islamica a viale Marconi analyse the binary ‘us-Italians' versus ‘thosemigrants' in two microcosms in Rome. General polarizations such as Islam and the West emerge as factors which are exploited in order to exacerbate tensions and divisions. In addition, Italianness appears to be an internally fragmented entity, which is imagined as compact and homogeneous, as a reaction to the influx of immigrants. Against any logic of binarism, the novels by Ghermandi, Scego, Ali Farah and Lakhous reveal the constant effort to create a passage between two poles and to uphold a dialogical relation between them; crossings over and hybridity are continuously affirmed. With their highly important affirmation of multiplicity, the works challenge any essentializing notion of identity and any narrow representation of Italianness, within multiethnic contemporary Italy.
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劉飛桐. "從史傳、筆記到傳奇 :古典小說之醞釀生發 = Historical biography, literary sketch and legendary novel : the gestation and germination of Chinese classical novel." Thesis, University of Macau, 2018. http://umaclib3.umac.mo/record=b3954211.
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Hale, Frederick. "Literary challenges to the heroic myth of the Voortrekkers : H.P. Lamont's War, wine and women and Stuart Cloete's Turning wheels." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/52325.
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Thesis (PhD)--University of Stellenbosch, 2001.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This dissertation is an interdisciplinary study of various historical novels which dealt to a greater or lesser degree with the Great Trek and were written between the 1840s and the 1930s in Dutch, Afrikaans and English but with particular emphasis on H.P. Lamont's War, Wine and Women and Stuart Cloete's Turning Wheels (1937). The analysis of all these fictional reconstructions focuses on the portrayal of the Voortrekkers found in them. Much attention is also paid to the historical contexts in which the two principal works in question were written and the great controversies which they occasioned because both of their authors had had the temerity to challenge the long-established myth of the heroic Voortrekkers, one of the holiest of the iconic cows in the barns of their Afrikaner descendants. Chapter I, "Introduction", is a statement of the purpose of the study, its place in the context of analyses of the history of Afrikaner nationalism, its structure and the sources on which it is based. Chapter II, "The Unfolding of the Myth of the Heroic Voortrekkers", traces its evolution from the 1830s to the 1930s and explores how both English-speaking South Africans and Afrikaners, especially Gustav PrelIer, purposefully contributed to it. Also highlighted in this chapter is the significance of the Great Trek Centenary and the events leading up to it in the middle and late 1930s in intensifying Afrikaner nationalism. Chapter III, "The Heroic Myth in Early Dutch and Afrikaans Novels about the Great Trek", considers especially how these works were used as vehicles for placing before Afrikaners the historic virtues of their ancestors both to provide models for emulation and to stimulate their ethnic pride. Chapter IV, "Sympathetic English Reconstructions of the Great Trek", deals with two novels, Eugenie de Kalb's Far Enough and Francis Brett Young's They Seek a Country, both of which reproduced the heroic myth to some extent. Chapter V, "Rendezvous with Disaster? The South Africa in Which Lamont Wrote War, Wine and Women" establishes the context of intensifying Afrikaner nationalism which this immigrant from the United Kingdom encountered in the late 1920s when he accepted a lectureship at the University of Pretoria and why this context was hostile to a novel which was critical of Afrikanerdom. Chapter VI, "Wa1~ Wine and Women: Its General Context and Commentary on South Africa" explores how this work, conceived as a "war book" dealing with the 1914-1918 conflict in Europe, depicted both Englishmen and Afrikaners negatively. Chapter VII, "Academic Freedom vs. Afrikaner Nationalism: The Consequential Strife over War, Wine and Women" deals with the hostile reception of Lamont's pseudonymously published novel, the physical assault on him and his dismissal from his lectureship at the University of Pretoria. Chapter VIII, "The Rhetoric of Revenge in Lamont's Halcyon Days in Africa", explores how the author, after relurning lo England, used his pen as a weapon for striking back al his Afrikaans foes in South Africa. Chapter IX, "Stuart Cloete's Portrayal of the Voortrekkers in Turning U'heels", focuses on the portrayal of various ethnic types in his gallery of characters. Chapter X, "The Con troversy over Turning U'heels", handles the hostile and apparently orchestrated reaction to Cloete's book and how it was eventually banned. Chapter XI, "Conclusion: Quod Eral Demonstrandum", summarises several thematic findings which a detailed examination of the novels in their historical context yields.