Inlcudes bibliographical references. / This paper examines representations of existential alienation in two early novels by the Ghanaian author Ayi Kwei Armah. The introductory chapter extrapolates an account of how the representational strategies of existential alienation produce specific effects on the act of self - writing. From there, the paper explores these effects in Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968), arguing that alienation is a valuable heuristic in unlocking the novel’s complex meditation on how abstract, macrohistorical forces like neo - colonialism come to be registered in the most intimate aspects of the subject’s experience of the world. As such, if one restores the historical details of Ghana’s “post-colonial” moment, the novel is redeemed from Chinua Achebe’s assertion that the novel is “sick [...] not with the sickness of Ghana, but the sickness of the human condition”. Representations of alienation have a diagnostic function in The Beautyful Ones . The second chapter examines alienation under the new imaginative terrains of Armah’s Two Thousand Seasons (1973), and articulates the experiments in formal representation in that novel with Armah’s inaugural concern with the possibility of a prognostic appraisal of the alienation so widely thematised in his earlier trilogy. Both studies are undertaken, finally, to explore the ways in which modernity has been received in African literature, and to demonstrate the analytic value of existential alienation in understanding the crises of a specifically African modernity.

This thesis explores representations of the littoral in South African literature. It analyses literature published in three broad historical periods with the specific focus on the littoral as a setting from which authors imagine histories differently, often as a corrective, to challenge and wrestle with the racialized categorization of bodies in space. Littoral settings are present throughout the history of South African literature and, when placed on a linear, progressive timeline, feature as a place of first encounters, a site of segregation, and the unmaking of these boundaries. This thesis argues, however, that sequencing representations of the littoral according to this model would subsume histories by those without the power to control official narratives, or whose histories are not well represented in official archives, under rigid nation-based paradigms of typical western historiography. By employing Kamau Brathwaite's theory of “tidalectics” as a method, metaphor and model, I conduct a recursive reading of the littoral's presence in South African literature to show that littoral moments resonate with each other across different historical moments. As such, tidalectics attend to multiple temporalities in a more open, fluid way. I argue that this manner of attending to history surfaces from and sits alongside formal historiography, gently disrupting its premises by offering alternative models for recognising and recording marginal narratives. The primary texts for this thesis include Portuguese expansionist texts, novels by prominent South African authors such as Olive Schreiner, Nadine Gordimer, Peter Abrahams, Zoë Wicomb, Lewis Nkosi, and Yvette Christiansë, and a poetry collection by Douglas Livingstone. In these texts, the littoral is presented as a space which is governed by the spatial politics of that era, but also challenges them, playing a valuable part in constructing spatial politics, and in turn racial politics, in South Africa. A tidalectic reading of these literatures therefore demonstrates that the littoral allows for a different spatio-temporal approach to the long history of social injustice in South Africa.

This thesis aims to assess the representations of Black same-sex desiring women, specifically in the contexts of the United States of America and Nigeria. The primary aim of this study is to explore and critique the notion of U.S. sexual exceptionalism and homonormativity as theorised by Jasbir Puar's Terrorist Assemblages. In doing so, I aim to show that while the United States of America positions itself as more progressive than countries that continue to criminalise and persecute same-sex desiring people, queer people in both contexts continue to be marginalised and face similar challenges that are a result or cause of this marginalisation. This comparative thesis of Chinelo Okparanta's Under the Udala Trees and Leona Beasley's Something Better Than Home examines the ways in which religion; notions of secrecy and censorship; as well as compulsory heterosexuality and homophobic violence contribute to the marginalisation of Black queer women in both the United States of America and Nigeria.

This dissertation explores the film adaptations of two of the novels of Herny James, namely Washington Square (1880) and The Portrait of a Lady (1881). The Introduction discusses issues relating broadly to the problems and attractions of film adaptation. I draw especially on the work of James Naremorc, Brian Mcfarlane and George Bluestone. Naremore surveys the history of film adaptation, pervasive in many countries with a film industry. Mcfarlane looks at the reasons for this interest in adapting novels to film as well as the issue of authenticity with regard to film adaptation. Bluestone looks at what film and literature have in common. In Chapter One, I discuss the novel Washington Square and two adaptations, William Wyler's 1949 version and Agnieszka Holland's 1997 version. The chapter opens with a discussion of the novel, focussing on themes such as marriage, money and status in society. I then examine selected aspects of the two films. In The Heiress, I look at the inclusion of scenes that don't appear in the novel, and how these scenes drive the narrative in the film. I also look at how the characters are portrayed in the film and how they bring their own uniqueness to the screen. In Holland's Washington Square, I examine both the characters and the sets, while also looking at Holland's feminist interpretation of the story. In Chapter Two, I examine the novel The Portrait of a Lady and Jane Campion's film version of this story. The discussion of the novel looks at themes like tragedy, the European experience, marriage, and the displaced American. I also discuss the various characters in the novel and the role that each of them plays. With regard to Campion's film, I look at unusual filmic devices that have been used as well as the way in which the characters from the novel have been translated to the screen. I conclude by noting how films have inspired people to read classic works once again.

