Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'War stories, English – History and criticism'
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1
Boykin, Dennis Joseph. "Wartime text and context: Cyril Connolly's Horizon." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/1959.
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This thesis examines the literary journal Horizon, its editor Cyril Connolly, and a selection of its editorial articles, poems, short stories and essays in the context of the Second World War, from 1939-45. Analyses of these works, their representation of wartime experience, and their artistic merit, serve as evidence of a shared and sustained literary engagement with the war. Collectively, they demonstrate Horizon’s role as one of the primary outlets for British literature and cultural discourse during the conflict. Previous assessments of the magazine as an apolitical organ with purely aesthetic concerns have led to enduring critical neglect and misappraisal. This thesis shows that, contrary to the commonly held view, Horizon consistently offered space for political debate, innovative criticism, and war-relevant content. It argues that Horizon’s wartime writing is indicative of the many varied types of literary response to a war that was all but incomprehensible for those who experienced it. These poems, stories and essays offer a distinctive and illuminating insight into the war and are proof that a viable literary culture thrived during the war years. This thesis also argues that Horizon, as a periodical, should be considered as a creative entity in and of itself, and is worthy of being studied in this light. The magazine’s constituent parts, interesting enough when considered separately, are shaped, informed, and granted new shades of meaning by their position alongside other works in Horizon. Chapters in the thesis cover editorials and editing, poetry, short stories, political essays, and critical essays respectively. Analyses of individual works are situated in the context of larger concerns in order to demonstrate the coherence of debate and discourse that characterised Horizon’s wartime run. In arguing that Horizon is a singular creative entity worthy of consideration in its own right, this thesis locates itself within the emerging field of periodical studies. Further, by arguing that the magazine demonstrates the value of Second World War literature, it articulates with other recent attempts to reassess the scope and quality of that literature. More specifically, this thesis offers the first focused and in-depth analysis of Horizon’s formative years.
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Boykin, Dennis Joseph. "Wartime text and context Cyril Connolly's Horizon /." University of Sydney, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/1959.
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Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)This thesis examines the literary journal Horizon, its editor Cyril Connolly, and a selection of its editorial articles, poems, short stories and essays in the context of the Second World War, from 1939-45. Analyses of these works, their representation of wartime experience, and their artistic merit, serve as evidence of a shared and sustained literary engagement with the war. Collectively, they demonstrate Horizon’s role as one of the primary outlets for British literature and cultural discourse during the conflict. Previous assessments of the magazine as an apolitical organ with purely aesthetic concerns have led to enduring critical neglect and misappraisal. This thesis shows that, contrary to the commonly held view, Horizon consistently offered space for political debate, innovative criticism, and war-relevant content. It argues that Horizon’s wartime writing is indicative of the many varied types of literary response to a war that was all but incomprehensible for those who experienced it. These poems, stories and essays offer a distinctive and illuminating insight into the war and are proof that a viable literary culture thrived during the war years. This thesis also argues that Horizon, as a periodical, should be considered as a creative entity in and of itself, and is worthy of being studied in this light. The magazine’s constituent parts, interesting enough when considered separately, are shaped, informed, and granted new shades of meaning by their position alongside other works in Horizon. Chapters in the thesis cover editorials and editing, poetry, short stories, political essays, and critical essays respectively. Analyses of individual works are situated in the context of larger concerns in order to demonstrate the coherence of debate and discourse that characterised Horizon’s wartime run. In arguing that Horizon is a singular creative entity worthy of consideration in its own right, this thesis locates itself within the emerging field of periodical studies. Further, by arguing that the magazine demonstrates the value of Second World War literature, it articulates with other recent attempts to reassess the scope and quality of that literature. More specifically, this thesis offers the first focused and in-depth analysis of Horizon’s formative years.
3
McArthur, Kathleen Maureen. "The heroic spirit in the literature of the Great War." Thesis, University of Cape Town, 1989. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/23680.
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MacKenzie, Craig. "The oral-style South African short story in English A.W. Drayson to H.C. Bosman." Thesis, Rhodes University, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002271.
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This study is concerned with a particular kind of short story in South African English literature - a kind of story variously called the fireside tale, tall tale, yarn, skaz narrative, frame narrative, or (the term used in this study), the 'oral-sty Ie story.' This kind of story is characterised by the use of an internal narrator (a fictional narrator or storyteller figure), the cadences of his or her speaking voice, and a 'reporting' frame narrator. Stories by A. W. Drayson, Frederick Boyle, J. Forsyth Ingram, W. C. Scully, Percy FitzPatrick, Ernest Glanville, Perceval Gibbon, Francis Carey Slater, Pauline Smith, Aegidius Jean Blignaut and Herman Charles Bosman form the principal body of primary sources examined in this study. The Bakhtinian notion of "simple" and "parodistic" skaz narratives is deployed to analyse the increasing complexity to be discerned in the works by these writers, which roughly span the 100 years from the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the present century. A "simple" use of the skaz narrative is evident in the early or 'ur-South African' oral-style story, represented here by Drayson, Boyle and Ingram. With Scully and FitzPatrick the form is still used 'artlessly,' although the beginnings of a greater self-consciousness can be discerned. The' Abe Pike' tales by Glanville introduce a more complex use of the fictional narrator, a process taken a step further by Gibbon in his 'Vrouw Grobelaar' tales. With the latter, in particular, the complex or "parodistic" skaz narrative makes its advent in South African literature. The oral-style stories of Slater and Smith are largely a regression to the ear lier form, although there are aspects of their stories which anticipate Bosman. With Blignaut and Bosman, however, the South African oral-style story comes into its own. In their Hottentot Ruiter and Oom Schalk Lourens characters is invested all the complexity and 'double-voicedness' that was latent, and largely dormant, in the earlier oral-style narratives. Through Blignaut, and Bosman in particular, the South African oral-style story achieves its most economical, sophisticated and successful form of expression. The study concludes by looking briefly at the use of an oral style in short stories by black South African writers and argues that their stories are not, formally speaking, to be categorised alongside those by the other~ writers examined. The oral-style story, the study concludes, achieved its apogee in Bosman's Oom Schalk Lourens sequence and went into sharp decline after Bosman's death in 1951.
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Plouffe, Bruce. "The post-war novella in German language literature : an analysis." Thesis, McGill University, 1990. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=74297.
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This study examines the interpretive possibilities in the shorter fiction of Post-War German literature. The corpus includes works by Rolf Hochhuth, Friedrich Durrenmatt and Martin Walser. The historical framework of the theory of the novella and short story provides a basis for a discussion of genre, extended to include the coordinates of metaphor and metonymy. With the exception of one text designated as a novel, these works demonstrate interlocking and restricted motif complexes, repetitive and parallel structure and the integration of most narrative components. They project a tenor of hermetic plurality from a vehicle of abbreviated and truncated referential discourse. They use myth and intertextuality to show general principles to be extrapolated from specific contexts. Metafiction complements the theme of the subject not at one with itself. A partial resolution to the incertitude of existence, rendered according to Freud and Lacan, is offered through the emerging role of women as a stabilizing factor.
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Foley, Matt. "Haunting modernisms : appropriations of the ghostly in Eliot, Woolf, Bowen and Lawrence." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/10994.
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This thesis is an extended reading of the topos of the ghostly as it is staged in the modernist writings of T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen and D.H. Lawrence. As I argue, their distinct appropriations of haunting are innately tied to their individual theories of the aesthetic; there are also a number of recurring motifs throughout their respective oeuvres, which time and again evoke a ghostly register. Consistently appearing in the texts I read here, most of which were published between the years 1919 and 1935, are figurations of the ghostly as a symptom of ‘ontological uncertainty’, as well as renderings of purgatorial subjectivity, and aporias of mourning. I locate my reading in response to the scholarly fields of haunting studies, mourning modernisms and Gothic modernisms. In a move common to contemporary theoretical studies of haunting, I draw also from the latter work of Jacques Derrida, a theoretical lens that facilitates my reading of a complex modernist ethics of mourning and alterity, one that often courts the ghostly, but resists what Derrida terms ‘hauntological’ work. The Derridean figure of the ethical apparition, in its status as the Absolute Other, is consistently complicated or rejected in these texts. This resistance mirrors a purgatorial mode of subjectivity that recurs in a range of guises in the modernisms I read here. In uncovering the economies that lie beneath these haunted subjectivities Jacques Lacan’s metapsychology of the subject helps also to conceptualise Bowen and Lawrence’s handling of the spectral. Bowen’s is a distinctly visual imagination, and her staging of a haunted subjectivity is elucidated by calling upon Lacan’s formulation of the gaze. Lawrence, whose work is consistently concerned with a-symbolic bodily registers, bypasses a number of the purgatorial aporias staged in the writings of Woolf, Eliot and Bowen. Viewing his appropriation of haunting through a Lacanian understanding of feminine jouissance suggests Lawrence’s welcoming of a radical ghostly other that may transcend the aporias of subjectivity, ethics and mourning that characterise these haunting modernisms.
