This dissertation examines narratives of passing of the nineteenth- and twentieth century fins de siècle. My central thesis is that passing narratives of the 1990s and beyond evidence symmetry between the tropes of passing that occur at plot level and passing strategies surrounding the production of the texts themselves. I argue that the connections between passing and authorship that emerge in contemporary stories invite us to reconsider extant interpretations of earlier passing stories, specifically those published at the turn of the twentieth century. The Introduction challenges the historiography of the passing narrative traced in existing studies of passing. It also suggests the ways in which authorship and passing are inextricably linked via the arbitrary standard of "authenticity," both authorial and racial. In Chapter One, I examine the relationship between the African American body-as-text and the African American author who produces a text in The Bondwoman's Narrative (date unknown), Philip Roth's The Human Stain (2000) and Percival Everett's Erasure (2001). Chapter Two takes the self-reflexive detective genre and traces the changing roles of the passing character within the conventions of the form, from femme fatale to hard-boiled detective. Here, I focus specifically on Pauline Hopkins's Hagar's Daughter (1901-1902), Walter Mosley's Devil in a Blue Dress (1990) and Robert Skinner's Wesley Farrell series (1997-2002). In Chapter Three, I examine texts whose protagonists' gender and/or racial ambiguity serve to destabilise analogously the religious categories under interrogation in those texts, namely Hopkins's Winona (1902) and Louise Erdrich's Tracks (1988) and The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (2001). Chapter Four examines tropes of passing in relation to three contemporary novels of adolescence, Paul Beatty's The White Boy Shuffle (1996), Danzy Senna's Caucasia (1998) and Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex (2002). Finally, the Conclusion discusses recent controversies of authorship and authenticity in the U.S., particularly as these pertain to the ambiguous literary category of "memoir."

The reading of selected literary texts in this thesis traces the changes from a divinely ordered world of stability (Thomas Mann's Bud<lenbrooks) to surroundings characterized by insecurity (William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury) to an unstable environment giving rise to largely futile attempts at finding answers to seemingly illogical questions (Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49). As a product of the accelerated speed of technological progression and the information revolution in the twentieth century, man is more often than not incapable of adjusting to changed circumstances in a seemingly hostile environment. Indeed, instability and unpredictability are external factors determining the sense of insecurity and uncertainty characterising the 'world' depicted in the literary texts under consideration. For this reason judicious use will be made of philosophical and psychoanalytical concepts, based, amongst others, on Nietzschean and Freudian theories, to explain the disintegration of families, the anguish experienced by individuals or, indeed, the shifting identities informing the portrayal of character in selected literary texts. / Afrikaans and Theory of Literature / D.Litt. et Phil. (Theory of Literature)

The reading of selected literary texts in this thesis traces the changes from a divinely ordered world of stability (Thomas Mann's Bud<lenbrooks) to surroundings characterized by insecurity (William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury) to an unstable environment giving rise to largely futile attempts at finding answers to seemingly illogical questions (Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49). As a product of the accelerated speed of technological progression and the information revolution in the twentieth century, man is more often than not incapable of adjusting to changed circumstances in a seemingly hostile environment. Indeed, instability and unpredictability are external factors determining the sense of insecurity and uncertainty characterising the 'world' depicted in the literary texts under consideration. For this reason judicious use will be made of philosophical and psychoanalytical concepts, based, amongst others, on Nietzschean and Freudian theories, to explain the disintegration of families, the anguish experienced by individuals or, indeed, the shifting identities informing the portrayal of character in selected literary texts. / Afrikaans and Theory of Literature / D.Litt. et Phil. (Theory of Literature)