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie verhandeling is 'n interdissiplinêre studie van verskeie historiese romans waarin daar in 'n mindere ofmeerdere mate op die Groot Trek gefokus word en wat geskryfis tussen die 1840's en die 1930's in Nederlands, Afrikaans en Engels, maar met die klem op H. P. Lamont se War, Wine and Wamen en Stuart Cloete se Turning Wheels (1937) in die besonder. Die analise van al hierdie fiktiewe rekonstruksies fokus op die uitbeelding van die Voortrekkers daarin. Daar word ook in die besonder aandag gegee aan die historiese kontekste waarbinne hierdie twee hoofwerke geskryfis en die groot polemiek daarrondom, omdat beide outeurs die vermetelheid gehad het om die lank reeds gevestigde mite van die heldhaftige Voortrekkers, een van die heiligste ikoniese koeie in die skure van die Afrikanernageslagte, uit te daag. Hoofstuk I, "Introduction", stel die doel van die studie, waar dit staan in die konteks van analises van die geskiedenis van Afrikanernasionalisme, die skruktuur en die bronne waarop dit gebaseer is. Hoofstuk II, "The Unfolding of the Myth of the Herioc Voortrekkers", volg die evolusie van Afrikanernasionalisme van die 1830's tot die 1930's en ondersoek op beide Engelssprekende Suid-Afrikaners en Afrikaners, veral Gustav Preller, doelgerig hiertoe bygedra het. In hierdie hoofstuk word daar ook beklemtoon hoe betekenisvol die honderdjarige herdenking van die Groot Trek en die gebeure wat daartoe aanleiding gegee het gedurende die middel- en laat 1930's, bygedra het tot die versterking van Afrikanernasionalisme. Hoofstuk III, "The Heroic Myth in Early Dutch and Afrikaans Novels about the Great Trek", bespreek veral hoe hierdie werke gebruik is om aan Afrikaners die historiese deugsaamheid van hulle voorvaders voor te hou en wat as voorbeelde moet dien wat nagestreef moet word en om hulle etniese trots te stimuleer. Hoofstuk IV, "Sympathetic English Reconstructions of the Great Trek", bespreek twee romans, Far Enough van Eugenie de Kalb en TheySeek a Country van Francis Brett Young, wat altwee die heroïse mite in 'n sekere mate herproduseer. Hoofstuk V, "Rendezvous with Disaster? The South Africa in Which Lamont Wrote War, Wine and Women" vestig die konteks van groeiende Afrikanernasionalisme wat hierdie immigrant van die Verenigde Koninkryk in die laat 1920's teëgekom het toe hy 'n lektoraat aan die Universiteit van Pretoria aanvaar het, en hoekom hierdie konteks vyandiggesind was teenoor 'n roman wat krities was teenoor die Afrikanerdom. Hoofstuk VI, "Wa1~ Wine and Women: Its General Context and Commentary on South Africa" ondersoek hoe hierdie werk, beskou as 'n "oorlogsboek" wat handeloor die 1914-1918 konflik in Europa, beide die Engelse en die Afrikaners in 'n negatiewe lig gestel het. Hoofstuk VII, "Academic Freedom vs. Afrikaner Nationalism: The Consequential Strife over War, Wine and Women" skenk aandag aan die vyandige ontvangs van Lamont se roman (gepubliseer onder 'n skuilnaam), die fisieke aanval op hom en sy ontslag as lektor van die Universiteit van Pretoria. Hoofstuk VIII, "The Rhetoric of Revenge in Lamont's Halcyon Days inAfrica", ondersoekhoe die outeur, na hy na Engeland teruggekeer het, sy pen as wapen gebruik het in 'n teenaanval op sy Afrikaanse vyande in Suid-Afrika. Hoofstuk IX, "Stuart Cloete's Portrayal of the Voortrekkers in Turning Wheels", fokus op die uitbeelding van verskeie etniese tipes in sy gallery karakters. Hoofstuk X, "The Controversy over Tumng Wheels", bespreek die vyandige en klaarblyklike georkestreerde reaksie op Cloete se boek, en hoe dit uiteindelik verban is. Hoofstuk XI, "Conclusion: Quod Era! Demonstrandum", bied 'n opsomming van verskei tematiese bevindinge aan, wat deur 'n gedetaileerde ondersoek van die romans opgelewer is.
