This thesis is a literary thematic analysis of Mark Behr's novels The Smell of Apples (1996) and Embrace (2000). Through these novels, Behr explores the nature of masculine identities and the ways in which they are developed through a process of adolescent males observing and interacting with their parents and the society in which they live. The development of the two protagonists is traced and white hegemonic attitudes to masculinity in South Africa are exposed. The novels are of importance as these hegemonic attitudes continue to exist within South Africa today. The focus of this analysis is on white adolescent masculinities and the ways in which Behr illustrates the effects of apartheid society on their development. The study makes an in-depth analysis of the plot and themes and the way in which these guide the reader into a critical awareness of socially constructed masculine identities. Each of the four themes - namely, sexuality, race, gender and land - is explored in this thesis and careful consideration is given to the techniques Behr uses in his writing. Of importance to this thesis are the interrelationships between character, themes and the context of the novels. While the novels are not regarded as a case study, this thesis repeatedly demonstrates the socio-political awareness that Behr uses in order to offer his reader insight into the significant realities that have faced adolescent males as they construct their identities. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2007.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Virginia, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 248-252). Also available online through Digital Dissertations.

Dissertação (mestrado)—Universidade de Brasília, Instituto de Letras, Departamento de Teoria Literária e Literaturas, 2007. / Submitted by Luis Felipe Souza (luis_felas@globo.com) on 2008-12-17T16:33:06Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao_2007_GildaQueiroz.pdf: 396974 bytes, checksum: 929165e1925d59e5d1cf2638f6f76416 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Georgia Fernandes(georgia@bce.unb.br) on 2009-02-19T17:45:02Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao_2007_GildaQueiroz.pdf: 396974 bytes, checksum: 929165e1925d59e5d1cf2638f6f76416 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2009-02-19T17:45:02Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao_2007_GildaQueiroz.pdf: 396974 bytes, checksum: 929165e1925d59e5d1cf2638f6f76416 (MD5) / O trabalho investiga a presença, na obra de Nicolas Behr, dos conceitos e idéias contidos nas leituras feitas pelo poeta em livros que abordam a construção da cidade de Brasília do ponto de vista das ciências sociais, história e do planejamento urbano. A analogia no conteúdo e a semelhança no vocabulário foram decisivos na escolha de seis textos – de uma mostra de mais de cem títulos – como foco da pesquisa: os de James Holston, Luis Sérgio Duarte da Silva, Brasilmar Nunes Ferreira, Lúcio Costa, Paulo Bertran e Clarice Lispector. Ao promover uma análise dos diversos mecanismos usados no aproveitamento dos textos lidos (como reinvenção, citações e paródias), o trabalho identifica mudanças que ocorrem ao longo das três fases da poesia (produzida de 1977 a 2004) e que se manifestam na variação do formato dos versos, do ritmo e no uso diferenciado de figuras de linguagem e expressões temáticas. A comparação da poesia de Nicolas Behr com a bibliografia selecionada permite observar ainda os resultados operados na construção de uma reflexão crítica do sujeito sobre o projeto urbanístico da cidade de Brasília. _________________________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT / This work aims to investigate the presence of concepts and ideas on the poetic work of Nicolas Behr related to books about the construction of Brasília read by the poet from the point of view of social sciences, history and urban planning. The analogy on contents and the similarity on vocabulary were crucial when it came to the choice of six texts – from a sample of more than one hundred titles – as objects of research. The chosen works were the ones by James Holston, Luís Sérgio Duarte da Silva, Brasilmar Nunes Ferreira, Lúcio Costa, Paulo Bertran and Clarice Lispector. By promoting an analysis of several strategies (recreation, quotations and parodies) used on the appropriation of the texts that had been read, the present work identifies changes that occur during the three stages of Behr’s poetry (produced from 1977 to 2004) and become evident through the variety of its lines forms, its rhythm and through the peculiar way it employs figures of speech and idioms. The comparison between the poetry of Nicolas Behr and the selected bibliography allows one to observe the results obtained in the construction of a critical reflection by the subject about the urban project of the city of Brasilia.