Bibliography: p. 287-312. / The study of the life and work of the 'nation building' author Dorothea Fairbridge is framed by the concept of the inventing of heritage for the Union of South Africa, circa 1910. The thesis begins with a historicizing of the concept of heritage, which is shown to have enjoyed a complex and wide range of social and cultural implications during the period roughly 1880 to 1930. This heritage paradigm or heritage discourse is reflected in the narrative dynamics of the contemporary novel, and samples including Fairbridge's fiction are discussed. The heritage paradigm is then applied in a survey of the Fairbridge family and its contribution to public culture. This paradigm is turned to the idea of the inventing of heritage for the Union, with a study of the rise of a 'Cape vernacular' architectural style and related topics, at the time of Union. The 'Van der Stel controversy' of 1909 plays a central role in Fairbridge's literary and historical work. The place of Van der Stel's farm, Vergelegen, as a cultural centre at the time of Union, is discussed, along with Fairbridge's classic studies of old Cape architecture and history. The exportation of the Cape vernacular building style as a national architectural idiom for South Africa at large is explored in a case study of the Tongaat-Hulett sugar estate in Kwazulu-Natal. The role of genteel anglophone Englishwomen in defining Cape identity at the time of Union is explored, and Fairbridge's Guild of Loyal Women is shown to have been the origins of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Questions of archivism, memory, history and memorialism are linked. The significance for literary production, of British immigration schemes, is discussed. The idea of national identity is then pursued in terms of the period genre of the 'new pageantry' where national and ethnic identity are performed. This is compared with mural painting in public buildings, and a case study is made of the 1908 Quebec Tercentenary pageant and the 1910 South African Union pageant. The study of Fairbridge and her milieu closes with a reconstruction of the cultural matrix with which the 'Cape-to-Cairo' idea was sustained for three decades, including an examination of the concept of the Cape as 'Mediterranean'. Thus, Fairbridge's contribution to South African public culture and identity is traced through her thirteen books and in the context of heritage, Africana, archives, colonial book production, architecture, gendered interests and activities, public performances, cultural geography and travel writing.

Bibliography: p. 260-284. / The focus of this dissertation is the thesis that if Ayi Kwei Armah's five novels - The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968), Fragments (1969), Why Are We So Blest? (1972), Two Thousand Seasons (1973) and The Healers (1978) - are closely analysed, they will emerge as a single creative mythology devoted to the fictional disfigurement of Black Africa from primeval times to the present. An analysis of Afiican writings reveals that a body of contemporary African literature has and is still undergoing a distinctive metamorphosis. This change, which amounts to a significant departure from the early fifties, derives its creative impulse from demonic anger and cynical iconoclasm and is triggered by the mind-shattering disillusion that followed independence. The proclivity towards tyranny and the exploitation of the ruled in modern Africa is traced by radical African creative writers to an ancient source : the legendary and god-like rulers of pre-colonial Africa. Ouologuem's Bound to Violence, Wole Soyinka's play, A Dance of the Forests, and Armah's Two Thousand Seasons and The Healers hypothesize that past political violations begot the present wreckage of the African populace. The legendary warrior heroes of the past, whose glory and splendour were once exalted in African writing, are now ruthlessly disentombed and paraded as miscreants and despots, who brutalized and sold their people into slavery. Although Armah glorifies "The Way" in Two Thousand Seasons and "the metaphysics of African healing" in The Healers, the dominant preoccupation of two novel histories is to divest the ancient godlike kings of their false glory.

Includes bibliographical references. / The study investigates the ability of English proficiency tests (1) to measure levels of English proficiency among learners who have English as the medium of teaching and learning, and (2) to predict long-term academic achievement (Grade 7 to Grade 12). The tests are "discrete-point" tests, namely, error recognition and grammar tests (both multiple-choice tests), and "integrative" tests, namely, cloze tests, essay tests and dictation tests. The sample of subjects consists of two groups: (1) those taking English as a First Language subject and those taking English as a Second Language subject. These groups are given the familiar labels of Ll and L2. The main interest lies in the L2 group. The main educational context is a high school in the North West Province of South Africa.

