'Visual Elective Affinities: An Elliptical Study of the Works of Angela Carter and Marosa di Giorgio' examines the extent to which these two authors engage with visual representations, as well as how visuality affects and modulates the nature of their writing. In this respect, I am committed to re-thinking the notions of verbal and visual media and I draw on W.J.T. Mitchell’s theory of the imagetext as a conceptual tool from which to investigate the heterogeneity of representation. On the one hand, I trace similarities and contrasts between Carter’s and di Giorgio’s perspectives, offering new critical approaches to each other’s œuvres. For example, I suggest new routes of interpretation into Carter’s and di Giorgio’s texts, by opening the exploration of their work to the interplay not only with visuality but also with each other’s geo-cultural domains. On the other hand, this thesis draws on theories and discourses of comparative literature and, hence, it also problematises standards and consequences of comparisons between the arts and between cultures. There are three major visual elective affinities with which I develop an intertwined analysis of the authors’ texts. Firstly, Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s pictures are a shared reference in Carter’s and di Giorgio’s writings, and I analyse Arcimboldo’s “effect” on their works. A second visual affinity is created around visions and images of women. Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber” is put under consideration along with images by Félicien Rops, Jacques Louis David and Corinna Sargood, amongst others, whilst di Giorgio’s Camino de las pedrerías is examined in relation to surrealist works of art including: Max Ernst’s, Leonora Carrington’s and Leonor Fini’s. Finally, this thesis analyses the films The Company of Wolves (dir. Neil Jordan, 1984) and Lobo (dir. Eduardo Casanova, 1990) in relation to Carter’s and di Giorgio’s works. In doing so, I introduce alternative perspectives on these writers, examining the links between cinematography and fairy tales, and exploring the conflictive and hybrid nature of filmic representation.

The aim of the study is to investigate how upper secondary school teachers of Swedish work with female authors writing in the period 1900–1940. The research questions concern how upper secondary school teachers work with the female authors, how their work interacts with steering documents and textbooks, whether the teachers show any similarities and differences in their work, and how female authors are treated in the textbooks and steering documents that are used. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with three upper secondary school teachers and one textbook per teacher was analysed together with the steering documents. The study reveals clear similarities and differences in the teachers’ work. The teachers work chronologically, period by period, and they deal with female authors in terms of a societal context, but they do not think that the work with women has any intrinsic value. Textbooks and steering documents have a central role to play in the teaching and are used together with other teaching material. The textbooks have an over-representation of male authors and the female authors are treated on their own, separated from the rest of the text and viewed in relation to male authors. The textbooks maintain a gender system where the man is the norm and the sexes are kept apart. The steering documents explicitly deal with female authors to a small extent and are shown to dictate of fundamental principles for what is considered valuable to consider in school work.

In this mini-dissertation, the main aim is to investigate and to describe the representation of gender identity in the four short stories in Mmualebe (A.M. Malope). It also implies developing a critique of the representation of gender identity in the four short stories of Mmualebe; comparing traditionalism and modernity with regard to the representation of gender identity; describing possible responses of the implied readers (male and female) with regard to reception aesthetics and developmental psychology; and to supply the variants and constants regarding the representation of gender identity in the four short stories of Mmualebe. In developing a critique of the representation of gender identity, some important literary techniques are used. Through these techniques, the role of the conflict between traditionalism and modernity regarding the representation of gender identity is determined. In general, it is evident that all theories used in this study, when integrated, can help with the development of a positive gender identity. Men and women need to be made aware of gender equality and equity and at the same time not to abuse their gender rights. / Thesis (M.A. (African Languages))--Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, 2003

In this mini-dissertation, the main aim is to investigate and to describe the representation of gender identity in the four short stories in Mmualebe (A.M. Malope). It also implies developing a critique of the representation of gender identity in the four short stories of Mmualebe; comparing traditionalism and modernity with regard to the representation of gender identity; describing possible responses of the implied readers (male and female) with regard to reception aesthetics and developmental psychology; and to supply the variants and constants regarding the representation of gender identity in the four short stories of Mmualebe. In developing a critique of the representation of gender identity, some important literary techniques are used. Through these techniques, the role of the conflict between traditionalism and modernity regarding the representation of gender identity is determined. In general, it is evident that all theories used in this study, when integrated, can help with the development of a positive gender identity. Men and women need to be made aware of gender equality and equity and at the same time not to abuse their gender rights. / Thesis (M.A. (African Languages))--Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, 2003

