In this dissertation I intervene in and challenge already-existing critical studies of Virginia Woolf's The Waves (1931) that focus on ideas of imperialism, empire and subject-making practices in the novel by arguing for a revisionist reading of The Waves as a Bildungsroman. Unlike the Bildungsroman of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, which utilised standard novelistic conventions to explore the relation between form and reality, I contend that The Waves is a thoroughly modernist reinvention of the Bildungsroman form designed to capture a rapidly industrialising and modernising English society. To capture the socio-political unrest in twentieth-century England at this time, Woolf deviates from the convention of a single-protagonist narration, using multiple perspectives to expose the contradictions in processes of self-formation, especially with regard to the relation between the self, nation and national identity. The correspondence between self, nation and national identity is explored through the silent seventh character, Percival, who I argue is characterised as a hero in the medieval romance tradition to expose the romantic and heroic fictional narratives that provided the framework for ideas of empire and imperialism, then at the core of nationhood and national identity in England. Conversely I argue that the character who narrates a third of the novel's narrative, Bernard, provides us with an alternative to empire and imperialism in subject-making practices. I argue that in the final section of The Waves Bernard deviates from the direct-speech narrative of preceding sections of the novel and engages the reader directly. The reader is thus alerted not only to his or her role as a reader, but also to Bernard's overarching role as primary protagonist in the novel. The reader has progressed alongside Bernard through the narrative in keeping with the genre designation of the Bildungsroman which encourages the progression of the reader alongside the progression of the primary protagonist. The reader is further encouraged in his or her progression by an aesthetic education present in the music and poetry that Woolf incorporates not only in the content, but in the very structure of the text. Two of the novel's characters, Louis and Neville, use poetry to locate their subjectivities within larger historical narratives, while Beethoven's String Quartet No. 13 in B♭ major, Opus 130, informs the structure of the text, contributing to the interactive sonic and non-sonic landscape that actively invites the participation of the reader. The reader's participation in the novel is most fully realised when Bernard addresses the reader directly in the final section of The Waves. This interaction explains and thus concretises Woolf's overarching critiques of empire and imperialism in the novel alongside her proposed methods - which directly oppose the ideology of imperialism - for developing a subjectivity formed in relation to the common, and the individual experience of the common as a historically and materially determined phenomenon. The common in this sense is a community of 'common reading subjects', who like Woolf are not formally educated, but develop a subjectivity through reading premised on an equality of intelligence which enables them to engage critically with, order and make sense of the society and politics of their surrounding world. In this way, I show that Woolf challenges the already existing subject-making practices in twentieth-century England by exposing the contradictions - the exclusion of the marginalised, the poor and women - in ideas of Englishness. She proposes an alternative form of subject-making that is as diverse as her reading public and premised on a non-exclusionary acknowledgement of an equality of intelligence that defies class, gender and social boundaries.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 96-97). / Larkin's place in the genealogy of English poetry is significant since, unlike many of his predecessors, his work lacks the hope or possibility of redemption offered by faith. Larkin countered the void created by his agnosticism by appealing to the power both of ritual and of the English landscape, and yet ultimately these attempts - although not wholly unsuccessful poetically - appear fruitless philosophically. Larkin's awareness of English society is not explicit, and yet his preoccupation with death and nothingness is inexorably linked to the political despair and religious questioning of post-war England. Through the use of the many' Englishes' of his time Larkin manages to construct a passable means by which to fill the lacuna left by godlessness. A thorough review of the critical opinion of Larkin is undertaken here, in order to sketch out the landscape of English letters and Larkin's place within, or in relation to, English poetry. His interrogation of the dominant societal structures is rigorous, and while his habit of constantly contradicting himself and his insistent ambiguity may seem to undermine his efforts, on closer inspection this lack of clarity complements his aims precisely. This dissertation will demonstrate how Larkin's use of cliche epitomises this struggle, and that in his poetry the often-assumed emptiness of such language is turned on its head. Larkin, it will be argued, deploys common English expressions as a modem substitute for the social links provided to earlier poets by means of reference to classical mythology.

