Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'New Zealand literature'
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McDonnell, Brian. "The Translation of New Zealand fiction into film." Thesis, University of Auckland, 1986. http://hdl.handle.net/2292/2010.
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This thesis explores the topic of literature-into-film adaptation by investigating the use of New Zealand fiction by film-makers in this country. It attempts this task primarily by examining eight case-studies of the adaptation process: five features designed for cinema release (Sleeping Dogs, A State of Siege, Sons for the Return Home, The Scarecrow and Other Halves), one feature-length television drama (the God Boy), and two thirty-minute television dramas (The Woman at the Store and Big Brother, Little Sister, from the series Winners and Losers). All eight had their first screenings in the ten-year period 1975-1985. For each of the case-studies, the following aspects are investigated: the original work of fiction, a practical history of the adaptation process (including interviews with people involved), and a study of changes made during the scripting and shooting stages. The films are analysed in detail, with a focus on visual and auditory style, in particular how these handle the themes, characterisation and style of the original works. Comparisons are made of the structures of the novels and the films. For each film, an especially close reading is offered of sample scenes (frequently the opening and closing scenes). The thesis is illustrated with still photographs – in effect, quotations from key moments – and these provide a focus to aspects of the discussion. Where individual adaptation problems existed in particular case-studies (for example, the challenge of the first-person narration of The God Boy), these are examined in detail. The interaction of both novels and films with the society around them is given emphasis, and the films are placed in their cultural and economic context - and in the context of general film history. For each film, the complex reception they gained from different groups (for example, reviewers, ethnic groups, gender groups, the authors of the original works) is discussed. All the aspects outlined above demonstrate the complexity of the responses made by New Zealand film-makers to the pressure and challenges of adaptation. They indicate the different answers they gave to the questions raised by the adaptation process in a new national cinema, and reveal their individual achievements.Whole document restricted, but available by request, use the feedback form to request access.
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Barnes, Felicity. "New Zealand's London : the metropolis and New Zealand's culture, 1890-1940 /." Thesis, University of Auckland, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/2292/3344.
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The role of London in forming New Zealand’s culture and identity is a significant feature of New Zealand’s cultural history that has, until now, been overlooked. Ties with London and with ‘Home’ generally, have received little study, and ‘Britishness’ in New Zealand is largely considered a legacy of demography to be eventually outgrown. This thesis suggests something different. During the period 1890-1940, technology changed cultural perceptions of time and space, and it changed the relationship between metropole and former colony too. These technologies drew New Zealand and London closer together. London was constructed as an active part of the New Zealand cultural landscape, rather than as a nostalgic remnant of a predominantly British-born settler population. London was New Zealand’s metropolis too, with consequences for the way New Zealand culture was shaped. This thesis considers the cultural impact of London using four tropes linked to those changing perceptions of time and space. ‘Greater New Zealand’ is concerned with space, whilst ‘“New” New Zealand’ is concerned with time. ‘London’s Farm’ and the ‘Imaginative Hinterland’ consider propinquity and simultaneity respectively. Each theme draws from different bases of evidence in order to suggest London’s broad impact. Collectively, they argue for a shift away from a core and periphery relationship, towards one better described as a city and hinterland relationship. This approach draws upon existing national, imperial, and cultural historiography, whilst at the same time questioning some of their conventions and conceptions. New Zealand as hinterland challenges the conceptual borders of ‘national history’, exploring the transnational nature of cultural formations that otherwise have been considered as autochthonous New Zealand (or for that matter, British) developments. At the same time, whilst hinterlands may exist as part of empire, they are not necessarily products of it. Nor are they necessarily formed in opposition to the metropole, even though alterity is often used to explain colonial relationships. ‘New Zealand’s London’ is, instead a reciprocal creation. Its shared cultural landscape is specific, but at the same time, it offers an alternative means for understanding other white settler colonies. Like New Zealand, their cultural histories may be more complex cultural constructions than national or imperial stories allow.Whole document restricted, but available by request, use the feedback form to request access.
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Holt, Jill. "Children's Writing in New Zealand Newspapers, 1930s and 1980s." Thesis, University of Auckland, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/2292/2315.
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This thesis is an investigation of writing by New Zealand children in the Children's Pages of five New Zealand newspapers: the New Zealand Herald, Christchurch Press and Otago Daily Times in the 1930s and 1980s, the Dominion in the 1930s; and the Wellington Evening Post in the 1980s. Its purpose is to show how children reflected their world, interacted with editors, and interpreted the adult world in published writing, and to examine continuities and changes between the 1930s and 1980s. It seeks evidence of gender variations in writing. and explores the circumstances in which the social role of writing was established by young writers. It considers the ways in which children (especially girls) consciously and unconsciously used public writing to create a public place for themselves. It compares major themes chosen by children, their topic and genre preferences in writing, and the gender and age differences evident in these preferences. The thesis is organised into three Parts, with an Introduction discussing the scholarly background to the issues it explores, and its methodology. Part One contains two chapters examining the format and tone of each Children's Page. And the role and influence of their Editors. Part Two (also of two chapters) investigates the origins and motivations of the young contributors, with a special focus on the Otago Daily Times as a community newspaper. Part Three. of four chapters, explores the children's writing itself, in separate chapters on younger and older children, and a chapter on the most popular genre, poetry. The conclusion suggests further areas of research, and points to the implications of the findings of the thesis for social history in New Zealand and for classroom practice. The thesis contains a Bibliography and an Appendix with a selection of writings by Janet Frame and her family to the Otago Daily Times Children's Page in the 1930s.Note: Whole document restricted at the request of the author, but available by individual request, use the feedback form to request access.
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Paul, Mary. "Reading readings: some current critical debates about New Zealand literature and culture." Thesis, University of Auckland, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/2292/1974.
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This thesis examines contemporary interpretations of a selection of important texts written by New Zealand women between 1910 and 1940, and also a film and film script written more recently (which are considered as re-readings of a novel by Mander). The thesis argues that, though reading or meaning-making is always an activity of construction there will, at any given moment, always be reasons for preferring one way of reading over another-a reading most appropriate to a situation or circumstances. This study is motivated by a desire to understand how literary criticism has changed in recent years, particularly under the influence of feminism, and how a reader today can make a choice among competing methods of interpretation. Comparisons are drawn between various possible readings of the texts in order to classify methods of reading, particularly nationalist and feminist reading strategies. The over-all tendency of the argument is to propose a more self-critical and self-conscious approach to reading, and to develop a materialist and historical approach which I see as particularly important to the New Zealand context in the 1990s.Thesis is now published as a book. Paul M. (1999) Her Side of the Story: readings of Mander, Mansfield and Hyde. Dunedin: Otago University Press. http://www.otago.ac.nz/press/ for more information.
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Cattermole, Grant. "School reports : university fiction in the masculine tradition of New Zealand literature." Thesis, University of Canterbury. English, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/9709.
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This thesis will investigate the fictional discourse that has developed around academia and how this discourse has manifested itself in the New Zealand literary tradition, primarily in the works of M.K. Joseph, Dan Davin and James K. Baxter. These three writers have been selected because of their status within Kai Jensen's conception of “a literary tradition of excitement about masculinity”; in other words, the masculine tradition in New Zealand literature which provides fictional representations of factual events and tensions. This literary approach is also utilised in the tradition of British university fiction, in which the behaviour of students and faculty are often deliberately exaggerated in order to provide a representation of campus life that captures the essence of the reality without being wholly factual. The fact that these three writers attempt, consciously or unconsciously, to combine the two traditions is a matter of great literary interest: Joseph's A Pound of Saffron (1962) appropriates tropes of the British university novel while extending them to include concerns specific to New Zealand; Davin's Cliffs of Fall (1945), Not Here, Not Now (1970) and Brides of Price (1972) attempt to blend traditions of university fiction with the masculine realist tradition in New Zealand literature, though, as we will see, with limited success; Baxter's station as the maternal grandson of a noted professor allows him to criticise the elitist New Zealand university system in Horse (1985) from a unique position, for he was more sympathetic towards what he considered the working class “peasant wisdom” of his father, Archie, than the “professorial knowledge” of Archie's father-in-law. These three authors have been chosen also because of the way they explore attitudes towards universities amongst mainstream New Zealand society in their writing, for while most novels in the British tradition demonstrate little tension between those within the university walls and those without, in New Zealand fiction the tension is palpable. The motivations for this tension will also be explored in due course, but before we can grapple with how the tradition of British university fiction has impacted New Zealand literature, we must first examine the tradition itself.
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Ellis, Oliver Benjamin Crawford. "“The Much Wished-For Shore”: Nationalism and Utopianism in New Zealand Literature: 1817-1973." Thesis, University of Canterbury. English, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/9255.
