This thesis proposes a theory of literature's human relevance in literary terms, developing hints in the critical practice of twentieth century literary critic F.R. Leavis. It examines how literary texts can be humanly relevant in a manner that depends on their literary merit, and does so in three stages, interrogating: the way literary texts operate; the role literary language plays in thinking; and the interaction of literature and morality. The thesis has two, related, aims: to reconceptualise literature's relation to human living, and to offer a recharacterisation of Leavis's literary criticism, with the investigation of aspects of Leavis's practice forming part of the more fundamental enquiry regarding the nature of literature's human significance. In the first stage, the thesis argues that Leavis's critical practice in his works of the 1930s (his first major decade of critical output) provides fruitful ways for conceptualising the interaction between form and meaning in literature, with important consequences for present-day understandings of how literature functions and how it matters. It focuses on an untheorised (by him or others) achievement in Leavis's criticism, the introduction of the term 'attitude' into literary analysis and judgement, and argues that the term enables a different mode of attention to the question of how literature relates to the human world. The second stage first interrogates the role that language in general plays in understanding, constructing a hypothesis from arguments by philosophers R.G. Collingwood and Charles Taylor, and then turns to literary language, arguing that it enables a mode of relating to experience not otherwise possible, and forms a process of thinking, for reader and writer alike. The final stage focuses on arguments in aesthetics against literature's cognitive value, and in moral philosophy for its empathic and moral value. Building on earlier arguments about the operation of literary language and language's relation to thought, the thesis claims that literary language is humanly meaningful in a way that is both cognitively and morally significant. Throughout, the thesis argues for the inescapable link between well-written literature and the morally resonant, such that good literature forms what Taylor calls 'moral sources'. The crucial query is how literature functions, which will help us better to answer why it is humanly important. This thesis engages with literary criticism, philosophical aesthetics and moral philosophy, as well as offering close readings of literature itself.

This study explores the relationship between literature and society against the background of the emergence in the 1930s and 1940s in South Africa of a form of Afrikaner nationalism that was spearheaded by members of the Afrikaner petty bourgeoisie and intelligentsia and a subsequent expansion in Afrikaans literary production. It addresses problems of explanation in Afrikaner nationalism by focusing attention on the question of culture, the field of imagination and the domain of everyday life. In particular, the study examines the Keurboslaan series - a series of schoolboy stories aimed at juvenile readers - by Stella Blakemore, and traces the production, circulation and critical reception of the twenty titles in the series. The first title in this series was published in 1941 and the series has been reprinted several times over a number of decades and as recently as 1997. Drawing on the work of Benedict Anderson, this study illuminates the link between the emergence of print capitalism and the production of popular fiction on the one hand and nationalism on the other. Whilst this is a link that is not often explored, an analysis of the Keurboslaan series illustrates that the study of popular fiction can illuminate the practices through which nationalism gains popular support. It is argued that the Keurboslaan series produced a narrative of the Afrikaner ‘nation’ in popular fiction, but that this narrative was not authenticated by the intelligentsia and petty bourgeoisie who were the driving forces behind Afrikaner nationalism and its contents. It is further argued that this ‘narrative of nation’ circulated alongside more official narratives of the ‘nation’ espoused in discourses of religion, science and literature published in Afrikaans. The narrative of ‘nation’ in Keurboslaan – whilst sharing many similarities with official narratives in other discourses – but also differs from those discourses in important respects. It is argued that the popular series was influential precisely because it imagined the Afrikaner ‘nation’ in very different ways and on different terms from those discourses. Moreover, the form in which this narrative was produced, that is popular youth literature, appealed to readers of Afrikaans who were in search of escapist fiction. For these readers, the Keurboslaan series helped to give shape to and created new possibilities for interpreting the world that they inhabited. Reading the school as a corollary of the ‘nation’, it is argued that the narrative of the nation in Keurboslaan series explores the boundaries between the self and the other and posits the self as a danger to the self, resulting in an emphasis on the need to discipline the self. This kind of analysis also creates the space for examining in what ways ideas and identities about ‘race’, gender, sexuality, class and ‘nation’ are constructed in the texts. Yet, the study maintains that whilst the Keurboslaan series contributed to creating a space in which a particular understanding of the self and the world becomes possible, and whereas the reader is not conceived of as a completely free agent that can derive simply any meaning from the text, the study and its theoretical underpinnings do not fully account for individual readers’ engagement with popular texts and the ways in which reading strategies and habits can generate different, ambiguous or inconclusive meanings for readers. It is suggested that a study of popular texts and Afrikaner nationalism employing theories of reading and the reader will complement this analysis. / Thesis (DLitt (Literary Theory))--University of Pretoria, 2004. / Afrikaans / unrestricted

