Firstly in digression Byron presents a national reality which gradually displaces his cherished cosmopolitan ideals. Among many other pressing problems of his day, political renegades, the paradox of scientific innovations, the rise of intellectual ladies and the commoditization of marriage and family constitute the tangible part of Byron's domestic recalling. With retrospective commentaries Byron fulfills the act of imagining native land; and in this regard nationalism is the spiritual support of the expatriate existence. / I propose to comprehend the perceptive gap by focusing on Don Juan which best contextualizes Byron in the flow of historicity with the dimension of nationalism. I intend to delve into three structural units of Don Juan---digression, narrative, a lyric song---to argue that Byronic contradictions manifest nationalism in its multiple contingencies. / In conclusion Don Juan reveals that Byron's participation in the modern historicity of nationalism involves three dimensions---residual cosmopolitan ideals, English national consciousness and the independence of the oppressed nations. Don Juan embodies a historical magnetic field where Byron's existence actualizes the potential conflict of the modernity. / Secondly by reading Don Juan as the quest romance of the individual initiation, I bring the narrative into scrutiny and argue that the hero's transformation involves an implicit evolution of the national identification. In terms of subjective consciousness, nationalism embodies the mature vision of masculine selfhood. Don Juan's encounter with both female and male characters, through his repeated border-crossing, illuminates a metaphorical process from rejection to embrace of native roots, from negation to affirmation of national bonds Juan's rite of passage---sexual initiation, surviving shipwreck, the trial of the exotic love and battlefield and diplomacy---transmits a national subjectivity which corresponds to the Byronic existence of mobility. / The dissertation explores the discrepancy between critical reception towards Byron as a Romantic poet in contemporary Romantic scholarship and in Chinese historical evaluation (with certain reference to the European Continent). Byronic contradictions pose a problem to Romantic scholars who are engaged to interpret the interplay between Byron the man and Byron the poet. They share the view that Byron succeeds in manipulating his own personal image to promote his poetical visibility and tend to doubt if his poems could stand alone without the reference to his letters and journals. In China, as in many other countries of European Continent and Asia, Byron is often viewed in a more positive way as the very name has become a byword for liberal nationalism and the rebellion against tyranny / Thirdly 'Isles of Greece' adds an alternative yet prospective dimension to perceive the tension between national anxiety and modernity. In English context its meanings vary as the contextual focus shifts from poetical to socio-biographical and to existential level. The theme of the national independence is complicated by its negative elements such as the identity of the songster. In the Chinese context, 'the Isles of Greece' initiates and embodies a myth-making process as it gives vent to the anxiety of modernity faced by Chinese people in the opening of the twentieth century. The individual shaping of the 'Isles' by three Chinese intellectual pioneers symbolizes the simultaneous awakening of Chinese national consciousness and individual consciousness. The extended reading of Byron by Lu Xun, together with his reworking, voices the existential dilemma of modern enlighteners. His invocation of 'Mara poets' is prophetic of the modern intellectuals who possess both vision and willpower to eradicate ignorance and public apathy. / Gu, Yao. / Adviser: Ching Yuet May. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 72-01, Section: A, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 167-173). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.

Thesis (Ph.D. (English studies)) -- University of Limpopo, 2011 / This thesis explores the theme of identity in Es’kia Mpha-hele’s fictional and autobiographical novels, with special attention given to the quest for the lost identity of Afri-can cultural and philosophical integrity. In other words, the revival of the core African experience and the efforts to preserve and promote things African. Mphahlele wrote most of his novels during the time when Africa was under colonial influence. His native land was under the abhorred apartheid system which sought to relegate the African expe-rience to the background. In this sense, he was the voice of the people, reminding them of their past and giving them direction for the future. Chapter One of the thesis outlines the background to the study, defines concepts and gives a survey of African lit-erary identity. It also probes salient aspects which have influenced Mphahlele’s perspective on African identity dur-ing his early years as a writer and socio-cultural activ-ist. Approaches and methodology employed to examine Mphahlele’s writings are also outlined. Chapter Two synthesises the theoretical underpinnings of the study. The thesis adopts Afrocentricity as the basis of analysis, looking at aspects such as the African worldview, humanism (ubuntu) and collectivism. Views by different Af-rican literary critics on what African literature should entail in its distinctive definition are also discussed. Two main literary traditions, orality and the contemporary tradition, which give African literature its unique charac-ter as well as its phases are identified and brought to the fore.Identity in African literature is discussed in detail in Chapters three and four where Mphahlele’s literary works are closely examined. Chapter Five concludes the study and recommends that in order for Africa to forge ahead in her attempt to reclaim and promote her cultural identity, a new perspective must be cultivated and Mphahlele proposes hy-bridity, which is a harmonious co-existence of two or more cultural beliefs without one oppressing the other. / The University of Limpopo