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This thesis examines the relationship between utopianism and nationalism in New Zealand literature between 1817 and 1973. My research utilises the definition of both the utopia and the nation as “imagined” or “imaginary” communities (to use Benedict Anderson and Phillip Wegner’s terms), in demonstrating how they function as interdependent concepts in colonial New Zealand literature. Specifically, my research focuses on how a dominant discourse of Pākehā nationalism is influenced by the desires of colonial settlement. There is an identifiable tradition in which New Zealand is imagined as a utopian space with an ambivalence towards modernity. The settler nation is defined subjectively by different authors, retaining, however, a tradition of excluding groups which are not compatible with the authors’ utopian projections. This exclusion may be based on race, gender, class, political views or other categorisations. I view this tradition as a dialectic of changing desires and utopian visions, based on changing historical contexts, but always engaged with the central attempt to speculate the possibilities that New Zealand holds as a utopia for Anglocentric settlement. The thesis is divided into four chapters, each based on the comparison of two texts from a certain period. The first chapter compares two texts of early nineteenth century British settlement, J.L. Nicholas’ Narrative of Voyage to New Zealand (1817) and E.J. Wakefield’s Adventure in New Zealand (1845). The second chapter examines Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872) and Julius Vogel’s Anno Domini 2000 (1889). The third chapter focuses on Robin Hyde’s Wednesday’s Children (1936) and John Mulgan’s Man Alone (1939). My final chapter argues that the end of this mode of writing is signalled by Smith’s Dream (1971 rev. 1973) by C.K. Stead and Intensive Care (1970) by Janet Frame, which demonstrate a changing approach to the tradition. After this point, other postcolonial voices emerge and the attempted homogeneity of settler utopianism is disrupted.
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Kimber, Geraldine Maria. "Katherine Mansfield : the view from France." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10036/33714.
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The aim of this thesis is to assess the reason why Katherine Mansfield’s reputation in France has always been greater than in England. The thesis examines the ways in which the French reception of Mansfield has idealised her persona to the extent of crafting a hagiography. I ask: what were the motives behind the French critics’ desire to put Mansfield on a pedestal? How did the three years she spent on French soil influence her writing? How do the translations of her work collude in the myth surrounding her personality? Although several other scholars have discussed the Katherine Mansfield myth in France, this thesis is the first sustained attempt to establish interconnections between her own French influences (literary and otherwise), and the mythmaking of the French critics and translators. I have divided my thesis into six chapters. The first places Mansfield in the general literary context of her era, exploring French literary tendencies at the time and juxtaposing them with the main literary trends in England. The second chapter focuses on the writer’s trips to France, demonstrating the influence of the French experience on her life and works. The third chapter highlights specific French literary influences and how these manifest themselves in her narrative art. In the fourth, I explain the workings of the writer’s narrative art, so that when in the next chapter I study the translations via close textual analysis, it will become clear whether the beliefs and principles expressed in the original texts have been diluted during the translation process. The last chapter prior to the conclusion will follow the critical appraisal of her life and work in France from her death up to the present day, by closely analysing the differing French critical responses. The division of the thesis in this way will enable me to show how these various strands combine to create a legend which has little basis in fact, thereby demonstrating how reception and translation determine the importance of an author’s reputation in the literary world.
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Zimmermann, Anne Barbara. "Godwitting and cuckooing : negotiations and legitimations of cultural identity in New Zealand literature /." Seedorf : [s.n.], 1996. http://www.ub.unibe.ch/content/bibliotheken_sammlungen/sondersammlungen/dissen_bestellformular/index_ger.html.
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Lawn, Jennifer. "Trauma and recovery in Janet Frame's fiction." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1997. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/nq25087.pdf.
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Bones, Helen Katherine. "A Dual Exile? New Zealand and the Colonial Writing World, 1890-1945." Thesis, University of Canterbury. Humanities, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/5618.
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It is commonly thought that New Zealand writers before World War II suffered from a "dual exile". In New Zealand, they were exiled far from the publishing opportunities and cultural stimulus of metropolitan centres. To succeed as writers they were forced to go overseas, where they endured a second kind of spiritual exile, far from home. They were required to give up their "New Zealandness" in order to achieve literary success, yet never completely belonged in the metropolitan centres to which they had gone. They thus became permanent exiles.
This thesis aims to discover the true prevalence of "dual exile" amongst early twentieth-century New Zealand writers. Using both quantitative and qualitative analysis, it argues that the hypothesis of "dual exile" is a myth propagated since the 1930s by New Zealand‘s cultural nationalist tradition. New Zealand writers were not exiles because of the existence of the "colonial writing world"—a system of cultural diffusion, literary networks and personal interactions that gave writers access to all the cultural capital of Britain through lines of communication established by colonial expansion. Those who went to Britain remained connected to New Zealand through these same networks. The existence of the colonial writing world meant that the physical location of the writer, whether in New Zealand or overseas, had far less impact on literary success than the cultural nationalists assumed.
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O'Donnell, David O'Donnell, and n/a. "Re-staging history : historiographic drama from New Zealand and Australia." University of Otago. Department of English, 1999. http://adt.otago.ac.nz./public/adt-NZDU20070523.151011.
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Since the 1980s, there has been an increasing emphasis on drama, in live theatre and on film, which re-addresses the ways in which the post-colonial histories of Australia and New Zealand have been written. Why is there such a focus on �historical� drama in these countries at the end of the twentieth century and what does this drama contribute to wider debates about post-colonial history? This thesis aims both to explore the connections between drama and history, and to analyse the interface between live and recorded drama.
In order to discuss these issues, I have used the work of theatre and film critics and historians, supplemented by reference to writers working in the field of post-colonial and performance theory. In particular, I have utilised the methods of Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins in Post-Colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics, beginning with their claim that in the post-colonial situation history has been seen to determine reality itself. I have also drawn on theorists such as Michel Foucault, Linda Hutcheon and Guy Debord who question the �truth� value of official history-writing and emphasize the role of representation in determining popular perceptions of the past. This discussion is developed through reference to contemporary performance theory, particularly the work of Richard Schechner and Marvin Carlson, in order to suggest that there is no clear separation between performance and reality, and that access to history is only possible through re-enactments of it, whether in written or performative forms.
Chapter One is a survey of the development of �historical� drama in theatre and film from New Zealand and Australia. This includes discussion of the diverse cultural and performative traditions which influence this drama, and establishment of the critical methodologies to be used in the thesis. Chapter Two examines four plays which are intercultural re-writings of canonical texts from the European dramatic tradition. In this chapter I analyse the formal and thematic strategies in each of these plays in relation to the source texts, and ask to what extent they function as canonical counter-discourse by offering a critique of the assumptions of the earlier play from a post-colonial perspective. The potential of dramatic representation in forming perceptions of reality has made it an attractive forum for Maori and Aboriginal artists, who are creating theatre which has both a political and a pedagogical function. This discussion demonstrates that much of the impetus towards historiographic drama in both countries has come from Maori and Aboriginal writers and directors working in collaboration with white practitioners. Such collaborations not only advance the project of historiographic drama, but also may form the basis of future theatre practice which departs from the Western tradition and is unique to each of New Zealand and Australia. In Chapter Three I explore the interface between live and recorded performance by comparing plays and films which dramatise similar historical material. I consider the relative effectiveness of theatre and film as media for historiographic critique. I suggest that although film often has a greater cultural impact than theatre, to date live theatre has been a more accessible form of expression for Maori and Aboriginal writers and directors. Furthermore, following theorists such as Brecht and Brook, I argue that such aspects as the presence of the live performer and the design of the physical space shared by actors and audience give theatre considerable potential for creating an immediate engagement with historiographic themes. In Chapter Four, I discuss two contrasting examples of recorded drama in order to highlight the potential of film and television as media for historiographic critique. I question the divisions between the documentary and dramatic genres, and use Derrida�s notion of play to suggest that there is a constant slippage between the dramatic and the real, between the past and the present. In Chapter Five, I summarize the arguments advanced in previous chapters, using the example of the national museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa, to illustrate that the �performance� of history has become part of popular culture. Like the interactive displays at Te Papa, the texts studied in this thesis demonstrate that dramatic representation has the potential to re-define perceptions of historical �reality�. With its superior capacity for creating illusion, film is a dynamic medium for exploring the imaginative process of history is that in the live performance the spectator symbolically comes into the presence of the past.
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Persson, Ulrika. "Culture-specific items : Translation procedures for a text about Australian and New Zealand children's literature." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för språk (SPR), 2015. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-46025.