23
Rafael, Laura. "The role of history in the recent Mexican novel : a study of five historical novels by Elena Garro, Carlos Fuentes, Fernando del Paso, Paco Ignacio Taibo II and Rosa Beltran." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/323.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis sets out to investigate the development of the recent historical novel in Mexico by examining a corpus of five novels. Elena Garro’s 'Los recuerdos del porvenir' (1963) represents the final point of the novel of the Revolution and it is the link with the recent historical novel. Carlos Fuentes’ 'Terra Nostra' (1975) and Fernando del Paso’s 'Noticias del Imperio' (1978) belong to the group containing the postmodern historical novel. 'Terra Nostra' summarizes all the concerns of postmodernism and can be considered as a paradigm of this current of thought. 'Noticias del Imperio' seeks a reconciliation between history and literature in an attempt to get closer to the historical truth. Paco Ignacio Taibo II’s 'La lejanía del Tesoro' (1992) is a representative novel in the way it melds history with the mystery novel, developing the genre of the historical thriller. Lastly, Rosa Beltrán’s 'La corte de los ilusos' (1995), and in particular its treatment of history is pertinent to this thesis due to the fact that women have been traditionally silenced by official history. This novel gives them a voice. From its beginnings, the historical novel confronted the problem of being questioned for its lack of accuracy when dealing with the past. This skepticism sparked a long lasting debate that initially degraded the historical novel as secondary genre that could never contribute to historical knowledge. However, as a result of recent theories that seek to defend the poetic nature of history, a theory developed initially by Hayden White, the recent historical novel has sought to debunk historiography’s claim to be the only possible way to recount the past. This thesis advances the theory that the recent historical novel in Mexico is the result of a search for a genuine identity, as well as a quest to develop an alternative, yet truthful, interpretation of a past whose true nature has been distorted by decades of historical officialdom. This process is seen in a context of increasing democratisation and globalisation.
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Pak, Inchan. "Historical Reconstruction and Self-Search: A Study of Thomas Pynchon's V.. John Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor. Norman Mailer's The Armies of the Nicrht. Robert Coover's The Public Burning, and E.L. Doctorow's The Book of Daniel." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1995. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc277638/.
Full textAbstract:
A search for self through historical reconstruction constitutes a crucial concern of the American postmodern historical novels of Pynchon, Barth, Mailer, Coover, and Doctorow. This concern consists of a self-conscious dramatization, paralleled by contemporary theorists' arguments, of the constructedness of history and individual subject. A historian-character's process of historical inquiry and narrative-making foregrounded in these novels represents the efforts by the postmodern self to (re)construct identity (or identities) in a constructing context of discourse and ideology.
25
Dionne, Chantal. "El héroe en la novela histórico-romántica Española : (Macías, de Larra; Sancho Saldaña, de Espronceda, y Doña Blanca de Navarra, de Navarro Villoslada)." Thesis, McGill University, 1996. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=23715.
Full textAbstract:
Literary criticism has attacked more than once the romantic historical novel condemning it because it was presenting both at a time historical events and historical fiction, what was, according to some critics, encroaching upon the verisimilitude of the historical facts introduced in this kind of novel as well as diminishing the quality of the fictional story while hindering the process of creativity of the writers. Of course, the historical Spanish novel has also suffered from these pessimistic judgements, but it has been accused too of being in no way original for it was taken mainly as an imitation of Scott's works. We do not share this opinion, however, and think on the contrary that Spain has produced great historical fictions which are original from the standpoint of their plots and their characters.In the first part of this thesis we will show how the Spanish hero of the historical, romantic novel is far from the model of hero typically depicted by Scott. The main objective of this study will be to define the entity or the masculine Spanish protagonist of the genre in question. For this purpose, we will compare three protagonists, Usdrobal, Macias and Jimeno, from three chosen Spanish novels, between each other and with other secondary characters, especially with their antagonists. The physical and moral aspects will be particularly underlined as we examine, for example, Lavater's science and, at the same, time, the actions, reactions and attitudes of these protagonists. As a result, we will be able to establish their profile and personality. Parallels will also be made, whenever useful, with other significant Spanish and European characters. In this analysis it will be made clear that these romantic beings who suffer terribly throughout their lives are vulnerable and original in opposition to both the traditional and the Scottian heroes.
26
Waters, Sandra A. "Narrating the Italian historical novel." 2009. http://hdl.rutgers.edu/1782.2/rucore10001600001.ETD.000051078.
Full text
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Ntabeni, Sally-Susan. "Theme and character : some reflections on the historical context of the Ndebele novel." Diss., 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/15668.
Full textAbstract:
According to Chiwome, ' ... a writer's social vislon is a soclo-spiritual and historical
product. A response to a complex process of Indoctrination' (1996: 16).The
response can be a reaction depending on whose interests the issue is considered.
The Ndebele novelist finds himself caught in the crossfire between two great
traditions. He tries to be true to his background while still having to do justice to his
newly acquired skill of graphically presenting his thoughts, feelings, and experiences
He is a Victim of socio-political systems bent on giving education which moulds the
mind to built-in- choices. Both poilitical eras use the printed word to further their
ideologies . The Ndebele novelist finds himself having to remould his artistic genius if
he is to fit in. In the process the goals of novelistic practice are missed.
