This thesis discusses two characteristics of language which affect translation, using English and Japanese examples. However, the general points made in the thesis are not specific to these two languages. One characteristic of language is that it encodes particular perceptions of experience by its users. Word meaning is defined in this thesis in terms of the typical experience the language user associates with a word. Concepts for which there are no single lexical items are encoded by putting together words which the speaker thinks best characterise the concept. This particular characterisation of a concept may become established in the language community. If the members of a language community form a habit of characterising a concept in a particular way, it may become difficult to perceive the concept in any other way. In translation, this may lead the translator to impose characterizations established in her own language on the other language. However, such difficulties can be overcome because of the creative capacity of people everywhere to learn new ways to perceive the world. And language provides the mechanism to encode such novel perception. This is the other characteristic of language discussed in this thesis. We can use an existing word to encode a new kind of experience which we perceive as having some connection with the kind of experience associated with the word. Such novel application of a word can be understood because upon hearing the word, the typical experience associated with the word is evoked in the hearer's mind, and using her knowledge, the hearer constructs a mental model which she thinks best accounts for the combination of experiences evoked in her mind by the linguistic forms. Defining word meaning and sentence meaning in terms of mental images allows us to understand the process of translation: Upon hearing/reading the source language text, the translator constructs a mental model based on the text. She then bases her translation on this mental model, which becomes a rich source of information. Because the translator is not moving directly from one language to the other, no direct correspondences between the linguistic forms of the two languages need to be sought. This also explains why it is relatively easy to translate between two languages whose users share similar experiences and therefore can build similar mental models, even if the languages are typologically very different from each other.

This thesis explores L1 attrition among young Korean-English late bilinguals. Thirty Korean immigrants to New Zealand, who had arrived at the age of 12-13 years and had spent at least 2 years in New Zealand, participated in the study. Ten monolingual Korean children aged 12 years served as a comparison group for L1 data. Linguistic data in both L1 and L2 were elicited by a standardised picture-naming test and a story-retelling task supplemented by a stimulated recall protocol. Information related to social variables and language use patterns was elicited through a questionnaire and interviews. Skehan (1996; 1998; 2001) proposes three dimensions of linguistic performance— accuracy, fluency, and complexity. The general findings suggest that accuracy and lexical diversity in L1 are most susceptible to attrition and that there is general positive transfer from L1 to L2 skills. While there is no direct negative interaction between L1 and L2 proficiency, analysis reveals that increasing L2 fluency and a decrease in L1 use have possible indirect effects on attrition in L1 accuracy but not in L1 lexical diversity. The data suggest that, while the frequency of return visits to the homeland is an important social variable, language use involving the father and siblings is also an important factor in attrition or maintenance of L1 proficiency of adolescent late bilinguals. Qualitative analysis conducted on five cases corroborates the quantitative findings. Analyses of speech samples reveal that synthetic structures with semantic ambiguity are most susceptible to L1 attrition. The qualitative analysis also highlights the role of L2 socialisation in L1 attrition in adolescent immigrant children who negotiate their language use and identities in an L2-dominant environment and show different patterns of attrition in their L1.

Error Analysis has been widely used in studies of second language learning. At the same time, foreign language learning (as opposed to teaching), has largely been ignored as an object of research. The research had three major aims: to examine the potential of Error Analysis in foreign language learning by the development and trialling of a complex new coding schedule for analysing learner errors in French; to provide some descriptive data on the written errors and performance of foreign language pupils over a complete scholastic year; and to explore the nature of foreign language learning strategies used by the pupils studied. The thesis opens with a statement of purpose and method. This is followed by a short discussion of theories, topics and techniques in second and foreign language learning. The development of two forms of the coding schedule used to analyse errors is described and discussed. Recode checks and the development of 'Coding Confidence Levels' are presented. Procedures used in a longitudinal study of errors are then described. This study acted as an important trial for the coding schedules, known as Foreign Language Error Analysis: French (FLEAF). All written French produced by eight pupils in the same school class was collected over the 1978 New Zealand school year (February to December). The group were in their second year of high school French and had an average age of 14 years 5 months midway through the study. Background information is given about the subjects, including results of selected IEA French (Population II) tests administered during the year. Some description of the year's work is given, followed by general and case study analyses of errors. Selected results from both the longer (FLEAF-L) and shorter (FLEAF-S) coding schedules are then tabulated and discussed. Particular attention is paid to variables coding possible explanations for errors. Detailed analyses of errors in word order, negation and gender are offered, along with a review of correct performances for selected aspects. These analyses lead to two preliminary hypotheses which could in part explain the occurrence of errors. One hypothesis relates to the frequency with which pupils had been required to focus through drills on the point at issue, the other to the number of choices available to the pupil at the time of error. Discussion of Error Analysis and pupil strategies is then presented. It is concluded that Error Analysis has a valid role in developing hypotheses for a theory of foreign language learning. Five such hypotheses, suggested by the longitudinal study, are presented. It is argued that these five could all be classified on one of a proposed five levels of 'Operating Procedures' (McLaughlin, 1978a). Selection of a unique cluster of operating procedures would constitute the learning/performance 'strategy' of a particular pupil. These notions are incorporated into a tentative framework for a theory of foreign language learning. A modified 'Principle of Least Effort' (Zipf, 1965), is suggested as a key factor in the early stages of learning a foreign language, and ideas for subsequent research are proposed. / Whole document restricted, but available by request, use the feedback form to request access.