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The aim of this study is to analyse the problems met when translating culture-specific items in a text about Australian and New Zealand colonial and post-colonial children’s literature into Swedish. The analysis quantifies and describes the different translation procedures used, and contrasts different strategies when there was more than one possible choice. It also outlines the reasons for the choices made when creating a text adapted for a Swedish audience. The translation methods applied are dynamic equivalence and domestication. As for the categorization of the material, the theories of Newmark (1988) have primarily been followed. The study shows that the frequency of each translation procedure depends on the type of culture-specific item, and the chosen translation method. It is argued that transference is the most commonly used procedure, and recognized translations are not as frequent as could have been expected with the choice of domestication. This is the case for proper nouns and references to literary works, where transference and dynamic equivalence has been given priority over domestication whenever the factual content was considered to be the most important aspect to follow. As for culture-specific items of the category social culture, neutralisation is the most commonly used procedure. In such cases the domestication method was more influential than dynamic equivalence as the consideration of ethics as well as avoidance of cultural taboos in the target culture were considered to be more important than content.
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Dionne, Lee Elton. "Situating the cetacean: Science and storytelling in Witi Ihimaera's The whale rider." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2006. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/2883.
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Rudd, Alison. "'Demons from the deep' : postcolonial Gothic fictions from the Caribbean, Canada, Australia and New Zealand." Thesis, University of Northampton, 2006. http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/2962/.
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This thesis explores the field of Postcolonial Gothic, initially through an examination of theories of the Gothic and the postcolonial and their points of intersection. Homi Bhabha’s notion of the ‘unhomely’ as the paradigm for postcolonial experience, particularly with regard to migrancy and Julia Kristeva’s concept of the abject are identified as particularly productive for a Postcolonial Gothic framework, which is then applied to a survey of the way the Gothic is figured on the individual and the Local, regional or national levels in the context of Caribbean, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand postcolonial writing and demonstrates how the Gothic as a mode of writing furnishes postcolonial authors with a narrative strategy to express the traumas of colonialism and their postcolonial legacies. In coming to terms with the past, historical temporality and authority are rendered problematic by postcolonial writers because the physical and psychic violence of colonialism and its effects on the individual and on society are compounded by the repression of past trauma. The effects of such trauma threaten to resurface despite resistance. These experiences underpin the images of postcolonial revenants as hybrid, distorted and monstrous figures, which arise out of cultural contact between colonised and coloniser. The ghost, the phantom, the revenant, gain new meanings in the service of the postcolonial, where the duppy, and the soucouyant, from the Caribbean; the Bunyip from Australia and the shape- shifting figure of Coyote from Canada are hybrid manifestations created from European, indigenous and cross-cultural remains and they speak of culturally specific histories, traumas and locations. The thesis is arranged into four chapters: Caribbean gothic, Canadian Gothic, Australian Gothic and New Zealand Gothic. Each chapter provides an overview of the Gothic in the national or regional context, placing the emphasis on the postcolonial and then focuses on the way the Gothic is utilised by both dominant and marginal cultures: by white settlers and indigenous peoples in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, by the descendents of people forcibly mobilised through slavery in the Caribbean, and by other more recent migrants to, or between these locations. The writers discussed have different tales to tell about the effects of colonialism on the individual and on their society, but they have chosen the Gothic as means of expression for some of the most violent and unspeakable acts of colonialism and their legacy in the postcolonial
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Cox, Emma. "Shakespeare and indigeneity : performative encounters in Australia and Aotearoa-New Zealand /." [St. Lucia, Qld.], 2005. http://www.library.uq.edu.au/pdfserve.php?image=thesisabs/absthe18639.pdf.
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Laurs, Deborah Elizabeth. ""Ungrown-up grown-ups" : the representation of adolescence in twentieth-century New Zealand young adult fiction : a dissertation presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Literature at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand." Massey University, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1255.
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Behaviouralists consider adolescence a time for developing autonomy, which accords with Michel Foucault‘s power/knowledge dynamic that recognises individuals‘ assertion of independence as a crucial element within society. Surprisingly, however, twentieth-century New Zealand Young Adult (YA) fiction tends to disempower adolescents, by portraying an adultist version of them as immature and unprepared for adult responsibilities. By depicting events through characters‘ eyes, a focalising device that encourages reader identification with the narratorial point-of-view, authors such as Esther Glen, Isabel Maud Peacocke, Joyce West, Phillis Garrard, Tessa Duder, Lisa Vasil, Margaret Mahy, William Taylor, Kate de Goldi, Paula Boock, David Hill, Jane Westaway, and Bernard Beckett stress the importance of conforming to adult authority. Rites of passage are rarely attained; protagonists respect their elders, and juvenile delinquents either repent or are punished for their misguided behaviours. ―Normal‖ expectations are established by the portrayal of single parents who behave ―like teenagers‖: an unnatural role reversal that demands a return to traditional hegemonic roles. Adolescents must forgive adults‘ failings within a discourse that rarely forgives theirs. Depictions of child abuse, while deploring the deed, tend to emphasise victims‘ forbearance rather than admitting perpetrators‘ culpability. As Foucault points out, adolescent sexuality both fascinates and alarms adult society. Within the texts, sex is strictly an adult prerogative, reserved for reproduction within marriage, with adolescent intimacy sanctioned only between couples who conform to the middle-class ideal of monogamy. On the other hand, teenagers who indulge in casual sex are invariably given cause to regret. Such presentations operate vicariously to protect readers from harm, but also create an idealised, steadfast sense of adultness in the process.
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Ellis, Jeanne. "Past (pre)occupations, present (dis)locations : the nineteenth century restoried in texts from/about South Africa, Canada, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/96012.
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Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2014.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis focuses on the 'restorying‘ of British settler colonialism in a range of texts that negotiate the intricacies of post-settler afterlives in the postcolonial contexts of South Africa, Canada, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. In this, I do not undertake a sustained, programmatic comparative reading in order to deliver a set of answers based on insights achieved into the current state of post-settler colonial identities. Rather, I approach the study as an open-ended exploration by reading a combination of texts of various kinds – novels, poetry, drama, films and installation art – from and about these different geographical and historical contexts, structured as a sequence of four chapters, each with a distinct theoretical ensemble specific to the (pre)occupations of the settler colonial past and the linked senses of (dis)location in the present that emerge from the primary texts combined in each case. Since this project is informed by my location as a South African researcher, the cluster of primary texts in every chapter always includes one or more South African texts as pivotal to the juxtapositional dynamics such a reading attempts. By placing this study of the textual afterlives of settler colonialism undertaken from a South African perspective within the ambit of neo-Victorian studies, it is my intention to contribute to the growing body of critical and theoretical work emerging from this interdisciplinary field and to introduce to it a set of primary texts that will extend the parameters of its productive intersections with colonial and postcolonial studies.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis bestudeer die 'restorying' van Britse setlaar-kolonialisme in ‘n groep tekste wat die verwikkeldheid van post-setlaar 'afterlives' in the post-koloniale kontekste van Suid Afrika, Kanada, Australië en Aotearoa Nieu-Seeland vervat. Hiermee onderneem ek nie ‘n volgehoue, programmatiese vergelykende interpretasie met die oog daarop om die huidige stand van post-setlaar koloniale identiteite tot ‘n stel antwoorde te reduseer nie. Ek benader die studie eerder as ‘n verkenning van moontlikhede gegenereer deur die lees van ‘n kombinasie van verskillende tekste – romans, gedigte, drama, films en installasie kuns – wat hulle oorsprong in hierdie verkillende geografiese en historiese kontekste het, asook daaroor handel. Gevolglik bestaan die studie uit vier hoofstukke wat elkeen die (pre)okkupasies van die setlaar-koloniale verlede en die gepaardgaande gevoel van (dis)lokasie in die hede, soos tevoorskyn gebring deur die kombinasie van primere tekste, aan die hand van ‘n toepaslike teoretiese ensemble bespreek. Aangesien die projek uit my posisie as Suid Afrikaanse navorser spruit, en ‘n jukstaposisionele dinamiek grondliggend aan my leesbenadering is, betrek ek telkens een of meer Suid Afrikaanse tekste by die groep primere tekste wat die basis van elke hoofstuk vorm. Deur hierdie studie van die tekstuele 'afterlives' van setlaar-kolonialisme, wat vanuit ‘n Suid Afrikaanse perspektief onderneem word, binne die raamwerk van neo-Viktoriaanse studies te plaas, beoog ek om by te dra tot die korpus van kritiese en teoretiese werk van hierdie interdisiplinere veld. Deur die toevoeging van die betrokke groep primere tekste word die area waar hierdie veld met koloniale en post-koloniale studies oorvleuel verbreed.