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Bellis, Joanna Ruth. "Language, literature, and the Hundred Years War, 1337-1600." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.609852.
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Dine, Philip Douglas. "French literary images of the Algerian war : an ideological analysis." Thesis, University of Stirling, 1990. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/3544.
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The Algerian war of 1954 to 1962 is generally acknowledged to have been the apogee of France's uniquely traumatic retreat from overseas empire. Yet, despite the war's rapid establishment as the focus for a vast body of literature in the broadest sense, the experience of those years is only now beginning to be acknowledged by the French nation in anything like a balanced way. The present study seeks to contribute to the continuing elucidation of this historical failure of assimilation by considering the specific role played by prose fiction in contemporary and subsequent perceptions of the relevant events. Previous research into this aspect of the Franco-Algerian relationship has tended either to approach it as a minor element in a larger conceptual whole or to attach insufficient importance to its fundamentally political nature. This thesis is conceived as an analysis of the images of the Algerian war communicated in a representative sample of French literature produced both during and after the conflict itself. The method adopted is an ideological one, with particular attention being given in each of the seven constituent chapters to the selected texts' depiction of one of the principal parties to the conflict, together with their attendant political mythologies. This reading is primarily informed by the Barthesian model of semiosis, which is drawn upon to explain the linguistic foundations of the systematic literary obfuscation of this period of colonial history. By analysing points of ideological tension in the fictional imaging of the war, we are able to identify and to evaluate examples of both artistic mystification and demystifying art. It is argued in conclusion that the former category of narrative has never ceased to predominate, thus enabling French public opinion to continue to avoid its ultimate responsibility for the war and its conduct.
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Eckstein, Simon J. "The shadow of the past : fantasy, modernism, and the aftermath of a world at war." Thesis, Swansea University, 2014. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.678625.
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This study constitutes a single strand of a wider argument for a thorough-going reassessment of the place of fantasy literature within the canon. In particular, it aims to redress a marked lack of critical attention paid to the distinct movement towards fantastic modes of representation in the mid-twentieth century.
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Robinson, Laura M. "Educating the reader, negotiation in nineteenth-century popular girls' stories." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/tape15/PQDD_0007/NQ27853.pdf.
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Rose, Caroline. "Closure and the short story: with readings oftexts by Elizabeth Gaskell and Angela Carter." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1996. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31213571.
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Duce, Cristy Lee. "In love and war : the politics of romance in four 21st-century Pakistani novels." Thesis, Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of English, 2011, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10133/3127.
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Writers of fiction have long since relied on love, romance, and desire to drive the
plots of their work, yet some postcolonial authors use romance and interpersonal
relationships to illustrate the larger political and social forces that affect their relatively
marginalized experiences in a global context. To illustrate this literary strategy, I have
chosen to discuss four novels written in the twenty-first century by Pakistani authors: Tbe
Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, Trespassing by Uzma Aslam Khan, The
Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam, and Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie. With the
geographical origin of these writers as a common starting place from which to compare
and contrast their perspectives on global politics, their understandings of gender, and
their perceptions of how the public and the private constitute and intersect each other, I
will use postcolonial theory to dissect the treatment of romance in their respective novels.v, 85 leaves ; 29 cm
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Weaver, Rosalie Mary. "Innovation within the modern short story through the interaction of gender, nationality, and genre, Margaret Atwood's Wilderness tips and Alice Munro's Open secrets." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1997. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/nq23675.pdf.
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Mackinnon, Jeremy E. "Speaking the unspeakable : war trauma in six contemporary novels." Title page, contents and abstract only, 2001. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PH/09phm15821.pdf.
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Includes bibliographical references (leaves 246-258) Presents readings of six novels which depict something of the nature of war trauma. Collectively, the novels suggest that the attempt to narrativise war trauma is inherently problematic. Traces the disjunctions between narrative and war trauma which ensure that war trauma remains an elusive and private phenomonen; the gulf between private experience and public discourse haunts each of the novels.
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Kelly, Alice Rose. "'A change of heart' : representations of death and memorialisation in First World War writing by women, 1914-39." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2014. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.708210.
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Ferris, Natalie. "'Ludic passage' : abstraction in post-war British literature, 1945-1980." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:5b3034e6-3a32-4684-b8a0-eb91cfc756c6.
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This thesis traces a line of literary experimentation in post-war British literature that was prompted by the aesthetic, philosophical and theoretical demands of abstraction. Spanning the period 1945 to 1980, it observes the ways in which certain aesthetic advancements initiated new forms of literary expression to posit a new genealogy of interdisciplinary practice in Britain. It is the first sustained chronological study to consider the ways in which a select number of British poets, authors and critics challenged the received views of their post-war moment in the discovery of the imaginative and idealizing potential of abstraction. At a time in which Britain became conscious of its evolving identity within an increasingly globalised context, this study accounts for the range of Continental and Transatlantic influences in order to more accurately locate the networks at play. Exploring the contributions made by individuals, such as Herbert Read, Ian Hamilton Finlay and Christine Brooke-Rose, as well as by groups of practitioners, such as the British concrete poetry movement, small press initiatives and Art & Language, this thesis offers a comprehensive account of the evolving status of abstraction across cultural, institutional and literary contexts. The discussions build a vision of an era that increasingly jettisons the predetermined critical lexicon of abstraction to generate works of a more pragmatic abstract inspiration: the spatial demands of concrete poetry, language as medium in the conceptual artwork, the absence of linear plot in the new novel.
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Goodland, Giles. "Modernist poetry and film of the Home Front, 1939-45." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1992. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:cbc4f071-0e64-4a07-866d-ba83359262cb.
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This thesis is an exploration of the links between modernist literature and film and society at a period of historical crisis, in Gramscian terms a moment of national 'popular will'. In general, these works are informed by a greater organicity of form, replacing the previous avant-garde model of a serial or mechanical structure. This organicity, however, maintains an element of disjunction, in which, as with filmic montage, the organicity is constituted on the level of the work seen as a totality. Herbert Read's aesthetics are shown to develop with these changes in the Thirties and the war years. The work of H.D. and T.S. Eliot is explored in the light of these new structural elements, and the formal questioning of the subject through the interplay of 'we' and montages of location and address in the poems. The pre-war years are portrayed in these works as a time of shame, and the war as a possible means of redemption, perhaps through suffering, or through the new subjectivity of the wartime community. The documentary movement provides an opportunity to trace these formal changes in a historical and institutional context, and with the work of Dylan Thomas, the relations between mass and high culture, film and poetry, are investigated, as well as the representation of the Blitz, in which guilt is sublimated into celebratory transcendence. These aspects, and the adaptation of a European avant-garde to meet British cultural needs, are examined in the work of the Apocalyptic movement. The last structure of feeling is reconstruction, which is related to Herbert Read's thought, but shown to inform all these other works and to be a linking-point between ideology and the structure of the text, formed as an organic unity that promises a reconstructed post-war society.
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Schroeder, Elfrieda Neufeld. "Fragmented identity, a comparative study of German Jewish and Canadian Mennonite literature after World War II." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2001. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/NQ60565.pdf.
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Lynch, Éadaoín. "'This may be my war after all' : the non-combatant poetry of W.H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, Dylan Thomas, and Stevie Smith." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/16566.
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This research aims to illuminate how and why war challenges the limits of poetic representation, through an analysis of non-combatant poetry of the Second World War. It is motivated by the question: how can one portray, represent, or talk about war? Literature on war poetry tends to concentrate on the combatant poets of the First World War, or their influence, while literature on the Second World War tends to focus on prose as the only expression of literary war experience. With a historicist approach, this thesis advances our understanding of both the Second World War, and our inherited notions of 'war poetry,' by parsing its historiography, and investigating the role critical appraisals have played in marginalising this area of poetic response. This thesis examines four poets as case studies in this field of research-W.H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, Dylan Thomas, and Stevie Smith-and evaluates them on both their individual explorations of poetic tone, faith systems, linguistic innovations, subversive performativity, and their collective trajectory towards a commitment to represent the war in their poetry. The findings from this research illustrate how too many critical appraisals have minimised or misrepresented Second World War poetry, and how the poets responded with a self-reflexivity that bespoke a deeper concern with how war is remembered and represented. The significance of these findings is breaking down the notion of objective fact in poetic representations of war, which are ineluctably subjective texts. These findings also offer insight into the 'failure' of poetry to represent war as a necessary part of war representation and prompt a rethinking of who has the 'right' experience-or simply the right-to talk about war.
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Gaylard, Rob. "Writing black : the South African short story by black writers /." Thesis, Link to the online version, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10019/3224.
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Leitch, Megan Glynnis. "Wars of the Roses literature : romancing treason in England c.1437-1497." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.610140.
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Hale, Frederick. "Literary challenges to the heroic myth of the Voortrekkers : H.P. Lamont's War, wine and women and Stuart Cloete's Turning wheels." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/52325.
