This thesis examines four novels as case studies of the mode of allegory in post-colonial Australian literature Allegory is a mode of fiction in which a hidden narrative is concealed below a surface narrative. Furthermore, when the hidden narrative is revealed, the surface narrative and its discursive codes become transformed. Post-colonial critics have argued that one aspect of post-colonial literature is the use of allegory in a way that the hidden narrative interpolates the surface narrative. This process of allegorical interpolation is one of the ways post-colonial literature is able to transform colonial discourses. Through an analysis of the four novels, I argue that allegory is a significant aspect of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian writing in its depiction of the natural environment and the settler nation. Bringing together ecological theory with post-colonial theories of allegory, I coin the term 'ecological allegory' to describe a specific type of allegory in which nature as subject becomes revealed within the 'hidden' narrative of the text. Through this process of interpolation, the literary representation of the land is being transformed as the natural environment is depicted as a dialogical subject. In the explication of the four novels as ecological allegories, I provide new readings of two canonical Australian texts, Remembering Babylon and Tourmaline, as well as, readings of two lesser known Indigenous Australian texts, Earth and Steam Pigs. I argue that theories of ecology provide a means for understanding the texts' representation of nature as subject. The allegorical mode of the novels offers a literary form whereby the natural environment as subject may be able to be represented in discursive language. Furthermore, in these allegories, the polysemy in the written mode of Australian literature is able to express the oral Indigenous worldview of Country, the land as a living entity. The claim that these texts are constructed as allegories, rather than simply reading the texts allegorically (known as allegoresis), combined with the methodology of ecological theory, to create a new term - ecological allegory - is an original way of reading Australian literature. Furthermore, my term 'ecological allegory' is an innovation in literary theory and its understanding of literary representations of the natural environment.

Inaug.-Diss.-Tübingen. / Vita. Bibliography: p. 183-184.

Thesis (Th. M.)--Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 71-74).

Thesis (M.A.)--Johnson Bible College, Knoxville, Tenn., 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 70-75).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1963. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 341-348).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1970. / Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Divinity School, June 2000. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Virginia Commonwealth University, 2010. / Prepared for: Dept. of Art History. Title from resource description page. Inlcudes bibliographical references.

As a dyslexic child, I always had trouble finding my voice. It's hard to express yourself in words, when you struggle with them. For me words always come later when I write. But most people don't understand how I feel. If your synapses fire off at the right time how can you image what it would be like it they didn't? That's where fiction comes in. If you can override someone's lack of experience with the use of a metaphor, then by distancing the reader from reality with an allegory, you can get to truth that's hard to capture any other way. You can also simply tell the truth in your writing with plain nonfiction. For me, fiction and nonfiction are a way for me to claim my voice and convey truth. Only a reader can decided what that truth looks like.

This dissertation examines the nature and influence of the structural complexity of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy on Dante’s Commedia, arguing that the latter is a deliberate response to the former. The General Introduction sets the groundwork through a survey of the major scholarship on Dante and Boethius; the genre of the Consolation as understood through the modern, but inadequate, category of Menippean satire and through accessus ad auctores in the medieval commentary tradition on Boethius and related authors; and the conception of intertextuality used in the study, which is connected to both the practice of allegory and Boethius’ understanding of metaphysics. Chapter One examines the Consolation, beginning with the presentation and roles of its two major characters, Boethius and Philosophy. Anchoring the more abstract discussion of the Consolation’s structure and its scholarly interpretations is the subsequent analysis of three main themes, time, love, and prayer. Chapter Two considers five twelfth-century prosimetra and their intertextual relationships with the Consolation in order to map authorial strategies of imitation: Bernard Silvestris’ Cosmographia; Alan of Lille’s Plaint of Nature; Hildebert of Lavardin’s Liber de querimonia; Adelard of Bath’s De eodem et diverso; and Lawrence of Durham’s Consolatio de morte amici. Each work is examined for its Boethian elements and structural complexity; the most original, the Cosmographia, is considered at greatest length. This provides an overview of common interpretive and imitative options for the Consolation. Chapter Three examines the Boethian elements of Dante’s Vita Nuova and the Convivio before engaging with the Commedia in order to take issue with the prevailing scholarly opinion that the Commedia can be understood as a rejecton of Dante’s Boethian stage as symbolized by the Convivio. Through a thorough examination of the many ways the Consolation is an intertext in the Commedia, this chapter argues that the Commedia is deeply responsive to the challenges of the Consolation both philosophically and artistically, and, in fact, is positioned by Dante so as to supersede and typologically fulfill the Consolation. In conclusion, therefore, Boethius’ work is demonstrated to be integral to a proper understanding of Dante’s purpose in the Commedia.