Charles Robert Maturin (1780-1824) produced a substantial body of writing that included six novels, three plays, and two collections of sermons. Despite the large audience he reached in his own time, and the interest he aroused in a number of later poets and novelists, Maturin's work has not received very much serious attention from critics. The present study attempts to take a fresh look at all Maturin's work, exploring it sympathetically from a variety of directions. Melmoth is included, but because it has dominated previous discussion of Maturin, I have chosen to concentrate on his neglected novels, Fatal Revenge, The Wild Irish Boy, The Milesian Chief, Women, or Pour et Contre, and The Albigenses. Special attention is given here to Maturin's two volumes of sermons (a valuable but seldom used source of information about his religious philosophy) and, more generally, to the theme of religion, which links many of his novels. This aspect of Gothic literature deserves a closer study than it usually receives, particularly in the work of Maturin who was a minister of religion. My thesis proposes a new interpretation of Fatal Revenge based on the parallel that Maturin developed between the use of superstition by Orazio and its use by the Catholic church. In The Albigenses there is a similar parallel between the outlaws and the supposedly holy Crusaders. Maturin took the Catholic church so often as his subject, not simply because it provided a colourful, stereotyped background (as some have suggested), but because it was a context in which he could seriously investigate the psychological pressures that produced (and still produce) conformity, extremism, and sexual violence. While his studies of oppressive societies may at times remind us of twentieth-century works such as 1984 or The Trial, Maturin's fiction is very much a part of its age. After a chapter that explores the history of 'the Gothic', my thesis focuses on the particular context of Maturin's period, mapping it initially by examining the responses to his work that appeared in print during his lifetime. Those reviews and essays make visible the complex field of forces in which Maturin worked. The Gothic novel developed in an age of more than usual ferment - literary, religious, and political - including the first phase of what we would today describe as feminist rebellion. All this was accompanied, as we can see from the criticism, by a strong conservative reaction in defence of the threatened values. The present study emphasizes the ways in which Maturin's work shared the new energies associated with change, even though it also displayed signs of ambivalence. I consider the reasons for this ambivalence and argue that in many cases there is subtlety in what appears at first to be confusion. Maturin's fiction was a late addition to the Gothic tradition, but its particular kinds of complexity - such as its psychological depth - made it an important development of the genre and linked it with other innovative writing of the period. Some admirers of Maturin have sought to play down the Gothic element in his work, which is understandable in view of the low esteem in which the genre has been held. The Gothic has often been seen, for example, as a confused rehearsal for Romanticism. While acknowledging the variety of Maturin's novels, I have sought to emphasise their continuing links with the Gothic genre and its special energies. During the past decade, new forms of Gothic criticism have appeared that treat the subject with greater seriousness. Today, interest in the Gothic genre seems to be springing to life again, and its relevance to our own time (which is also a period of complex social change and widespread ambivalence) has become clearer. I have attempted to contribute to this new type of criticism by pointing out the value of Maturin's studies of oppression and his ability to go beyond stereotypes in his treatment of women characters. I have also suggested some links between Gothic literature and feminist science-fiction writing today. In general, the aim of this thesis has been to consider the most mature Gothic fiction (such as that of Maturin) not merely as fantasy but as an expanded vision of reality. / Note: Thesis now published. Dunsford, C (2007). Painting life in extremes Charles Maturin and the Gothic genre. NZ: Global Dialogues Press. ISBN 9780968245340

