This thesis is about the application of modern literary criticism to the epistle of Jude. One of the major questions it asks is "What happens to a text (Jude) when a reader reads it using one of these literary theories?" Or to put it a different way, "What does this way of reading emphasise which may have been neglected, ignored, or treated as irrelevant by other forms of reading?" The answers to these questions have been constructed around three loci: the reader, the text, and the author. Within the chapters constructed around those foci, the issues of power and desire, knowledge and language are brought to the forefront by the methods used for reading Jude. These methods include ideas drawn from reader response criticism, feminism, psychoanalysis, intertextuality, the study of tropes, structuralism, and post-structuralism. These methods and the ideas which they highlight are drawn together to comment on the relationship between the reader, the text, and the author and to accent their access (or lack of it) to desire, power, knowledge, and language. The epistle of Jude becomes an epistle that is about power and desire just as much as it is an epistle about "false teachers" and about a community of people known by the name Beloved.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)—Boston University / Mary Ellen Chase, a contemporary author of many parts, has followed the double career, not uncommon in twentieth-century Anerica, of writing and of teaching college English, contributing the vigor of her New England heritage in a complementary fashion to both professions. She has written short stories, and novels, biographies and autobiographies, volumes of essays and Biblical commentary, textbooks and a miscellany of introductions, reviews, articles, and pamphlets. Although she retired from the Smith College faculty in 1955, she continues to write books and many lesser pieces. Since the body of her published work is now a substantial one, it has seemed a good time to survey her general accomplishnent to date, in the individual use of many ideas and traditions, both historical and literary. The name of Mary Ellen Chase has appeared in footnotes, appendices, and lists. She has sometimes been mentioned or even briefly discussed as a New England regionalist. Almost all of her books have been reviewed, some of them often and quite generously, but there has been no general survey or study of the whole body of her writing. Thus there has been very little established opinion to guide this study. The problem has been to bring together such ideas about Miss Chase's writing as have been separately expressed, mainly in reviews, and to find in her writing its motivating themes, recurrent interests, and developing characteristics of style. A complete bibliography of her books and contributions to major periodicals has been attempted. Miss Chase's New England heritage has been the pivot on which many of her interests have turned. Unfailingly her concern for her own traditions and others as well has been motivated by her delight in them and by the search for any understanding which can contribute to a "good life" in the present. She makes it clear that the past, even at its high points, should inform the present, but never afford a mere retreat from it. The New England past forms a large part of her New England consciousness, which includes a strong sense of place and of the things and people to be found in the rural and coastal areas of Maine. Her contributions serve mainly to brighten old knowledge into new. Often the sense of place in her writing outweighs the impact of the past. Some of her best style describes the relationships between her characters and their natural environment. Sonetimes she shows the symbolic power of one single object from the natural environment. In her interest in England and in the Bible, Miss Chase is focusing on secondary aspects of the cultural heritage of New England. In her studies of the Bible, past and place are again important, as is the love of language, which has permeated all her writing with increasing effectiveness. Characteristic of Miss Chase's books about the Bible is her infectious enthusiasm for the ancient Hebrew people and for their literature. The impact of literary traditions on rer work has occasionally been noted, and sone close examination has been made of her imagery, the aspect of her style most generally useful to her. Its use has often allowed her to make distinct the multiple pasts producing together the total sense of the past which she never wishes to separate from the present.

This thesis challenges the way feminist literary criticism has been represented as a field polarized between American and French positions. As an alternative to the American/French distinction, I propose one between feminist criticism oriented to research and feminist criticism oriented to aesthetics. In keeping with this alternative distinction, I relocate the shift in feminist criticism within American feminism. The "aesthetic turn" inaugurated by American "gynocriticism" is itself identified in relation to a more general philosophical shift from discovery to creation. While the relativistic and voluntaristic tendencies which distinguish the latter pole are exemplified by French feminism, I argue that they are anticipated by American feminism's "aesthetic turn." Finally, this thesis not only relocates and redefines the shift in feminist literary criticism, but provides arguments in favour of a research-oriented feminist criticism.

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The genesis and development of modern African literature in indigenous languages in South Africa cannot be satisfactorily handled without linking them to the historical, social and political developments in South Africa. The first literary works to be published in South Africa in indigenous languclges were the products of western imperialist agents, the missionaries especially. This literature was later exposed to further ideologies when the government took control of education for Af~cans. The intensification of th€ liberation struggle from mid 20th century saw literature becoming another area of resistance politics in South Africa. African writers began to write in English. The birth of the Black Consciousness Muvement in the late sixties gave further impetus to this development with the emergence of black protest literature. This study seeks to investigate thes. developments in both African literature and black protest literature by employing a materialist analysis, specifically focusing on ideology as a material condition. / Afrikaans & Theory of literature / (M.A. (Theory of Literature ))

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the significance of conflict stories in the Gospel of Matthew from a literary critical perspective. The key research question the thesis has attempted to answer is, how do conflict stories function in Matthew’s narrative? Because their interest is often limited to the Sitz im Leben behind the Matthean text, previous studies attempting the similar pursuit view conflict stories as transparent accounts of Matthew’s polemical program against the Jews or Judaism. Thus they have neglected a vital purpose of the author, that is, besides his interest to record or preserve what happened in history, the Gospel author is also interested to arouse or affirm the readers’ faith in Jesus through his preservation and redaction of his sources, which is an inseparable part of the author’s theological program. How exactly then has his literary work achieved this purpose? Assuming the literary unity of the Matthean text, this study has treated the Matthean text as a mirror and explored literary nuances reflected by the textual ‘surface.’ Under such a premise, the narrative analysis of this thesis has highlighted three foci: 1. The connection which each conflict makes with its narrative context; 2. How the Hebrew Scripture interacts with the author’s composition or redaction of the stories; and 3. The literary impact these stories have on the implied reader. This study selects a total of seventeen conflict stories in Matthew based on three criteria, Matt 9.1-8, 9-13, 14-17; 12.1-8, 9-14, 22-37, 38-45; 13.53-58; 15.1-9; 16.1-4; 19.1-9; 21.14-17, 23-27; 22.15-22, 23-33, 34-40, 41-46: 1. The presence of an attitude of hostility or challenge in the setting of the narrative (either explicit or implied); 2. The presence of a question of an accusation or a challenge; and 3. The question or the accusation is usually followed by a reply of Jesus. In conclusion, the literary analysis of this study suggests two most important functions of Matthean conflict stories: 1. Conflict stories function, either individually or in clusters, as kernels of the Matthean plot to advance the narrative forward in order to reach its climax in the passion narrative. 2. The Christological focus in conflict stories is consistently concerned not only with the superiority of Jesus over the opponents, but more importantly with the nexus between the divine status of Jesus and him being the messianic figure.

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