ABSTRACT In this thesis, it is argued that the performance of three plays written by Daniel David Moses: Brébeuf's Ghost, The Indian Medicine Shows and Almighty Voice and his Wife function as healing ceremonies. This healing - so necessary after the cultural genocide wrought upon First Nations peoples by the Canadian government's attempts to legislate and educate them out of existence - is brought about through Moses' examination of the dichotic underpinnings of euro-western notions of absence and presence and how this dichotomy leads to conflict between the euro-western concept of disease as a purely physical phenomena and the indigenous view of disease as being the physical manifestation of spiritual imbalance, of not living in accord with the land. The link Heidegger makes between absence and the essence of things - an example of this being his assertion that the essence of a wine jug "does not lie at all in the material of which it consists, but in the void that holds" ("The Thing" 169) - is representative of the viewpoint of the euro-western characters of the play, most of whom base their understanding of the world and the things in it on their perception of voids. For both euro-western and native characters in these plays, physical and psychological disease is linked to the idea of absence. Disease, as a social construct, is argued as a manifestation of the physical and spiritual voids created by a preoccupation with absence. The euro-western relationship to 'things' and commodities to fill the absence of 'self' is. I argue that the performance of the text is a type of ceremony designed to physically manifest the spiritual, akin to such rituals as the Hopi katina ceremony and the Navajo red ant ceremony, whose aims are to restore the wellness of an individual and, thus, the group. It is the performance of absence which is the key to understanding the works' healing value.

ABSTRACT In this thesis, it is argued that the performance of three plays written by Daniel David Moses: Brébeuf's Ghost, The Indian Medicine Shows and Almighty Voice and his Wife function as healing ceremonies. This healing - so necessary after the cultural genocide wrought upon First Nations peoples by the Canadian government's attempts to legislate and educate them out of existence - is brought about through Moses' examination of the dichotic underpinnings of euro-western notions of absence and presence and how this dichotomy leads to conflict between the euro-western concept of disease as a purely physical phenomena and the indigenous view of disease as being the physical manifestation of spiritual imbalance, of not living in accord with the land. The link Heidegger makes between absence and the essence of things - an example of this being his assertion that the essence of a wine jug "does not lie at all in the material of which it consists, but in the void that holds" ("The Thing" 169) - is representative of the viewpoint of the euro-western characters of the play, most of whom base their understanding of the world and the things in it on their perception of voids. For both euro-western and native characters in these plays, physical and psychological disease is linked to the idea of absence. Disease, as a social construct, is argued as a manifestation of the physical and spiritual voids created by a preoccupation with absence. The euro-western relationship to 'things' and commodities to fill the absence of 'self' is. I argue that the performance of the text is a type of ceremony designed to physically manifest the spiritual, akin to such rituals as the Hopi katina ceremony and the Navajo red ant ceremony, whose aims are to restore the wellness of an individual and, thus, the group. It is the performance of absence which is the key to understanding the works' healing value.

C. S. Lewis’s novel, Till We Have Faces, has been misunderstood by both scholars and readers alike. This paper seeks to read the text through the lens of Lewis’s own literary criticism. It begins by presenting Lewis’s fundamental dilemma of the mind, the rift between the rational and the imaginative faculties. Lewis posits myth as a “partial solution” to this problem. This paper traces Lewis’s ideas from his early position on myth as “beautiful lies” to the more nuanced, later position where myth is connected with terms like “truth,” “reality,” “fact” and “history.” Using the text of “On Stories,” and the chapter “On Myth” from Lewis’s book An Experiment in Criticism, this paper argues that Lewis, because of the basic elusiveness of mythic experience, steps into the use of story or narrative as a provisional solution for the dilemma of the mind. This is then applied to Till We Have Faces, arguing that the story is not a myth or an allegory, but a realistic novel with a hidden mythic reality, a Lewisian narrative that fulfills his requirements of Story. A close reading of Till We Have Faces connects the text with Lewis’s realism of content and realism of presentation. This reading then places the text within the problem of rationality set against imaginative reception. Till We Have Faces is a test case for Lewis’s extensive ideas about Divine Myth, its hiddenness behind and within narrative, and its power to heal a divided mind. The narrative of Till We Have Faces, for the main character Orual, as well as for the receptive reader, comes to embody the transformative power of extra-literary myth within the containment of word-dense, tensed story.