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Schuler, Annabel. "Michael King, journalist : a study of the influence of journalism on King's later writing : a thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Mass Communication in the University of Canterbury /." Thesis, University of Canterbury. Political Science and Communication, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/913.
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Michael King is an acclaimed writer, author and communicator. When he died in a car accident he was eulogised as one of New Zealand's leading citizens for his literary contribution. He is celebrated as a writer who communicated history in a way that was palatable and comprehensible to all New Zealanders. He is also remembered for his commentary on New Zealand as a bi-cultural society. This thesis debates whether his years as a journalist gave him the skills to write, argue and communicate better. King was not a journalist for long and then he taught journalism, but those years served as a bridge between academia and a life in everyday New Zealand. Good writing and good journalistic writing have been analysed and refined down to basic rules which are then measured against King's work. Drivers to good writing have also been identified and these relate to the emotional and psychological characteristics of a good writer. Anecdotal evidence about King's work as a journalist and then as a writer has been gathered and tested against the rules and drivers. Two key themes have emerged. One that King was born with a natural ability to write and this was fuelled by strong reading and writing habits early in his life. The second is that King worked at being a good journalist, he learned rules and disciplines which improved his writing and these stayed with him throughout his literary career. The issue of objectivity is a moot point for journalists and there is debate about how objective journalists can realistically be. One of the reasons King left daily journalism was because he became frustrated with the constraints of objectivity. The thesis debates how this impacted on his writing and the direction of his later work.
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Stoop, Graham Charles. "The management of knowledge : text, context, and the New Zealand English curriculums, 1969-1996." Thesis, University of Canterbury. Education, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/1045.
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This is a study of the New Zealand English curriculums, 1969-1996. The study is organised around three phases of reform: the initial changes made to the teaching of English in the first three years of secondary school; the later reform of the senior-school English syllabus; the more recent development of an integrated national curriculum statement for the teaching of English. These reforms are charted in a narrative fashion, although the thesis does not purport to be a full history of English teaching in the period under review. Instead, the various developments and changes to English teaching in New Zealand secondary schools, during a thirty year period, are contextualised under the interpretative paradigm: the management of knowledge. It is argued herein that knowledge, and, in this case, the subject English, has been managed - consciously and unconsciously - in the interests of dominant socio-cultural and socio-economic groups. I aver that even alleged progressive developments in the pedagogy of classroom life have been routinised in the curriculum statements. Consequently, there has been an official sanctioning of established or conservative perspectives on the way English language and literature should be taught, thus often denying the emancipatory themes of respect for the human subject and human agency. My contention is advanced and supported through a careful examination of the curriculum text discourses, and, in several instances, through an examination of the transmission process from the draft statement to the published statement. I am therefore able to argue that the English curriculums must be understood as part of wider social and political processes: the curriculums are produced, managed and reproduced. The influences of the social environment and, in particular, the ideological struggle between State and society, are to be found in the English teaching discourse. This notion is captured in the subtitle of the study: text and context. The thesis concludes with a brief, personal reflection on how an English curriculum might be theorised so that it does not impose on students a definition of reality that declares the values and symbols of the social elites. I assert that an understanding of discourse, or the discourses of knowledge, can provide a way forward for the theorising of the subject English.
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Hanson, Paul Michael. "Beyond settler consciousness : new geographies of nation in two novels by Margaret Laurence and Fiona Kidman : a thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English /." ResearchArchive@Victoria e-Thesis, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10063/916.
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Burke, Christopher J. F. "Diversity or Perversity? Investigating Queer Narratives, Resistance, and Representation in Aotearoa / New Zealand, 1948-2000." The University of Waikato, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10289/2245.
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This thesis contributes to the burgeoning field of the history of sexuality in New Zealand and seeks to distill the more theorised and reflexive understanding of the subjectively understood queer male identity since 1948. Emerging from the disciplines of History and English, this project draws from a range of narratological materials: parliamentary debates contained in Hansard, and novels and short stories written by men with publicly avowed queer identities. This thesis explores how both 'normative' identity and the category of 'the homosexual' were constructed and mobilised in the public domain, in this case, the House of Representatives. It shows that members of the House have engaged with an extensive tradition of defining and excluding; a process by which state and public discourses have constructed largely unified, negative and othering narratives of 'the homosexual'. This constitutes an overarching narrative of queer experience which, until the mid-1990s, excluded queer subjects from its construction. At the same time, fictional narratives offer an adjacent body of knowledge and thought for queer men and women. This thesis posits literature's position as an important and productive space for queer resistance and critique. Such texts typically engage with and subvert 'dominant' or 'normative' understandings of sexuality and disturb efforts to apprehend precise or linear histories of 'gay liberation' and 'gay consciousness'. Drawing from the works of Frank Sargeson, James Courage, Bill Pearson, Noel Virtue, Stevan Eldred-Grigg, and Peter Wells, this thesis argues for a revaluing of fictional narratives as active texts from which historians can construct a matrix of cultural experience, while allowing for, and explaining, the determining role such narratives play in the discursively constructed understandings of gender and sexuality in New Zealand.
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White, Mandala Camille. "From the Sublime to the Rebellious: Representations of Nature in the Urban Novels of a Contemporary New Zealand Author." Thesis, University of Canterbury. English, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/957.
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Although nature is a dominant presence both in historical New Zealand literature and in New Zealand's current international image, literary critics observe a tendency on the part of young writers to neglect nature in favour of more human, urban and cultural themes. I write against this perception, basing my argument on the hypothesis that such urban-based literature may in fact be centrally concerned with the natural world and with human-nature relations. In locating nature within the urban fictional environment, I demonstrate a model of analysis that extends literary critical approaches to nature both within New Zealand literature and within the field of ecocriticism, both of which are largely consumed with analysing representations of sublime, non-urban nature. I test this urban ecocritical method of reading in my analysis of Catherine Chidgey's three novels, In a Fishbone Church, Golden Deeds and The Transformation, all of which adhere to the human-centred trend typical of contemporary New Zealand novels. I reveal within Chidgey's fiction a gradual progression away from archetypal representations of the sublime toward a more complex, fractured and rebellious variety of nature that co-exists alongside humans within urban space. Thus, while the characters in her first novel predominantly interact with nature as a sublime, non-urban entity, those in her second and third novels face the daily possibility of encountering "the wild" within domesticated settings that are apparently severed from any connection with the natural world. This kind of urbanised feral nature poses a significant threat to Chidgey's characters, overtly in the form of the powerful natural elements, and covertly through the myriad varieties of transformed nature with which they surround themselves. I read this portrayal of nature as a commentary on contemporary modernity's relationship with the natural environment, and I suggest that this kind of agentive, autonomous nature demands a new theory of environmentalism which will consider nature as an actor alongside humans.
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Allen, Chadwick 1964. "Blood as narrative/narrative as blood: Constructing indigenous identity in contemporary American Indian and New Zealand Maori literatures and politics." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/289022.
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Following the end of World War II and the formation of the United Nations organization, indigenous minorities who had fought on behalf of First World nations--including record numbers of New Zealand Maori and American Indians--pursued their longstanding efforts to assert cultural and political distinctiveness from dominant settler populations with renewed vigor. In the first decades after the War, New Zealand Maori and American Indians worked largely within dominant discourses in their efforts to define viable contemporary indigenous identities. But by the late 1960s and early 1970s, both New Zealand and the United States felt the effects of an emerging indigenous "renaissance," marked by dramatic events of political and cultural activism and by unprecedented literary production. By the mid-1970s, New Zealand Maori and American Indians were part of an emerging international indigenous rights movement, signaled by the formation and first general assembly of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP). In "Blood As Narrative/Narrative As Blood," I chronicle these periods of indigenous minority activism and writing and investigate the wide range of tactics developed for asserting indigenous difference in literary and political activist texts produced by the WCIP, New Zealand Maori, and American Indians. Indigenous minority or "Fourth World" writers and activists have mobilized and revalued both indigenous and dominant discourses, including the pictographic discourse of plains Indian "winter counts" in the United States and the ritual discourse of the Maori marae in New Zealand, as well as the discourse of treaties in both. These writers and activists have also created powerful tropes and emblematic figures for contemporary indigenous identity, including "blood memory," the ancient child, and the rebuilding of the ancestral house (whare tipuna). My readings of a wide range of poems, short stories, novels, essays, non-fiction works, representations of cultural and political activism, and works of literary, art history, political science, and cultural criticism lead to the development of critical approaches for reading indigenous minority literary and political activist texts that take into account the complex historical and cultural contexts of their production--local, national and, increasingly, global.
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Cozzone, Iolanda. "Una poeta : perspectives on the translation of Janet Frame's Verse into Italian." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10871/16610.
