The period between 1527 and 1534 in England was a period of transition. King Henry VIII up until this time period had been faithfully served by his chief minister Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. The English nobility had increasingly become unsatisfied and jealous of the absolute power Wolsey had commanded for so many years. Wolsey had done a good job solidifying his position as well as maintaining his monopoly over the ears of the King. A faction against Wolsey emerges at a crucial juncture for Henry, his divorce from Catherine of Aragon. The faction is successful in removing Wolsey from notoriety and influence. However, the ineptitude and lack of skill in administration that existed from those that had removed Wolsey paved the way for a new single chief minister, Thomas Cromwell. The intent of this thesis is to examine the transition from Wolsey to Cromwell. Using various primary sources including letters, parliamentary records, and observations of foreign ambassadors in addition to various secondary sources, the thesis follows the coming together of the faction against Wolsey to the collapse of that faction and the rise of Cromwell. Through analysis of these numerous sources it is shown that the failures of the anti-Wolsey faction to satisfy the King's greatest desire in addition to their overall weakness in governance paved the way for Cromwell.

This thesis is an extended reading of the topos of the ghostly as it is staged in the modernist writings of T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen and D.H. Lawrence. As I argue, their distinct appropriations of haunting are innately tied to their individual theories of the aesthetic; there are also a number of recurring motifs throughout their respective oeuvres, which time and again evoke a ghostly register. Consistently appearing in the texts I read here, most of which were published between the years 1919 and 1935, are figurations of the ghostly as a symptom of ‘ontological uncertainty’, as well as renderings of purgatorial subjectivity, and aporias of mourning. I locate my reading in response to the scholarly fields of haunting studies, mourning modernisms and Gothic modernisms. In a move common to contemporary theoretical studies of haunting, I draw also from the latter work of Jacques Derrida, a theoretical lens that facilitates my reading of a complex modernist ethics of mourning and alterity, one that often courts the ghostly, but resists what Derrida terms ‘hauntological’ work. The Derridean figure of the ethical apparition, in its status as the Absolute Other, is consistently complicated or rejected in these texts. This resistance mirrors a purgatorial mode of subjectivity that recurs in a range of guises in the modernisms I read here. In uncovering the economies that lie beneath these haunted subjectivities Jacques Lacan’s metapsychology of the subject helps also to conceptualise Bowen and Lawrence’s handling of the spectral. Bowen’s is a distinctly visual imagination, and her staging of a haunted subjectivity is elucidated by calling upon Lacan’s formulation of the gaze. Lawrence, whose work is consistently concerned with a-symbolic bodily registers, bypasses a number of the purgatorial aporias staged in the writings of Woolf, Eliot and Bowen. Viewing his appropriation of haunting through a Lacanian understanding of feminine jouissance suggests Lawrence’s welcoming of a radical ghostly other that may transcend the aporias of subjectivity, ethics and mourning that characterise these haunting modernisms.

A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts. / The aim of this dissertation is to offer a close, critical examination of the particular dilemmas and responses of concempocary white English-speaking South Africans as these are reflected in South African English poetry. This aim ought not to be construed as a denial of the legitimate claims of other ethnic groups for attention; nor should it in any way be interpreted as an attempt to reinforce artificial racial categories or to bolster restrictive barriers between communities. The purpose, rather is to help advance mutual understanding and awareness by focussing on the specific problems of a complex and intriguing, yet strangely neglected group of people in this country. By examining the difficulties facing the white English- speaking group as registered and articulated in the work of South African English poets, this dissertation moves beyond a purely sociological account of the group. The dissertation will include both a study of the direct critique by South African English poets of the dilemmas and responses of their white English- speaking countrymen, as well as an investigation of the ways in which the poets themselves, consciously or otherwise, have responded as white English-speaking South Africans in their poetry to these dilemmas. The understanding of the white English-speaking group to be gained in this fashion though differing from that to be derived from a sociological study, need not be any the less authentic or assiduous, In particular the ability to examfne the group from both subjective and objective points of view may enhance illumination. As such, in order to comprehend fully what the poetry reveals about the white English-speaking South Africans, it is necessary to investigate how it does so, and so this dissertation will adopt a primarily literary critical approach to the poetic texts under consideration This dissertation will isolate and examine four of the most important and characteristic dilemmas confronting contemporary white English-speaking South Africans. After an introductory chapter, the second chapter will focus upon the "crisis of identity" experienced by modern-day English-speakers, and will discuss the disturbingly incohesive and vague nature of the English-speaking group, as well as what has been seen as its uncertain and precarious position within the 'wider South African social context. The third chapter will concentrate upon English-speakers "damaged sense of place their feelings of alienation both from the land of their birth and from the European source of much of their cultural heritage, their sense of having no true home. The fourth chapter will be concerned with the feelings of profound dread which seem to have permeated the white English-speaking South African consciousness, both the fearful anticipation of violent political upheaval, as well as a less explicit anxiety about some undefined menace or force which threatens to breach the white South African "laager". Finally, the fifth chapter will examine the attitudes, conduct and political orientation of contemporary white English-speaking South Africans, and will suggest that while a large aggregate of English-speakers may be conservative and apathetic, there exists nonetheless a substantial minority within the group (including most poets) who are enlightened, progressive and activist in outlook and who thus represent a significant "tradition of dissent' in white South African thought. / Andrew Chakane 2018