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Thesis (PhD)--University of Stellenbosch, 2001.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This dissertation is an interdisciplinary study of various historical novels which dealt to a greater or lesser degree with the Great Trek and were written between the 1840s and the 1930s in Dutch, Afrikaans and English but with particular emphasis on H.P. Lamont's War, Wine and Women and Stuart Cloete's Turning Wheels (1937). The analysis of all these fictional reconstructions focuses on the portrayal of the Voortrekkers found in them. Much attention is also paid to the historical contexts in which the two principal works in question were written and the great controversies which they occasioned because both of their authors had had the temerity to challenge the long-established myth of the heroic Voortrekkers, one of the holiest of the iconic cows in the barns of their Afrikaner descendants. Chapter I, "Introduction", is a statement of the purpose of the study, its place in the context of analyses of the history of Afrikaner nationalism, its structure and the sources on which it is based. Chapter II, "The Unfolding of the Myth of the Heroic Voortrekkers", traces its evolution from the 1830s to the 1930s and explores how both English-speaking South Africans and Afrikaners, especially Gustav PrelIer, purposefully contributed to it. Also highlighted in this chapter is the significance of the Great Trek Centenary and the events leading up to it in the middle and late 1930s in intensifying Afrikaner nationalism. Chapter III, "The Heroic Myth in Early Dutch and Afrikaans Novels about the Great Trek", considers especially how these works were used as vehicles for placing before Afrikaners the historic virtues of their ancestors both to provide models for emulation and to stimulate their ethnic pride. Chapter IV, "Sympathetic English Reconstructions of the Great Trek", deals with two novels, Eugenie de Kalb's Far Enough and Francis Brett Young's They Seek a Country, both of which reproduced the heroic myth to some extent. Chapter V, "Rendezvous with Disaster? The South Africa in Which Lamont Wrote War, Wine and Women" establishes the context of intensifying Afrikaner nationalism which this immigrant from the United Kingdom encountered in the late 1920s when he accepted a lectureship at the University of Pretoria and why this context was hostile to a novel which was critical of Afrikanerdom. Chapter VI, "Wa1~ Wine and Women: Its General Context and Commentary on South Africa" explores how this work, conceived as a "war book" dealing with the 1914-1918 conflict in Europe, depicted both Englishmen and Afrikaners negatively. Chapter VII, "Academic Freedom vs. Afrikaner Nationalism: The Consequential Strife over War, Wine and Women" deals with the hostile reception of Lamont's pseudonymously published novel, the physical assault on him and his dismissal from his lectureship at the University of Pretoria. Chapter VIII, "The Rhetoric of Revenge in Lamont's Halcyon Days in Africa", explores how the author, after relurning lo England, used his pen as a weapon for striking back al his Afrikaans foes in South Africa. Chapter IX, "Stuart Cloete's Portrayal of the Voortrekkers in Turning U'heels", focuses on the portrayal of various ethnic types in his gallery of characters. Chapter X, "The Con troversy over Turning U'heels", handles the hostile and apparently orchestrated reaction to Cloete's book and how it was eventually banned. Chapter XI, "Conclusion: Quod Eral Demonstrandum", summarises several thematic findings which a detailed examination of the novels in their historical context yields.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie verhandeling is 'n interdissiplinêre studie van verskeie historiese romans waarin daar in 'n mindere ofmeerdere mate op die Groot Trek gefokus word en wat geskryfis tussen die 1840's en die 1930's in Nederlands, Afrikaans en Engels, maar met die klem op H. P. Lamont se War, Wine and Wamen en Stuart Cloete se Turning Wheels (1937) in die besonder. Die analise van al hierdie fiktiewe rekonstruksies fokus op die uitbeelding van die Voortrekkers daarin. Daar word ook in die besonder aandag gegee aan die historiese kontekste waarbinne hierdie twee hoofwerke geskryfis en die groot polemiek daarrondom, omdat beide outeurs die vermetelheid gehad het om die lank reeds gevestigde mite van die heldhaftige Voortrekkers, een van die heiligste ikoniese koeie in die skure van die Afrikanernageslagte, uit te daag. Hoofstuk I, "Introduction", stel die doel van die studie, waar dit staan in die konteks van analises van die geskiedenis van Afrikanernasionalisme, die skruktuur en die bronne waarop dit gebaseer is. Hoofstuk II, "The Unfolding of the Myth of the Herioc Voortrekkers", volg die evolusie van Afrikanernasionalisme van die 1830's tot die 1930's en ondersoek op beide Engelssprekende Suid-Afrikaners en Afrikaners, veral Gustav Preller, doelgerig hiertoe bygedra het. In hierdie hoofstuk word daar ook beklemtoon hoe betekenisvol die honderdjarige herdenking van die Groot Trek en die gebeure wat daartoe aanleiding gegee het gedurende die middel- en laat 1930's, bygedra het tot die versterking van Afrikanernasionalisme. Hoofstuk III, "The Heroic Myth in Early Dutch and Afrikaans Novels about the Great Trek", bespreek veral hoe hierdie werke gebruik is om aan Afrikaners die historiese deugsaamheid van hulle voorvaders voor te hou en wat as voorbeelde moet dien wat nagestreef moet word en om hulle etniese trots te stimuleer. Hoofstuk IV, "Sympathetic English Reconstructions of the Great Trek", bespreek twee romans, Far Enough van Eugenie de Kalb en TheySeek a Country van Francis Brett Young, wat altwee die heroïse mite in 'n sekere mate herproduseer. Hoofstuk V, "Rendezvous with Disaster? The South Africa in Which Lamont Wrote War, Wine and Women" vestig die konteks van groeiende Afrikanernasionalisme wat hierdie immigrant van die Verenigde Koninkryk in die laat 1920's teëgekom het toe hy 'n lektoraat aan die Universiteit van Pretoria aanvaar het, en hoekom hierdie konteks vyandiggesind was teenoor 'n roman wat krities was teenoor die Afrikanerdom. Hoofstuk VI, "Wa1~ Wine and Women: Its General Context and Commentary on South Africa" ondersoek hoe hierdie werk, beskou as 'n "oorlogsboek" wat handeloor die 1914-1918 konflik in Europa, beide die Engelse en die Afrikaners in 'n negatiewe lig gestel het. Hoofstuk VII, "Academic Freedom vs. Afrikaner Nationalism: The Consequential Strife over War, Wine and Women" skenk aandag aan die vyandige ontvangs van Lamont se roman (gepubliseer onder 'n skuilnaam), die fisieke aanval op hom en sy ontslag as lektor van die Universiteit van Pretoria. Hoofstuk VIII, "The Rhetoric of Revenge in Lamont's Halcyon Days inAfrica", ondersoekhoe die outeur, na hy na Engeland teruggekeer het, sy pen as wapen gebruik het in 'n teenaanval op sy Afrikaanse vyande in Suid-Afrika. Hoofstuk IX, "Stuart Cloete's Portrayal of the Voortrekkers in Turning Wheels", fokus op die uitbeelding van verskeie etniese tipes in sy gallery karakters. Hoofstuk X, "The Controversy over Tumng Wheels", bespreek die vyandige en klaarblyklike georkestreerde reaksie op Cloete se boek, en hoe dit uiteindelik verban is. Hoofstuk XI, "Conclusion: Quod Era! Demonstrandum", bied 'n opsomming van verskei tematiese bevindinge aan, wat deur 'n gedetaileerde ondersoek van die romans opgelewer is.
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Chew, Laureen. "Chinese American images in selected children's fiction for kindergarten through sixth grade." Scholarly Commons, 1986. https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uop_etds/2131.
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The purpose of this study is to investigate Chinese American images in selected children's fiction to determine whether or not data support the position of the Council on Interracial Books for Children, that the works of fiction studied tend to stereotype Chinese Americans.
After reading the selected fifteen works of fiction, a criterion checklist was devised by the investigator to examine the behavior and lifestyle of Chinese Americans depicted in a variety of circumstances. validity of the criterion checklist was established by a panel of experts in the area of Chinese American studies. Inter-rater reliability was determined by two readers who utilized the criterion checklist to analyze the content of one lower elementary grade and one upper elementary grade work of fiction. Finally, the criterion checklist was used to analyze the fifteen works of fiction and draw conclusions related to the purpose of this study.
The findings in this study do support the conclusions of the Council on Interracial Books for Children that this group of fiction portrays Chinese Americans in a one dimensional, stereotypic manner. In the checklist items related to environment, food, utensils, physical attributes, cultural celebrations, occupations, and recreation, Chinese Americans were portrayed as adhering to Chinese-specific characteristics. However, in cross-cultural and behavioral items, Chinese Americans were portrayed as desiring Western-specific characteristics. This tendency was especially prevalent in upper elementary grade fiction. A more integrative or multi-dimensional view of Chinese Americans appreciating, and able to function well in, both cultural contexts is disconcertingly absent.
Based on the findings of this study, the following recommendations are made:
1. That teachers, librarians, and other school personnel who use this collection of books, supplement them with materials containing contemporary and realistic information about Chinese Americans.
2. That future writers of children's fiction dealing with Chinese Americans portray them in a multidimensional manner.
3. That curriculum writers of textbooks use a similar criterion checklist to offset the one-dimensionality of Chinese American images in existing children's literature.