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Janet Frame (1924-2004) is known for being one of the most prolific, translated, and unconventional New Zealand novelists. Her work, however, includes a vast production of poems, which scholars and translators have ignored or, at least, not considered worthy for a comprehensive approach to her. Frame's work has undergone the further limitation of a strongly biography-based hermeneutics: from the gossiping around her alleged schizophrenia, to the popularity of the filmic version of her autobiography (An Angel at My Table) by Jane Campion, and the countless legends that have sprung around her, she has often been stigmatised and labelled the 'mad writer' of Campion's movie. This thesis links the risks of the life/myth-driven perspectives to the current lack of interest in Frame's poetry. Her poetic production is here presented as a fundamental part of her oeuvre and her idiosyncratic approach to writing. Therefore, this study aims to fill this gap in the literature on Frame and thus reconfigure her role as a poet. Through a combination of methodologies grounded in literary and verse translation theories, creativity and genre studies, poststructuralism and postcolonialism, this thesis investigates the most significant traits of Frame's prose and poetry, particularly the traits shared by both. It critiques past translations of Frame's prose into Italian where these have not taken into account the poetic value of her work, and suggests strategies for the translation of her verse into Italian, arguing that an informed approach to her poetry in translation may greatly contribute to a reconfiguration and re-evaluation of her legacy.
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Casertano, Renata. "Perceiving the vertigo : the fall of the heroine in four New Zealand writers." Thesis, University of Stirling, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/1695.
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In this study I analyse the role of the heroine in the work of four New Zealand writers, Katherine Mansfield, Robin Hyde, Janet Frame and Keri Hulme, starting from the assumption that such a role is influenced by the notion of the fall and by the perception of the vertigo entailed in it. In order to prove this I turn to the texts of four New Zealand writers dedicating one chapter to each. In the first chapter a few of Katherine Mansfield's short stories are analysed from the vantage point of the fall, investigated both in the construction of the character's subjectivity and in the construction of the narration. In the second chapter a link is established between Katherine Mansfield and Robin Hyde. A particular emphasis is put on the notion of subjectivity in relationship developed by the two writers, highlighting the link between this kind of subjectivity and the notion of the fall. In the third chapter the focus is subsequently shifted to Robin Hyde's work, in particular one of her novels, Wednesday's Children, which is read in the context of Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the carnivalistic. In the fourth chapter the notion of the fall is analysed in the fiction of Janet Frame, which is related to the treatment of the notion of the fall present in Keri Hulme's The Bone People. The fifth chapter is dedicated to the analysis of The Bone People as in the novel the notion of the fall and the vertigo perception find their fullest expression, whilst in the sixth chapter a significant parallel is drawn between Janet Frame's Scented Gardens for the Blind and Keri Hulme's The Bone People and links are established with their predecessors. Finally in the seventh chapter the critical perspective is broadened to comprise those common elements in the writing of Katherine Mansfield, Robin Hyde, Janet Frame and Keri Hulme that have been neglected by focusing uniquely on the notion of the fall, and thus to contribute to a more complete overall picture of the comparison presented in this study.
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Seran, Justine Calypso. "Intersubjective acts and relational selves in contemporary Australian Aboriginal and Aotearoa/New Zealand Maori women's writing." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/21999.
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This thesis explores the dynamics of intersubjectivity and relationality in a corpus of contemporary literature by twelve Indigenous women writers in order to trace modes of subject-formation and communication along four main axes: violence, care, language, and memory. Each chapter establishes a comparative discussion across the Tasman Sea between Indigenous texts and world theory, the local and the global, self and community. The texts range from 1984 to 2011 to cover a period of growth in publishing and international recognition of Indigenous writing. Chapter 1 examines instances of colonial oppression in the primary corpus and links them with manifestations of violence on institutional, familial, epistemic, and literary levels in Aboriginal authors Melissa Lucashenko and Tara June Winch’s debut novels Steam Pigs (1997) and Swallow the Air (2006). They address the cycle of violence and the archetypal motif of return to bring to light the life of urban Aboriginal women whose ancestral land has been lost and whose home is the western, modern Australian city. Maori short story writer Alice Tawhai’s collections Festival of Miracles (2005), Luminous (2007), and Dark Jelly (2011), on the other hand, deny the characters and reader closure, and establish an atmosphere characterised by a lack of hope and the absence of any political or personal will to effect change. Chapter 2 explores caring relationships between characters displaying symptoms that may be ascribed to various forms of intellectual and mental disability, and the relatives who look after them. I situate the texts within a postcolonial disability framework and address the figure of the informal carer in relation to her “caree.” Patricia Grace’s short story “Eben,” from her collection Small Holes in the Silence (2006), tells the life of a man with physical and intellectual disability from birth (the eponymous Eben) and his relationship with his adoptive mother Pani. The main character of Lisa Cherrington’s novel The People-Faces (2004) is a young Maori woman called Nikki whose brother Joshua is in and out of psychiatric facilities. Finally, the central characters of Vivienne Cleven’s novel Her Sister’s Eye (2002) display a wide range of congenital and acquired cognitive impairments, allowing the author to explore how the compounded trauma of racism and sexism participates in (and is influenced by) mental disability. Chapter 3 examines the materiality and corporeality of language to reveal its role in the formation of (inter)subjectivity. I argue that the use of language in Aboriginal and Maori women’s writing is anchored in the racialised, sexualised bodies of Indigenous women, as well as the locale of their ancestral land. The relationship between language, body, and country in Keri Hulme’s the bone people (1984) and Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria (2006) are analysed in relation to orality, gesture, and mapping in order to reveal their role in the formation of Indigenous selfhood. Chapter 4 explores how the reflexive practice of life-writing (including fictional auto/biography) participates in the decolonisation of the Indigenous self and community, as well as the process of individual survival and cultural survivance, through the selective remembering and forgetting of traumatic histories. Sally Morgan’s Aboriginal life-writing narrative My Place (1987), Terri Janke’s Torres Strait Islander novel Butterfly Song (2005), as well as Paula Morris and Kelly Ana Morey’s Maori texts Rangatira (2011) and Bloom (2003) address these issues in various forms. Through the interactions between memory and memoirs, I bring to light the literary processes of decolonisation of the writing/written self in the settler countries of Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. This study intends to raise the profile of the authors mentioned above and to encourage the public and scholarly community to pay attention and respect to Indigenous women’s writing. One of the ambitions of this thesis is also to expose the limits and correct the shortcomings of western, postcolonial, and gender theory in relation to Indigenous women writers and the Fourth World.
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Caskey, Sarah A. "Open secrets, ambiguity and irresolution in the Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian short story." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2000. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp02/NQ58399.pdf.
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Thurman, Megan. ""The End at the Beginning" : Spiral Logic in Keri Hulme's The Bone People." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2017. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/896.
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Siddall, Jane. "Mother what art thou? : a study of the depiction of mother figures in recent Australian and New Zealand fiction for teenagers." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2003. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/1290.
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This thesis is a study of the representations of mothers and mother figures as found in five contemporary (published between 1984 and 1999) novels for teenagers. The focus is on western constructions of motherhood, as both normalising and universalising discourses. Utilising a variety of critical approaches this thesis examines the socio-cultural issues present in the novels in conjunction with western models of maternity. This study argues the category of mother is interdependent upon the category of child. As children's literature often focuses on the development of the child, the mother figures are often read as the “unconscious” of the texts. I examine the extent to which the mother figures are given a "subject-in-processness" (Lucas, 1998, p.39) subjectivity. The texts considered are The Changeover(First published in 1984) by Margaret Mahy; Greylands (1997) by lsobelle Carmody; Speaking to Miranda (First published in 1990) by Caroline Macdonald: Touching earth lightly (1996) by Margo Lanagan and Closed, Stanger(1999) by Kate De Goldi. In part, the selection of the texts has been based upon the various and multifaceted relationships between the mothers and the children. I use the Mahy text as a means to establish selected mother and, to a lesser degree, child characteristics. Some comparisons are made with this sole text of the 19805, in order to ascertain if there has been an evolution in the articulation of mother, figures in the 1990s. This study does not adopt a survey approach nor does it claim that the five novels present all the categories of "mother". Rather it addresses categories such as, mother as nurturer, as sexual being and, importantly, the dichotomy of the “good/bad" mother. Within western discourses of maternity, this latter category is still used as a model by which to label women who mother. This study considers the stability of this binary within the novels. This thesis relies upon close reading of the primary texts. The emphasis is on critical approaches that draw attention to contexts, with particular emphasis on the socio-cultural issues present in each particular novel. My readings suggest that there is the possibility for engagement with the texts' social content/comment, in conjunction with the representations of western models of maternity. I draw from a variety of motherhood discourses and theoretical approaches, including amongst others, the work of Luce Irigaray, HeIene Cixous, Judith Hennan, Martha Fineman, Rose Lucas, and Robyn McCallum.
