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Text in Xhosa. / Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2002. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study examines representations of women in four Xhosa drama books, thus aiming at highlighting the interplay between culture and women's social space. A comparative approach is used to review the ways in which the Xhosa dramatists under study characterise women.Some of these representations suggest that women have the capability to achieve personal transedence rather than accept the immanence imposed by stereotyped gender relationships. In these works, it is evident that writers can change the image of women by centralising them as active people who fight for their rights. THE ASSIGNMENT IS ARRANGED AS FOllOWS: CHAPTER 1 Introduces the aim, the scope, the theories and the methods of the study. CHAPTER 2 Deals with the development of plot and attention is paid to episodes in the four dramas. These episodes depict the different phases of the dramas. The dramas under study are evaluated critically by motivating their positive and negative aspects. CHAPTER3 Deals with woman as character in Xhosa dramas under study. A critical detailed analysis of the main woman character in each drama is undertaken. CHAPTER4 Presents depiction of Xhosa culture in the Xhosa dramas. CHAPTERS Summarises the findings of the study which is the representation of women in Xhosa drama books. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie studie ondersoek voorstellings van vroue in vier Xhosa dramas met die doelom die interaksie te ontleed tussen kultuurverskynsels in die vrou se sosiale ruimte. 'n Vergelykende benadering word gevolg om 'n analise te doen van hoe die dramaturge wie se werke bestudeer word vroue karakteriseer. Sommige representasies van hierdie karakterisering dui aan dat vroue die vermoë het tot persoonlike transendensie, eerder as om die onmiddellikheid te aanvaar van gestereotipeerde genderverhoudings. In die dramas wat ondersoek is, blyk dit dat die skrywers in staat is om die beeld van vroue te verander deur hulle te sentraliseer as aktiewe mense wat veg vir hulle regte. Die werkstuk word as volg georganiseer: Hoofstuk Een gee 'n uiteensetting van die doelstelling, omvang, teoretiese raamwerk en metodes van die studie. Hoofstuk Twee ondersoek die ontwikkeling van intrige en 'n analise word gedoen van die episodes in die vier dramas. Hierdie episodes beeld die verskillende fases van die onderskeie dramas uit. Die dramas word krities ge-evalueer en hulle positiewe en negatiewe aspekte word behandel. Hoofstuk Drie ondersoek die vrou as karakter in die Xhosa dramas. 'n Gedetaileerde kritiese analise word onderneem van die hoof vroue karakter in elke drama. Hoofstuk Vier ondersoek die uitbeelding van kultuur in die onderskeie Xhosa dramas. Hoofstuk Vyf gee 'n opsomming van die hoofaspekte van ondersoek en die bevindinge van die studie.

abstract / toc / Chinese / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Comparative Literature / Master / Master of Philosophy

This dissertation examines the problem of narrative closure in Hawthorne's major romances in the light of the unfinished manuscripts he was working on immediately before his death. Despite the sense of formlessness the mass of material itself sugests, these manuscripts bear striking similarities to his earlier works. The problems of reading and writing, of concealment and revelation, of searching for one's origins and being shaped by one's past, the figure of the storyteller whose manner and difficulties usurp the story itself in importance--these are materials Hawthorne returned to time after time as if unable to locate precisely or exhaust completely their implications. The majority of Hawthorne's tales and romances are fragmentary. For Hawthorne, reality is always beyond man's ability to perceive except as bits and fragments. Throughout his work he asserts his awareness that man can perceive and express only a minuscule part of the immense, inexhaustible reality within and outside of his own mind. Every expression is, therefore, incomplete, and the artistic process becomes one of piecing together, by retelling and reshaping, the fragments of both imagination and perception. To study the problem of closure in narratives that have grown out of this view of the relationship between human experience and its artistic expression is to consider not only the formalistic dimension of the problem (how stories end) but the relationship between the narrative's ending and the ending of human experience in death. It is to consider the relationship between the forms of closure and the formlessness and absence of death. In viewing Hawthorne's romances retrospectively one repeatedly encounters his ironic sense that death both gives meaning to life and renders it ridiculous and that death both generates narrative and demands its ending. Hawthorne's allegory causes him to place himself within his texts in a way that makes them expressive of the design of his own life artistically woven into the texts of his career. By thus inverting the glass and reversing the cycle as suggested in "The Dolliver Romance," the reader effects the reliving of the author's life through art. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.)

This study compares fetishistic desires exhibited within Faulkner's fiction to the narrative strategies governing those texts. It surveys Faulkner's thematic and narrative experiments with fetishism from his first poems and sketches through his major novels. His early works, especially "Nympholepsy" and The Marble Faun, capture fetishistic moments of longing and lack of fulfillment, attraction and repulsion. Faulkner's novels, though, re-enact the dynamics of fetishism by means of their narrative strategies; thus, Faulkner achieves a correspondence between the fictional form and the fetish depicted. Because his texts engage us within their shifting temporality and symbolic repetitions, as readers we invariably fall prey to the fetishistic desires his narratives initiate and imitate. Interpretive problems necessarily arise concerning the reader's relationship to the text and desire for meaning. In As I Lay Dying, multiple points-of-view call our attention to the validity of interpretive perception; in Sanctuary, rape operates as Faulkner's master trope for both the characters' and reader's struggles for dominance; in Absalom, Absalom!, writing and reading history are obsessions shared by the narrators and the reader. My readings are informed by several interdisciplinary approaches to fetishism, such as: icon-worship and totemism from anthropology; object and linguistic substitutions from psychoanalysis; commodity exchange and reification from Marxist theories; and sign production and displacement from post-structuralism. Instead of imposing a general taxonomy for fetishism, I have allowed each text's narrative and thematic structures to guide my readings and, therefore, consciously matched my readings to the particular fetishes his narratives engender.

The Neo-Confucian philosopher Yang Shih (1053-1135) flourished during one of the most fertile periods in the history of Chinese philosophy. His curiosity about differences among the Confucian classics, his interest in the Book of Change, his exploration of Buddhist philosophy and his reaction against the philosophical foundation of Wang An-shih's political policies mark Yang Shih as highly representative of his generation. That these factors led to his formulation of a Confucian metaphysics makes him philosophically significant. Further, as the Ch'eng brothers' emissary to southern China, the founder of the Tung-lin Academy, and a progenitor of Chu Hsi, Yang's historical significance is considerable. Yang Shih forms the link between northern and southern China, the Ch'eng brothers and Chu Hsi. This study offers two types of framework within which the diverse elements of Yang Shih's thought may be analyzed: (1) a systemic approach based on the centrality of metaphysics to his teachings, and (2) a comparative approach examining Yang's reaction to the philosophical underpinnings of Wang An-shih's political theories. The major portion of the dissertation deals with Yang's concept of the Tao as a palpable entity, its operator (the principle of change), and its dynamic (response). It examines the ramifications of this groundwork for Yang's theories of human nature and the value of wen (the written and cultural heritage) as well as his attitude toward so-called "heterodox" schools, most notably Buddhism and Taoism. The secondary portion of the dissertation focusses on Yang Shih's criticism of Wang An-shih's Tzu-shuo. Despite the marked divergence of their approaches to political and social issues, an examination of their respective philosophical theories shows the difference between Yang Shih and Wang An-shih to be predominantly one of discourse and emphasis rather than fundamental metaphysical theory. Three appendices follow the body of the dissertation. The first describes the various available editions of the primary source text; the second consists of a biography of Yang Shih; and a glossary of Chinese terms forms the third.