This thesis project involves the translation of a selection of short stories by Camille Deslauriers, a Québécois writer, from French into English, as well as the translation of a selection of short stories by Angie Abdou, a Western English-Canadian writer, from English into French. The thesis is divided into four chapters into which the translations have been inserted. The chapters provide an introduction and commentary to the translations. I begin by giving a brief overview of the importance of literary translation in Canada as well as a short description of Québécois and English-Canadian short fiction.This section introduces the two authors that have been chosen for this thesis, Camille Deslauriers and Angie Abdou, as well as their collections of short stories, Femme-Boa and Anything Boys Can Do respectively. I discuss various approaches to translation, literary translation, linguistic issues, the translation process, and the issue of mother tongue and directionality. Following the two introductory chapters are the translations. I have translated nine of Camille Deslauriers' short stories from Femme-Boa from French into English, and three of Angie Abdou's short stories from Anything Boys Can Do from English into French. In both cases, these are the first translations to be done of these authors' works. I then go on to describe certain challenges posed by the translations, giving examples of strategies adopted to resolve the problems. In the final chapter, I reflect upon the translation process as a whole, in light of the revisions done by both of my thesis advisors, in terms of vocabulary, syntax, bilingualism, and biculturalism.This reflection enables me to synthesize the knowledge that I acquired through the whole translation experience.

This thesis argues that the popularity of the clandestine marriage plot in English and Spanish drama following the Reformation corresponds closely to developments and emerging conflicts in European matrimonial law. My title, ‘casos de honra,' or ‘honour cases', unites law and drama in a way that captures this argument. Taken from the Spanish playwright Lope de Vega's El arte nuevo (1609), a treatise on his dramatic practice, the phrase has been understood as a description of the honour plots so common in Spanish Golden Age drama, but ‘casos' [cases] has a further, and related, legal meaning. Casos de honra are cases touching honour, whether portrayed on stage or at law, a European rather than a strictly Spanish phenomenon, and clandestine marriages are one such example. I trace the genealogy of three casos de honra from their recognisable origins in Italian novelle, through Italian, French, Spanish, and English adaptations, until their final early modern manifestations on the English and Spanish stage. Their seeming differences, and often radical divergences in plot can be explained with reference to their distinct, but related, legal concerns.

Thesis (MA)- Stellenbosch University, 2003. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In fulfilment of the degree of Magister in Creative Writing: Afrikaans, a novel titled Sirkus (Circus) is presented in which the main character figures as an idiot. It is accompanied by a perspicacious formal essay which maintains the relationship between theory and novel. The essay titled "Die idioot: spieël en skadu" (The idiot: mirror and shadow) reflects on the problematics concerning the representation of the idiot in literary texts. The essay investigates the phenomenon of the idiot in literature according to well-known literary texts presenting idiots. What these texts have in common is that the narrator acts on behalf of a character who does not have the ability nor the will to narrate himself. The problematics is viewed from a thematic as well as writing technique niveaux, according to insights gleaned from literature, philosophy, narratology and psychology. The argument concludes by reflecting on the responsibility of the author and the ethics of creating an effigy of the idiot. The novel Sirkus, (Circus), focuses on an idiot character with webbed hands and feet, Siegfried Landman. It is an exposition of his journey to hell starting on a farm in the Karoo. It takes him through a grotesque urban landscape where he eventually ends up in a circus of freaks. The text starts with the death of Siegfried's father and is in the form of a quest narrative, a quest for the vague image of his uncle Fischer. The tale emanates predominantly from Siegfried's consciousness. During the course of the text he is accompanied by varioius travelling companions who each fmd a voice in the text. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING Ter vervulling van die graad van Magister in Kreatiewe Afrikaanse skryfkunde is 'n roman getiteld Sirkus voorgelê waarin die hoofkarakter 'n idiotefiguur is. Dit word vergesel met 'n verbandhoudende beskoulike werkstuk: "Die idioot: spieël en skadu", wat die vorm aanneem van 'n essay oar die problematiek rondom die representasie van die idioot in literêre tekste. In die werkstuk word die verskynsel van die idioot in die letterkunde ondersoek aan die hand van bekende literêre tekste waarin idiotefigure gerepresenteer word. Hierdie tekste het dit gemeen dat die verteller optree namens 'n karakter wat nie die vermoë óf die wil het om self te vertel nie. Die problematiek word beskou op tematiese sowel as skryftegniese vlakke aan die hand van insigte uit die letterkunde, filosofie, narratologie en sielkunde. Die argument sluit uiteindelik af met 'n besinning oor die skrywerlike verantwoordelikheid en 'n skrywerlike etiek ten opsigte van die uitbeelding van die idioot. Die roman Sirkus fokus op 'n idiote-karakter met gewebde hande en voete, Siegfried Landman. Dit is 'n uitbeelding van sy hellevaart wat begin op 'n plaas in die Karoo en hom voer deur 'n groteske stadslandskap voor hy uiteindelik opeindig in 'n sirkus van fratse. Die teks begin met die dood van Siegfried se vader en is in die vorm van 'n soektognarratief, 'n soektog na die vae beeld van sy oom Fischer. Die verhaal word grotendeels vanuit Siegfried se bewussyn vertel. Hy word deur die verloop van die teks vergesel deur verskeie reisgenote wat elk ook 'n eie stem in die teks verkry.