What does it mean to be lawful in a secular age? Reincarnating Law in the Cosmos orbits around such a humanistic inquiry, offering a local contribution to a global jurisprudence by theorizing contemporary Indigenous and state laws in Canada in reciprocal relation to secular modernity. In this context, the study marks the first substantive engagement with Val Napoleon’s Ayook: Gitksan Legal Order, Law, and Legal Theory (2009). The study interprets Napoleon’s reification thesis on Gitxsan law and society as part of a historical disembedding process and evaluates it with reference to a 2016 pipeline agreement signed between a segment of Gitxsan hereditary leaders and the province of British Columbia. Translating Charles Taylor’s concept of excarnation for the legal sphere, it then expands upon Napoleon’s thesis by postulating the steady disembodying and disenchanting reduction of Gitxsan lawful life. To address this dilemma, the study supplements the active and reasoned sense of Gitxsan citizenship posited in Ayook by recasting it in phenomenological terms as a distinctly embodied form of legal agency. To clarify this aspect of agency, the study applies critical race feminist Preeti Dhaliwal’s legal research and playwriting method known as jurisprudential theatre. Dhaliwal’s method shapes the study in two significant ways. First, her impetus for developing the method draws from her own witnessing and overcoming of excarnation in the Canadian law school and immigration system, demonstrating it to be a larger problem traversing multi-juridical borders. To address this problem, the method, in turn, enables the innovation of a new Gitxsan concept of legal agency – the ‘wii bil’ust (giant star) – and an original drama that reveals the real-world struggle and heroism of reincarnating the Gitxsan legal order across generations over the past century. To encourage the broader reincarnation of law, and building on Jeremy Webber’s critique of the functionalist account of customary law, the study points towards a shared grammar of incarnational law. That is, a grammar deepened by embodied modes of relationality, reimagined cosmologies attuned to our earthly predicaments, and creative fluency in multiple languages and traditions, among other habitable zones. / Graduate / 2023-07-15

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The objectives of this study is to investigate how the church has changed over time, with focus on how modernity has influenced the church’s construction of its identity through martyrs’ texts, and to contribute to theory development through analysis. The study takes its theoretical starting point in Rowan Williams perspective on history as stories we tell to understand who we are. My main question is: how are changes in the church’s identity reflected in texts of martyrs from two historical periods? This question is answered through comparative analysis of texts written by martyrs from both the early church and the twentieth century, focusing on how the martyrs interpret and describe their coming martyrdom and suffering. Ignatius of Antiochs letters together with the prison narrative from The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas is compared to texts by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and by four trappist monks from Algeria: the brothers Luc, Paul, Christophe and Christian.  Six motifs are identified as common in the martyrs’ texts regarding their interpretation of martyrdom and its suffering:  1.    Suffering as freedom and liberation, 2.    the transformative suffering, 3.    suffering and martyrdom as argumentation, 4.    suffering as communion with God, 5.    the martyr’s suffering as the special path, 6.    and martyrdom as combat. Changes within these motifs are identified between the historical periods. Central differences between the texts involve a recurring shift from a transcendental to immanent interpretive framework, a movement from power to powerlessness and an increased focus on humanity and mankind in the modern era. The image of God has changed: from identification with the risen powerful Christ, the martyr rather identifies with the incarnated, suffering, serving, powerless and dying human Jesus in the modern era. The self-image of the martyrs has changed: the modern martyrs see themselves not becoming anything other than human, and instead becoming more human through her suffering and martyrdom. The political potential and hope have also changed: powerlessness is premiered, the martyr’s own guilt as human beings replaces the demonization of the other, and the change the martyrs hope for is in the immanent realm of humanity for the common well of all mankind in modern times. These changes can only to some extent, but not fully, be explained and understood by Charles Taylors theory on modernity and suffering presented in his A Secular Age (2007) and Byung-Chul Hans theory on modernity and suffering as discussed in his Palliativsamhället (2021). The immanent frame, the process of disenchantment and the anthropocentric shift helps to understand some of the differences between the eras.  But both Taylor’s and Han’s basic thesis is that suffering is impossible to handle and by default meaningless and negative in the modern west, and that suffering in modernity has lost all its political and societal dimensions that previously could result in the fight for political change, and that there is no possibility to maintain a Christian belief in God whilst suffering. This is by this study proven to be incorrect. The modern martyrs, and the church in the modern era reflected through the texts of the martyrs, is influenced by but not synonymous with the modernity pictured by Taylor and Han. They are not non-modern, but neither do they repeat the same interpretations and theology as their precursors in the early church. Instead, we see in them the expression of a renewed Christian identity. The modern martyrs in this study have, through theological creativity, recontextualized and reinterpreted their faith informed by the experience of modernity as pictured by Taylor and Han. The church has changed over time and it shows through the martyrs accounts and interpretations of their suffering and martyrdom. The renewed identity, both anthropocentric and theocentric, formed through creative theological recontextualization, has made it possible to maintain a Christian belief in God, a hope for a better world and a sense of meaning midst suffering, in the modern era. Taylor’s and Han’s theories about the secularization of the church’s identity and the modern west have not happened in practice.