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Dean, Andrew. "Foes, ghosts, and faces in the water : self-reflexivity in postwar fiction." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2017. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4c2e3b07-2454-457a-bf9f-a3f0734c89ba.
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This thesis examines the nature and value of metafictional practices in the careers of postwar novelists. Discussions of metafiction have been central to accounts of postwar literature. Where debates in the 1980s and 1990s about metafiction tended to make claims about its distinctive political and theoretical power, recent work in the study of institutions has folded metafiction into the routine operation of the literary field, and attacked previous claims to distinctive value. In this thesis I both historicize self-reflexive literary practices in the literary field, an element largely absent from the earlier scholarship, and present historically determinate claims about the value of these practices, an element I suggest is missing from the more recent work. To do so, I turn to the study of autobiography, specifically Philippe Lejeune's concept of 'autobiographical space.' In the first chapter, I explore how J. M. Coetzee develops academic literary criticism in his fiction. In the second chapter, I examine how Janet Frame responds to both the demands of a national literature and biographical inquiry into her life. In the third chapter, I address how Philip Roth handles the relationship between the politics of identity and the postwar novel. Self-reflexive practices, I show throughout, are ways of writing that were encouraged by particular formations in the literary field and were handled by writers through more or less explicit treatments of autobiographical space. I argue, though, that while these practices can be remarkably inventive, they carry no guarantees for political, theoretical, or aesthetic value.
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McWilliams, Amber. "Our lands, our selves : the postcolonial literary landscape of Maurice Gee and David Malouf /." e-Thesis University of Auckland, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/2292/5617.
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Thesis (PhD--English)--University of Auckland, 2009."Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the Doctor of Philosophy in English, the University of Auckland, 2009." Includes bibliographical references.
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Paringatai, Karyn Ailsa, and n/a. "Poia mai taku poi: Unearthing the knowledge of the past : a critical review of written literature on the poi in New Zealand and the Pacific." University of Otago. Te Tumu - School of Maori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies, 2005. http://adt.otago.ac.nz./public/adt-NZDU20070430.110817.
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The primary objective of this thesis is to review literature written about poi in order to construct an historical overview of poi from pre-contact Maori society until the 1920s. The mythological and Polynesian origins of poi, traditional and contemporary materials and methods used to make poi, early travellers, explorers, and settlers accounts of poi and two case studies on the use of poi in the Taranaki and Te Arawa areas will be included in this thesis. The information will be used to show the changes in poi that have occured since Maori and European arrival to New Zealand until the 1920s.
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Bentley, Trevor William. "Images of Pakeha-Māori: A Study of the Representation of Pakeha-Māori by Historians of New Zealand From Arthur Thomson (1859) to James Belich (1996)." The University of Waikato, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10289/2559.
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This thesis investigates how Pakeha-Māori have been represented in New Zealand non-fiction writing during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The chronological and textual boundaries range from Arthur Thomson's seminal history The Story of New Zealand (1859) to James Belich's Making Peoples (1996). It examines the discursive inventions and reinventions of Pakeha-Māori from the stereotypical images of the Victorian era to modern times when the contact zone has become a subject of critical investigation and a sign of changing intellectual dynamics in New Zealand and elsewhere. This thesis is about the history of attitudes to culture-crossers in New Zealand, the use of the term 'Pakeha-Māori', and the images that underlie the thinking of Britons and Pakeha about them. It explores the motives and backgrounds of specific authors and the ways in which they frame New Zealand history. It elucidates the ambiguous and contradictory perspectives of Pakeha-Māori in the literature and analyses its impact on changing public perceptions about them. The study critiques the literature with emphasis on theoretically informed research, historical analysis, and literary insights. Discussion is confined to published texts, with the aim of exploring the multiplicity of Pakeha-Māori images and the processes that gave rise to them. This study is essentially an investigation into how and why historians and other scholars try to draw boundaries between cultures in order to create a satisfactory metanarrative or myth of the 'settlement' of New Zealand and thus to forge a sense of New Zealandness. The cultural and racial categories of 'Māori' and 'Pakeha' are very unstable, however, and a consideration of the 'in-between' or 'culture-crossing' category of 'Pakeha-Māori' can reveal the way in which 'Māori' and 'Pakeha' and a sense of New Zealand and New Zealanders have been constructed. More particularly, consideration of representations of those culture-crossers or race-crossers called Pakeha-Māori can reveal the hopes and fears of Pakeha writers regarding Pakeha, Māori and New Zealand and how Pakeha-Māori have frequently been a barometer or litmus test of public perceptions of relations between Māori and Pakeha in different historical periods.
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Fankhauser, Rochelle A. "Dear Father." Diss., CLICK HERE for online access, 1998. http://patriot.lib.byu.edu/u?/MTAF,34215.
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Lambert, Kelly Ann. "Calling the taniwha : Mana Wahine Maori and the poetry of Roma Potiki : a thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in New Zealand Literature /." ResearchArchive@Victoria e-thesis, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10063/995.
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Redmond, Robert Stanley. "Female authors and their male detectives: the ideological contest in female-authored crime fiction : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand." Massey University, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1057.
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In the nineteen-eighties a host of female detectives appeared in crime fiction authored by women. Ostensibly these detectives challenged hegemonic norms, but the consensus of opinion was that their appropriation of male values and adherence to conventional generic closures colluded with a gender system of male privilege. Academic interest in the work of female authors featuring male detectives was limited. Yet it can be argued that these texts could have the potential to disrupt the hegemonic order through the introduction, whether deliberately, or inadvertently, of a female counterpoint to the hegemony. The hypothesis I am advancing claims that the reconfiguration of male detectives in works authored by women avoids the visible contradictions of gender and genre that are characteristic of works featuring female detectives. However, through their use of disruptive performatives, these works allow scope for challenging normal gender practices—without damage to the genre. This hypothesis is tested by applying the performative theories of Judith Butler to a close reading of selected crime novels. Influenced by the theories of Austin, Lacan and Althusser, Butler’s concept of performativity claims that hegemonic notions of gender are a fiction. This discussion also uses Wayne Booth’s concept of the implied author as a means of distinguishing the performative agency of the text from that of the characters. Agatha Christie, P.D. James, and Donna Leon, each with their male detective heroes, come from different generations. A Butlerian reading illustrates their potential for disrupting gender norms. Of the three, however, only Donna Leon avoids the return to hegemonic control that is a feature of the genre. Christie’s women who have agency are inevitably eliminated, while conformist women are rewarded. James’s lead female character is never fully at ease in her professional role. When thrust into a leadership she proves herself to be competent, but not ready or desirous of the senior position. Instead her role is to mediate the transition of her junior, a male, to that position. Donna Leon is different. The moral and emotional content of her narratives suggests an implied author committed to ideological change. Her characters simultaneously renounce and collude with illusions of patriarchal authority, and could lay claim to be models for Butler’s notion of performative resistance.
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Painter, Holly. "Wanderlust : a poetry collection : a thesis submitted to the University of Canterbury in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creating Writing /." Thesis, University of Canterbury. School of Humanities, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/2743.
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Sörensen, Susanne. "In Splendid Isolation : A Deconstructive Close-Reading of a Passage in Janet Frame's "The Lagoon"." Thesis, Högskolan i Halmstad, Sektionen för humaniora (HUM), 2006. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-6090.
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In reading the literary criticism on Janet Frame's work it soon turns out that Frame was deconstructive before the concept was even invented. Thus, deconstruction is used in this essay to close-read a passage in the title story of her collection of short stories, The Lagoon (1951). The main hierarchical dichotomy of the passage is found to be the one between "the sea" and "the lagoon," in which the sea is proven to hold supremacy. "The sea" is read as an image of the great sea of English literary/cultural reference whereas "the lagoon" is read as an image of the vulnerably interdependent, peripheral pool of it, in the form of New Zealand literary/cultural reference. Through this symbolic and post-colonial reading the hierarchical dichotomy between "the sea" and "the lagoon" is deconstrued and reversed. In the conclusion, a post-colonial trace of Maori influence displaces the oppositional relation between "the sea" and "the lagoon."
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Thorpe, Vicki. "We made this song : the group song writing processes of three adolescent rock bands : a thesis submitted to the New Zealand School of Music in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Music in History and Literature of Music /." ResearhArchive@Victoria e-Thesis, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10063/272.
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Kennedy, Melissa. ""Striding both worlds" : cross-cultural influence in the work of Witi Ihimaera." Thesis, University of Canterbury. English, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/3931.