Fictional Constructions of Grey Street by Selected South African Indian Writers. This thesis explores the fictional constructions of Grey Street by selected South African Indian writers to establish a deeper understanding of the connection between writers, place and identity in the South African Indian context. The concepts of 'place' and 'space' are of particular importance to this thesis. Michel Foucault's (1980) theories on space and power, Frantz Fanon's (1952) work on the connection between race and spatial politics, and Pierre Bourdieu's (1990) concept of 'habitus' are drawn on in this thesis in order to understand the ramifications of the spatial segregation of different race groups in colonial and apartheid South Africa. The specific kind of place focused on in this thesis is the city. Foucault's (1977, 1980) theorisation of the Panopticon is used to explain the apartheid government's panoptic planning of the South African city. As a counterpoint to this notion of panoptic urban ordering, Jonathan Raban's Soft City (1974), Michel de Certeau's "Walking in the city" (1984) and Walter Benjamin's The Arcades Project (2002) are analysed to explore an alternative way of engaging with city space. These theorists privilege the perspective of the walker in the city, suggesting that the city cannot be governed by top-down urban planning as it is constantly being re-made by the city's pedestrians on the ground. The South African city is an interesting site for a study of this kind as it has, since the colonial era, been an intensely contested space. This dissertation looks primarily at the South African Indian experience of the city of Durban which is a characteristically diasporic one. The theories of diasporic culture by Vijay Mishra (1996) and Avtar Brah (1996) form the foundation for a discussion of the Indian diasporas in the South African colonial and apartheid urban context. Two major Indian diasporic groups are identified: the old Indian diasporas and the new Indian diasporas. Each group experiences the city in different ways which is important in this study which looks at how different Indian diasporic experiences of the city shape the construction of Grey Street in fiction. One of the arenas in which diasporic histories are played out, and thus colonial, nationalist histories are challenged, is the space of fiction, Fiction provides diasporic groups with a textual space in which to record, and thus freeze, their collective memories; memories that are vital in challenging the hegemonic 'nationalist' collective memories often imposed on them. Christopher Shaw and Malcolm Chase's (1989) work on nostalgia is useful in this thesis which proposes that the collective memories of diasporic groups are quintessentially nostalgic. This is significant as the fictional constructions of place in the primary texts selected are remembered and re-membered through a nostalgic lens. The fictional works selected for this thesis include Imraan Coovadia's The Wedding (2001) and Aziz Hassim's The Lotus People (2002). Although other Indian writers have represented Grey Street in their works, including Kesevaloo Goonam in Coolie Doctor (1991), Phyllis Naidoo in Footprints in Grey Street (2002), Mariam Akabor in Flat 9 (2006) and Ravi Govender in Down Memory Lane (2006), the two novels selected respond most fully to the theories raised in this thesis. However, the other texts are referred to in relation to the selected texts in order to get a fuller picture of the Indian South African perspective of Grey Street. The selected primary texts are analysed in this dissertation in their historical context and therefore a brief history of Indians in South Africa is provided. The time period covered ranges from 1886 with the arrival of the first Indian indentured labourers to Natal to present day. Although this thesis focuses largely on the past and present experiences of Indian South Africans in Grey Street, questions are raised regarding future directions in Indian writing in the area. Thus, attention is also given to forthcoming novels by Hassim, Coovadia and Akabor. Research such as I am proposing can contribute to the debate on the cultural representation of urban space in South Africa and hopefully stimulate further studies of Indian literary production centered on writers, place and identity in the country. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2007.