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-29T14:11:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 tese_4154_.pdf: 513235 bytes, checksum: 3d581005ba07e52584758ef595bf331c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-03-31 / Este trabalho tem o propósito de estudar e estender as noções de testemunho na literatura, a partir de textos relativos ao genocídio ocorrido durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial, de 1939 a 1945, e de textos relativos aos sangrentos anos ditatoriais no Brasil militarizado dos anos 1960 e 70. A hipótese, na esteira de autores como Giorgio Agamben e Márcio Seligmann-Silva, é detectar um teor testemunhal na obra poética de Nicolas Behr, obra que se inicia na década de 1970, continua nos anos 2000 e tem como traço marcante a presença da cidade de Brasília e, por extensão, uma vasta simbologia política que dela emana

Thesis (MA (English))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis explores masculinity and sexuality, hegemonic and “deviant” in the nation state of the old apartheid South Africa, by addressing aspects of fatherhood, boyhood and motherhood in white, predominantly Afrikaans family narratives. In doing this, I explore the ways in which the young boys in texts such as The Smell of Apples (1995), by Mark Behr, and moffie (2006), by André Carl van der Merwe, are systematically groomed to become the ideal stereotype of masculinity at the time: rugged, intelligent, successful and heterosexual. The main focus of this thesis is to explore the ideologies inherent in constructing the white, Afrikaner man, his woman and their family. This will be done with specific reference to the time frame between the early 1970s to the fall of the apartheid regime in the early 1990s, focussing on the young white boys who are sent to do military training and oftentimes, a stint on the border between Angola and the then South-West Africa, in order to keep the so-called threat of communism at bay. I explore what happens when this white-centred patriarchal hegemony is broken down, threatened or resisted when “deviance” in the form of homosexuality occurs. A second focus of this thesis is that of “deviance” in the army. I analyse “deviance” in three novels, moffie (2006) by André Carl van der Merwe, The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs (1991) by Damon Galgut and Kings of the Water (2009) by Mark Behr. These novels foreground “deviance” and I make use of them in exploring the punishment, or “consequences” of being homosexual or “deviant” in the highly masculine environs of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) army. I also examine the muted yet, I argue, resistant voices of female characters in these novels. This thesis concludes by briefly noting the aftermath of this war, the after-effects of a white, hegemonic, conservative ruling party at the helm of a divided, war-faring country on its soldiers, who are now middle-aged men. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis ondersoek manlikheid en seksualiteit, hegemonie en “afwykings” in die staat van ou apartheid Suid-Afrika deur te verwys na aspekte van vaderskap, seunwees en moederskap in blanke, oorwegend Afrikaanse gesinsvertellings. Eerstens sal daar ondersoek ingestel word na die wyses waarop jong seuns in tekste soos The Smell of Apples (1995) deur Mark Behr en moffie (2006) deur André Carl van der Merwe stelselmatig gekweek word tot die ideale stereotipe van manlikheid in die era: ongetem, intelligent, suksesvol en heteroseksueel. Die hoofklem van hierdie tesis is om die denkwyses onderliggend aan die konstruksie van die blanke Afrikaner man, sy vrou en hulle gesin, te verken. Dit sal bewerkstellig word deur na die tydperk vanaf die vroeë 1970s tot en met die ondergang van die apartheidsbewind in die vroeë 1990s te verwys, met spesifieke klem op jeugdige blanke seuns wat gestuur is vir militêre opleiding en dikwels ook diensplig aan die grens tussen Angola en destydse Suid-Wes Afrika om die oënskynlike kommunistiese aanslag af te weer. Daar word verken wat plaasvind wanneer hierdie blank-gesentreerde, patriargale oorwig afgebreek, bedreig of teengestaan word deur “afwykings” soos die voorkoms van homoseksualiteit. ‘n Tweede fokuspunt van hierdie tesis is die “afwykings” in die weermag. Die volgende drie “afwykingsromans” word ontleed: moffie (2006), The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs (1991) deur Damon Galgut en Kings of the Water (2009) deur Mark Behr. Hierdie romans ondervang die idee van “afwykings” en word gebruik in die ondersoek na die straf of gevolge van homoseksueel of “afwykend” wees in die uitsluitlik manlike omgewing geskep deur die SANW-opleiding. Daar word ook ondersoek ingestel na die stilgemaakte; dog, soos aangetoon word, versettende stemme van vroulike karakters in die romans. Hierdie tesis sluit af deur vlugtig te verwys na die nasleep van die oorlog en die gevolge van ’n blanke, heersende, konserwatiewe party aan die stuur van ’n verdeelde, oorlogvoerende land op sy soldate wat tans middeljarige mans is.

