No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The literary and socio-political environments of early nineteenth-century America demanded from Hawthorne a new formulation of the allegorical mode, which in turn afforded him means to critique that same historical situation. His metonymic and realistic uses of allegorical techniques invert the emphasis of traditional allegory, permitting him subversively to critique the idealist principles of contemporary historiography and the Transcendentalist movement. Hawthorne's discontent with antebellum historiography's conflation of the Puritan colonists and the Revolutionary fathers, and with Transcendentalism's disregard for the darker side of human nature, led him to critique these idealisms in his fictions. His appropriation of allegorical conventions allowed him to enact this critique subversively, without alienating the increasingly nationalistic American reading public. This subversive program exerts a global influence on Hawthorne's work. The first chapter of this thesis defines my use of the term "allegory." The second situates Hawthorne within the allegorical tradition, the third within the American ideological context. The last two chapters identify and discuss Hawthorne's appropriations of the allegorical conventions of personification and procession as they are found in each of the three forms in which he most commonly wrote: the sketch, the tale, and the historical romance.

No description available.

Bessie Head's fiction reflects the author's consciousness of power as the definitive force in the South African context. By considering Head as a social realist, the thesis relates sociological evidence to authorial interest and demonstrates Head's treatment of the power issue in her three novels, When Rain Clouds Gather, Maru, and A Question of Power. Biographical data, particularly Head's unique, though socially marginal position as a political exile, a Coloured, and a woman are also applied. The thesis covers three areas--politics, race, and gender. The first explores the nature of power in South African politics within the time-frame of the present, past, and future. The second which focuses on the institution of apartheid examines racial relations between the blacks and whites and also among the blacks, with attention given to the dilemma of the Coloured. The third section discusses sexual politics, looking at male-female relationships in both traditional and contemporary societies.