An oblique reading of the European canon constitutes the discursive center for present day Caribbean literature. In doing this, authors question Eurocentric representational codes of Caribbean identity while they create their own discourses in "a certain way", that is, from a certain perspective and by means of hybrid appropriation and synchretization of the very models that feed their imagination. As this analysis purports to show, writers Virgilio Piñera (Cuba) and Aída Cartagena Portalatín (Dominican Republic), by their rereading of the canon, establish in their works hybrid dialogs between the European There and the Caribbean Here. In that line, among the canonical cultural signifiers that the authors adopt, they privilege the appropriation of Greek myths. Piñera does this in his theater piece Electra Garrigó, and Cartagena in her novel Escalera para Electra. In Piñera's work, the main devices utilized are humor, irony, and parody of the text by Euripides, obtained by the used of "choteo", a particular brand of Cuban parodic humor in the manner of Bakhtin's carnavalization. This technique is employed along with the use of heteroglossia, which is utilized by Cartagena as well in her novel. In her work, the Dominican author constructs a parallel and intertextual reading of the same play by the Greek dramatist from the positionality of a female subject. Although with different strategies and in different literary genres, Piñera and Cartagena structure their literary discourses with themes that reflect their cultural identities from the synchretism of difference and from the perspective of a Caribbean subject. This dissertation confirms the efficacy of the discursive strategies they utilize on taking the female subject and the family as the axis of their contesting, unofficial readings of the history and cultural identity of the Caribbean.

According to John Lukacs, German people's views on Hitler and Nazism once got examined right after the fall the Third Reich in the 1950s but this subject has lost its appeal since then. How do Germans nowadays, specifically those young ones raised in the "New Germany" after the fall of the Berlin Wall, think of Hitler and their country's Nazi legacy? This dissertation is to explore how six young Germans growing up in the new "unified Germany" interpret two films' representations of Hitler and Nazism.

The writings of Göran Tunström (1937 – 2000) are closely linked with his birthplace, Sunne in Värmland. His four ’Sunne Novels’, De heliga geograferna (1973; ’The Holy Geographers’), Guddöttrarna (1976; ’The Goddaughters’), Juloratoriet (1983; The Christmas Oratorio, 1995) and Tjuven (1986; ’The Thief’) form the subject of this thesis. The focus is on the novels as an entity, an 'epic universe', a micro-/macrocosmos, examined from five different aspects: space, time, literary models, poetics and ethics. The first part of the thesis concentrates on Sunne, and both the inward and outward significance of place. Topographical descriptions and place-names use physical surroundings as their starting point, but here the analysis is structured phenomenologically, on what Gaston Bachelard calls ’topoanalysis’: i.e. Sunne is seen both subjectively and objectively. In the second part the significance of the time dimension in its epic configuration is examined. The hypothesis is that there is a typological structure in the Sunne novels corresponding to the Genesis and Apocalypse of the Bible. The third part looks at the significance of the work of two writers, Selma Lagerlöf and Lars Ahlin, whose production can be seen as literary models. The fourth part considers the poetics of the Sunne novels. The main issue is narratological and discusses the kind of prose used, the various literary patterns, genres, motifs and rhetorical figures that appear, and the sorts of meaning created thereby. An expression often used throughout the Sunne novels is 'turning round': a trope implying transgression, recognition, identification and perception, awareness, and knowledge. In these novels different literary and mythical traditions are interwoven using various narratological devices. The relation to tradition may be described as parody. The fifth and last part of the thesis looks at the narrator and the ethical discourse in the Sunne novels. It considers both the relation between the narrator and his creativity in terms of self-examination and identity, and the ethical question as to how one ought to live. Elements of the philosophy of existence can characteristically be related to the work of Lars Ahlin and Søren Kierkegaard. The ethical analysis is based, as with Martha Nussbaum, on the fundamental question as to how one becomes, and remains, a true and living person. By investigating the relation between subject and object in creative, artistic practice, contact with reality is obtained as well as truth and individuality. The confessional element in the narrative context points towards this and also contributes to the therapeutic character of the novels. The relation between imagination and reality resolves itself into an acceptance of 'both - and'. 'Humour' as an attitude to life means the ability to accommodate a 'both-and' stance without losing perception and consciousness and also leads to self-fulfilment and fellowship. / Akademisk avhandling för avläggande av filosofie doktorsexamen fredagen den 21 november år 2003 kl. 13.15 i Lilla hörsalen, Humanisten, Göteborgs universitet, Renströmsgatan 6, Göteborg.