Poetry in New Zealand, nearly everyone agrees, came to birth around 1920, or 1930, or 1940; in fact, round about when those who are now the grand old men of New Zealand letters were boys. No doubt future generations will see it as beginning in 1950, or 1960, or 1970. In any case, no attempt will be made in this work to upset such a widely-held belief – my researches are unashamedly foetal, a chronicle of the first faint heart-beats, the first weak kicks, and a whole lot of morning-sickness. It is something less than a ‘study’ of poetic pre-history; to try to consider New Zealand poetry before 1930 ‘in depth’ would be like practising diving in a mangrove swamp. On the other hand, although I have quoted extensively, it is something more than an anthology. Its purpose is to review the course of poetry in this country since it began, so that those who are interested in colonial verse can get some idea of what would have been its ‘development’ if it had developed, without having to wade through the four hundred or so volumes in which it is embalmed.

CHRISTINA STEAD (1902-1983) is a major Australian woman writer, and this thesis explores one of the least known periods in her life and work, the years she spent in the United States (1937- 7946). During this time she wrote her two best known novels, The Man Who Loved Children and For Love Alone, both based on autobiographical material. This study explores contextual aspects of Stead's life and work in New York, drawing on a considerable amount of new material. (Chapters I and II) During this period Stead wrote partly out of a personal need to understand her own life situation, and psychological readings of three novels, The Man who Loved Children, For Love Alone and Letty Fox, seen as a 'father trilogy', are designed to open up new lines of enquiry into aspects of all of these novels. (Chapters III and IV) The thesis also discusses formal aspects of Stead's work, beginning with her own formulation of an esthetics of the novel, which occurred during a course she gave in New York in 1943 called Workshop in the Novel. (Chapter V) The relevance of this course for her own practice as a novelist is also explored, with particular reference to the two later American novels A Little TeA, A Little Chat and, The People with The Dogs. (Chapter VI) In Chapter VII an exploration of Stead's interest in the genre of the novella, focussing on the collection The Puzzleheaded Girl, continues the formal lines of enquiry opened up in the previous two chapters, and in the following chapter the same collection provides a starting point for a consideration of Stead's deep interest in the situation of women in modern society, especially the recurrent figure of the wanderer or female rebel. The last chapter concentrates on the literary self-portraits which appeared in Stead's American fiction after The Man who Loved Children and For Love Alone, and their curiously limited characterization is compared with the more vigorous portrait of her provided in one of the novels of her husband, William Blake. This thesis, then, argues that Stead's life fed her fiction, especially in her American period, and that her work was part of a broader personal quest. Understanding this quest is relevant to a discussion of her literary style, and to her personal use of autobiographical material in her fiction, and it illuminates aspects of the creative process itself. Stead's need to understand her own life not only shaped her fiction, it also provided it with the 'intelligent ferocity' she aimed for, and resulted in a major 'realist' writer.

The text which follows is a critical modern spelling edition of ‘Wit at Several Weapons’ devised according to the principles established for the editors of the Revels series of English Renaissance plays. Punctuation has been altered from the original 17th Century edition to conform as far as possible with current practice. Elisions in verb endings have been quietly expanded thus the forms “-ed” and “-est” appear throughout, except where the metre demands their retention. Speech headings too have been slightly regularised, in an abbreviated form, throughout the play. Where a single line is divided between two or more speakers the second (or subsequent) speaker’s portion of the line is indented. Obvious errors in the copy-text have been emended and the emendations recorded in the collation. Any editorial insertions such as scene-headings and added or altered stage-directions, are placed within square brackets.