The novel will not communicate effectively since it has to answer to particular
external forces. These forces derive,' ... from the urge of power to protect itself, to
perpetuate itself, to prevail' (Chiwome 1996 :22).
On the threshold of the two eras, the novel becomes a political statement. It Is this
political aspect of the novel which continues to create what Chiwome (1996) has
called creative timidity and mediocrity.African Languages
M.A. (African Languages)
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Cabajsky, Andrea. ""Transcolonial circuits" : historical fiction and national identities in Ireland, Scotland, and Canada." Thesis, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/13301.
Full textAbstract:
'"Transcolonial Circuits': Historical Fiction and National Identities in Ireland, Scotland,
and Canada" explores the intersections between gender, canon-formation, and literary
genre in order to argue that English- and French-Canadian historical fiction was
influenced, both in form and content, by the precedent-setting fictions o f Scotland and
Ireland in the early nineteenth century. Conceived in the spirit o f Katie Trumpener's
Bardic Nationalism: The Romantic Novel and the British Empire (1997), this dissertation
extends Trumpener's examination of nineteenth-century British and Canadian romantic
fiction by exploring in greater detail the flow of ideas and literary techniques between
Ireland, Scotland, and English and French Canada. It does so in order to revise critical
understandings of the formal and thematic origins and development of Canadian
historical fiction from the nineteenth century to the present.
Chapter One functions as a series of literary snapshots that examine historically
the critical and popular reception of novels by Maria Edgeworth and Sydney Owenson in
Ireland, Sir Walter Scott in Scotland, John Richardson, William Kirby, and Jean
Mcllwraith in English Canada, and Philippe Aubert de Gaspe and Napoleon Bourassa in
French Canada. I pay particular attention to the issues o f gender and political ideology as
inseparable from the history of the novel itself. In Chapter Two, by focussing on the
travel trope, I examine in detail how Irish, Scottish, and Canadian writers transformed the
investigative journeys of Samuel Johnson and Arthur Young into journeys of resistance
to the dictates of the metropolis. Chapter Three focuses on the complications of marriage
as a metaphor o f intercultural union. It pays particular attention to the intersections
between gender, sexuality, and colonial identity. The Conclusion extends the concerns
raised in the thesis about the relationship between historical writing and national identity
to the late-twentieth-century Canadian context, by examining the adaptation of literary
and historiographical conventions to the medium of television in the CBC/SRC television
series Canada: A People's History, which aired in 2001-02.
29
Van, Zyl Maria Elizabeth. "Die Suid-Afrikaanse historiese in die kinder- en jeugverhaal / Maria Elizabeth van Zyl." Thesis, 1985. http://hdl.handle.net/10394/10681.
Full textAbstract:
History as a school subject confronts a child with events, motives for action, and moral dilemmas, demanding a high level of abstract reasoning. Before the child reaches the cognitive stage of formal operations (14 years), his abstract reasoning is limited and egocentric in terms of time concept and social consciousness. To supplement this lack of abstraction, it seems necessary to enrich the teaching of history by means of substitute experiences. In an analysis of different teaching methods, it was found that abstract historical facts become more palatable to the pupil when historical novels are used to replace direct experience. The pupil thus identifies with the historical character of his own age group, and encounters history on a human level, because an emotional involvement with the facts has taken place. If a historical novel is to be utilized successfully it must therefore be more than a feebly romanticized, and superficial account of historical facts. Such a novel should capture the exact atmosphere of a specific era. It should attain a delicate balance between fact and fiction, gripping intrigue and real life characters in
order to form an emotional bridge between reality and abstract historical facts. In reviewing South African history from 1488 to 1915, it seems that the fiction possibilities of this era have been adequately exploited. Novelists have however given preference to events of a more spectacular nature. More attention and focus has been given to novels for older children and teenagers. There is a great variety of these novels, enabling the pupil of middle childhood and adolescence to identify with the characters, thus experiencing universal needs and universal problems. The natural affinity for fantasy of early childhood has however not been utilized fully. The historical novel concerning the history of indigenous race groups is scantily represented. This jeopardizes the employment of historical novels in promoting positive attitudes towards other races and meaningful co-existence in South Africa.MBibl, PU vir CHO, 1985
30
Pierobon, Ermenegilda. "Trasgressione e consenso nella vocazione realistica di una scrittrice ottocentesca : Itinerario Artistico della Marchesa Colombi (Maria Antonietta Torriani, 1840-1920)." Thesis, 1994. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/15782.
