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No abstract available. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1973.

No abstract available. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1978.

The aim of this study is to suggest, by selective example, a method of interpreting Gordimer's fiction from a 'post-Apartheid' perspective. My hypothesis is that Gordimer's own comments in her key lecture of 1982, "Living in the Interregnum", reflect not only her practice in the years of struggle politics, but suggest a yearning for a time beyond struggle, when the civil imaginary might again become a major subject. She claims that she has continually felt a tension in her practice as writer between her responsibility to 'national' testimony, her "necessary gesture" to the history of which she was indelibly a part, and her responsibility to the integrity of the individual experience, her "essential gesture" to novelistic truth. In arguing for a modification of what has almost become the standard political evaluation of Gordimer, my study returns the emphasis to a revindicated humanism, a critical approach that, by implication, questions the continuing appropriateness of anti-humanist ideology critique at a time in South Africa that requires reconstitutions of people's lives. The shift in reading for which I argue, in consequence, validates the 'individual' above the 'typical', the 'meditative' above the ideologically-detennined 'statement', 'showing' above 'telling'. I do not wish to deny the value of a previous decade's readings of the novels as conditioned by their specific historical context. The philosophical concept of social psychology and the stylistic accent on neo-thematism employed in this thesis are not meant to separate the personal conviction from the public demand. Rather, I intend to return attention to a contemplative field of human process and choice that, I shall suggest, has remained a constant feature of Gordimer's achievement. My return to the text does not attempt to establish textual autonomy; the act of interpretation acknowledges that meaning changes in different conditions of critical reception. My study is not a comprehensive survey of Gordimer' s oeuvre. It focuses on certain works as illustrative of the overall argument. After an Introduction of general principles, Chapter One focuses on two novels from politically ' overdetermined' times to show that even in the 'years of emergency', Gordimer's commitment to personal lives and destinies had significantly informed her national narratives. Chapter Two turns to two novels from less 'determined' times as further evidence of Gordimer' s abiding interest in the inner landscapes behind social terrains. Having proposed a critical return to the 'ordinary' concerns of the 'civil imaginary', the study concludes by suggesting that the times in the 1990s are ready for a new look at the most intensely lyrical aspects of Gordimer' s art: her short stories. The specific examples culminate, at the end of each chapter, in brief observations as to how the reading strategy might apply to other works in Gordimer's achievement, as well as to an 'interior' as opposed to an 'exterior' accent in South African fiction as a whole. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1997.

This study investigates the problem of defining Mary Benson as a person and a writer. Her writing spans a range of generic classifications - biography, history, plays, a novel and an autobiography. Yet, all are centred on her preoccupation with the struggle for freedom in South Africa. All reveal, moreover, a great deal about Benson's own values and commitment, prompting us to question the validity, in her case, of such strict generic categories as useful defining properties in her literary career. Starting with her most recent publication, the autobiography A Far Cry. I shall look at the way she presents herself in a traditionally introspective genre. It soon becomes apparent that Benson views herself within a perspective of South African social reality, and that her sense of self is inextricably linked to her political involvement. Her personal needs and desires, to a large extent, remain unobtrusive as she foregrounds her public interactions and her concern with humanitarian and racial issues. A study of Benson, therefore, needs to address a selection of her work in an attempt to fully appreciate her sense of her own identity. In consequence, I go on to discuss her biography Nelson Mandela and her novel At the Still Point. .Both works confirm the portrait in A Far Cry of Benson as a responsible South African who has selflessly and consistently devoted herself to her role as a witness of racial oppression in South Africa. In her biography, Nelson Mandela, for example, the ANC leader emerges as an exemplary figure in the public world while his values and ideals are allowed to parallel Benson's own 'autobiographical' ideals. In At the Still Point, Anne Dawson, Benson's fictional protagonist, I shall argue, gives her author the opportunity to express her own feelings about private life in relation to sociopolitical action. These 'personal ' feelings seem to be avoided in the more direct opportunities of the autobiographical form. In exploring Benson's sense of self, therefore, this study suggests that for Benson 'commitment' overrides her sense of herself as a literary figure, and that this has consequences for the weight we give to content and form in the reading of her work. My conclusion is that we are looking not so much at the challenges of genre as at a large autobiographical project, in which the 'self is defined substantially in its meetings with other people in political circumstances / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1991.

One seldom comes across felicitous love in nineteenth-century French literature. Viewed in an unfavourable light, being looked upon as sheer utopianism, felicitous love never quite made it as a major theme in fiction. But idealized as it is in the works of George Sand, this particular topic never ceases to be true to life: the "weltanschauung" in which it originates is far too focused on the realm of reality for love to be put through senseless poetising. To highlight this singularity, this essay focuses on the love symbolic in three George Sand's novels, Indiana (1832), Le Meunier d'Angibault (1845), and Le Marquis de Villemer (1860), by going into the heroine's quest for the ideal. Contemplated with the romantic presupposition (that of the self versus society), this particular quest is subjected to a plural approach (ideological, chronotopical, initiatory) likely to fathom out a symbolic inherent to a writer known after all as "la romanciere de l'amour".

