This dissertation examines E. E. Cummings's writings in the sonnet genre and in those genres to which the sonnet is related in various ways. Its fundamental point is that, despite the surface impression of poetic iconoclasm for which Cummings has a popular reputation, in choosing to write sonnets he engages in a traditional literary practice. He does this because his purpose is always to be an artist, as defined by the Aesthetic movement which influenced him. In order to argue his embracing of a traditional artistic role, the theory of genres espoused by Alastair Fowler in his book, Kinds of Literature, is used. Chapter 1 of the thesis comprises general introductory material, both to the range of Aesthetic ideas to which Cummings subscribed, and to Fowler's theory of genres. Several key generic kinds are also described. The second chapter makes use of two of these generic models, the sonnet sequence and the silva, as a way of examining Cummings's deployment of the sonnet within the larger context of his poetry collections. It is a survey of the structure of the anthologies he compiled from Tulips & Chimneys (1922) to 95 Poems (1958). The third chapter explores the three sonnet modes which Cummings first identifies and names when compiling the manuscript of Tulips & Chimneys, and continues to use in his collections up to and including is 5 (1926). Chapter 4 shows how certain themes and concerns from these early sonnets are altered and synthesised as Cummings matures from an aesthete to a Romantic poet. Sonnets from his later books are taken to be representative of three central kinds in all of his work after is 5. Chapters 3 and 4 proceed by means of relatively close readings of individual sonnets. This practice fulfils a double role: it penetrates the apparent obscurity of the more difficult poems, and it attempts to preserve the integrity of individual poems which exemplify different generic tendencies in Cummings's work. One of Cummings's reasons for writing sonnets is that the form favours the achievement of what Wordsworth calls "a feeling of intense unity". In undertaking close readings of a few sonnets I have attempted to preserve that feeling.

The thesis argues, in lie main, for both a negative and positive agenda to Wittgenstein's rule-following remarks in both his Philosophical Investigations and Remarks on the foundations of Mathematics. The negative agenda is a sceptical agenda, different than as conceived by Kripke, that is destructive of a realist account of rules and contends that the correct application of a rule is not fully determined in an understanding of the rule. In addition to these consequences, this negative agenda opens Wittgenstein to Dummett's charge of radical conventionalism (a charge that also, but differently, applies to certain mid-period views and this is addressed in the first chapter). These negative consequences are left unresolved by Kripke's sceptical solution and, notably, are wrongly assessed by those that dissent from a sceptical reading (e.g., McDowell). The positive agenda builds on these negative considerations arguing that although there is no determination in the understanding of a rule of what will count as a correct application in so far unconsidered situations, we are still able to follow a rule correctly. This seems to involve an epistemic leap, from an underdetermined understanding to a determinate application, and, in respect of this appearance, involves what Wittgenstein calls following a rule "blindly" in an epistemic sense. Developing this view, of following a rule blindly, involves developing an account of an alternative rational response to rule instruction, one that need not involve a role for interpreting or inferring, but all the same allows for correctness in rule application in virtue of enabling agreement in rule application.

This thesis examines how Gwyn Thomas and Ron Berry interact with and respond to landscape and environment in their fictional and non-fictional writing. Exploring how the writers negotiate the convergence of the industrial and the rural/natural in the uplands of the south Wales coalfield, in particular the Rhondda Fawr Valley, the study considers the literary geographies their work creates. Examining the themes of the cultural and political use of landscape and rural imagery, the manifestation of authority in landscapes, the impact of industrialisation and de-industrialisation, the uncanny underground environment and its dynamic interactions with the ground above, and post-industrial environmental issues, the study re-positions two industrial writers of Wales to reveal the significance of landscape, place and environment in their writing.

M.A. / The idea that parody can be used as an instrument of internal criticism and at the same time be a form of literary history is the point of departure for this study. By analysing and comparing the parody pendants of D.J. Opperman ("Met apologie" in Kuns-mis, 1964) and Johann Johl ("Dubbelloop: 'n pastiche" in Gewalste woord, 1990), the way in which parody functions as internal criticism and even as method of periodisation in literary history is examined. D.J. Opperman parodies the Afrikaans poets of the thirties. In the parodies he establishes a critical dialogue with these poets and their work by means of the intertextual nature of parody. Through these parodies he comments on each poet's oeuvre with regard to the mannerisms and personal style of writing apparent in their work by exaggeration and intentional ridicule. However, the parody does not only reduce the poet's work to a ridiculous level, but is also used as a vehicle of praise for the highlights in the poet's work. Furthermore, by restricting these parodies to the poets of the thirties and two of their successors of the forties, Opperman also establishes a kind of miniature literary history. One can deduce some aspects of the characteristics of the thirties poetry from these parodies. In the same way Johann Johl parodies the Afrikaans writers of the sixties and seventies. Here the critical dialogue is established on two levels. On the first level it serves as criticism on the work of D.J. Opperman and that done by the poets of the thirties by means of the intertextual relationship existing between the parody pendants. In doing so it compares and contrasts the renewal in Afrikaans literature by the poets of the thirties to the renewal brought by two writers of the sixties and seventies. In this study the focus will be on the writers of the sixties (Breyten Breytenbach and Etienne Leroux). On the second level it serves as criticism on the work of Breyten Breytenbach and Etienne Leroux as well as a form of miniature literary history of the writers of the sixties. Some characteristics of this period in the Afrikaans literature can be deduced from these parodies. The whole study is based on the statement made by Lyotard (Hutcheon, 1985:1) "Art forms have increasingly appeared to distrust external criticism to the extent that they have sought to incorporate critical commentary within their own structures in a kind of self-legitimizing short-circuit of the normal critical dialogue." From what has been said above, it is clear that parody may well be this "self-legitimizing short-circuit". The parodies analysed in this study are examples of parody being used as an internal instrument of criticism, thus incorporating critical commentary within art's own structures. Furthermore, due to its intertextual nature, parody also comments on the characteristics of (in this case) two important periods (the thirties and sixties) in the history of Afrikaans literature and therefore also serves as a kind of miniature literary history.