In December, 1924, at the Annual Congress Meeting of the Suid Afrikaanse Onderwysers Unie a paper was read by Dr. H. Cruse on "Intelligence Tests and their applications to the Schools". As a result of this paper it was decided to appoint a Committee to attempt to standardize tests for pupils in South African schools, since no set of tests from any one country can be adequately adopted in any other country in view of the vast differences existing in racial and climatic conditions.

This thesis has been written in an attempt to answer a question which came to mind when I first began reading white English south African literature. The question itself was quite simple: why is this literature like it is, and, more particularly, why is it a body of work whose quality is generally so mediocre? There is a general critical consensus that it is mediocre, and all the more so when it is judged in the light of standards set by modern European and American literature.

Bibliography: p. 81 -82. / In examining the theatre of Tom Stoppard, I have decided to use only plays that have been written to be performed live before an audience. This excludes the radio and television plays and, of course, his only novel. This decision was me.de because of a desire to concentrate on the theatrical nature of the plays, how they are received by a live theatre audience, as opposed to the impression made on a reader who has only a text before him. The whole emphasis in Stoppard's theatre is on the theme of differing angles of perception, of the different ways a spectator can look at an idea and the varied truths that can result. The spectator is hero both inside and outside Stoppard's created worlds; the stylist, removed from the world of action, fashions life to mirror art, but is caught in a dilemma when faced by the innumerable reflections he sees or thinks he sees Plays need to be studied with the eye of a directors and not simply as literature. As a playwright, Stoppard's conscious aim is to .achieve that volatile quality that binds audience and actors together for a few short hours as a work of art is created. I have tried to keep this in mind while looking, in the mind's eye, at the plays. Because the subject of this study is in his middle years there is the likelihood that, prolific as he is, he will continue to produce plays at his present rate and it is very possible that he will branch out into different areas. This cannot therefore be much more than an interim assessment, not even an interim judgment. Already it seems that the challenge of naturalism is making itself felt and, in Night and Day a strong movement can be perceived in that direction.

Bibliography: leaves 51-53. / This dissertation focuses on the work of writers for whom the nature of 'Coloured' identity is a problematic issue. ('Coloured' is the Apartheid term used to describe people of mixed descent living in South Africa). I base my analysis of their writings around 'Coloured' identity in postcolonial theory, in order to examine constructions of self and other. Chapter one introduces the reader to the Black woman writer, Malika Ndlovu and the collective Women's Education and Artistic Voice Expression (WEAVE), of which Malika Ndlovu is a founder member. Chapter two uses a postcolonial lens to discuss constructions of identity. This chapter looks at the ways in which postcolonial theorists oppose Europe and the West as the centre, and the Third World as the periphery to that centre. I contextualise the manner in which Ndlovu and WEAVE reject and subvert ideas of self and other in accordance with postcolonial theory. This chapter also deals, with Ndlovu's rejection of feminism in so far as it is a Western construct, speaking on behalf of all women. It concludes with the claim that postcolonial theory sheds light on a unique dimension in South African history, namely the ways in which colonialism and Apartheid created the category 'Coloured' for those who did not fit into the polarised Black and White division (which can be found in all colonised countries). Chapter three gives a brief history of the developments of and resistance to concepts of 'Coloured' identity. In chapter four, I examine the relationship Malika Ndlovu has to the label 'Coloured' which was designated to her at birth; her rejection of such a label, and her chosen African identity. Chapter five examines WEAVE's collective writings. This chapter explores the ways in which the writers' work falls within the ambit of postcolonial literature, looking specifically at how they respond to colonial and Apartheid discourses. A brief concluding chapter summarises the main points and observations emerging from this paper, and indicates to evidence of the writers' ambivalence towards 'Coloured' identity.