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The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, presuppose Roman Catholicism, but are today made by many who are not Catholics. Moreover, even Roman Catholics who make Ignatian Exercises often are not spontaneously inclined to obey Roman ecclesiastical authority. Neither avoiding the ecclesial dimension nor an authoritarian ‘follow the rules!’ provides spiritual directors with adequate orientation when working with issues at Church frontiers. This dissertation in pastoral theology seeks to navigate a middle position by moving beyond the individualism and the a-historical assumptions of the existing relevant literature. The dissertation remains close to the Ignatian primary sources, in the awareness that the Ignatian tradition needs to be constantly updated and that the contemporary ecclesial frontiers are not fully foreseen in the canonical texts. The main hypothesis is that a notion is needed of a ‘pilgrim Church’ in space and time, with Christians who are related to one another in a deep and fundamental sense. The minor hypothesis is that the individual needs to be open towards and prepared to learn from the Roman Catholic Church, in order to understand and to be profoundly moved by these exercises, but not necessarily to become a Roman Catholic. Having presented and discussed various approaches in the writings of twentieth-century and recent thinkers, this thesis puts forward its own ecclesiological position informed by Charles Taylor, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Karl Rahner. The aim is to take Ignatian studies forward by combining relational anthropology, hermeneutics and a sacramental understanding of the Church, and to apply this synthesis to the practice of giving Ignatian Exercises. The final chapter discusses a selection of cases in the light of my ecclesiological position. The synthesis and application claim originality.

<p>Numera Nette Wermeld Enström.</p>

This thesis examines ways in which identities have been represented in new South African play texts. It begins by exploring various ways in which identity has been described from various philosophical, psychological and anthropological perspectives. In particular, the thesis describes its methodology in terms of Gilles Deleuze's definition of "rhizomatic" structures. The introduction also elaborates ways in which drama is uniquely suited to represent ¨C as well as to effect ¨C transformations of identity. The thesis then moves on to an examination of specific texts in terms of four broad areas of investigation ¨C gender, political affiliation, ethnicity and syncretism. In these chapters a number of play texts are investigated from different points of view. Firstly, in a chapter on gender, the thesis focuses specifically on issues of masculinity and exile in plays by Athol Fugard, Anthony Akerman and Zakes Mda. This chapter explores orientations of the masculine which have become embedded within notions of nationalism and patriotism. In terms of political affiliations, the thesis looks at what Loren Kruger has called "post-anti-apartheid theatre" (2002: 233) and considers the trend away from protest theatre. With reference to the plays of Mike van Graan it also examines new forms of protest theatre. This chapter also explores plays which were inspired by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and looks in more detail at Ubu and the Truth Commission by Jane Taylor. When considering ethnicities, the thesis reflects on how identity in terms of an ethnic collective is most often premised on laws of exclusion, and on the construction of what Benedict Anderson refers to as an "imagined community" (1991: 15). Representations of ethnic identities are then analysed in Happy Natives by Greig Coetzee. Syncretism seems to present a preferable description of how South African identities can be constructed and the thesis then elaborates attempts to forge a new identity in terms of amalgamation and a creative fusion of cultural resources, with particular reference to the plays of Brett Bailey and Reza de Wet. In the conclusion of this thesis, the thorny issue of racial identities is considered, and in particular the trope of the "rainbow nation", which many writers regard as a problematic blanketing description which cancels out difference. Instead, Ashraf Jamal's "radical syncretism", which does not seek to subsume heterogeneous identities, is suggested as a viable means of approaching definitions of identity. The final chapter also briefly touches on the development of physical theatre in South Africa and describes how the body can be used as a tool for transformation, relying principally on the writings of Mark Fleishman and Eugenio Barba in this regard. Finally, again resorting to a Deleuzian vocabulary which describes identity as constructed in terms of lines operating on particular planes, the thesis considers whether it may not be more beneficial in the post-apartheid context to favour paradoxical processes which relinquish identities, instead of those which attempt to consolidate them. @ 2008 Author Please cite as follows: Krueger, AR 2008, Experiments in freedom : representations of identity in new South African drama : an investigation into identity formations in some post-apartheid play-texts published in English by South African writers, from 1994 - 2007, DLitt thesis, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-10282008-141823/ > D497/gm / Thesis (DLitt)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / English / unrestricted

A critical investigation of the public/private distinction as it has been conceived in Anglo-American political thinking in the second half of the 20th century. A broadly held consensus has developed amongst many theorists that public/private does not refer to any single determinate distinction or relationship but rather to an often ambiguous range of related but analytically distinct conceptual oppositions. The argument of this thesis is that if we approach public/private in the search for analytic or conceptual clarity then this consensus is correct. Against this I propose that a number of the most dominant invocations of the distinction can be understood to express public/private as an irreducibly political dialectic that mediates the relationship between the subjective and objective side of social and political life. By locating these conceptually diverse invocations within a broader and more determinate framework of the historical development and contestation of the boundaries which establish the conditions for subjectivity, as the assertion of political agency, on the one hand, and which demarcate, police and defend these particular boundaries, as part of the objectively given character of social life and institutional organisation, on the other hand, then a more determinate character to public/private can be recognized. I then seek to explore the capacity of this model to capture and explain the peculiar post-war problematisation of public/private amongst a number of new left thinkers in Britain and America.