Many critics resort to explaining readers' experiences of poems like William Blake's Jerusalem and T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets in terms of "spirituality" or "religion". These experiences are broadly defined in this thesis as jouissance (after Roland Barthes' essay The Pleasure of the Text) or "experience qua experience". Critical attempts at the reduction of jouissance into abstract constructs serve merely as stopgap measures by which critics might avoid having to account for the limits of their own rational discourse. These poems, in particular, are deliberately structured to preserve the reader's experience of the poem from reduction to any particular meta-discursive construct, including "the spiritual". Through a broad application of Rezeption-Asthetik principles, this thesis demonstrates how the poems are structured to direct readers' faculties to engage with the hypothetical realm within which jouissance occurs, beyond the rationally abstractable. T.S. Eliot's poetic oeuvre appears to chart his growing confidence in non-rational, pre-critical faculties. Through "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", The Waste Land, and Four Quartets, Eliot's poetry becomes gradually less prescriptive of the terms to which the experience of his poetry might be reduced. In Four Quartets he finally entrusts readers with a great deal of responsibility for "co-creating" the poem's significance. Like T.S . Eliot, although more consistently throughout his oeuvre, William Blake is similarly concerned with the validation of the reader's subjective interpretative/creative faculties. Blake's Jerusalem is carefully structured on various intertwined levels to rouse and exercise in the reader what the poet calls the "All Glorious Imagination" (Keynes 1972: 679). The jouissance of Jerusalem or Four Quartets is located in the reader's efforts to co-create the significance of the poems. It is only during a direct engagement with this process, rather than in subsequent attempts to abstract it, that the "experience qua experience" may be understood.

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M.A. / Since the 19th century, scholastic biblical hermeneutics mushroomed in competition with other critical disciplines within the human sciences, and this resulted in the emergence of the historical critical approach. This is an umbrella-term which describes a plurality of methods. These approaches include the textual criticism; literary criticism; form criticism; redaction criticism; source criticism and many others. The historical critical approach dominated biblical interpretation for the last one hundred and fifty years. The socio-scientific critics used the expression “context” to understand the importance of the life-situation; the economic; social; political; historical; cultural, gender and psychological “context” to bring back the full picture of “human context" of the Bible. Representatives such as Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh read and interpret the New Testament from a modernized industrial perspective with certain presumptions and assumptions from the reader’s own culture and background. New Testament scholars have made attempts to use the aspects of the social world of ancient Israel to investigate the origin, development, and/or function of these societal components of the social systems and structures of biblical Israel. The socio-scientific critics feel that every interpretation, giving meaning to a text, derives from a cultural system. They say that using social-science models from Mediterranean cultures is an honest attempt to come to the same understanding, of that of the first century reader and author by applying the same social systems. According to the socio-scientific critics, the modern reader must understand what then made sense to a Mediterranean culture. In this case, they also say that the knowledge of the sociological data of the biblical world is very important for the interpreters. Socio-scientific criticism studies, emphasises the strict relationship between the texts of the Bible and the life actually lived by the early Christian communities. We can therefore conclude by saying that the socio-scientific criticism is indeed that phase of the exegetical task which concerns itself with the social and cultural dimensions of the text and of its environmental context.

M.A. (French) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

M.A. (Politics) / What is democracy? In the second half of the twentieth century the term, which may relate either to a form of government or a form of society, has become much used and, in the writer's opinion, misused. Indeed, Macpherson believes there is "a good deal of muddle about democracy" (Macpherson 1972:1). At the start of the century's last decade this process appears to have accelerated as the term has become ever more topical, encouraged hugely as the process is by the predominance of mass media communication. The writer considers that democracy is not only a topical term but an important concept, for students of politics as well as for the pub Li.c at large. It is a term which surely requires better understanding of its meaning if the concepts and principles to which it relates are to be valued and appreciated appropriately. At the beginning of his enquiries, which result in this dissertation, the writer assumes "democracy" to mean a form of government Which ensures an equal say in its direct control for all citizens of sound mind. Franchise qualifications should provide for a reasonable minimum age but must disregard any other differences, such as sex, race or religion. This dissertation is undertaken in an endeavour to clear away some of the confusion, or "muddle", which exists regarding democracy. The writer anticipates that elucidation will enhance not. only the possibility of wider understanding but also prospects for meeting the need for concerted, tenacious and widespread efforts to obtain meaningful improvement in levels of democratization. The writings of two prominent political theorists, Robert Allen Dahl and Crawford Brough Macpherson, will be examined to ascertain and compare their views on democracy, with the subsidiary objectives of clarifying the meaning of democracy and ascertaining whether real democracy exists in any sizeable political system. It is the writer's hypothesis that although the basic conceptions of democracy found in the writings of Dahl and Macpherson indicate major differences, certain similarities have been perceived: and that these similarities will prove valuable in stabilizing the meaning of democracy, and in establishing to what extent (if any) true, that is direct, democracy exists.

M.A. (African Languages) / Please refer to full text to view abstract