Dissertação (mestrado)—Universidade de Brasília, Instituto de Letras, Departamento de Teoria Literária e Literaturas, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Literatura, 2012 / Submitted by Albânia Cézar de Melo (albania@bce.unb.br) on 2013-01-23T15:21:29Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2012_MariaClaraDunckSantos.pdf: 1250114 bytes, checksum: c70afeb1a3da1650be18661c835f0eb8 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Guimaraes Jacqueline(jacqueline.guimaraes@bce.unb.br) on 2013-01-24T11:42:46Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2012_MariaClaraDunckSantos.pdf: 1250114 bytes, checksum: c70afeb1a3da1650be18661c835f0eb8 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-01-24T11:42:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2012_MariaClaraDunckSantos.pdf: 1250114 bytes, checksum: c70afeb1a3da1650be18661c835f0eb8 (MD5) / O advento da Segunda Guerra Mundial trouxe consigo grandes mudanças no cenário artístico global. Para a compreensão da literatura produzida nesse período, é necessário tratar da Contracultura, um movimento contestador que faz oposição à cultura dominante. Esta, de caráter conservador e elitista, serve à indústria cultural, como um importante veículo de propagação e manutenção do establishment. Apesar de apoiada por uma minoria, a Contracultura é fundamental para a compreensão da literatura contemporânea, visto que, ao se popularizar, contribuiu para a formação da dominante cultural do século XXI: a pós-modernidade. Este estudo compara duas literaturas contraculturais: uma norte-americana da década de 1950, conhecida como geração beat, e outra brasileira da década de 1970, chamada de geração mimeógrafo. Afirma-se que a brasileira é epígona da norte-americana. E para contrapor tal assertiva, esta pesquisa vale-se da Teoria dos Polissistemas, aliada à análise semiótica da poética de Jack Kerouac, no caso da geração beat, e da poética de Nicolas Behr, da geração mimeógrafo. ______________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT / The advent of Second World War brought relevant changes in the global art scene. For understanding the literature produced during this period, it is necessary to study the Counterculture, a movement that opposes to the dominant culture, which serves the Culture Industry as an important vehicle for the propagation and maintenance of the conservative and elitist establishment. Although the Counterculture is supported by a minority, it is fundamental to the understanding of contemporary literature because its posterior popularity contributed to the formation of the dominant culture of the twenty-first century: the postmodernity. This study compares two countercultural literatures: an American in the 1950s, known as the Beat Generation, and another, Brazilian, in the 1970s, called geração mimeógrafo. It is said that the Brazilian counterculture literature is an epigone to the U.S. To prove this assertion, this research uses the Theory Polysystem allied to a semiotic analysis of the poetry of Jack Kerouac, in the case of the Beat Generation, and the poetry of Nicolas Behr, of the geração mimeógrafo.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-07-29T16:27:55Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Manoela dos Anjos pre.pdf: 467085 bytes, checksum: 11a6a8c334f2fca2a3418825280fa894 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-03-27 / This Master dissertation is mainly composed by some reflections about the creation processes that have brought me to the beginning of a new engraving production. The graphic research showed here was made from 2003 to 2005 and is a result of my affective relation with Brasilia through several languages. As I got to know the city, initially having a foreign look over it, I came from the architecture to its history and then to the Nicolas Behr´s poetry. In that constant transit I made the Brasília Gravada engraving series, which became a thinkingthe- city graphic place. / Esta dissertação de mestrado é constituída basicamente por reflexões sobre os processos de criação que levaram-me ao início de uma nova produção em gravura. A pesquisa gráfica aqui apresentada situa-se entre os anos de 2003 e 2005 e é fruto das relações afetivas que estabeleci com Brasília a partir de diversas linguagens. Ao conhecer essa cidade e lançar-lhe um olhar inicialmente estrangeiro, fui da arquitetura à sua história e, delas, à poesia de Nicolas Behr. Nesse trânsito constante produzi a série de gravuras Brasília Gravada, a qual se transformou num lugar gráfico de pensar-acidade.

M.A. / The post-apartheid period has seen growing literary interest in issues of gender and sexuality. This dissertation reads literature as a type of cultural history and engages critically with the discursive and epistemological role of fiction within a broader palimpsest of discourses, theories and nomenclatures relating to sexuality. It maps the limitations of existing epistemological hierarchies and argues for the recognition of fiction as an ephemeral and complementary archive of same-sex subjectivities. While fiction can construct and shift signifying regimes, it also engages with the complexities and nuances of individual subjectivities as well as the affective elements of narratives in interesting and important ways. Focussing particularly on K. Sello Duiker’s The Quiet Violence of Dreams (2001), Gerald Kraak’s Ice in the Lungs (2006), and Mark Behr’s Kings of the Water (2009), this dissertation examines the ways in which representations of non-heteronormative sexualities impact on post-transitional literary culture in South Africa. Transition-era texts and discourses tend to serve particular political imperatives that demand the politicisation of identities. This dissertation destabilises the existing taxonomies of sexual identities and foregrounds the fluidity of both sexual desire and individual subjectivities. Furthermore, this dissertation interrogates the signifying regimes and discursive practices with which same-sex intimacies between men are represented. In addition, it interrogates the prevailing frameworks for the study of masculinities and shows how the novels under consideration illustrate alternative ways of conceptualising gender performativity. While there are of course a multiplicity of masculinities, through a close reading of the novels I argue that the performativity of masculinities is produced by the indeterminate, though undeniable, intersections between cultural gender norms and individual agency. This dissertation’s analysis of gender representations identifies masculinities as the site for the interrogation of myriad historical and cultural discourses including those relating to the South African Defence Force, the anti-apartheid movement and post-apartheid Cape Town. Accordingly, I argue that the three post-transitional novels under consideration resist the politics of collective mobilisation and undermine ideologically-sanctioned ‘official’ histories. As both a literary and a cultural history, this dissertation engages not only with the literariness of the novels but also with how they contribute to a broader cultural history of same-sex male subjectivities in South Africa.

