Criticism on Donne???s Holy Sonnets has traditionally been concerned with trying to find an explanation for the doubt, anxiety, and despair that is often expressed by the speaker of those poems. In recent decades, critics have increasingly made recourse to Calvinist theology in an effort to explain these melancholy states of mind. The accounts that such critics provide of ???Calvinism,??? however, have been varied and largely inadequate, mainly because they fail to engage with Calvin???s work at the level it requires. My thesis seeks to correct such deficiencies by providing a detailed reading of Calvin???s view on salvation and the way in which it is received. Calvin argues that we obtain salvation through a firm and certain faith, a faith that is nevertheless attacked by the unbelief that still resides in the believer. In other words, there is a division between the flesh and the spirit within the soul of the believer, which means that he or she is never free (until death) from the sinful temptations of this life. This division, which Calvin invokes to reconcile the uncertainties of the Christian life with the assurance of faith, is dramatised in the Holy Sonnets. In the five poems that I analyse, the speaker is torn between a desire for righteousness and an inclination toward evil, a division that is also represented in the structural qualities of the text. The various temptations which the speaker registers and confronts (and often falls to) are, I believe, a demonstration of Calvin???s view that the regenerate person is in continuous warfare against the remnants of the flesh.

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This thesis examines aspects of identity and representation using contemporary theories and definitions emerging out of a growing body of work known as whiteness studies. The condition of whiteness as it continues to inform identity politics in post-apartheid South Africa is explored in an analysis of selected texts written by white women, to demonstrate the ways in which whiteness continues to suggest normativity. In reading a representative selection of literatures produced in contemporary South Africa by white women writers, this study aims to illustrate the ambivalence apparent in the interstitial manifestations of emergent reconciliatory gestures that are at odds with residual traces of superiority. A sampling of disparate texts is examined to explore the representations of race and belonging in post-apartheid South Africa in the light of contemporary theories of whiteness which posit it as a powerful and invisible identification. The analysis attempts to plot a continuum from writers who are least, through to those who are most, aware of whiteness as a cultural construct and of their own positionality in relation to the discursive dynamics that inform South African racial politics. A contextualising overview of the terrain of whiteness studies is provided in Chapter One, marking the ideological and theoretical affiliations of this project, and foregrounding the construction of whiteness as an imagined identity in contemporary cultural criticism. It also provides a justification for the selection of the textual material under scrutiny. Chapter Two explores a genre that has been identified as a growing trend in South African fiction: the production of pulp fiction written by white middle-class women. Two such texts are the focus of this chapter, namely, Pamela Jooste’s People like Ourselves (2004) and Susan Mann’s One Tongue Singing (2005), and the complicities and clichés that are characteristic of popular literature are examined. Antjie Krog’s A Change of Tongue (2003) is the focus of Chapter Three. It is examined as a book offering the writer’s personal response to the difficulties of transformation within the first decade of South African democracy. Krog confronts her own defensiveness, her sense of normalcy, and her sense of alienation in relation to multiple encounters with different people. Chapter Four focuses on the journalism of Marianne Thamm. Her role as columnist for the popular women’s magazine, Fairlady is explored, particularly in relation to the inclusion of a contending voice writing against the general tenets of Fairlady. Thamm’s critique of the mores governing bourgeois white womanhood is read in relation to her role as officially sanctioned Court Jester. Her Fairlady columns have been collected in Mental Floss (2002) but the analysis includes selected columns from 2003 to 2005. Echo Location: A Guide to Sea Point for Residents and Visitors (1998) by Karen Press is the focus of Chapter Five. Her work is read as examining a white South African crisis of belonging in relation to the implications of mapping the co-ordinates of whiteness in South Africa. Chapter Six offers a reading of four short stories, written by Nadine Gordimer and Marlene van Niekerk. These stories are juxtaposed to trace an anxious impasse in white responses to suburbia, the place of enactment of white bourgeois mores, which both writers interrogate.