Full textAbstract:
Il presente lavoro si propane di portare un contributo critico
all'opera della Colombi, delineandone quegli aspetti salienti che
caratterizzano la sua partecipazione alla scena letteraria come donna e
come professionista.
Le sue scelte poetiche, basate sull'ideale di un'intima,
inscindibile unita donna-parola-lingua e sull'armoniosa corrispondenza
vita-arte, contribuiscono ad acuire il confl itto con il repressivo e
misogino ambiente ottocentesco. Si crea una continua tensione tra la
tendenza all'adeguamento impasto dalla priorita di difendere la propria
presenza e l'altrettanto forte spinta alla trasgressione come necessita
di salvaguardare la coerenza a se stessa. L'ambivalenza vissuta verso
il padre, depositario dell 'ordine sociale, si riflette, coerentemente con
le premesse poetiche, nelle polemiche condotte nei confronti dei padri
della letteratura. Se queste ultime tendono a rimanere contenute a
livello metatestuale, in genera le, il genuino ed autentico messaggio
letterario viene soprattutto espresso attraverso il gusto antifrastico
dell'ironia ea livello metaforico e simbolico.
La messa in luce della repressione e della morte dei valori
femminili, la creativita intellettuale e fisica, che costituiscono la
vera essenza dell'individuo e della stessa esistenza umana, va di pari
passo con la maturazione di un sofferto compromesso con le dure leggi
imposte dalla vita. Dalla crudelta di lavori alienanti alla brutale
caduta degli ideali e dell'amore, si raggiunge, con le opere maggiori,
un rinnovato equilibrio vita-arte che, nella sublimazione delle
esperienze di morte, eleva l'espressione artistica a piano ultimo di
salvezza e di realizzazione individuale. Nell'affermazione di un'arte firmata al femminile e posta al servizio della giustizia e della verita,
si consuma cosi la disobbedienza nei confronti di ogni forma arbitraria
di potere. Connotato al maschile, esso viene evidenziato nei suoi
effetti deleteri ed alienanti anche nella connivenza e mancanza di una
reale autenticita delle stesse donne, in particolare le madri.
Dall'analisi dell'opera della Colombi emerge l'immagine di una
scrittrice che si distingue non solo per la sua originalita e
complessita, ma anche per l'indubbia modernita sia di stile che di
problematicheThe aim of the present study is to offer a critical contribution on the writings of the Marchesa Colombi by tracing and developing those aspects of her work which best characterise her personality as a woman and as a writer. Her poetical choices, based on the ideal of an intimate, indivisible unity of woman-word-language and on the harmonious correlation between life and art, focus sharply on her conflict with the repressive and misogynist ambience of nineteenth-century Italy. Her works reveal a constant tension between the need to adapt in order to defend her own presence (as a writer) and the urge to transgress as a means to safeguard her inner, personal coherence. The author's ambivalence towards the father, depositary of the social order, is further reflected, in keeping with her poetical vision, in the polemical debates held with the fathers of Italian literature. Whereas these debates remain embedded within a metatextual discourse, the genuine and authentic message of her works is generally expressed on the metaphorical and symbolic levels and by an extensive antiphrastic use of irony. The need to stress the repression and death of feminine values, the intellectual and physical creativity which constitute the true essence of the individual, goes hand in hand with the artist's achievement of maturity as a painful compromise with the hard rules imposed by life. From the cruelty of a alienating labour to the brutal collapse of her ideals and of love, Colombi is able to achieve in her major works a new form of balance between life and art which, by sublimating the experience of death, elevates the artistic expression to the heights of personal salvation and of self-realization. By affirming her art as a product of the feminine mind at the service of justice and truth, she plays out her disobedience against all arbitrary forms of power. This study of the works of the Marchesa Colombi reveals the image of a writer who distinguishes herself not only for her originality and complexity but also for the marked modernity both in her style and in her choice of subject
Department of Classics & Modern European Languages
D.Litt. et Phil. (Italian)
31
Alvarez, José Antonio. "La desmonumentalización en la novela histórica hispanoamericana de fines del siglo veinte." Thesis, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/1469.
Full text
32
Muwati, Itai. "Interface of history and fiction : the Zimbabwean liberation war novel." Thesis, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/18686.