4. That future writers of children's fiction on Chinese Americans utilize a criterion checklist such as the one in this study to assist them in developing multi-dimensional characters.
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Kaplan, Stacey Meredith 1973. "The modern(ist) short form: Containing class in early 20th century literature and film." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/10574.
Full textAbstract:
ix, 182 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.My dissertation analyzes the overlooked short works of authors and auteurs who do not fit comfortably into the conventional category of modernism due to their subtly experimental aesthetics: the versatile British author Vita Sackville-West, the Anglo-Irish novelist and short-story writer Elizabeth Bowen, and the British emigrant filmmaker Charlie Chaplin. I focus on the years 1920-1923 to gain an alternative understanding of modernism's annus mirabulus and the years immediately preceding and following it. My first chapter studies the most critically disregarded author of the project: Sackville-West. Her 1922 volume of short stories The Heir: A Love Story deserves attention for its examination of social hierarchies. Although her stories ridicule characters regardless of their class background, those who attempt to change their class status, especially when not sanctioned by heredity, are treated with the greatest contempt. The volume, with the reinforcement of the contracted short form, advocates staying within given class boundaries. The second chapter analyzes social structures in Bowen's first book of short stories, Encounters (1922). Like Sackville-West, Bowen's use of the short form complements her interest in how class hierarchies can confine characters. Bowen's portraits of classed encounters and of characters' encounters with class reveal a sense of anxiety over being confined by social status and a sense of displacement over breaking out of class groups, exposing how class divisions accentuate feelings of alienation and instability. The last chapter examines Chaplin's final short films: "The Idle Class" (1921), "Pay Day (1922), and "The Pilgrim" (1923). While placing Chaplin among the modernists complicates the canon in a positive way, it also reduces the complexity of this man and his art. Chaplin is neither a pyrotechnic modernist nor a traditional sentimentalist. Additionally, Chaplin's shorts are neither socially liberal nor conservative. Rather, Chaplin's short films flirt with experimental techniques and progressive class politics, presenting multiple perspectives on the thematic of social hierarchies. But, in the end, his films reinforce rather than overthrow traditional artistic forms and hierarchical ideas. Studying these artists elucidates how the contracted space of the short form produces the perfect room to present a nuanced portrayal of class.
Committee in charge: Paul Peppis, Chairperson, English; Michael Aronson, Member, English; Mark Quigley, Member, English; Jenifer Presto, Outside Member, Comparative Literature
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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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Trainin, Sarah Jean. "The rise of mass culture theory and its effect on golden age detective fiction." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2002. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/2255.
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Hoffman, Megan. "Women writing women : gender and representation in British 'Golden Age' crime fiction." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/11910.
Full textAbstract:
In this thesis, I examine representations of women and gender in British ‘Golden Age' crime fiction by writers including Margery Allingham, Christianna Brand, Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L. Sayers, Josephine Tey and Patricia Wentworth. I argue that portrayals of women in these narratives are ambivalent, both advocating a modern, active model of femininity, while also displaying with their resolutions an emphasis on domesticity and on maintaining a heteronormative order, and that this ambivalence provides a means to deal with anxieties about women's place in society. This thesis is divided thematically, beginning with a chapter on historical context which provides an overview of the period's key social tensions. Chapter II explores depictions of women who do not conform to the heteronormative order, such as spinsters, lesbians and ‘fallen' women. Chapter III looks at the ways in which the courtships and marriages of detective couples attempt to negotiate the ideal of companionate marriage and the pressures of a ‘cult of domesticity'. Chapter IV considers the ways in which depictions of women in schools, universities and the workplace are used to explore the tensions between an expanding role in the public sphere and the demand to inhabit traditionally domestic roles. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the image of female victims' and female killers' bodies and the ways in which such depictions can be seen to expose issues of gender, class and identity. Through its examination of a wide variety of texts and writers in the period 1920 to the late 1940s, this thesis investigates the ambivalent nature of modes of femininity depicted in Golden Age crime fiction written by women, and argues that seemingly conservative resolutions are often attempts to provide a ‘modern-yet-safe' solution to the conflicts raised in the texts.
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Tector, Amy. "Wounded warriors: representations of disabled soldiers in Canadian fiction of the First World War." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/210335.
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Kindler, Jessica Claire. "Tokuya Higashigawa's After-Dinner Mysteries: Unusual Detectives in Contemporary Japanese Mystery Fiction." PDXScholar, 2013. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/1011.
Full textAbstract:
The detective fiction (tantei shōsetsu) genre is one that came into Japan from the West around the time of the Meiji Restoration (1868), and soon became wildly popular. Again in recent years, detective fiction has experienced a popularity boom in Japan, and there has been an outpouring of new detective fiction books as well as various television and movie adaptations. It is not a revelation that the Japanese detective fiction genre, while rife with imitation and homage to Western works, took a dramatic turn somewhere along the line, away from celebrated models like Poe, Doyle, and Christie, and developed into a unique subgenre of Japanese prose. However, despite its popularity and innovation, Japanese detective fiction has often been categorized as popular literature (taishū bungaku), which is historically disregarded as vulgar and common.
My thesis first consists of a brief introductory history oftantei shōsetsugenre in Japan. This includes a discussion of Japanese writers' anxiety concerning imitation of Western forms and their perception of themselves as imposters and imitators. Following this, I examine the ways in whichtantei shōsetsuwriters--particularly Edogawa Ranpo (1894 - 1965), the grandfather of the genre in Japan--began to deviate from the Western model in the 1920's. At the same time, I investigate the bias againsttantei shōsetsuas a vulgar or even pornographic genre. Through a discussion of literary critic Karatani Kōjin's ideas on the construction of depth in literature, I will demonstrate how Edogawa created, through his deviance from the West, a new kind of construction in detective fiction to bring a different sort of depth to what was generally considered merely a popular and shallow genre.
This discussion includes a look at the ideas of Tsubouchi Shōyō on writing modern novels, and Japanese conceptions of "pure" (junsui) and "popular" (taishū) literature. Through an examination of several of Edogawa's works and his use of psychology in creating interiority in his characters, I propose that the depth configuration, put forth by Karatani in his critique of canonical modern Japanese literature, is also present in popular fiction, like Edogawa'stantei shōsetsu. When viewed through the lens of Karatani's depth paradigm, we discover how detective fiction and the vulgarity therein may actually have more in common with "pure" fiction created by those writers who followed Shōyō's prescriptions.
In the final section of the introduction, I propose a definition of Japanese detective fiction that links Edogawa's works from the 1920's to the contemporary Japanese detective novel After-Dinner Mysteries (Nazotoki wa dinaa no ato de, 2010), by Higashigawa Tokuya. Thus we see that many of the themes and conventions present in Edogawa remain prevalent in contemporary writing. Finally, I present my translation of the first two chapters of After-Dinner Mysteries.
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Griswold, Amy Herring. "Detecting Masculinity: The Positive Masculine Qualities of Fictional Detectives." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2007. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc3971/.
Full textAbstract:
Detective fiction highlights those qualities of masculinity that are most valuable to a contemporary culture. In mysteries a cultural context is more thoroughly revealed than in any other genre of literature. Through the crimes, an audience can understand not only the fears of a particular society but also the level of calumny that society assigns to a crime. As each generation has needed a particular set of qualities in its defense, so the detective has provided them. Through the detective's response to particular crimes, the reader can learn the delineation of forgivable and unforgivable acts. These detectives illustrate positive masculinity, proving that fiction has more uses than mere entertainment. In this paper, I trace four detectives, each from a different era. Sherlock Holmes lives to solve problems. His primary function is to solve a riddle. Lord Peter Wimsey takes on the moral question of why anyone should detect at all. His stories involve the difficulty of justifying putting oneself in the morally superior position of judge. The Mike Hammer stories treat the difficulty of dealing with criminals who use the law to protect themselves. They have perverted the protections of society, and Hammer must find a way to bring them to justice outside of the law. The Kate Martinelli stories focus more on the victims of crime than on the criminals. Martinelli discovers the motivations that draw a criminal toward a specific victim and explains what it is about certain victims that makes villains want to harm them. All of these detectives display the traditional traits of the Western male. They are hunters; they protect society as a whole. Yet each detective fulfills a certain cultural role that speaks to the specific problems of his or her era, proving that masculinity is a more fluid role than many have previously credited.