Bibliography: pages 216-219. / This dissertation examines the value of feminist film theory for the analysis of representations of women in visual media, and the potential of media education for establishing a culture of critical viewing. Feminist film theory is thus critically considered, as are associated debates within feminism on the reproduction by media institutions of categories of gendered identity implicated in violence against women. At attempt is made to synthesise key insights offered by sociological debates within feminism (Segal, Vance and Riley), feminist film theory (Mulvey and Kuhn) and discussions of media education (Clarke and Masterman), with a view to developing a description of spectatorial relations which may inform community-based media education programmes. Central to such a formulation is a post-structuralist notion of the subject operating within gendered power relations. The thesis concludes with a detailed evaluation of a media education course for women run at the Community Arts Project, Cape Town in 1993.

Includes bibliographical references. / Edward Said's notice of 'orientalism' is explored with reference to a cross-section of Byron's narrative verse, taken chronologically. Particular focus is placed on two textual loci, namely, the concepts of 'culture' and 'identity'. These concepts form the basis of a close reading of both the texts themselves, and the manner in which Byron's personal and textual personas shape the narrative and are in turn influenced by their social context. An additional theme of exile is considered, and forms the bridge between a historical analysis of the verse, and current political reality as it is depicted in JM Coetzee's recent novel, Disgrace.

Includes bibliographical references. / This dissertation seeks to demonstrate and propose a resolution to modernism in the form of the thought and literature of GK Chesterton. Chesterton, whilst constantly touted as either a harmless kind of literary clown or as a Christian crypto-fascist, has largely been ignored within all serious academic discourse. Therefore, the work of this dissertation takes place in three, interconnected and inter-weaved, stages. Firstly, the core of modernism – its problems, inconsistencies, and political ramifications - is elucidated; secondly, the central ideas of Chesterton's work are explored; and, finally, the way in which Chesterton's work presents a viable resolution to modernism's problems, is explained. In this explanation, I propose an academic return to Chesterton as a serious and coherent counter-voice to the literature of canonical high modernism. At the heart of this thesis is the presupposition that the primal energy of modernism stems from the crisis of representation - the doubt that any reality, other than that which is subjective, can ever be known or represented. I suggest that this turn towards subjectivity exposed the modern world firstly to a kind of negative liberalism that tends to dehumanise politics, and secondly to an authoritarianism that enlarges the subjective to grand proportions in a bid to include absolutely everything into its ambit. Chesterton's thought counters such scepticism with his faith in the coherence and goodness of Being, and the organic participation of Mind and language within that Being. In his opposition to scepticism, Chesterton proposes an allegorical view of literature that has at its heart a belief in the priestly nature of writing and its ability to transfigure language into an allegory of reality. Not only is this a mere counter, but I argue that it becomes an attempt to reposition modernism itself within a scheme of Being, so as to re-configure its sceptical nature as a necessary pre- which offers a kind of sacred humanism as the new centre for a liberalism that is neither totalitarian nor relativist, but rather democratic in its proposal of an objective reality accessible to all people. In Chesterton’s vista, the artist is reduced from modernist master to servant of reality. My thesis works along the theoretical lines proposed by figures such as Erich Auerbach and Pericles Lewis in their analysis of mimesis and modernism in the Western canon, as well as, in particular, Lewis's theorising of the political nature of the modernist novel, in its bid to intervene upon the liberal crisis of subjectivity and thus pre-empt an organic totalitarianism. Overarching such theoretical underpinnings, however, is an analysis of Chesterton's deployment of Thomas Aquinas, and the way in which Chesterton approaches Thomism as the philosophical means by which he attempts to unite the literal graphics of writing with metaphysical reality. In so doing, this dissertation argues that Chesterton charts a way beyond both modernism and anti-modernism toward a new kind of literary sublimity that is able to incarnate objective reality.