It is argued in this thesis that the Nigerian Novel is an attempt to transliterate traditional customs, beliefs and attitudes, the characters of myth and legends, a whole universe of ancestors, into an entirely new context of the twentieth century, employing a language to which the modern reader can respond. The work gives detailed consideration to the salient features of this attempt and assesses, with particular reference to the novels of Tutuola, Achebe, Aluko, Nzekwu, Amadi, Balewa, Egbuna, Adaora Ulasi, Nwankwo and Okara, what in each case is the atti tudeof the novelist to the indigenous culture of his country and how successfully the link between tradition and modern experience has been established. The approach adopted in the thesis is one of close analysis of texts in an attempt to find out how critically an author has presented those aspects of tradition he has selected for treatment and how skilfully he has dramatized the realities and dilemmas of the present. On each author answers are sought to a numer of searching questions. What are the particular values the writer is upholding or opposing, and what is his attitude to them? What particular emotional or intellectual effect does he hope to achieve, and does he succeed? If he does, by what methods of communication? If he fails, from what problems of communication has failure resulted, and what effect does this have on the reader? What sympathies are evoked, and how do we see a particular work in the body of works of a particular author? A writer's language is a mirror held up to his personality and his particular circumstances. It is through his use of language that he reflects his individual awareness of a given situation. The detailed study of language leads, almost inevitably, to a consideration of the more fundamental problems of communication. Even though all save one of the novelists to whom this thesis is devoted use English as their creative medium, they do so in the consciousness of the fact that they are presenting a Nigerian experience, and the best of them reveal in their works a specific mode of the imagination which derives from their Nigerian background. It has therefore been necessary in all cases to examine closely the use of language by each novelist and try to assess how effectively the artist has communicated. Because of the historical and cultural environment of the Nigerian novelist considerable interest is taken in the influence which the mother tongue (LI) has had on the writer's English (L2). The thesis concludes by identifying the essential requirements for the establishment of a successful link between tradition and modern life: an important theme, a consistent imaginative scheme, a language which recognizes the characteristics of LI and skill in the use of language. Only works in which many of these conditions are fulfilled as, for example, in the novels of Achebe, Amadi, Okara and Aluko achieve satisfactory results. The link between tradition and modern life is valuable only if it widens satisfyingly our experience of what it is to be human and thus contributes to the solution of the political and social problems of the present.

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2015 / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis undertakes a comparative reading of post-colonial literature written in English in Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe to bring into focus the similarities and differences between fictional representations of poverty in these three countries. The thesis explores the unique way in which literature may contribute to the better understanding of poverty, a field that has hitherto been largely dominated by scholarship that relies on quantitative analysis as opposed to qualitative approaches. The thesis seeks to use examples from selected texts to illustrate that (as many social scientists have argued before) literature provides insights into the ‘lived realities’ of the poor and that with its vividly imagined specificities it illuminates the broad generalisations about poverty established in other (data-gathering) disciplines. Selected texts from the three countries destabilise the usual categories of gender, race and class which are often utilised in quantitative studies of poverty and by so doing show that experiences of poverty cut across and intersect all of these spheres and the experiences differ from one person to another regardless of which category they may fall within. The three main chapters focus primarily on local indigence as depicted by texts from the three countries. The selection of texts in the chapters follows a thematic approach and texts are discussed by means of selective focus on the ways in which they address the theme of poverty. Using three main theorists – Maria Pia Lara, Njabulo Ndebele and Amartya Sen – the thesis focuses centrally on how writers use varying literary devices and techniques to provide moving depictions of poverty that show rather than tell the reader of the unique experiences that different characters and different communities have of deprivation and shortage of basic needs. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis onderneem ‘n vergelykende studie van post-koloniale letterkunde in Engels uit Botswana, Namibië en Zimbabwe, om sodoende die ooreenstemmings en verskille tussen letterkundige uitbeeldings van armoede in hierdie drie lande aan die lig te bring. Die tesis ondersoek die unieke manier waarop letterkunde kan bydra tot ‘n beter begrip van armoede, ‘n studieveld wat tot huidiglik grotendeels op kwantitatiewe analises berus, in teenstelling met kwalitatiewe benaderings. Die tesis se werkswyse gebruik voorbeelde uit gelekteerde tekste met die doel om te illustreer (soos verskeie sosiaal-wetenskaplikes reeds aangevoer het) dat letterkunde insig voorsien in die lewenservarings van armoediges en dat dit die breë veralgemenings aangaande armoede in ander (data-gebaseerde) wetenskappe kan illumineer. Geselekteerde tekste uit die drie lande destabiliseer die gewone kategorieë van gender, ras en klas wat normaaalweg gebruik word in kwantitatiewe studies van armoede, om sodoende aan te toon dat die ervaring van armoede dwarsdeur hierdie klassifikasies sny en dat hierdie tipe lewenservaring verskil van persoon tot persoon ongeag in watter kategorie hulle geplaas word. Die drie sentrale hoofstukke fokus primêr op lokale armoede soos uitgebeeld in tekste vanuit die drie lande. Die seleksie van tekste in die hoofstukke volg ‘n tematiese patroon en tekste word geanaliseer na aanleiding van ‘n selektiewe fokus op die maniere waarop hulle armoede uitbeeld. Deur gebruik te maak van ‘ die teorieë van Maria Pia Lara, Njabulo Ndebele en Amartya Sen, fokus hierdie tesis sentraal op hoe skrywers verskeie literêre metodes en tegnieke aanwend ten einde ontroerende uitbeeldings van armoede te skep wat die leser wys liewer as om hom/haar slegs te vertel aangaande die unieke ervarings wat verskillende karakters en gemeenskappe het van ontbering en die tekort aan basiese behoefte-voorsiening.