This thesis explores changes in approaches to the interpretation of the genre of classical Chinese poetry re-created as English poetry during the twentieth century. This genre, produced by two literary cultures - Chinese and English - is subjected to critical scrutiny in both its original and re-created forms and this study discusses the extent to which critical theories resulted in shifts in the interpretive approaches of twentieth century translations of the genre. Interpretive changes are exposed by comparative analysis of publications of the genre by Ezra Pound and Arthur Waley, Burton Watson and Gary Snyder, James J. Y. Liu and Stephen Owen and Pauline Yu and Haun Saussy. This involves a discussion of how their formative years, environmental factors and critical pressures influenced their approaches to interpretation of the genre. The study found that changes to interpretative approaches for the genre rested on two key experiences of translators and readers. Primary influences - family, education and personal pursuits - did affect interpreters of the genre but secondary influences - critical theories, literary trends, political, religious and social movements - had greater impact on interpretive change. Isogesis, an unavoidable factor of cultural interpretation, insidiously influenced how the genre was interpreted and that the increased use of montage and anthology late in the twentieth century attempted to reduce the effect of isogesis and, even more importantly, returned the genre to its cultural roots, the Shijing, the earliest Chinese classical anthology of poetry. This study illustrates three areas of importance. Firstly, it shows that biographical and environmental factors affecting translators caused shifts in approach to interpretation of classical Chinese poetry re-created as English poetry. Secondly, choices of what to re-create and print - made by translators, editors and publishers - affect reader response to the genre. Thirdly and finally, it suggests the possibility that the interpretive approaches of these eight translators can be employed as poetic montage in the third millennium to reduce the effect of misinterpreting of the genre. / Thesis (M.A.)--School of Social Sciences, 2006.