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This thesis engages with aspects of Witi Ihimaera's oeuvre that demonstrate influences from cultures other than Maori. These may be overt in the fiction, such as plot settings in Venice, Vietnam and Canada, or implicit in his writing mode and style, influenced by English romanticism, Pakeha cultural nationalism, Katherine Mansfield's modernist epiphanies, and Italian verismo opera. In revealing Ihimaera's indebtedness to cultural and aesthetic influences commonly seen as irrelevant to contemporary Maori literature, this thesis reveals a depth and richness in Ihimaera's imaginary that is frequently overlooked and undervalued in New Zealand literary interpretation. Illuminating cross-cultural influence in Ihimaera's works calls into question the applicability of biculturalism as a comprehensive manner of accounting for both Maori cultural ambitions of self-determination and the Maori relationship with Pakeha on the national level. Far from an "us-versus-them" dialectic based on a separatist notion of two individually self-sufficient and complete cultures, Ihimaera's fiction shows Maori culture to have been shaped by a long history of interaction and influence with the colonial British and the Pakeha. This is manifest in the way that the Maori sovereignty and renaissance movements, which gathered force in the 1970s, have been inspired by European concepts of modernity, the structures of nation building and, more recently, by Western globalization described in the theories of transculturation and diaspora. Similarly, in New Zealand literature, Maori writing is commonly considered a parallel genre which describes a distinctive Maori worldview and literary style. Contrary to the familiar interpretation of Ihimaera's fiction from this standpoint, this thesis argues that an emphasis on difference tends to lose sight of fiction's capacity to bring into play issues of differentiation, originality and hybridity through its very form and function. In effect, Maori negotiation of its sovereign space in its literature takes place in its forms rather than in its storyline, for example in multiple linguistic significations, in the text's unstable relationship with reality, and the way that imagery escapes concrete, definitive explanation. In this optic, this thesis analyses little-discussed aspects of Ihimaera's fiction, including his love of opera, the extravagance of his baroque lyricism, his exploration of the science-fiction genre, and his increasing interest in taking Maori into the international arena. While reading against the grain of current New Zealand literary practice, this thesis does not intend to contest such reading. Rather, it endeavours to present an additional, complementary analytical framework, based on a conviction that contemporary Maori-Pakeha cultural and literary negotiation and contestation is far from unique, but a local manifestation of other international and historical efforts for recognition and respect.
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Jackson, Janet Ruth. "A coat of ashes: A collection of poems, incorporating a metafictional narrative - and - Poetry, Daoism, physics and systems theory: a poetics: A set of critical essays." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2018. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/2125.
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This thesis comprises a book-length creative work accompanied by a set of essays. It explores how poetry might bring together spiritual and scientific discourses, focusing primarily on philosophical Daoism (Taoism) and contemporary physics. Systems theory (the science of complex and self-organising systems) is a secondary focus of the creative work and is used metaphorically in theorising the writing process.
The creative work, “A coat of ashes”, is chiefly concerned with the nature of being. It asks, “What is?”, “What am I?” and, most urgently, “What matters?”. To engage with these questions, it opens a space in which voices expressing scientific and spiritual worldviews may be heard on equal terms. “A coat of ashes” contributes a substantial number of poems to the small corpus of Daoist-influenced poetry in English and adds to the larger corpus of poetry engaging with the sciences. The poems are offset by a metafictional narrative, “The Dream”, which may be read as an allegory of the writing journey and the struggle to combine discourses.
The four essays articulate the poetics of “A coat of ashes” by addressing its context, themes, influences, methodology and compositional processes. They contribute to both literary criticism and writing theory. Like the creative work, they focus on dialogues between rationalist or scientific discourses and subjective or spiritual ones.
The first essay, “An introduction”, discusses the thesis itself: its rationale, background, components, limitations and implications. The second, “Singing the quantum”, reviews scholarship discussing the influence of physics on poetry, then examines figurative representations of physics concepts in selected poems by Rebecca Elson, Cilla McQueen and
Frederick Seidel. These poems illustrate how contemporary poetry can interpret scientific
concepts in terms of subjective human concerns.
The third essay, “Let the song be bare”, discusses existing Daoist poetry criticism before considering Daoist influences in the poetry of Ursula K. Le Guin, Randolph Stow and Judith Wright. These non-Indigenous poets with a strong awareness of the sciences have, by adopting Daoist-inflected senses of the sacred, been able to articulate the tension engendered by their problematic relationships with colonised landscapes. Moreover, the changing aesthetic of Wright’s later poetry reflects a struggle between Daoist quietism and European lyric commentary.
The final essay, “Animating the ash”, reflects on the process of writing poetry, using examples from “A coat of ashes” to construct a theoretical synthesis based on Daoism, systems theory and contemporary poetics. It proposes a novel way to characterise the nature and emergence of the hard-to-define quality that makes a poem a poem. This essay also discusses some of the Daoist and scientific motifs that occur in the creative work.
As a whole, this project highlights the potential of both the sciences and the more ancient ways of knowing — when seen in each other’s light — to help us apprehend the world’s material and metaphysical nature and live harmoniously within it.
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Schaub, Kerstin [Verfasser], and Ralph [Akademischer Betreuer] Pordzik. "As Written in the Flesh. The Human Body as Medium of Cultural Identity and Memory in Fiction from New Zealand / Kerstin Schaub. Betreuer: Ralph Pordzik." Würzburg : Universitätsbibliothek der Universität Würzburg, 2013. http://d-nb.info/1036367843/34.
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Malcolm-Buchanan, Vincent Alan. "Fragmentation and Restoration: Generational Legacies of 21st Century Māori." The University of Waikato, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10289/2797.
Full textAbstract:
The content of this thesis is premised on a reflexive examination of some historical juxtapositions culminating in critical aspects of being Māori in the twenty first century and how such aspects have informed contemporary indigenous identity. That is, the continuing acknowledgement and exponential public recognition of critical concepts which inextricably link indigenous and civic identity. The theoretical sources for this research are, in the main, derived from anthropological and religious studies, particularly on the significance of mythologies and oral histories, as well as from the oral theorising of elders in Aotearoa New Zealand. A very significant contribution from one such elder, a senior Māori woman academic, has been included in the form of the transcript of an interview. She herself had collected the views of a number of elders on myth, creating a rare and valuable resource. In the interview she married her reflections on these with her own experiences and her cogent analyses. From the outset, it was necessary to be discerning so as to ensure the thesis workload was manageable and realistic. For this reason the selected critical aspects that have been used to frame this research are (1) a developing Western validation (that is, acknowledgement and respect) of Māori, Māori culture and their mythology; (2) oral history (genealogy) and traditions that have remained constant despite the influences of modernity; and (3) notions of fluidity, negotiation and pragmatism regarding kinship legacies and cultural heritage. The thesis is comprised of six chapters starting from a subjective narrative leading through increasingly objective discourses that culminate in a conclusion which supports a belief that modern Māori require a balancing of critical aspects of cultural heritage, with a broad understanding of the world of the 'other', in order to realise and develop their contemporary indigenous identity. Ultimately, indigenous ideologies, practices and knowledge recorded and examined in the world of academia today, become potential resources for tomorrow. The intention of this research is to aggregate and discuss intrinsic aspects of the Māori past as well as developing aspects of the present, in order to better understand the significance of the future, and to add to the growing corpus of indigenous worldviews.
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Le, Marquand Jane Nicole. "'I'm not a woman writer, but--' : gender matters in New Zealand women's short fiction 1975-1995 : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand." 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1462.
Full textAbstract:
From the late 1970s, New Zealand women short story writers increasingly worked their way into the literary mainstream. In the wake of the early, feminist-motivated years of the decade their gender, which had previously been the root of their marginalized position, began to work for them. However, rather than embracing womanhood, this growth in gender recognition led to many writers rejecting overt identification of their sex. To be a labeled a woman writer was considered patronising, a mark of inferiority. These women wanted to be known as writers only, some even expressing a hope for literature to reach a point of androgyny. Their work, however, did not convey an androgynous perspective. Just as the fact of their gender could not be avoided, so the influence their sex had on their creativity cannot be denied. Gender does matter and New Zealand women's short fiction published in the 1975-1995 period illustrates its significance. From the early trend for adopting fiction as a site for social commentary and political treatise against patriarchy's one-dimensional image of woman, these stories show a gradually increasing awareness of fictional possibilities, allowing for celebration of the multiplicity of female experience and capturing a process of redefinition rather than rejection of 'women's work'. Though in the later 1990s it may no longer have been politically 'necessary' to promote women's work on the grounds of gender, on a personal level the 'difference of view' of the woman writer remained both visible and vital. An increasing sense of woman-to-woman communication based on shared experience emerges: women are writing as women, about women, for women.