Full textAbstract:
The research examines the interface of history and fiction. It predominantly focuses on historical fiction on the Zimbabwean liberation war written in Shona, Ndebele and English and published after the attainment of political independence in 1980. Historical fiction on the liberation war is both biographical and autobiographical. Consequently, the study comes to the conclusion that historical fiction is a veritable stakeholder in the history issue in Zimbabwe. It becomes another type or source of history that cannot be papered over when dealing with the nation’s history. In a nation where liberation war history is not only taken seriously, but is also a vigorously contested terrain, historical fiction becomes part of those discursive contestations, particularly on nation and nationalism. It is in this regard that the study problematises the interface of history and fiction by reasoning that historical fiction published in the early 1980s largely advances a state-centered perspective which views history, nation and nationalism in positive terms. This discourse uses history in order to argue for a single nation that derives its identity from the heroic and symbolic guerrilla characters. Nationalism is exclusively presented as humanising and as being the sole legitimate political brand capable of leading the nation. On the other hand, historical fiction written in English and published in the late 1980s onwards represents alternative historical truths that contest nationalism and debunk official definitions of nation. This discourse leads to the pluralisation of perspectives on nation and nationalism. The focus on historical fiction published in three languages used in Zimbabwe is a conscious attempt to transcend ethnicity in critical scholarship. Discussing novels in Shona, Ndebele and English, which are the three main languages in Zimbabwe, makes it possible for the study to draw reasoned conclusions on the bearing of time, language, region and background among others on historical representation. This undertaking brings to the fore how literature responding to similar historical processes appears moderately conjunctive and principally disjunctive. Correspondingly, it also shows various trends in the development of liberation war fiction in Zimbabwe.African Languages
D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)
33
Dalley, Hamish. "Postcolonialism and the historical novel : allegorical realism and contemporary literature of the past in Nigeria, Australia and New Zealand." Phd thesis, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/155168.
Full textAbstract:
The historical novel is one of the most prominent modes of contemporary writing in the former British Empire, yet the genre's postcolonial variant has not been the subject of critical analysis in its own right. This neglect can be explained by the dominance of a "resistance paradigm" in postcolonial studies, which tends to equate realism with naive mimesis and thus treats the historical novel as either a vehicle for imperialist ideology or a site of discursive conflict over the meaning of the past. As a result, the genre's epistemological and aesthetic complexities have been marginalised. This thesis responds to this neglect by critically analysing examples of the historical novel published since 2000 in Nigeria, Australia, and New Zealand. Historicised close analysis reveals that notwithstanding the anti-mimetic presumptions of much contemporary postcolonial criticism, and despite differences arising from contextual particularities, these texts are shaped by a common "realist impulse" that frames their narratives as defensible interpretations of the past. This ethical obligation to evidence-based interpretation has formal and epistemological consequences that manifest in an aesthetic framework I call allegorical realism. This term names a mode of representation in which fictional elements oscillate between ontological and conceptual registers in ways that simultaneously produce empathetically-unsettling relations to imagined individuals and interpretations of macro-historical change. This combination of affect and abstraction defines the genre as one based neither around assumptions about the transparency of language, nor overly pessimistic views that knowledge of the past is unachievable. I show that focusing analysis on allegorical realism allows critical attention to move away from its exclusive concern with textual resistance and instead explore how the genre is inflected by the various narratives it mediates and the specificities of postcolonial contexts. This research identifies three main variants of the contemporary postcolonial historical novel, each characterised by a different modulation of allegorical realism. Settler allegory comprises texts like Kate Grenville's The Secret River (2005) and Fiona Kidman's The Captive Wife (2006), in which colonists' alienation from occupied territory is reflected formally in the undercutting of allegorical procedures that align imaginary characters with their settings. Transnational historical novels, by contrast, stretch the spatio-temporal coordinates of allegorical realism to encompass processes taking place in global settings. This generates aesthetic effects that link apparently dissimilar novels like Witi Ihimaera's The Trowenna Sea (2009) and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun (2006). Finally, melancholy realism describes texts like Chris Abani's Song for Night (2007) and Richard Flanagan's Gould's Book of Fish (2001)-texts which disrupt the boundaries between past and present to unsettle postcolonial complacency. Tracing allegorical realism across these modes reveals how postcolonial concerns continue to recreate the genre, and how the oscillation of the allegorical signifier can challenge dominant accounts of historical change. The genre provides a significant archive for exploring how postcolonial literature is characterised by disjunctive temporalities irreducible to dominant narratives of modernity, while nonetheless being shaped by processes that link the globalised world.
34
"Postcolonial counter discourse in historical novel writing: the construction of historical representation and cultural identity in One hundred years of solitude, Midnight's children and Flying carpet." 2002. http://library.cuhk.edu.hk/record=b5896036.
Full textAbstract:
Ng Chui-yin, Christine.Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 148-156).
Abstracts in English and Chinese.