The works of Edwin M. Duval, especially The Design of Rabelais's "Pantagruel" will act as a springboard for our proposition that Theleme is a New Jerusalem. Through textual analysis of biblical texts and those of Rabelais, we intend to bring to light their intertextual relationships as well as that of certain works pertaining to a New Jerusalem which were of importance during the sixteenth century, namely those of Joachim of Flora, Calvin and Torquato Tasso. / We will begin by presenting a compilation of what has been established about Theleme to date. Following this, we will present Duval's arguments culminating in his two conclusions: firstly, that Pantagruel is a "Christ-Redeemer" for the race of Giants, and secondly, that Pantagruel is an epic of the New Testament. We will then take these conclusions one step further by proposing that just as the New Testament ends with the Book of Revelation, the Rabelaisian cycle Pantagruel-Gargantua is also brought to a close with the advent of a New Jerusalem. / Next, we will present a historical overview of the founding of abbeys up to the time of Rabelais in order to counter the claim that Theleme is an anti-monastery or a counter-abbey. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Visual art and written text have been described as historical sisters, linguistic twins and warlike enemies. These attempts to exclusively define the capabilities of each medium are inherently limited, contradictory and inaccurate. A better understanding of their individual capability and cooperative possibility can be achieved by examining the ways in which each functions in relation to the other on the composite page. William Blake's designs provide an excellent arena in which the functional interaction between the arts can be observed. Blake's visual additions to the poetry of Thomas Gray, Robert Blair and Edward Young demonstrate that the visual image is capable of interrupting the stability of exclusive textual meaning. However, this does not undermine the capability of either medium to assert meaningful possibility. Rather, the excess of Blake's visual imagery amidst another's poetic page produces a pluralisation of media and representative potential that avoids the extremes of hierarchical definition and all-inclusive meaninglessness. In contrast, Blake's own composites feature visual art and textual expression that both contribute to an overall evasion of definitive interpretation. However, their unpredictable interrelations and inconsistencies amplify and distort one another on the composite page, sustaining a relationship that is neither exclusively harmonic nor discordant. Thus, the non-synthetic "marriage" of contrary states that provides the subject matter of the Songs and the Marriage is also an accurate model for the overall relationship between visual art and text in Blake's designs. A consideration of historical context reveals the contradictory currents that direct and antagonise Blake's designs and suggests that the perception of the relationship between the "Sister Arts" often depends on such temporal conditions. While acknowledging the limitations imposed by historical circumstance, this study also recognises that late eighteenth-century uncertainties encourage innovative reconceptualisations of composite interaction. In both form and content, Blake's designs contain yet contend with a variety of perspectives, and are invaluable examples of the individual and interactive plenitude that visual art and text are capable of. Overall, Blake's work highlights the unique role that the multi-media space plays in creative and critical efforts to understand the functional capability of each representative medium.

A. S. Byatt attempts to recover lost voices in Possession and Angels and Insects (a collection of two novellas) by examining the limiting roles of women in literature and society. Chapter one examines Possession in which the characters search for their connections to the literary past, ultimately locating them through a lesser-known, female, Victorian poet. In chapter two I consider "Morpho Eugenia," the first novella in Angels and Insects. Byatt illustrates how the male gaze names women and defines their roles. In the second novella, "The Conjugial Angel," analyzed in chapter three, Byatt (re)tells Emily Jesse's story, one formerly appropriated by Alfred Tennyson in In Memoriam. I conclude that Byatt attempts to relocate her heroines from the margins to the center by deconstructing hierarchical patterns of storytelling. Rather than replacing male-monopolized narratives with female ones, Byatt undermines the dominating viewpoint by demonstrating the way in which it obscures all other perspectives.

The concerns of the artist-figure are a central issue in the work of Leonard Cohen. His novels, poems, and songs, seen as a whole, form a portrait-of-the-artist. Cohen's artist-story is crafted with attention to the romantic tradition of the Kunstlerroman but extends beyond an initial apprenticeship phase, the focus of the Kunstlerroman, offering a more extensive exploration of the artistic vocation. The artist-figure, as he develops, encounters conflicts between his vocation and the demands of the outside world. Cohen's artist-figure endeavours both to make art and to self-create, and this creative impulse is simultaneously propelled and hindered by the romantic-love relationship, by the demands of an artist's role in the public sphere, by the aesthetic requirements of art itself, and by spiritual and religious issues. The last of these four concerns provides the artist-figure with a degree of lasting comfort through its mediation of some of the ongoing internal struggles of the artistic temperament. Cohen's portrait-of-the-artist attains a degree of depth and perspective by his own artistic persona's intrusion into his work, a persona he constructs in an ironic, self-conscious, and self-reflexive fashion.