This thesis explores the conceptualisation of subjectivity, the past and language in the work of one particular English novelist and critic, A. S. Byatt. In doing so, it examines significant points of overlap between Byatt's fiction and criticism, on the one hand, and, on the other, the discourses that have contributed to their formation. Whilst Byatt's work is inflected by recent critical examinations of the three concepts, this thesis is less concerned with how it reflects prevailing notions of subjectivity, the past and language, than with its participation in an ongoing examination of each. Although I do investigate the interplay between Byatt's fiction and criticism, my focus is on how this is played out in Byatt's fictional texts, in particular the novels. The Introduction offers a brief summary of other criticism on Byatt's work summarises the recent definitions of 'text' and broader discussions of postmodernism that have impacted on my approach to her fiction, and proposes a reading of these texts that accounts for their ambivalence. In Chapter One, I focus on the reconfiguration of subjectivity in Byatt's writing, particularly as it relates to textuality. Chapter Two explores the relationship between present and past in Byatt's fiction that is partly enacted through the texts' own engagement with past literatures, in particular nineteenth-century literature, and the related issues of historiography, linearity and memory that these texts investigate. Language, in particular Byatt's interest in its relation to 'things', is the focus of the third and final chapter of this thesis. Throughout each of the chapters is an exploration of Byatt's engagement or reexamination of a persistent 'thread of two' in Western discourse. Although each chapter focuses on one of the three concepts, each also explores the issues that arise from the conjunction of 'two things' in these fictions: text and subject, present and past, language and the world. Related to this is my consideration of how Byatt's fiction is characterised by a number of contradictory impetuses. Of particular interest is the ambivalence that arises from Byatt's partial engagement with recent critical theory - not only because it reflects larger cultural and discursive movements, but also because it contributes to a productive forging of new forms of fiction that combine an awareness of the concerns of literary and cultural criticism with a desire to evoke pleasure in the texts.

This study is twofold in purpose: (1) to examine the full range of William's writing, a task which has not been undertaken by anyone since Vivienne Koch in 1950. Necessarily, Miss Koch could not consider the poems of William's final, greatest, period, (2) to examine Peterson particularly in relation to draft material at Yale and Buffalo. Many studies of the poem have been published (including Sister M, B. Quinn's important essay and recently, Walter Scott Paterson's book length analysis), but none hitherto from this particular point of view.

The principles of form in ‘mosaic’ poems such as The Cantos, Paterson, Maximus, or even ‘The Waste Land,’ are not yet clearly understood. Criticism needs to bring its various ideas of ‘musical form,’ ‘non-linear form,’ or ‘the poem as a field of forces’ into sharper focus. Mosaic poems are characterized by sudden changes of direction, heightened contrasts of style and texture, a complex use of quotation, and strange effects of fluidity where the usual distinction between the ‘tenor’ and ‘vehicle’ of metaphors is dissolved. To decide what features (if any) of the modern mosaic poem are new, the thesis examines possible precedents: so-called ‘pre-logical’ poetry, the associationism of Romantic poetry, Leaves of Grass, Rimbaud’s poems, Mallarmé’s Un coup de dés, etc. the work of European avant-garde poets of the 1910s (Apollinaire, Cendrars, Marinetti, et al.) is considered in detail, and the supposed originality of Pound and Eliot’s poetry is somewhat diminished when it is viewed against this European background. Nevertheless Pound and Eliot do contribute some technical innovations, particularly in the way their poetry combines ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ textures (to use Pound’s terms). The thesis examines Pound’s special ‘breakthrough’ in 1919, and also the close interaction between his work and Eliot’s during this period – the two men advancing ‘like mountaineers roped together.' Mosaic poems demand a new style of ‘reading by field.’ Criticism needs to develop ways of talking about the experience of discontinuity as sensitively as it now deals with continuity. Approaches to The Cantos that emphasize ‘ideogrammic logic’ tend to be over-intellectual and not able to deal adequately with the more fluid or discontinuous aspects of the poem. The thesis explores the procedures of mosaic poetry, its various styles of ‘jumping’ (to use Robert Bly’s term), ways of using fragments evocatively, and ways in which gaps or silences in a poem can be charged with meaning. Since collage is an important feature of mosaic poetry, the thesis attempts to survey this development historically, distinguishing it in some respects from traditional styles of quotation and allusion. The mosaic poem is compared and contrasted with earlier types of poem-sequence. The doubts expressed by Eliot, Tate, and other critics about the coherence of the modern long poem are answered by such essays as ‘Dr Williams’ Position’ in which Pound proposes new ideas of order. But Pound’s poetic practice was still more subtle than his theory, a discrepancy also noted in Eliot’s work. The thesis looks cautiously at the analogy often drawn between mosaic poetry and modern painting or film-making. It also examines the ways in which the music of pre-modern composers such as Bach and Beethoven has been used as a formal model by mosaic poets. The thesis offers a detailed analysis of ‘Canto XLVII’ as a critical experiment in analyzing the reader’s temporal experience of mosaic poetry, his ‘shifting gestalts’ as he explores the ‘field’ of the poem. The analysis seeks to clarify the way in which The Cantos combines ‘Imagist’ hardness with the fluidity of Symbolist poetry.