Abstract --- p.i
Acknowledgement --- p.vi
Contents --- p.vii
"Introduction: History, Fiction, and Narrative" --- p.1
History and Narrative in Traditional Historical Narrative --- p.4
A Rethinking of the Relationship between History and Narrative --- p.6
Historical Narrative in a Postcolonial Context --- p.21
Historical Novel Writing and Postcolonial Counter Discourse --- p.26
Chapter Chapter One: --- Resistance to Solitude: Garcia Marquez's Vision of a New World in One Hundred Years of Solitude
Imperial Historical Narratives and Latin America --- p.35
Magical Realism and Historical Representation of Latin America --- p.44
"Solitude, Family History and the Problem of Identity" --- p.59
Conclusion --- p.71
Chapter Chapter Two: --- Midnight's Children and Hybridity
Imperial Historical Narratives and India --- p.74
Metafictional Writing and Historical Novel Writing --- p.80
Hybridity of Indian Cultural Identity --- p.91
Conclusion --- p.101
Chapter Chapter Three: --- Non-resistance to National Historical Narratives: Xi Xi's Flying Carpet
"British Colonial Narratives, Chinese National Narratives and Hong Kong" --- p.102
Fairy-tale Realism and an Alternative Historical Representation --- p.112
The Representation of the HongkongnesśؤHeterogeneity and All-inclusiveness --- p.119
Conclusion --- p.129
Conclusion: Postcolonial Counter Discourse in Historical Novel Writing --- p.131
Notes --- p.141
Work Cited --- p.148
35
Mapara, Jacob. "An analysis of the reliability and validity of the Shona novel as a historical document." Thesis, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/1341.
Full textAbstract:
A lot of research on the Shona novel has focussed on the influence of orature and the Bible. It has also focused on the influence that the Southern Rhodesia Literature Bureau had on its development. This research has endeavoured to highlight the reliability and validity of the Shona novel as a historical document. The dependability of the novel as an alternative site from which history can be deciphered is corroborated by historical documents. The history that comes out in the Shona novels that have been studied covers the pre-colonial period right up to the post-independence period. Among the issues that come up in the research that relate to history are the Rozvi state under Chirisamhuru, the economic activities in pre-colonial Shona society that include raids for cattle and women as well as hunting and external trade. The Shona novel has also proved historically reliable in as far as it relates to the navigability of the Save River. It has highlighted the living conditions and the wages that Blacks got in colonial Rhodesia and exposed the land imbalances that came into existence because of the Land Apportionment Act of 1930, which left Blacks living on the periphery and in overcrowded, hot and dry reserves that were hardly fertile. The Rhodesian authorities, as the novels have exposed, denied most Blacks access to education. When schools were provided, they were poorly staffed and those on farms functioned more as labour pools than schools. The novel has also proved its dependability when it highlights the early days of the nationalist movement and the unilateral declaration of independence of 1965. It has also brought to the fore the birth of the armed struggle and the Rhodesian responses to it. The Rhodesians responded politically and militarily. Politically, it was through the Internal Settlement Agreement of March 1978. Militarily they moved people into 'protected villages' in an effort to deny guerrillas access to food and clothing. The novel also highlights the post-independence period especially political intolerance.African Languages
D.Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)
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Muirden, Sallie. "We too shall be mothers : her story, our story, history: feminism and postmodernism in the contemporary historical novel." Thesis, 2001. https://vuir.vu.edu.au/18195/.
Full textAbstract:
This Master of Arts thesis is in two parts : a novel, We Too Shall Be Mothers,
(WTSBM) and an exegesis which positions the novel in relation to several
strands of contemporary theory and fiction. The novel is set during the French
Revolution in the southern French city of Avignon and in Vienna, the capital of
the Hapsburg Empire. WTSBM tells the story of a fictional nun, Marie-France,
who leaves her Carmelite convent and embarks on a journey towards
motherhood and fully sexualised adulthood.
The exegesis contains three main strands of theorisation. First, it illustrates
the profound influence of feminist psychoanalytic theory on WTSBM, but also
argues that the novel reformulates and departs from specific aspects of the
feminist psychoanalytic paradigm. Second, the exegesis argues that WTSBM can
be classified as a 'postmodernist, revisionist, historical novel', which can be
positioned alongside other postmodernist, historical literature. Third, the
exegesis argues that WTSBM can be located within contemporary issues of
feminist politics, particularly issues of gender, sexuality and relationship, which
are also evident in Jeanette Winterson's The Passion (1987).
The research material for this thesis has come from a range of sources.
Primary sources include field visits to the European cities of Avignon and
Vienna. Secondary sources include literary theory, novels, and newspaper
reviews, as well as historical monographs and works of religious philosophy and
autobiography.