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Hunt, Sally Ann. "The discoursal construction of female physical identity in selected works in children's literature." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1005965.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis reports on an analysis of the discursive construction of female and male physical identity in children’s literature and explicitly combines corpus linguistic methods with a critical discourse approach. Based on three novels from each of the Chronicles of Narnia and the Harry Potter series, it shows clear gendering of body parts, not only in terms of the purely quantitative preferences for certain body parts to be associated with one or other gender, but in terms of discourse prosody, or the uses to which the body parts are put. Human body parts in these series are mostly used in the following four ways, all of which show differences in realisation in terms of gender: · to describe individuals, physically, in order to distinguish one from the other; · to convey emotion, unintentionally as well as consciously; · for physical interaction between people and · for interaction with the world more broadly: responses to danger and agency, i.e. the ability to act on the world and the nature of what is achieved. The use of body parts by characters to express emotion and act agentively on the world is revealed to be strongly gendered in the two series. I characterise the most prominent patterns in terms of the bodily products blood, sweat and tears, of which the last is strongly connected to female characters, who are generally associated with emotion. The other two, referring to active participation in fighting and injury, as well as agency, are almost exclusively reserved for males, with female characters rendered unable to act on the physical world as a result of overwhelming feelings. The females’ response to danger suggests stereotyped discourses of inequality which see women and girls as requiring protection and being physically incapable. Thus gender is still a particularly salient aspect in these widely-read examples of children’s literature, despite plots which appear to be fairly positive towards women. The strength of the inclusion of a corpus approach in this study lies in its capacity to reveal objective, and often fairly covert, trends in language use. These in turn enrich the critical analysis of discourses in these influential texts, which facilitates social change through linguistic analysis.
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Dedman, Stephen. "Techronomicon (novel) ; and The weapon shop : the relationship between American science fiction and the US military (dissertation)." University of Western Australia. School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2008. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2008.0093.
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Techronomicon Techronomicon is a science fiction novel that examines far-future military actions from several different perspectives. Human beings have colonized several planets with help from the enigmatic and more technologically advanced Zhir, who gave spaceships and habitable worlds to those they deemed suitable and their descendants. The Joint Expeditionary Force is the military arm of the Universal Faith, called in when conflicts arise that the Faith decides are beyond the local government and militia and require their intervention. Leneveldt and Roader are JEF officers assigned to Operation Techronomicon, investigating what seems to be a Zhir-built defence shield around the planet Lassana. Another JEF company sent to Kalaabhavan after the murder of the planets Confessor-General loses its CO to a land-mine, and Lieutenant Hellerman reluctantly accepts command. Chevalier, a civilian pilot, takes refugees fleeing military-run detention camps on Ararat to a biological research station on otherwise uninhabited Lila. The biologists on Lila discover a symbiote that enables humans to photosynthesize, which comes to the attention of Operation Techronomicon and the JEF's Weapons Research Division. Leneveldt and Roeder, frustrated by the lack of progress on Lassana, are sent to Lila to detain the biologists, who flee into the swamps. Hellerman's efforts to restore peace on Kalaabhavan are frustrated by the Confessors, and his company finds itself besieged by insurgents. The novel explores individuals' motives for choosing or rejecting violence and/or military service; the lessons they learn about themselves and their enemies; and the possible results of attempts to forcibly suppress ideas.
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Rogers, Sean Anthony. "Fighting tomorrow : a study of selected Southern African war fiction." Thesis, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10413/1902.
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This research provides an analytical reading of five southern African war novels, in a transnational study of the experience of war as represented by the novels' authors. In order to situate the texts within a transnational tradition of writing about modern warfare, I draw on Paul Fussell's work on the fictional writings of the Second World War in combination with Tobey Herzog's work on the writings of America's war in Vietnam. Through a reading of Sousa Jamba's Patriots and Mark Behr's The Smell of Apples. I illustrate that while these and other southern African war texts can be situated within a transnational tradition of writing about modern warfare, they also extend the tradition by adding new and previously silenced voices. I then turn to a focus on specific experiences of southern African anti-colonial war as represented in Pepetela's Mayombe and Mark Behr's The Smell of Apples. These texts are read in light of Franz Fanon's extensive writings on the nature of colonial violence and with a focus on the role of the victim and perpetrator in violent resistance to colonial oppression. Following this, and keeping with my examination of the experience of war in southern Africa, I read Pepetela's Mayombe. Sousa Jamba's Patriots and Chenjerai Hove's Bones with a view to highlighting their writing of women in times of war. Using the work of Florence Stratton, this section exposes the great difficulties faced by women in times of war as a result of war's complicity in the maintenance of patriarchal societal structures. Finally, I read Chenjerai Hove's Bones and Mia Couto's Under the Frangipani as post-war texts so as to highlight the authors' use of organic images to imagine post-war futures that are not tainted by the experience of war. In examining this topic, I aim to suggest that all of the texts studied show war to be a continuum that results in failed societies. I therefore read the texts as active interventions that seek to break the destructive cycle of the region's wars in the hope of better and constructive futures.Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2005.
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Govender, Poobendran. "Exploring the South African gangster film genre prior and post liberation : a study of Mapantsula, Hijack Stories and Jerusalema." Thesis, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10413/7952.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation is a study of the gangster film genre and how it has been used to represent
the sociopolitical and economic conditions of South Africa over an extended period of time.
Firstly, by looking at the early history of the influence of the gangster genre on South African
audiences, specifically the Sophiatown generation, a history of the genre being strongly
linked to sociopolitical conditions in South Africa is established. The project then focuses on
South African-made gangster films, beginning with Mapantsula (1988) and how it speaks to
the tumultuous times of the 1980s prior to liberation. It then proceeds to examine Hijack
Stories (2000) as a gangster film that represents South African society post-liberation. Lastly,
it examines Jerusalema (2008) as a recent example of the gangster film and its representation
of current issues, problems and tensions within South African society. The project delves into
the messages that the gangster genre in particular holds as a genre that is intimately linked to
social, economic and political conditions. The use of the genre as a tool to represent the
experiences of South Africans prior to and post liberation is of particular interest to this
research.
Introduction: Genre and the Gangster Film
This chapter attempts briefly to define genre in film studies, discuss how genres operate and
explore the importance of genre. It also offers an elaboration of the history of the gangster
film as well as discussion of the ideas of its three most significant theorists.
Chapter 1: The Hollywood gangster figure in Sophiatown
This chapter examines the influence of the Hollywood gangster figure on the audiences of
Sophiatown. It explores the emulation of the style, mannerisms and behavior of the cinematic
gangster by the residents of Sophiatown as a way of adopting a resistant urban identity in
opposition to the dominant ideology of the time. However, it is found that this resistance fails
to effectively become political in the form of an anti-government resistance. Chapter 1: The Hollywood gangster figure in Sophiatown
This chapter examines the influence of the Hollywood gangster figure on the audiences of
Sophiatown. It explores the emulation of the style, mannerisms and behavior of the cinematic
gangster by the residents of Sophiatown as a way of adopting a resistant urban identity in
opposition to the dominant ideology of the time. However, it is found that this resistance fails
to effectively become political in the form of an anti-government resistance.
Chapter 2: Mapantsula as Pre-liberation South African Gangster Film
This chapter explores the relationship between the ‘pantsula’ subculture and the cinematic
gangster and thereafter makes a case for how Mapantsula can be read as a gangster film.
Furthermore, it goes on to study how Mapantsula works within the gangster genre framework
looking at the politicization of Panic with a focus on pre-liberation South Africa.
Chapter 3: Hijack Stories as Post-liberation South African Gangster Film
This chapter examines Hijack Stories as a South African example of the gangster film by
firstly situating it within the genre and then examining how it functions as a post-liberation
South African gangster film around the period of its release. The gangster figure here is
linked to ideas of authenticity and black experience.
Chapter 4: Jerusalema as recent Post-liberation South African Gangster Film
This chapter examines how Jerusalema uses the conventions of the gangster genre to explore
current South African issues in particular, the tension between the ideology of capitalist
entrepeneurship and that of restitution and social justice. It goes on to then study how it
works as a post-liberation recent gangster film exploration of modern day South African
society.
Conclusion
This chapter briefly examines how the gangster film genre has survived in South Africa over
a long and shifting period of time and how it has spoken to different periods in South Africa’s
history through the films discussed in this research. The gangster figure starts as a resistant
figure in Mapantsula who slowly moves away from material pursuits and becomes
politicized. Thereafter in Hijack Stories, the gangster figure is used to explore issues of black
identity in the post-liberation period and to explore the growing divide between the recently
advantaged and the still disadvantaged black South African. Finally, Jerusalema uses the
gangster genre to stage the contradictions of the “South African Dream” and the lack of a
firm direction for South Africa as the ideologies of capitalism and social justice clash while
the period after the fall of an order leaves much in question as a nation finds its identity.Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2011.
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Baraban, Elena V. "Russia in the prism of popular culture : Russian and American detective fiction and thrillers of the 1990s." Thesis, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/15156.
Full textAbstract:
The subject matter of my study is representations of Russia in Anglo-American
and Russian spy novels, mysteries, and action thrillers of the 1990s. Especially suitable
for representing the world split between good and evil, these genres played a prominent
role in constructing the image of the other during the Cold War. Crime fiction then is an
important source for grasping the changes in representing Russia after the Cold War. My
hypothesis is that despite the changes in the political roles of Russia and the United
States, the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union continued to have a
significant impact on popular fiction about Russia in the 1990s. A comparative
perspective on depictions of Russia in the 1990s is particularly suitable in regard to
American and Russian popular cultures because during the Cold War, Soviet and
American identities were formed in view of the other. A comparative approach to the
study of Russian popular fiction is additionally justified by the role that the idea of the
West had played in Russian cultural history starting from the early eighteenth century.