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English

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This dissertation offers an extended examination of the writing of the 1820 Scottish settler Thomas Pringle. Though the primary focus of analysis is Pringle's poetry, the dissertation also engages extensively with Pringle's prose writing, particularly the Narrative ofa Residence in South Africa (1834), as well as the archival records of his personal and official correspondence. As the title suggests, the dissertation works through three distinct periods of Pringle's life, in each of which it locates different but related colonial postures or dispositions. In this schema, Pringle's Scottish writing is understood as obeisant to British cultural and linguistic norms, which it reproduces in a fashion that may be considered colonial in its deference to metropolitan standards. The Scottish context also provides Pringle with examples of people considered marginal to the developing modernity of the Scottish state (such as gypsies), who provide, I argue, baseline models for how Pringle will come to represent colonised indigenous peoples. In addition, the general principles of Scottish Enlightenment thought, in particular the four stages theory of historical development, supplied Pringle with a model within which to conceptualise the colonial state and its future evolution. Chapters two and three focus on Pringle's colonial career in the Cape Colony. Here I argue that Pringle's poetry of this period provides evidence of two distinct phases. In the first and most difficult period of settlement Pringle wrote poetry of troubled lyric interiority which reflected an incommensurable gap between colonial experience and the expressive expectations and conventions which he brought to it. Following his fallout with Governor Somerset and a de facto alliance with the mission humanitarians, Pringle's poetry moves away from a Romantic preoccupation with the self and begins to engage larger public issues, such as the treatment of indigenous people. In this mode, Pringle very often assumes an indigenous persona and I examine the extent to which such a gesture might be considered both appropriative and incipiently transcultural. As indicated earlier, I also examine the generic and representational models which might have informed Pringle's treatment of this subject. The chapters also consider Pringle's colonial politics, and emphasise that his reputation as a 'radical' is a misleading one; there are, furthermore, no easy conjunctures to be established between Pringle's allegedly radical politics and a radicalism of representation in his poetry (a commonplace critical assumption). In the final chapter I examine the complexities of Pringle's London years, which require that we bring into focus both his Scottish and his South African experience and their mediation by this new context. Here the broad focus of my argument is that we must take account not only of Pringle's standing as an abolitionist-humanitarian and Secretary to the high profile Anti-Slavery Society, but also his position as a respectable man of letters, particularly his role as editor of the influential but genteel 'annual', Friendship's Offering, from 1829-1835. These dual public roles reciprocated one another, I argue, in that Pringle's reputation as a poet of 'elegance' and 'taste' also lent credence to his reputation an ethically exemplary humanitarian. This reciprocation of roles is strongly evident in Pringle's best known poems of this period, «The Bechuana Boy" and «The Emigrant's Cabin", which rewrite colonial experience in a way that conforms to the expectations of his metropolitan readers. During his residence in London, Pringle also produced a number of poems in the subgenre of what could be described as evangelical redemptivism. These hortatory and proselytising pieces were mainly published in missionary magazines, and though South African in subject matter they could equally be set in any area of empire where mission work was being done. This subgenre I analyse as an offshoot of the extreme evangelical and abolitionist enthusiasms of the 1830s, with their belief in their divinely mandated mission to fully Christianise the British empire and emancipate all its subjects. In conclusion, this study argues for an understanding of Pringle's work as being intersected by differences in imperial location and status, as well as by a significant degree of instability and contradiction in its representation of the colonial project. Far from being cohered around a teleological liberal vision of an emancipated future, Pringle's work, both prose and poetry, repeatedly reveals a contradiction and contrariety that suggests fundamental irresolution rather than firm conviction. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008.

This thesis examines the middle ground between dual strands of sexuality/gender and race/ethnicity, which I refer to metaphorically as a fluid space of possibility between the rainbows of the pride flag, which celebrates sexual diversity, and the image of the rainbow nation, which celebrates multiculturalism. I discuss ways in which lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues and rights have been discursively treated in the West as well as Africa, most particularly South Africa. I note that a substantial number of novels which appeared after 1994 and have a South African setting or were authored by South Africans, employ the trope of bisexuality. This new preoccupation with bisexuality is parallel to attitudes towards change, the future, and progressive politics, including gender politics. Representations of bisexuality in each of the texts I examine vary; however, together they form a crucial cartography of a liberalization of the imagination in post-apartheid South Africa: a space of anxiety and hope, a space particularly revealing the ongoing evolution of a national identity, and newly part of a global community. Reading bisexuality accurately contributes to the disruption of binaries and illumination of the interstitial associated with the post-apartheid moment in general, and contemporary South African literature and literary criticism in particular. This method of reading, which I call "biopia," allows for a fresh understanding of sexuality, gender, race, citizenship and authority. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2005.

My study examines three female Black British bildungsromane: Monica Ali’s Brick Lane, Joan Riley’s Waiting in the Twilight, and Buchi Emecheta’s Second-Class Citizen. By combining a study of a relatively established novel form with contemporary female diasporic fictions, my work looks at how gender, race and location complicate the tropes of the genre, while still adhering to many of its parameters. I explore ways in which the existential states of loneliness, isolation, and solitude faced by the female protagonists in England assist or inhibit the formation of collectivity and subjectivity. This study pays particular attention to ways that community formation and friendship, as well as work and affective labor, serve as means to find/create a sense of home in diasporic conditions, as in Brick Lane and Second-Class Citizen. I also study how a sense of community falters because of a disconnection from productive work in Waiting in the Twilight. / Department of English