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Van, Zyl Dorothea Petronella. "Salomo syn oue goudfelde : op die spoor van die retorika in die Afrikaanse romankuns." Thesis, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/17787.
Full textAbstract:
Text in AfrikaansHoewel die retorika bykans 26 eeue oud is, word die relevansie daarvan vir ons eie tyd toenemend besef - as 'n sleutel tot die wyse waarop mense dinkargumenteer en oorreed. Hierdie studie ondersoek retoriese (oorredende) strategiee in Afrikaanse historiese romantekste, binne 'n historiese konteks en teen die agtergrond van eietydse historiografiese insigte. Die aspekte van die kommunikasiesituasie wat saamhang met die retorika, word verbind met die vernuwende denke daaroor binne die hedendaagse literatuurteorie en historiografie. Die konteks van die outeur en roman word telkens bestudeer, gevolg deur 'n retoriese analise. Aristoteles se idees oor die retorika kry hierby voorrang, vanwee sy nadruk op die inventio of vinding, maar die retorika word eerder geassosieer met 'n dinamiese metode as met rigiede kategorisering. Aandag word veral bestee aan retoriese strategies in S.J. du Toit se Di koningin fan Skeba (1898) en Andre P. Brink se Houd-den-bek (1982), maar ook aan resente historiese romans wat hedendaagse historiografiese en retoriese opvattinge en konvensies ontgin en problematiseer. Beide S.J. du Toit, wat kennelik 'n goeie kennis van die antieke retorika gehad het en Andre P. Brink, met sy romanonderwerp wat aansluit by die geregtelike rede, betree die retoriese terrain op sodanige wyse dat hul romans tipiese produkte van hul eie tyd genoem kan word. Beide die geskiedskrywing en die historiese roman is gemedieerde weergawes, gekenmerk deur 'n subjektiewe seleksie (inventio) van gegewens en die kombinasie daarvan binne eie verbale strukture (dispositio). Dit kan in verband gebring word met nie-tegniese oorredingsmiddele, waar die sender sy informasie van buite kry. Hy gebruik dan sogenaamde empiries-verifieerbare feite as retoriese strategie ten einde 'n waarheids- en I of werklikheidsillusie te skep wat bydra tot die roman se oorredingsskrag. Die keuse vir die skryf van 'n historiese roman, impliseer reeds ook 'n keuse vir die bakens van die geskiedskrywing, maar 'n skeppende skrywer is, anders as 'n historikus, eties vry om nie-tegniese bewysmiddele te transformeer tot tegniese bewysmiddele, in aanpassing by 'n nuutgeskepte argumentatio en 'n eie causa. Na aanleiding van die tekste kom die ontvanger op sy beurt tot 'n eie seleksie en skep sy eie kousale en argumentatiewe strukture
While rhetoric has been part of the history of mankind for nearly 26 centuries, it is increasingly regarded as extremely relevant for our time - as a key to the way in which people think, argue and persuade. This study investigates rhetorical (persuasive) strategies in Afrikaans historical novels. The novels and their authors are first situated in their historical contexts and against the background of contemporary historiographical inquiry, and then analyzed by means of rhetorical concepts. Aspects of communication, which coincide with rhetorical categories, are combined with recent developments in the field of literary theory and historiography. Aristotle's views on persuasion and rhetoric are used as point of departure, but rhetoric is regarded as a dynamic method rather than a rigid categorization. Attention is given to rhetorical strategies in the novel Di konlngin fan Skeba [The queen of Sheba] by S.J. du Toit (1898) and Andre P. Brink's Houd-denbek [translated into English by the author as A chain of voices], but also to recent Afrikaans historical novels which exploit contemporary historiographical and rhetorical conventions. In S.J. du Toit's novel (which illustrates his knowledge of ancient rhetoric) as well as Andre P. Brink's (where the topic can be linked to litigation) rhetorical strategies are employed in such a manner that their texts can be regarded as products of their historical contexts. Both historiography and historical novels are mediated representations, characterized by a subjective selection (inventio) of data and its combination in verbal structures (dispositio). This can be related to 'extrinsic' or 'inartificial' proofs, which are not contrived by the author. The author exploits the so-called empirically verifiable facts as rhetorical strategies to create an illusion of truth or verisimilitude, which greatly contributes to the persuasiveness of the novel. The decision to write a historical novel implies a choice to keep to the historical 'facts', but the writer, in contrast to the historiographer, is ethically free to transform the inartificial proofs into artificial proofs, in combination with his own invented argumentatio and causa. Prompted by these texts the reader, in his turn, makes his own selection and creates his own causal and argumentative structures
Afrikaans & Theory of Literature
D. Litt. et Phil. (Afrikaans)