Reflection on depictions of Russia in crime fiction by writers coming from the
two formerly antagonistic cultures poses the problem of representation in its relationship
to time, history, politics, popular culture, and genre. The methods used in this
dissertation derive from the field of cultural studies, history, and structuralist poetics. A
combination of structuralist readings and social theory allows me to uncover the ways in
which popular detective genres changed in response to the sentiments of nostalgia and
anxiety about repressed or lost identities, the sentiments that were typical of the 1990s.
My study of Anglo-American and Russian spy novels, mysteries, and action thrillers
contributes to our understanding of the ways American and Russian cultures invent and
reinvent themselves after a significant historical rupture, how they mobilize the past for
making sense of the present. Drawing on readings of literature and culture by such
scholars as Mikhail Bakhtin, Tzvetan Todorov, Siegfried Kracauer, Andreas Huyssen,
Fredric Jameson, and Svetlana Boym, I show that differences in Anglo-American and
Russian representations of Russia are a result of cultural asymmetries and cultural
chronotopes in the United States and in Russia. I argue that Russian and American crime
fiction of the 1990s re-writes Russia in the light of cultural memory, nostalgia, and
historical sensibilities after the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union.
Memories of the Cold War and coming to terms with the end of the Cold War played a
defining role in depicting Russia by Anglo-American detective authors of the 1990s; this
role is clear from the genre changes in Anglo-American thrillers about Russia. Similarly,
reconsideration of Russian history became an essential characteristic in the development
of the new Russian detektiv.
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Mackinnon, Jeremy E. "Speaking the unspeakable : war trauma in six contemporary novels / Jeremy E. Mackinnon." Thesis, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/2440/19791.
Full textAbstract:
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 246-258)258 leaves ; 30 cm.
Presents readings of six novels which depict something of the nature of war trauma. Collectively, the novels suggest that the attempt to narrativise war trauma is inherently problematic. Traces the disjunctions between narrative and war trauma which ensure that war trauma remains an elusive and private phenomonen; the gulf between private experience and public discourse haunts each of the novels.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of English, 2001
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Rice, Michael. "From Dolly Gray to Sarie Marais : the Boer War in popular memory." Thesis, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10210/11419.
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Von, Memerty Joan Elizabeth. "Distance and clarity in selected works of Michael Ondaatje." Diss., 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/1739.
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Wright, Joanna Pretorius. "Memory, monuments and the South African national imaginary : Constitution Hill and the fiction of Ivan Vladislavic." Thesis, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10413/3492.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation is an examination of public culture and memory sites in post-apartheid South Africa, in relation to their narrativisation in the fiction of the South African writer Ivan Vladislavić, who evinces a creolized, ludic style. The carnivalesque elements at play in his writing and his use of “minoritised” English constitute a radical aesthetic. With reference to poststructuralist theories of language, representation and history, I examine short stories and a novel by Vladislavić. I then turn a grammar developed from this aesthetic to an examination of one of post-apartheid South Africa’s most symbolically rich memory sites: Constitution Hill in Johannesburg. Official spaces in this country and in this era have tended to be built and curated in the interests of establishing a national imaginary based on a teleological understanding of apartheid history. This can be problematic, as I show in a brief discussion of the Apartheid Museum, a site that offers an instructive comparison with Constitution Hill. I argue that Vladislavić’s radical aesthetic provides a way to interrogate the more totalizing discourses of nationhood and citizenship of the post-Rainbow Nation. Vladislavić’s refusal to allow an authentic history and his radical aesthetics of representation constitute an iconoclasm that can be brought to bear on the more totalizing aspects of Constitution Hill’s design.Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2010.
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Paasche, Karin Ilona Mary. "Changing social consciousness in the South African English novel after World War II, with special reference to Peter Abrahams, Alan Paton, Es'kia Mphahlele and Nadine Gordimer." Diss., 1992. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/15727.
Full textAbstract:
The changing social consciousness in South Africa during the twentieth century falls within a
political-historical framework of events: amongst others, World Wars I and II; the institution of the
Apartheid Laws in 1948; the declaration of a South African Republic in 1960; Nelson Mandela's release in
1992. The literary social consciousness of Abrahams, Paton, Mphahlele and Gordimer spans the time
before and after 1948. Their novels reflect the changing reality of a country whose racial and social
problems both pre-date and will outlive the apartheid ideology. These and other novelists' changing social
consciousness is an indication of the development of attitudes and reactions to issues which have their
roots in the human and in the economic spheres, as well as in the political, cultural and religious. Their
work interprets the history and the change in the South African social consciousness, and also gives some
indication of a possible future vision.English Studies
M.A. (English)
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Mbwera, Shereck. "Short stories for life : implications of the Canonisation of the Zimbabwe story-telling tradition, with special reference to selected Zimbabwean short stories." Thesis, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/22592.
Full textAbstract:
This study examines the myth of the surrogate power of canonicity by exposing the condition of liminality of the Zimbabwean short story genre within African literary canon. Building on the hypothesis that canonisation distorts literature the study postulates that literary canon produce predictable biases in construing the position of the short story. It fossilises and condenses the marginal genres to the extent that the existing canon repertoire hardly recognises them. The peripheral but de facto canon of the short story genre entertains a strong relationship of heteronomy to the mainstream/central canon. This thesis studies this relationship which determines canon formation within the African literary systems. It challenges the prevailing status quo in which the short story is polarised against other literary modes. The polarity creates a charged diametric force between the presumed canonical genres and the supposedly non-canonical short story mess. What lacks in this equation of conflicts is a sense of revival, reformation and continuity of the short story canon. The marginality of the short story canon is predicated on factors external to the genre itself, such as the influence of colonial institutions, collegiate institutions and publishers on writers. These factors pervade the dialectics of canonical marginality of the genre. The study, which argues that there is no unanimity on theory of canon, proposes Africulture, as both a theory and praxis of Afrocentricity, to function as an arbiter of short story literary reputation and consecration. The research reveres the autonomous value of African story-telling tradition which withstood the test and movement of time, in the process, surviving not only the historical-cum-cultural threat of colonial loss and canonical displacement, but also the throes and will power of new media and digital technologies. The ascendancy of the electronic short story genre to canonical status remains questionable. Critical controversies abound about the canonicity of electronic literature. The study employs Technauriture as a theoretical model for rethinking the transcendence of the electronic short story canon. The study concludes that, by virtue of its resilience, the short story ought to be treated as a wholesale and independent genre, worth of full scale appreciation.African Languages
D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)
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"基於語料庫的幽默文本翻譯研究: 以錢鍾書的漢語小說"圍城"的英譯為個案研究." 2012. http://library.cuhk.edu.hk/record=b5549361.
Full textAbstract:
幽默是人類社會的一種普遍現象，是人們言語交際的一部分，在日常生活中無處不在。研究者們對幽默的研究涵蓋了心理學、哲學、社會學、人類學、神學、文化學等不同的領域。幽默被認為是最難研究的課題之一，翻譯幽默更是難上加難。我們至今對言語幽默的文本語言特徵、對言語幽默的譯文的文本語言特徵、對涉及言語幽默的翻譯過程知之不多。在言語幽默的翻譯中，有時候原文的幽默信息在譯文中完全保留，有時候則不能，原因何在，有關這方面的研究至今不多見；以漢語幽默文本的英譯為語料建立單向平行語料庫，探討漢語言語幽默英譯的一般及特殊規律的研究，尚無人做過，這正是本研究的目的所在。本研究以錢鍾書的小說《圍城》及其英譯本為語料，運用言語幽默概論的理論框架，建立原文和譯文對照的雙語單向平行語料庫，采用語料庫檢索的方法，對語料進行描寫與分析，得出了“譯文要傳遞原文幽默信息需要保留或轉換原文的表層及深層參數特徵，特別是深層參數的腳本對立、表層參數的修辭手段及語言中的本源概念的研究結論。
主要研究結果有三：
一是展示了言語幽默翻譯的一般規律，即“譯文需要保留原文中的腳本對立；
二是展現了漢語言語幽默翻譯的特殊規律，即“要保留原文中的腳本對立，就需要轉換漢語所特有的修辭手段和漢語本源概念；
三是顯示了漢語言語幽默的文本語言特徵，即，漢語言語幽默具有表層和深層的參數特徵。表層參數的核心是修辭手段，深層參數的核心是腳本對立；表層參數具有“相似性之奇特統一、“語言要素之巧妙轉移和“不和諧邏輯間之和諧三大特徵；深層參數具有“真實的與非真實的語境對立、“正常的與非正常的語境對立、“合理與不合理的語境對立三大特徵，反映了現實與經驗、話語現實與語言經驗、話語邏輯與正常邏輯的矛盾衝突。
Humour is regarded as a universal human phenomenon, and funny situations, funny stories, even funny thoughts occur everyday to virtually everybody (Raskin 1985: 1). Humour represents a multidisciplinary and fertile research field. So is Translation Studies. Both draw from linguistics, psychology and sociology, among other disciplines, for their descriptions and their theoretical models and constructs (Zabalbeascoa 2005: 185). What is surprising is that the link between translation and humour has not received sufficient attention from scholars in either field (ibid).
