According to Lewis Seifert, “Fairy tales are obsessed with femininity … These narratives are concerned above all else with defining what makes women different from men and, more precisely, what is and is not acceptable feminine behaviour” (1996: 175). This study, then, will demonstrate how certain patriarchal ideas associated with fairy tales are disseminated when fairy tale elements are reworked in film, visual art and the novel. The aim of this project, more specifically, is to show how certain stereotypical representations of women endure in works that could be read as feminist appropriations of Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Little Mermaid’. Stereotypical representations of women are numerous and may include: depicting females as fitting neatly into what is often called the virgin/whore or Madonna/whore binary opposition; depicting women as being caring and kind, but also passive, submissive and weak; and depicting older women as being sexually unattractive and evil (Goodwin and Fiske 2001:358; Sullivan 2010: 4). It must be said that the list of stereotypes relating to women given here is far from exhaustive.

A Translation project submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts (Translation). / This case study investigates and analyses the transfer of the socio-political elements of meaning, in the translated text, A Season in Paradise (1985). The study attempts to discover and account for any factors which may have impacted on the transfer of the socio-political elements from the source text. to make the study as systematic and as objective as possible, an adaptation of the model of analysis proposed by Lambert and Van Gorp is used. Lambert and Van Gorp are theorists who fall within the branch of translation studies called Descriptive Translation studies. The adaptation of the Lambert and Van Gorp model takes into account the factors which could have influenced the translator's reading of the literary text and which could have impacted on her translation strategy. The macro-analysis establishes the background to the translation and compares the physical features and the publishing circumstances of the target text with that of the source text. It contains a discussion on any similarities or differences found. On the micro-level, specific extracts with a socio-political theme are compared using selected linguistic concepts from Halliday's An Introduction to Functional Grammar as interpretive tools. The shifts discovered here were linked to the discoveries made in the macro-level analysis. It: was determined that prevalent reading strategies at the time did to a limited extent influence the transfer of the socio-political elements of meaning present in the text. This study is done to shed more light on the process of translating a literary work and the factors which may influence this process. / Andrew Chakane 2018

In House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski has produced a text which epitomises the traits and concerns of postmodernist literature. Through his attention to aspects such as metafiction, intertextuality and parody, Danielewski develops a narrative structure which is best understood as a literary labyrinth. It is a structure intended to reflect the social conditions of the twenty-first century and comment on the experience of people living at this time. Some of the meaning-making strategies within the book’s labyrinthine structure are thus discussed in detail in order to demonstrate the relevance and importance of House of Leaves as social commentary. House of Leaves is an exemplary postmodernist text, but it is also one that seeks to guide the reader beyond the intellectual impasse of the postmodernist paradigm toward a renewed ethical and political engagement with the world. One of the most important goals of both Danielewski’s novel and this thesis is to attempt to redefine the postmodernist perspective in such a way as to insist on the necessity of what I call a new realism. This is founded upon an awareness of the pervasiveness of the self-perpetuating ideology of capitalism, even in the perspective of postmodernism (which purports to subvert all authoritative ideologies). Playing a crucial role in perpetuating the status quo of capitalism is the growth of entertainment culture, which works to sideline crucial political issues by replacing information with infotainment. The result is an intensification of the processes of commodification. Such an intensification, it is argued, may be countered by a radical scepticism which draws upon the methods and insights of contemporary science.