The industrial safety posters produced by Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) during WW2 are evidence of a politically progressive, socially engaged and mass-produced graphic communication in Britain. These characteristics allow the RoSPA posters to qualify, by Walter Benjamin’s criteria, as exemplars of Modernist cultural production in the age of mechanical reproduction. The emergence of these images, within the unlikely context of war, is evidence of the social change identified by George Orwell as a necessary condition of victory. Furthermore, the presence of this material, within an English context, counters the prevailing orthodoxy of an English resistance to Modernism. The thesis describes the administrative and technical determinants of the posters, as indicated by the structure of RoSPA, the personalities behind the campaign and the technical expertise of the printers; Loxley Brothers of Sheffield. Quaker and Nonconformist antecedents are revealed to define the values of both administration and printers. The thesis explores the RoSPA posters’ use of Surrealist techniques and iconography and also their appeal to a wider and international Left community. The address of the RoSPA posters to the neophyte industrial worker offers the opportunity, exemplified by the special case of women workers, to project an “imagined community” beyond the normal tribal and class distinctions of British society through “Social Vision.” The RoSPA posters make explicit a connection, within English Modernism, between community, technology, progress and dissent. A catalogue of posters is appended to the thesis. The RoSPA posters reaffirm the progressive, emancipatory and radical quality of the popular experience of the Home-Front in Britain during WW2. The social changes, precipitated by the circumstances of war, of which the RoSPA posters are a manifestation, alter the role of graphic designer in relationship to community through an embrace of technology. The concept of graphic authorship is, in consequence, irrevocably changed.

This thesis demonstrates how a specific tradition of English poetry written by Indians in the nineteenth-century borrowed its subject matter from Orientalist research into Indian antiquity, and its style and forms from the English poetic tradition. After an examination of the political, historical and social motivations that resulted in the birth of colonial poetry in India, the poets dealt with comprise Henry Louis Vivian Derozio (1809-31), the first Indian poet writing in English ; Kasiprasad Ghosh (1809-73), the first Bengali Hindu to write English verse; and Michael Madhusudan Dutt (1824-73), who converted to Christianity in the hope of reaching England and becoming a great 'English' poet. A subsequent chapter examines the Dutt Family Album (London, 1870) in the changing political context of the latter half of the century. In the Conclusion it is shown how the advent of Modernism in England, and the birth of an active nationalism in India, finally brought about the end of all aspects of what is here called 'Orientalist' verse. This area has not been dealt with comprehensively by critics; only one book, Lotika Basu's Indian Writers of English Verse (1933), exists on this subject to date. This thesis, besides filling the gaps that exist in the knowledge available in this area, also brings an additional insight to bear on the current debate on colonialism and literature. After Said's Orientalism (1978), a spate of theoretical work has been published on literary studies and colonial power in British India. Without restricting the argument to the constraints of the Saidian model, this study addresses the issues raised by these works, showing that a subtler reading is possible, through the medium of this poetry, of the interaction that took place in India between the production of literature and colonialism. In particular, this thesis demonstrates that although Orientalist poetry was in many ways derivative, it also evinces an active and developing response to the imposition of British culture upon India.