In this thesis, I try to situate the effects of the text, specifically on the reader, by looking at ideas of transformation. My primary investigation is to determine the extent of the effect on the reader and the reader's reality, and if it is possible to alter the reader by inducing a transformation. I argue that transformation is possible as a “becoming”. Transformation depends on the text's reflection and verisimilitude to reality, which aids introspection and the consequent transitioning toward a new identity. I confront these concerns via close analysis of Edgar Allan Poe's “The Fall of the House of Usher”. Whereas critics have read Poe while considering authorial intent and biography, and while limiting effect to emotion, I argue that the reader determines meaning and effect which can impose on identity. This inquiry deals directly with the interaction between the text and the reader, while acknowledging language as the common ground and means of communicating meaning and effect between them. Arnold van Gennep's theory of liminality provides a framework for transition, which I apply to character and reader becoming. And, it explains the interstitial space between the textual realm and the reader's reality. My close analysis of Poe's characters elucidates these tasks as I engage the text as a reflection of the reader's development, and as the narrator's interactions with the Usher siblings mimics the reader's relation to the text. Mikhail Bakhtin's polyphonic theory depicts the text as life-like and appropriate for this exchange. I consider metafiction for its ability to dissemble illusory distinctions between the text and reality, and as it induces consciousness in the reader. I have also placed Poe in conversation with Julia Kristeva for her insights into the psychoanalytic process of abjection, and as she illustrates the revision of identity. Much of this project deals with finding unity and reconciling the inherently contradictory elements of human existence. Ultimately, I consider how the process of textual interaction contributes to potential reader “becoming”. And, I argue that becoming and identity are intimately dependent on selfconsciousness of the vastness of human potential, as well as the dissolution of the very borders designed to limit and make sense of that vastness.

Contemporary romance is a genre which is often denigrated to the realm of popular fiction or “chick-lit”. However, contemporary romance is in dialogue with a much older tradition, and it serves a purpose beyond mere entertainment. In this dissertation, I analyse four works of contemporary romance which demonstrate a keen awareness of the conventions that precede them and offer a range of new imaginative, romantic possibilities. Narratives of love and desire play a crucial role in societal perceptions of love as it relates to gender, marriage, sexuality, autonomy, and belonging. In Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), the banality of ideas of fate and soulmates is revealed in a world of falseness informed by the communist state in Czechoslovakia. While in Possession: A Romance (1990), A.S. Byatt self-reflexively questions traditional romantic assumptions of love as belonging as well as more feminist, postmodern concerns of desire. Byatt also reappropriates the mythical figure of Melusine to recentre feminine desire. Furthermore, Sally Rooney's Normal People (2018) addresses recent romantic tropes such as the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, along with the problems with the social pressure to appear “normal”. Lastly, I consider Nthikeng Mohlele's Illumination (2019), a novel that is at once a love story and a story of fractured existence in post-apartheid Johannesburg. Using a mixture of feminist, queer, and postcolonial theories, I examine the ways in which these authors redefine love relations. These novels demonstrate that the language of love and desire is one of nuance and complexity which cannot be reduced to clichéd expressions or neatly wrapped in conventions of marriage or tragedy. Lovers are situated in space and time, and in language. By reappropriating, subverting, and questioning various romantic tropes, these four contemporary novels offer new and productive ways of thinking about love and desire. All these works of fiction challenge dominant, normative notions of romance and prompt a critical reconceptualization of love and desire.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-107). / This work deals with the current state of the South African theatre; it focuses primarily on 'white' theatre: scripted plays with a single author produced for mainstream South African and international theatres. This study examines the historical, political, and social forces that have brought about a period of pronounced turmoil in the post-apartheid South African theatre; it then explores how particular playwrights have engaged with key crisis points in their society. This dissertation focuses on four plays, one from the late 1980s - Pieter-Dirk Uys' Just Like Home' and three from the first decade of the 21st century: Lara Foot's Reach, Craig Higginson's Dream of the Dog, and John Kani's Nothing But the Truth. Other plays are drawn on briefly for comparison. The theme of the study is 'places' of whiteness, as it explores how, in the new South Africa, identities are shaped by different ideas of place: temporal, cultural, and physical. Key questions arise from each of these places. Debates about land, public versus private identities, the right to belong, guilt and forgiveness, and reconciliation across cultural boundaries are addressed, if not fully resolved, in all of the plays under discussion. The study is divided into four chapters. The first chapter provides historical background for the works under discussion, highlighting the debates currently taking place about the state of South African arts and culture. It then lays out theoretical frameworks that will be useful for analyzing these plays, in particular Peter Brook's discussion of the deadly theatre, Bertolt Brecht's aesthetic models, and Raymond Williams' analysis of subjunctive dramaturgy. The second chapter compares Uys' play, which displays the exhaustion of struggle theatre aesthetics, with Foot's work, which seeks to find a new, post-apartheid 'aesthetic of the ordinary.' By doing so, Foot's work posits a model of reconciliation through care that, although flawed, is nonetheless worthy of analysis. The third chapter turns to Higginson's and Kani's plays. Drawing parallels with the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, this chapter explores questions of guilt, memory, and forgiveness; this provides a foundation for a further exploration of the redefining of identities in the new South Africa. The final chapter highlights the strengths and weaknesses of all four plays, each of which is only partially successful as a dramatic work. While emphasizing the contributions of all four plays to the task of building the new South Africa, this chapter also outlines the work that remains to be done in the South African theatre and suggests possible ways forward for later generations of theatre artists.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-103). / Margaret Atwood's work examines the individual's struggle for identity within a prescriptive Western society that tends to divide the world into binary categories. One side of the binary is considered powerful, while the other side is less powerful. Often, those on the weaker end of the spectrum are victimised. Because the fundamental principles for these binary categories are based on patriarchal ideologies, women are the victims. The rules that govern men's and women's actions within this patriarchal system are conveyed through language and vision. Women learn social rules through communication, and these rules are reinforced through vision.