This thesis is divided into four main sections as outlined in the following paragraphs. After a brief introduction setting out the purposes and limitations of the thesis, we examine Marlowe’s critical reputation from his own time to the present. We find that he was largely ignored as a playwright until he was "rediscovered" by the Romantic critics at the beginning of the nineteenth century. These critics created the myth of Marlowe as a passionate young rebel against an orthodox world, a myth that persisted well into the twentieth century. When we come to the twentieth century, we divide Marlowe critics into the Romantic (those who maintain the image of Marlowe as a rebel against orthodoxy) and the anti-Romantic (those who view him as a traditionalist). Representative works from each group are examined. It is then decided that this thesis, while it does not deny the validity of the Romantic approach, is anti-Romantic since it seeks to emphasize the traditional side of Marlowe’s writing. We then proceed to a discussion of the morality play in order to set out a working definition of the genre. This is done by an examination of the sources and the history and development of the morality and by a more extensive examination of its outstanding characteristics. We find that there is present at least one of three basic themes: the conflict of good and evil for the soul of man, contempt of the world, and the debate of the Heavenly Virtues for the soul of man after death. Certain stock characters constantly reappear, the most important of which are the Everyman type, the Vice, the Devil, the Worldly Man, the Good and Evil Angels, and Death. Two basic structural types are used, the first showing a central character who is influenced by alternating groups of good and evil figures, and the second making use of a comic subplot, alternating scenes of moral didacticism with scenes of comic relief. Other characteristics of moralities are found to be the extensive use of debate and the lack of a realistic space-time concept. We then define the morality as a didactic play using one or more of the characteristic themes, stock characters, and one of the structural patterns outlined above. We then proceed to compare Edward II with this definition. Thematically, we find that the conflict between good and evil for control of man’s soul is present in the conflict between the nobles and Gaveston for control over the king. This is developed in the morality fashion, showing the central figure succumbing to vice, repenting, and ultimately gaining salvation. The theme of contempt of the world is also present particularly in the story of Mortimer and Isabella, whose rise and fall is found to follow the pattern of the "Worldly Man" morality. We then proceed to show that thematically Edward II is a combination of two morality play types, the "good and evil conflict" type and the "Worldly Man" type, and that the conflicting roles that characters are required to play in these two structures sometimes gives rise to character ambiguity. An examination of the character types present in the play shows that Edward plays the Everyman role in the "good and evil" structure and the Heavenly Man in the "Worldly Man" structure, Mortimer’s character is found to be ambiguous because he is forced to play a virtuous counsellor within one structure and the Worldly Man in the other. The same applies to Isabella. Less important characters lack this ambiguity and function in a more straightforward manner. Kent represents Moderation, Gaveston is the Vice, Spencer and Baldock are assistant Vices, Lightborn is Death, and Prince Edward is Justice. Structurally, Edward II follows the pattern of a central character coming under the influence of good and evil characters alternately. Debate is of limited importance in the play and the concept of time is loose, as is the concept of space. The thesis concludes that although there are a number of morality play elements in Edward II, the play cannot be regarded as a morality because it does not teach an overt lesson. Although certain precepts are embodied in the text of the play, Marlowe himself seems to withold moral judgment on the action. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This thesis explores the implications of the relationships between building trade guilds and the pageants they produced in York, and examines this relationship over the two-hundred-year production of the York Cycle. Because this relationship and the reception of any dramatic performance is heavily influenced by context, we need to look closer at the social, political, and economic environment of late medieval York in order to better understand the range of interpretations available to the Cycle's original audience. Doing so also allows us to witness the issues of identity and community that are negotiated throughout these plays. Chapter 1 examines the guilds responsible for most day-to-day construction (the plasters, tilers, and carpenters) and explores the interpretations that the conjunction of guild casting, play text, and historical context invites. The Plasterers' "Creation" deals with issues of labour and political power, economic fluctuations influence representations of family and community in the Tilers' "Nativity," and the Carpenters' "Resurrection" explores issues of integrity and urban corruption, while also representing a struggle for social authority. Chapter Two considers the participation of groups outside of civic jurisdiction, most particularly the Masons, and investigates the ways in which the York Cycle may have cut across boundaries (or united "separate" groups) instead of, or as well as, reinforcing them. Finally, the changing contexts that in turn changed (or re-focused) the meanings of these texts reveal the boundaries over and through which concepts of identity and community were negotiated. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

by Jessie Partridge / Typescript / M.A. Florida State College for Women 1914 / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 2-3)

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