C. S. Lewis’s novel, Till We Have Faces, has been misunderstood by both scholars and readers alike. This paper seeks to read the text through the lens of Lewis’s own literary criticism. It begins by presenting Lewis’s fundamental dilemma of the mind, the rift between the rational and the imaginative faculties. Lewis posits myth as a “partial solution” to this problem. This paper traces Lewis’s ideas from his early position on myth as “beautiful lies” to the more nuanced, later position where myth is connected with terms like “truth,” “reality,” “fact” and “history.” Using the text of “On Stories,” and the chapter “On Myth” from Lewis’s book An Experiment in Criticism, this paper argues that Lewis, because of the basic elusiveness of mythic experience, steps into the use of story or narrative as a provisional solution for the dilemma of the mind. This is then applied to Till We Have Faces, arguing that the story is not a myth or an allegory, but a realistic novel with a hidden mythic reality, a Lewisian narrative that fulfills his requirements of Story. A close reading of Till We Have Faces connects the text with Lewis’s realism of content and realism of presentation. This reading then places the text within the problem of rationality set against imaginative reception. Till We Have Faces is a test case for Lewis’s extensive ideas about Divine Myth, its hiddenness behind and within narrative, and its power to heal a divided mind. The narrative of Till We Have Faces, for the main character Orual, as well as for the receptive reader, comes to embody the transformative power of extra-literary myth within the containment of word-dense, tensed story.

This thesis is an examination of the Gothic elements present in a selection of works by Canadian playwright Judith Thompson. The Gothic genre is marked by continual flux and adaptation, ensuring that its ability to inspire terror, as well as its relevance as a form of cultural critique, remains undiminished. Gothic texts seek to uncover the anxieties and uncertainties that societies would prefer to repress, and then forcing a confrontation with those elements. Frequently this pattern of repression and return takes the form of various kinds of hauntings, as well as the monstrous. As this emphasis on the “return of the repressed” would suggest, psychoanalysis will figure prominently in my analysis of Thompson’s work and is woven throughout the four chapters. Chapter One concentrates on establishing a working definition of the Gothic, its history and development, and the three subcategories of the genre that I will be focusing on in the subsequent chapters: the postmodern Gothic, the feminist Gothic and the Canadian Gothic. All three Gothic subgenres share their affinity for translating late twentieth-century anxieties into the language of the Gothic. They also share a resistance to closure or solutions of any kind, even if such solutions would seem to be advantageous to the author’s putative ideological stance. The works by Thompson I have chosen evidence her preoccupation with postmodern, feminist and contemporary Canadian concerns. She expresses these concerns in a unique style that blends contemporary literary techniques with the more timeless elements of the Gothic tradition.

This thesis is an examination of the Gothic elements present in a selection of works by Canadian playwright Judith Thompson. The Gothic genre is marked by continual flux and adaptation, ensuring that its ability to inspire terror, as well as its relevance as a form of cultural critique, remains undiminished. Gothic texts seek to uncover the anxieties and uncertainties that societies would prefer to repress, and then forcing a confrontation with those elements. Frequently this pattern of repression and return takes the form of various kinds of hauntings, as well as the monstrous. As this emphasis on the “return of the repressed” would suggest, psychoanalysis will figure prominently in my analysis of Thompson’s work and is woven throughout the four chapters. Chapter One concentrates on establishing a working definition of the Gothic, its history and development, and the three subcategories of the genre that I will be focusing on in the subsequent chapters: the postmodern Gothic, the feminist Gothic and the Canadian Gothic. All three Gothic subgenres share their affinity for translating late twentieth-century anxieties into the language of the Gothic. They also share a resistance to closure or solutions of any kind, even if such solutions would seem to be advantageous to the author’s putative ideological stance. The works by Thompson I have chosen evidence her preoccupation with postmodern, feminist and contemporary Canadian concerns. She expresses these concerns in a unique style that blends contemporary literary techniques with the more timeless elements of the Gothic tradition.