The thesis explores the development of Shakespeare’s political ideas, in particular his exploration of authority, and the legitimacy of resistance towards it, in the two English history tetralogies (as well as the self-contained history, King John), and examines the ways in which this protracted engagement with the question of kingship – and governance more generally – informs his turn to tragedy towards the end of the 1590s. The thesis argues that criticism has tended to downplay the importance of the first tetralogy in the Shakespeare canon (particularly the Henry VI plays), and as a corollary it has overlooked the important continuities that can be traced from Shakespeare’s earliest engagement with politics to his treatment of power in Julius Caesar and Hamlet. The thesis sees the history plays as essentially paradoxical and ambivalent. Shakespeare presents the past as both a shining example to which each succeeding generation must aspire, but also as a legacy which they are powerless to fulfil, while he treats the dynastic conflicts of the Houses of York and Lancaster as essentially intractable, with each new pretender to the throne – however legitimate his claim – undermined by a host of legal, moral, and pragmatic considerations. It is a central contention of the thesis that it was Shakespeare’s failure satisfactorily to resolve the intractable political conflicts of the first tetralogy which prompted him to confront a similar set of questions in King John, before returning to them yet again in the more highly acclaimed second tetralogy. The thesis concludes by arguing that far from representing a breach with his history plays, the tragedies are continuous with them. So rather than identifying the ‘origins’ of Hamlet either in Shakespeare’s reaction to the fall of Essex or the death of his son, Hammet, in 1596, it is more persuasive to see the play as arising from the debates and problems which were initially addressed in the first tetralogy.

This thesis is an exploration of the complex relationship between academic, popular and museum histories. A central theme to the research is that nostalgia currently keeps these categories of history quite separate from one another, as academic historians are critical of the use of nostalgia in presenting the past, whereas popular histories are often steeped in nostalgia, as are historical narratives presented in museums. I argue that nostalgia and nostalgic sources should not be viewed as problematic by historians, but embraced simply as another type of historical source. Popular histories, rich in nostalgia, and often reliant on memories should also be considered more favourably by academics as they serve to engage people with historical narratives as both contributors and consumers. The inclusion of nostalgic sources, such as memoirs and oral histories, in historical narratives can also result in the production of new or relative histories, which enrich the historical past presented to us, and open up fresh debates on well covered topics. Nor is nostalgia problematic in museums as it helps visitors relate to, and understand, the stories presented to them. Nostalgia can also motivate people to donate objects to museums, and therefore to have an active role in how the past is represented within museums. Once again this serves to produce a more complex narrative for the visitor that can broaden our understanding of the past. These ideas are presented through two case studies of agricultural change in Lincolnshire between 1850 and 1980, and a case study of museums in the county. The historical narratives were produced using a range of primary and secondary sources, including oral histories and memoirs. The inclusion of non- ii traditional sources aided in the production of new accounts of changes in the labour patterns of women and children, and of increased mechanisation during the period. Both chapters reposition agricultural modernity in history, demonstrating that the shift from traditional to modern practices did not occur immediately after World War Two, but over a period of 30 years from the 1930s to the 1960s. The museological case study explores how the past is represented in museums and the factors that shape this. Museums in Lincolnshire were surveyed, and professionals working in them were interviewed, to ascertain how they present historical narratives around agricultural changes, and how nostalgia relates to this. It was found that nostalgia had very little impact on how the past was presented in the museums, but the processes of donation and collection, the lack of specialist knowledge in the sector, and external political factors had a significant impact on the presentation of the past in these institutions. The thesis argues that those involved with academic, popular, and museum histories should work collaboratively to explore ways of incorporating nostalgic sources into historical narratives to develop new interpretations of the past. They should also work in partnership to move away from the traditional museological ‘nostalgia debate’ to resolve the issues that currently affect how the past is presented in museums.