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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.
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Steer, Philip. "Unsettled Nation: Britain, Australasia, and the Victorian Cultural Archipelago." Diss., 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10161/3207.
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This dissertation argues that the literary, intellectual, and cultural borders of Victorian Britain extended as far as Australia and New Zealand, and that the tradition of nation-based literary criticism inherited from the Victorians has blinded Victorian Studies to that possibility. Building upon the nineteenth century concept of "Greater Britain," a term invoking the expansion of the British nation through settler colonization, I demonstrate that literary forms did not simply diffuse from the core to the periphery of the empire, but instead were able to circulate within the space of Greater Britain. That process of circulation shaped Victorian literature and culture, as local colonial circumstances led writers to modify literary forms and knowledge formations; those modifications were then able to be further disseminated through the empire by way of the networks that constituted Greater Britain.
My argument focuses on the novel, because its formal allegiance to the imagined national community made it a valuable testing ground for the multi-centered nation that was being formed by settlement. I specifically locate the Victorian novel in the context of Britain's relations with the colonies of Australia and New Zealand, which were unique in that their transition from initial settlement to independent nations occurred almost entirely during the Victorian period. The chapters of
Working at the intersection between Victorian Studies and Australian and New Zealand literary criticism, I seek to recover and reconsider the geographical mobility of nineteenth century Britons and their literature. Thus, more than merely trying to cast light on a dimension of imperialism largely ignored by critics of Victorian literature, I use the specific example of Australasia to make the broader claim that the very idea of Victorian Britain can and must be profitably expanded to include its settler colonies.
Dissertation
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Shaw, Kirsten Elizabeth. "Neoliberalism and social patterns : constructions of home and community in contemporary New Zealand fiction : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in English at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand." 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/736.
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Constructions of home, family and community as ways of belonging have been ongoing discourses in New Zealand. This thesis examines constructions of home and family in works of fiction by four contemporary New Zealand authors: Alice Tawhai, Charlotte Grimshaw, Witi Ihimaera and Damien Wilkins. It asks how the main sociological characteristics of the period are presented and performed through fiction. Through these characters and their situations these authors expose the social fantasy of contemporary New Zealand society: that of individual reflexive opportunity. The twentieth century has seen a changing social fabric with loosening of bonds and the increase of individualism. The New Zealand way of life is changing, with increasing interconnectedness of the world through globalisation. Neo-liberal ideology, itself a response to globalising effects, has exacerbated social fragmentation and income disparity. Neoliberalism, a retreat of the state from both financial control and support of individuals, presumes a logic of market-forces and rational choice based on the maximisation of opportunity. This has implications for the individual’s sense of self and ways of belonging as the New Zealand subject is increasingly premised on personal responsibility. This thesis looks at the economic and sociological analyses of neoliberalism and asks if they are confirmed in the fiction.
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Liang, Wen (Lawa Iwan), and 梁文. "The Development of Ethnicity and its History of Literature: A Comparison of New Zealand Māori People and Taiwan Indigenous Peoples." Thesis, 2018. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/zc288b.
Full textAbstract:
碩士國立政治大學
民族學系
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The aim of the thesis, The Development of Ethnicity and its History of Literature: A Comparison of New Zealand Māori People and Taiwan Indigenous Peoples, is to compare the ethnic developments of the New Zealand Maori and Taiwan’s indigenous peoples, and further characterize the history of their literature. Before the New Southbound Policy, researchers have been devoted to contributing abundant Maori research. However, many of them only chose a certain topic to write about, ignoring other perspectives or orientations, which only revealed the tip of the iceberg. For this reason, the thesis ascertained other aspects with a holistic approach. Several similarities exist between the Maori and Taiwan’s indigenous peoples: both were Austronesian peoples, and share similar languages and cultures. In addition, they both undergone colonization and launched ethnic movements to regain their rights. The thesis is divided into three periods, which are before the ethnic movement, during the ethnic movement, and after the ethnic movement. Each chapter demonstrates its social context and the significant ethnic writers at that time. The thesis first illustrates Maori and Taiwan indigenous peoples’ unawakened ethnic consciousness through their literary writings. During the ethnic movement, both ethnic groups launched the ethnic movement and published their political perspectives during political and economic instability. Afterwards, the Maori and Taiwan’s indigenous peoples share different values in accordance with different social context after their respective ethnic movement. Finally, the thesis examines their social contexts and their literature through three aspects of ethnic literature, which are identity, language, and theme. The thesis is composed of seven chapters. The introduction reviews the purpose of the study, its motivation, and the background. Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 provide an overview of ethnic certification, the status of ethnic language, and the distribution of Maori and Taiwan’s indigenous peoples. Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 depicts Maori and Taiwan indigenous peoples’ social contexts and literature respectively. By comparing both ethnic groups, Chapter 5 shows their similarities and differences. Conclusions are drawn in Chapter 7. The conclusion offer incentives and disincentives from the Maori’s experience, which could be the inspiration for Taiwan’s indigenous peoples.
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Sturm, Jennifer. "Fictionalising the facts : an exploration of the 'place' of Aotearoa/New Zealand in the post-war autobiographical fiction of Anna Kavan." 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/2292/2496.
Full textAbstract:
Whole document restricted, see Access Instructions file below for details of how to access the print copy.This PhD thesis explores the Aotearoa / New Zealand influence in the post-World War II writing of English author, Anna Kavan. In response to her provocatively worded 1943 Horizon-published article on the socio-cultural features of that country, I sought evidence of the source of her apparent disdain. Imperialist in tone and disparaging of the post-colonial Other, the article contributed to the reflective dialectic of national identity of her temporary home. The discovery of unpublished and not previously discussed short stories, written during Kavan’s stay in Aotearoa / New Zealand, revealed a contrarily positive perspective, and offered an anomalous body of material that illuminate the early wartime experiences of the residents of Auckland's North Shore. Comparison between the stories in the manuscript and work published by Kavan since World War II exposed the compellingly autobiographical nature of her writing. This revelation was underscored by a second discovery, that of a previously-unseen cache of correspondence, letters sent from Kavan to her Aotearoa / New Zealand lover, the conscientious objector and author, Walter [Ian] Hamilton. The letters, unpublished short stories, and published work, collectively manifest an intertextuality which reinforces their status as autobiographical. Close analysis has determined that much of Kavan's 'fiction’ is in fact thinly disguised life-writing, a construct which would otherwise be unnoticed, in the absence of back-grounding evidence. This thesis further proves Kavan's authorial appropriation of thematic aspects of the Aotearoa / New Zealand vocabulary, geography, and historical aesthetic. The thesis also corrects extant inaccurate biographical material, particularly with respect to the years 1939 - 1943. Discovery of a small collection of photographs, featuring Kavan in a New Zealand context, has added impetus to the move to install her as a transient constituent on the continuum of New Zealand literature.
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(9778025), Romana Ashton. "Antipodean Gothic cinema: A study of the (postmodern) Gothic in Australian and New Zealand film since the 1970s." Thesis, 2005. https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/Antipodean_Gothic_cinema_A_study_of_the_postmodern_Gothic_in_Australian_and_New_Zealand_film_since_the_1970s/13420679.
Full textAbstract:
Although various film critics and academics have located the Gothic in Antipodean cinema, there has been no in-depth study of the Gothic and its ideological entanglements with postmodernism within this cinema. This study is divided into two parts and locates the (postmodern) Gothic in twelve Australian/New Zealand films ranging from Ted Kotcheff’s Wake in Fright (1971) to Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures (1994). Part one theorizes the Gothic as a subversive cultural mode that foreshadows postmodernism in terms of its antithetical relationship with Enlightenment ideals. Interconnections are made between proto-postmodern aspects of early Gothic literature and the appropriation and intensification of these aspects in what has been dubbed the postmodern Gothic. The dissertation then argues that the Antipodes was/is constructed through Euro-centric discourse(s) as a Gothic/(proto)-postmodern space or place, this construction manifest in, and becoming intertwined with the postmodern in post 1970s Antipodean cinema. In part two, a cross-section of Australian/New Zealand films is organized into cinematic sub-genres in line with their similar thematic preoccupations and settings, all films argued as reflecting a marked postmodern Gothic sensibility. In its conclusion, the study finds that “Antipodean Gothic cinema”, particularly since the 1970s, can be strongly characterized by its combining of Gothic/postmodernist modes of representation, this convergence constitutive of a postmodernized version of the Gothic which is heavily influenced by Euro-centric constructions of the Antipodes in Gothic/(proto)-postmodern related terms.