This research attempts to explore how Chinese humorous texts are transferred into English and what factors affect humour transference in the target text, with a focus on the universality of the translation process, by tapping on fresh methodologies of modern Translation Studies such as bilingual corpora and the General Theory of Verbal Humor. The bilingual corpus for the research is from Wei Cheng (Fortress Besieged) (1947/1991/2003), a humorous fiction by the Chinese writer Ch’ien Chung-shu (1910-1998) and its English translation by Jeanne Kelly and Nathan K. Mao (1979/2003). Adopting the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH) (Attardo & Raskin 1991; Attardo 1994, 2001) as the theoretical framework, the research makes a quantitative and qualitative analysis on the samplings from the corpus and obtains some encouraging findings as follows:
(a) Transference of humour in the source text to the target text needs transference of the Script Opposition embedded in the deep parameters of the source text, which shows the universality of translating Chinese verbal humour into English;
(b) More specifically, transference of the Script Opposition embedded in the deep parameters requires transference of specific Chinese rhetoric devices and socioculturally-bound Chinese alien sources in the target text;
(c) Chinese verbal humour has three features in the surface parameters and three features in the deep parameters, which shows the textual characteristics of Chinese verbal humour. The surface parameters show the features of similarity among quite different things, transference among quite different linguistic elements and congruity among incongruous logical elements. The deep parameters show the following three features: opposition between real and unreal situations; opposition between normal and abnormal situations, opposition between possible, plausible and fully or partially impossible or much less plausible situations.
The research draws a conclusion that verbal humour may travel from one culture to another via translation if the target text successfully transfers the Script Opposition embedded in the deep parameters of the source text, the Rhetorical Device in the surface parameters and the alien concepts hidden in the Language Parameter.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
戈玲玲.
Sumitted date: 2011年12月.
Sumitted date: 2011 nian 12 yue.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2012.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 307-319)
Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Abstracts in Chinese and English.
Ge Lingling.
摘要 --- p.i
前言 --- p.vi
目錄 --- p.vii
圖表目錄 --- p.x
Chapter 第一章 --- 導論 --- p.1
Chapter 1.1 --- 研究目的 --- p.2
Chapter 1.2 --- 原文及作者簡介 --- p.7
Chapter 1.3 --- 《圍城》的外文譯本 --- p.14
Chapter 1.4 --- 對《圍城》及其英譯本的研究 --- p.16
Chapter 1.5 --- 論文結構 --- p.20
Chapter 第二章 --- 幽默評述及研究 --- p.22
Chapter 2.1 --- 詞典中對幽默的定义 --- p.22
Chapter 2.2 --- 前人對幽默的評述與研究 --- p.27
Chapter 2.2.1 --- 西方的評述與研究 --- p.27
Chapter 2.2.2 --- 中國的評述與研究 --- p.31
Chapter 2.2.2.1 --- 林語堂、錢鍾書論幽默 --- p.32
Chapter 2.2.2.2 --- 其他評述與研究 --- p.34
Chapter 2.3 --- 言語幽默的可譯性 --- p.37
Chapter 2.4 --- 小結 --- p.42
Chapter 第三章 --- 理論框架 --- p.44
Chapter 3.1 --- 語義腳本理論 --- p.44
Chapter 3.2 --- 言語幽默概論 --- p.48
Chapter 3.2.1 --- 六個參數 --- p.50
Chapter 3.2.1.1 --- 四個必要參數 --- p.51
Chapter 3.2.1.2 --- 兩個可選參數 --- p.59
Chapter 3.2.2 --- 六個參數的層級排列：言語幽默相似度測量系統 --- p.65
Chapter 3.3 --- 言語幽默概論運用於幽默翻譯研究：Attardo（2002） --- p.70
Chapter 3.4 --- 理論框架的延伸 --- p.73
Chapter 3.4.1 --- 漢語特有的修辞手段 --- p.74
Chapter 3.4.2 --- 言語幽默語段的表層參數和深層參數 --- p.76
Chapter 3.4.2.1 --- 表層參數 --- p.78
Chapter 3.4.2.2 --- 深層參數 --- p.84
Chapter 3.5 --- 小結 --- p.87
Chapter 第四章 --- 《圍城》中幽默語段及其英譯本的雙語平行語料庫 --- p.89
Chapter 4.1 --- 抽樣過程 --- p.90
Chapter 4.1.1 --- 《圍城》及其英譯本讀者問卷調查 --- p.90
Chapter 4.1.2 --- 理論參數 --- p.91
Chapter 4.2 --- 建立語料庫 --- p.92
Chapter 4.3 --- 標注漢英對應文本 --- p.94
Chapter 4.3.1 --- 技術性標注 --- p.94
Chapter 4.3.2 --- 理論參數標注 --- p.95
Chapter 4.3.3 --- 本源概念及其翻譯策略的標注 --- p.97
Chapter 4.4 --- 檢索漢英對應文本 --- p.99
Chapter 4.4.1 --- 檢索編程 --- p.100
Chapter 4.4.2 --- 檢索功能 --- p.102
Chapter 4.5 --- 標注的誤差測定 --- p.114
Chapter 4.6 --- 小結 --- p.117
Chapter 第五章 --- 原文中言語幽默語段的分析 --- p.118
Chapter 5.1 --- 原文幽默語段的表層特徵 --- p.118
Chapter 5.1.1 --- 表層特徵一：相似性之奇特統一 --- p.119
Chapter 5.1.2 --- 表層特徵二：語言要素之巧妙轉移 --- p.129
Chapter 5.1.3 --- 表層特徵三：不和諧邏輯間之和諧 --- p.138
Chapter 5.2 --- 原文幽默語段的深層特徵 --- p.143
Chapter 5.3 --- 不規範的參數類型 --- p.149
Chapter 5.4 --- 表層與深層特徵的對應關係 --- p.160
Chapter 5.5 --- 小結 --- p.169
Chapter 第六章 --- 英譯本分析 --- p.171
Chapter 6.1 --- 英譯本的表層特徵 --- p.172
Chapter 6.1.1 --- 譯文表層特徵一：相似性之奇特統一 --- p.172
Chapter 6.1.2 --- 譯文表層特徵二：語言要素之巧妙轉移 --- p.182
Chapter 6.1.3 --- 譯文表層特徵三：不和諧邏輯間之和諧 --- p.186
Chapter 6.2. --- 英譯本的深層特徵 --- p.186
Chapter 6.3 --- 不規範的參數類型 --- p.194
Chapter 6.4 --- 譯文表層與深層特徵的對應關係 --- p.212
Chapter 6.5 --- 小結 --- p.222
Chapter 第七章 --- 譯文、原文對比分析 --- p.224
Chapter 7.1 --- 譯文、原文總體對比 --- p.224
Chapter 7.2 --- 譯文、原文分類對比 --- p.226
Chapter 7.2.1 --- 同型轉換 --- p.227
Chapter 7.2.2 --- 異型轉換 --- p.229
Chapter 7.3 --- 譯文、原文表層參數與深層參數的異同對比 --- p.231
Chapter 7.4 --- 譯文、原文表層與深層特徵對比 --- p.234
Chapter 7.5 --- 譯文、原文參數的層級排列對比 --- p.235
Chapter 7.5.1 --- 參數層級排列與原文的參數排列對比 --- p.235
Chapter 7.5.2 --- 參數層級排列與譯文的參數排列對比 --- p.237
Chapter 7.5.3 --- 譯文、原文中六個參數的層級排列對比 --- p.239
Chapter 7.6 --- 小結 --- p.241
Chapter 第八章 --- 《圍城》中言語幽默的英譯策略 --- p.243
Chapter 8.1 --- 同型轉換時的翻譯策略 --- p.244
Chapter 8.2 --- 異型轉換時的翻譯策略--譯文仍然是幽默語段 --- p.259
Chapter 8.3 --- 異型轉換時的翻譯策略--譯文不是幽默語段 --- p.267
Chapter 8.4 --- 小結暨討論 --- p.282
Chapter 第九章 --- 結論 --- p.286
Chapter 9.1 --- 研究結果 --- p.286
Chapter 9.2 --- 研究局限 --- p.291
Chapter 9.3 --- 研究前景 --- p.292
附錄一 --- p.294
參考文獻 --- p.307
43
Verster, Helene. "Translating humour in children's literature: Dahl as a case study." Diss., 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/25414.
