Because of woman's peculiar relationship to language, and therefore to the means of comprehending and expressing her experience, female autobiographical writing is a problematic undertaking. An exploration of several premises about Western culture can help to illuminate the difficulties the female autobiographer encounters in creating her life/text. Among these premises are the following: (1) that the culture that provides the context for female experience is what feminist theorists call "patriarchal," that is, a culture dependent upon and reinforced by the supremacy of male interests, pursuits, and values. (2) that the habit of mind of this culture is essentially dichotomous, and that this bifurcation, although it serves very well to enable one person or group to gain power over another, fails to account for the sense of relatedness characteristic of female moral development as demonstrated by recent feminist psychologists. (3) that one lives through telling oneself the story of one's life (that is, that living itself is an essentially autobiographical act); that this narrative conforms to certain cultural conventions; and that these conventions present distinct problems to the narrator who is female. (4) that the human being constructs its self through language, and that the language of a patriarchal culture is problematic to female authenticity. In order to confront these theoretical problems in practice, twelve essays explore some experiences of a middle-aged, middle-class white American woman in the second half of the twentieth century. These include illness, both physical (multiple sclerosis) and emotional (depression, agoraphobia); suicide; relationships with men, strangers, and cats; motherhood; and above all, writing. They form a feminist project whose purpose is so to merge theory with praxis, nonfiction with fiction and poetry, scholarship with creation, that such distinctions become meaningless and the female writer can get on with the real business of making and contemplating her text. An annotated selected bibliography lists works in feminist theory and criticism, some of which inform the essays, thus providing a program for extensive feminist study, especially in literature, anthropology, and psychology.

Marechera the Zimbabwean writer, poet and novelist emerged in the late 1970s as a new voice in African literature, but his writing career lasted less than a decade. It was his iconoclastic, dense style that expressed the psychological disintegration prevalent in Africa during this period and challenged the central beliefs of both the nationalist and post-independence eras. Defying the limitations of nationality, race and culture, Marechera’s writing explores universal issues, particularly urban existence in the late twentieth century. Marechera’s life and work were closely linked. His outspoken views and unorthodox lifestyle brought him into frequent conflict with the authorities and contributed to him being perceived as a cult figure. Through his work and personality he became a major inspiration and role model for the younger generation of writers in Zimbabwe and other African countries. The present study is a psychobiographical case study with the primary aim being to explore and describe the personality development of Dambudzo Marechera (1952-1987) using Alfred Adler’s theory of Individual Psychology. It was through the use of a theory of psychological development that a better understanding of Marechera’s personality, based on his cultural and historical background was achieved and a new interpretation and explanation was reported. The findings of the study can be generalised to the theory of individual psychology through the process of analytical generalization.

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Orientador: Antonio Arnoni Prado / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-17T15:55:00Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Vale_Julio_D.pdf: 2239629 bytes, checksum: e925bd3fa69fc1aeb3ede36a5f1f8477 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011 / Resumo: Este estudo pretende compreender as Memorias de Pedro Nava enquanto um produto tardio do movimento modernista. Para isto, investiga especialmente as relações desta obra com o modernismo de Mário de Andrade, de cujas ideias o memorialista julga-se devedor. Progressivamente, a análise encaminha-se de modo a demonstrar as peculiaridades da obra de Nava, notadamente a sua atração pela literatura fin de siècle e, sobretudo, a sua peculiar concepção de tempo - traço mais visível quando comparada à obra de outros colegas de movimento, como Carlos Drummond de Andrade e Murilo Mendes (outros memorialistas tardios) ou ainda Oswald de Andrade. Esta peculiar concepção de tempo colaborará para, na "Conclusão" do trabalho, compor a feição tardia do ciclo naviano, então entendido numa chave saidiana (isto é, de acordo com Edward Said em Estilo Tardio). Com isto, espera-se justificar, mais especificamente, a posição insular das Memórias no contexto do modernismo brasileiro / Abstract: This work examines the Pedro Nava's Memorias as a late product of the Modernist movement. In this sense, we study the relationship of this text with the Modernism conceived by Mario de Andrade (whose ideas have influenced a lot Nava in the 20s). Subsequently, the analysis aims to demonstrate the peculiarities of Nava's Memorias, highlighting the importance of Symbolist-Decadent movement and the peculiar concept of time proposed in this memorial narrative. In the latter case, the Memorias are compared with other modernist works: late memoirists as Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Murilo Mendes (besides, in another chapter, Oswald de Andrade's poems) illustrate this critical path. In the "Conclusion", this peculiar conception of time is important to understand this memories as late work (according to the ideas of Edward Said in his book On Late Style). This is intended to describe the insular position of Nava's Memorias in the context of Brazilian Modernism / Doutorado / Literatura Brasileira / Doutor em Teoria e História Literária