This research provides an analytical reading of five southern African war novels, in a transnational study of the experience of war as represented by the novels' authors. In order to situate the texts within a transnational tradition of writing about modern warfare, I draw on Paul Fussell's work on the fictional writings of the Second World War in combination with Tobey Herzog's work on the writings of America's war in Vietnam. Through a reading of Sousa Jamba's Patriots and Mark Behr's The Smell of Apples. I illustrate that while these and other southern African war texts can be situated within a transnational tradition of writing about modern warfare, they also extend the tradition by adding new and previously silenced voices. I then turn to a focus on specific experiences of southern African anti-colonial war as represented in Pepetela's Mayombe and Mark Behr's The Smell of Apples. These texts are read in light of Franz Fanon's extensive writings on the nature of colonial violence and with a focus on the role of the victim and perpetrator in violent resistance to colonial oppression. Following this, and keeping with my examination of the experience of war in southern Africa, I read Pepetela's Mayombe. Sousa Jamba's Patriots and Chenjerai Hove's Bones with a view to highlighting their writing of women in times of war. Using the work of Florence Stratton, this section exposes the great difficulties faced by women in times of war as a result of war's complicity in the maintenance of patriarchal societal structures. Finally, I read Chenjerai Hove's Bones and Mia Couto's Under the Frangipani as post-war texts so as to highlight the authors' use of organic images to imagine post-war futures that are not tainted by the experience of war. In examining this topic, I aim to suggest that all of the texts studied show war to be a continuum that results in failed societies. I therefore read the texts as active interventions that seek to break the destructive cycle of the region's wars in the hope of better and constructive futures. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2005.

This dissertation analyses the violence of patriarchal culture as it is staged in three twentieth century texts: the Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981), the South African novelist Mark Behr's The Smell of Apples (1993) and the American film Night of the Hunter (1954) directed by Charles Laughton. Each of these works focuses on the induction of the boy child into culture and the trauma attendant on this process of accession. The thesis is that if culture is violent then it must follow that damage is done to the developing subject in the process of its construction by the cultural forces that shape masculinity. The theoretical grounding of the analysis is derived from two main sources: Jacques Derrida's account of the violence of culture in Of Grammatology (1976) and the analysis of patriarchy and the Oedipal development of the boy child into manhood found in the work of Freud and Lacan. Derrida is used for his thinking on the inherently violent nature of culture and the way in which cultural discourse is structured through binary dualisms. The three chosen works all critique and dismantle binarist thinking as a move towards imagining a less destructive discursive order. The Oedipal narrative, as a myth which describes and explains the forces shaping the male child in the process of acculturation, exemplifies and illustrates cultural violence: As expounded by Freud and Lacan, the Oedipal myth is one which underpins all three of the chosen works. Derrida, Freud and Lacan have been very usefully mediated by several cultural critics and therefore extensive use is made of commentaries by Kaja Silverman, Frank Krutnik and Madan Sarup. Slavoj Zizek's interpretations of Lacan have also yielded much that is interesting about the nature of the Law of the Father and consequently reference is made to his ideas, principally in Chapter Four.This dissertation analyses the violence of patriarchal culture as it is staged in three twentieth century texts: the Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981), the South African novelist Mark Behr's The Smell of Apples (1993) and the American film Night of the Hunter (1954) directed by Charles Laughton. Each of these works focuses on the induction of the boy child into culture and the trauma attendant on this process of accession. The thesis is that if culture is violent then it must follow that damage is done to the developing subject in the process of its construction by the cultural forces that shape masculinity. The theoretical grounding of the analysis is derived from two main sources: Jacques Derrida's account of the violence of culture in Of Grammatology (1976) and the analysis of patriarchy and the Oedipal development of the boy child into manhood found in the work of Freud and Lacan. Derrida is used for his thinking on the inherently violent nature of culture and the way in which cultural discourse is structured through binary dualisms. The three chosen works all critique and dismantle binarist thinking as a move towards imagining a less destructive discursive order. The Oedipal narrative, as a myth which describes and explains the forces shaping the male child in the process of acculturation, exemplifies and illustrates cultural violence: As expounded by Freud and Lacan, the Oedipal myth is one which underpins all three of the chosen works. Derrida, Freud and Lacan have been very usefully mediated by several cultural critics and therefore extensive use is made of commentaries by Kaja Silverman, Frank Krutnik and Madan Sarup. Slavoj Zizek's interpretations of Lacan have also yielded much that is interesting about the nature of the Law of the Father and consequently reference is made to his ideas, principally in Chapter Four. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2005.