Full textAbstract:
Text in EnglishThis study focuses on the strategies and devices used to create humour in children’s literature. No language is a replica of another language and it is generally accepted that a translator has to be creative in order to make the Source Text (ST) meaning available to the Target Text (TT) reader. The research conducted in this study aims to fill a gap regarding the application of humour in the rather under-researched field of children’s literature. A descriptive framework was used to conduct this qualitative study in order to be able to describe the linguistic strategies and devices used to translate the English source text by Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator into the Afrikaans Target Text, Charlie en die Groot Glashyser by Kobus Geldenhuys. Literary devices to create humour, employed by both the writer and the translator, were identified and analysed. Interviews and reading sessions with ST learners (English) as well as TT learners (Afrikaans) were conducted in order to observe their non-verbal reactions as well as document their verbal comments to complement the data obtained from the textual analysis. The textual analysis showed that the literary device most frequently applied in the ST was the simile and the main trend regarding the transference of humorous devices to the TT was to retain the device with formal equivalence. The most popular translation strategy was direct translation with the most important shifts identified on morphological and lexical level and shifts in expressive and evoked meaning were relatively low. With regard to the reading sessions, the most positive results from both groups of learners regarding humorous devices in the ST and TT were obtained for the device of inappropriate behaviour.
Linguistics and Modern Languages
M.A. (Linguistics)
44
Van, der Linde G. P. L. (Gerhardus Philippus Leonardus). "Cognitive rationality and indeterminism in the contemporary detective novel, with special reference to the work of Umberto Eco, Carlo Emilio Gadda and Stanislaw Lem." Thesis, 1994. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/16256.
Full textAbstract:
The study examines cognitive rationality as to()l for problemsolving within the context of a
movement from determinism and monolithic universal Reason towards indeterminism and plurality.
It is contended that theories of literature do not provide an adequate conceptual framework, and
therefore, extensive use is made of pluralist fallibilism (Popper, Helmut Spinner) and chaos theory.
The philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche is viewed as a decisive influence in the shift towards plurality
and scepticism. In chapter 2, Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, a novel by Agatha Christie
and Gaston Leroux's Le mystere de Ia chambre jaune are discussed as examples of optimistic
rationalism. Chapter 3 indicates that Eco's II nome della rosa emphasizes the conjectural nature of
truth and objective knowledge, underpinned by a 'soft' rationalism which amounts to monopolistic
pluralism. Chapter 4 analyses the defeat of cognitive rationality by the complex interaction of a
multiplicity of independent causal series. The detectives' relationship with the feminine exemplifies
the interpenetration of rationality and the instinctual, while the mystery of the feminine is a
metaphor for impenetrable complexity. Chapter 5 shows that hypotheses concerning random
complex systems remain inconclusive. However, as the trajectory of a complex system can be
regulated, so reason can be viewed as the underlying regulative pattern (strange attractorl for an
infinite proliferation of hypotheses. Thus, despite .shifting conceptions of rationality and order, all
the detectives in the study accept objective truth as regulative principle and are involved in a
search for objective knowledgeAfrikaans & Theory of Literature
D.Litt. et Phil. (Theory of literature)
45
Meyer, Cathryn Marie. "Producing the Middle English corpus: confession and Medieval bodies." Thesis, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/2770.
Full text
46
Van, de Ruit John. "On the inside writing out : the dramatic represention of the private boys' boarding school on the South African stage." Thesis, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/10413/9050.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation sets out to analyze the manner in which the writers of dramatic fiction
deconstruct the mythology and ideology of the private boys' boarding school in their
work. It also seeks to interrogate the sociological and philosophical notions that underpin
this fictional work. The central thrust of this dissertation is to explore the representation
of the private boys' boarding school experience on the South African stage, with
particular reference to writers whose work reflects their personal experiences within such
institutions.
Private boys' boarding schools promote the ideology that they provide a superior
education based on liberal and democratic principles. These institutions supposedly
oversee the development of the individual's mental, physical, spiritual, cultural and social
education. The projected ideology of the private boys' boarding schools has become
entrenched and has manifested itself as a pervasive mythology, which glorifies and
glamourises the social reality of such institutions.
This mythology is challenged and refuted by the appropriation of various sociological,
and philosophical theorists, including: traditional Marxist critiques such as the theories of
Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis (1976); structuralist theories such as those proposed
by Louis Althusser (1971) and Antonio Gramsci (1971), whose notions of hegemony
carry much relevance when considering private boys' boarding schools; and finally,
Michel Foucault's (1977) theories of power and power hierarchies (Lotringer, 1989;
Smart, 1985).
Since South Africa's democratization in 1994, a number of fictional works have emerged
that have engaged with the social reality of private boys' boarding schools. Most
notably, two plays, Anthony Akerman's Old Boys (2000) and John van de Ruit's War
Cry (1999), have highlighted issues surrounding private boys' boarding schools in South
Africa. Together with a variety of texts written for different media these works have
formed a critical base that, to some degree, has undermined the supremely positive
resonance of the entrenched private school mythology, and in so doing, challenge the
projected ideology. This dissertation's prime focus is on South African private boys'
boarding schools; however, it also includes texts that articulate the social reality of
private education in England and America. These texts are relevant firstly because the
South African private schools are modeled very closely on the English public school
system and secondly, because their inclusion adds weight and variety to the discussion.
Important areas of study within this dissertation will be the interpretation of the various
thematic concerns raised, and character constructions created by the various writers. This
will be underpinned by the theoretical framework, which analyzes systems of power and
power hierarchies, and the notion of hegemonic masculinity. Finally, the private boys'
boarding school will be examined as a site for hegemonic struggle where power and
privilege are continually contested in a relationship characterized by coercion and
consent. The critical discourse of the fictional texts and its theoretical underpinning will
be placed in opposition to the elitist mythology of the private boys' boarding school and
the ideology that these institutions espouse.Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2001.
47
Cooper, Lucille. "Is there a woman in the text? : a feminist exploration of Katherine Mansfield's search for authentic selves in a selection of short stories." Diss., 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/2410.
Full textAbstract:
Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923), British Modernist writer whose search for authentic selves in the lives of the characters in her short stories, is reflected in her innovative style of writing in which she examines the interior consciousness of their minds.
Mansfield questions the inauthentic lives of the characters, revealing that the roles they play are socially imposed forcing them to hide their true selves behind masks.
The stories which have been chosen for this study focus on women characters (and men also) who grapple with societal prescriptions for accepted actions, and are rendered mute as a result. The women characters include all age groups and social classes. Some are young and impressionable (The Tiredness of Rosabel, The Little Governess and The Garden Party), others are married and older (Bliss, Prelude and Frau Brechenmacher attends a wedding ), while there are also middle-aged women in Miss Brill and The Life of Ma Parker.English Studies
M.A. (English)
48
Potter, Mary-Anne. "The worlds between, above and below : "growing up" and "falling down" in Alice in Wonderland and Stardust." Diss., 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/11870.
Full textAbstract:
The purpose of my dissertation is to conduct an intertextual study of two fantasy texts — Alice in Wonderland by Victorian author Lewis Carroll, and Stardust by postmodern fantasy author Neil Gaiman — and their filmic re-visionings by Tim Burton and Matthew Vaughn respectively. In scrutinising these texts, drawing on insights from feminist, children’s literature and intertextual theorists, the actions of ‘growing up’ and ‘falling down’ are shown to be indicative of a paradoxical becoming of the text’s central female protagonists, Alice and Yvaine. The social mechanisms of the Victorian age that educate the girl-child into becoming accepting of their domestic roles ultimately alienate her from her true state of being. While she may garner some sense of importance within the imaginary realms of fantasy narratives, as these female protagonists demonstrate, she is reduced to the position of submissive in reality – in ‘growing up’, she must assume a ‘fallen down’ state in relation to the male.English Studies
M.A. (English)
49
Potter, Mary-Anne. "Arboreal thresholds - the liminal function of trees in twentieth-century fantasy narratives." Thesis, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/25341.
Full textAbstract:
Trees, as threshold beings, effectively blur the line between the real world and fantastical alternate worlds, and destabilise traditional binary classification systems that distinguish humanity, and Culture, from Nature. Though the presence of trees is often peripheral to the main narrative action, their representation is necessary within the fantasy trope. Their consistent inclusion within fantasy texts of the twentieth century demonstrates an enduring arboreal legacy that cannot be disregarded in its contemporary relevance, whether they are represented individually or in collective forests. The purpose of my dissertation is to conduct a study of various prominent fantasy texts of the twentieth century, including the fantasy works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Robert Holdstock, Diana Wynne Jones, Natalie Babbitt, and J.K. Rowling. In scrutinising these texts, and drawing on insights offered by liminal, ecocritical, ecofeminist, mythological and psychological theorists, I identify the primary function of trees within fantasy narratives as liminal: what Victor Turner identifies as a ‘betwixt and between’ state (1991:95) where binaries are suspended in favour of embracing potentiality. This liminality is constituted by three central dimensions: the ecological, the mythological, and the psychological. Each dimension informs the relationship between the arboreal as grounded in reality, and represented in fantasy. Trees, as literary and cinematic arboreal totems are positioned within fantasy narratives in such a way as to emphasise an underlying call to bio-conservatorship, to enable a connection to a larger scope of cultural expectation, and to act as a means through which human self-awareness is developed.English Studies
D. Litt. et Phil. (English)