Includes abstract. / [W]hile the image of the SADF as a heinous perpetrator of Apartheid violence is undeniable, it is being complicated by the emergence of a range of recent cultural productions. Using Jacqui Thompson’s collection of SADF memoirs, An Unpopular War: From Afkak to Bosbefok (2006), and the revival of Anthony Akerman’s play, Somewhere on the Border (2012), this thesis explores how these cultural productions assert an alternative, individual, and humanised rendering of the SADF soldiers who experienced the Border War. The attempt to render these soldiers in an alternative light signals an anxiety regarding the way the SADF is remembered in contemporary South Africa. This anxiety resonates with broader issues of the role of “victimhood” in South Africa’s national identity in the aftermath of Apartheid.

This thesis seeks to account for the largely unprecedented vigour of white writing in post- apartheid South Africa. Though there are a number of contributing socio-economic factors, it argues that there is an inherent ambivalence in many texts written by white South African authors. Texts that are generally designated as 'reconciliatory' or 'reconstitutive' have a latent imperative. The ambivalence of these texts is exposed by my analysis of two prominent South African novels, Marlene Van Niekerk's Triomf and Shaun Johnson's The Native Commissioner. Alongside this concern, is the fact that the white South African family, regulated and constructed by apartheid legislation, provides one means through which post-apartheid white identity can be anatomized. Therefore, the methodology of this thesis is acritical application of Freud's Oedipal family structure and its attendant primal scene. Through this application we find that Van Niekerk's novel is preoccupied with subverting patriarchal Oedipal structures. This is expressed by the dysfunction of the Benade family. One aspect of this subversion is the dissipating and illegitimate patriarch, and his unremarkable death Mol, the mother, is analysed in terms of her disruptive and chaotic power, as well as her dispensation of narrative. The problem with Van Niekerk's text is that itis incapable of suggesting a post-apartheid Afrikaner (white) identity. This is indicated both by slippages in her portrayal of Mol, and by her attempt to counter-position lesbianism as a viable post-apartheid identity. Therefore, the text exposes an anxiety about paternal authority, suggested by the patriarch's death on voting day. Ten years later, I argue, Shaun Johnson attempts to recuperate this paternal white power in his text, The Native Commissioner. In Johnson's novel, George Jameson is represented as a benevolent bureaucrat and a loving father. I argue that though Johnson attempts to represent George's profession as encroaching upon the benign space of family. This is a false opposition in that colonial paternalism is implicit in George's identity as a father. By focussing on the recurrent image of the garden, I proceed to indicate that this novel is primarily about negotiating the Oedipus complex. By reliving the conflict through narration, the narrator identifies with the dead father. In the Oedipus complex, identification results in remorse and guilt, enacting a transmission of power from father to sons. I argue that this text is latently invested in this transmission of power. This indicates that at the heart of the text is an imperative to recuperate the lost paternalistic white power which the narrator's father represents. Therefore, through these analyses I show that the ten year trajectory represented by Triomf and The Native Commissioner latently enacts a process of loss and recuperation which concerns itself with white illegitimated power. This positions mothers in the novels as representing the illegitimacy of this power, and has the capacity to reflect on the ambivalence inherent in post-apartheid white narratives.

S.J. Naudé's collection of short stories, The Alphabet of Birds, foregrounds the diasporic experiences of its marginalised, transnational subjects. The stories unearth profound grief and a deep sense of loss and displacement. The title of the collection suggests that the content grapples with issues that are central to the discourse of diaspora: movement, freedom, borders, home, dwelling, meaning, and identity. Jaco van Schalkwyk's debut novel, The Alibi Club, is structured around the story of a young man's efforts to build a new life in an unfamiliar country. Although very different in style, tone, and form, Naudé and Van Schalkwyk both ask questions about the nature of belonging, pain and loss associated with the diasporic experience: How does one come to terms with one's past?; How does one navigate oneself in an increasingly estranging global world?; Is it possible to re-imagine the past, to rewrite the stories one tells about oneself? Naudé and Van Schalkwyk are not the first South Africans to give thought to these questions; in fact, our country has a rich history of pre- and post-apartheid diasporic writings. What I find compelling, however, is how a new generation of authors - a group of writers that faces unique challenges - draws on the literary form to engage with and relate to the past and present, their country of birth, and their language. I consider in what ways the literary form allows these two authors to articulate and re-imagine the lived diasporic experiences of their Afrikaans-speaking, contemporary transnational subjects who inhabit multiple identities.