It can be argued that critical scholarship has not satisfactorily commented on the portrayal of women in South African theatre by male playwrights. This dissertation will examine the presentation of the female voice in the selected plays of two playwrights, namely Athol Fugard and Zakes Mda, coming from different socio-historical and cultural backgrounds. This comparative study will re-interrogate the selected representative texts from a feminist perspective, and will compare Fugard's subversive distrust of the female voice juxtaposed against Mda's refreshing celebration of the female presence in the selected plays. Fugard and Mda's female characters are generally seen by their readers, audiences and critics such as Andrew Hom, Marcia Blumberg and Dennis Walder as fundamentally vital, irrepressible and certainly more admirable than their male counterparts, as it is ultimately their quest for symbiosis and affirmation of the self which precludes any passive spectatorship on the part of the audience. However, paradoxically and ironically, it is Fugard, writing from a relatively privileged white male position, who consistently places his female characters in positions where their distinct inner strength is continually undermined. Despite their cognitive ability to engage with their situation, they are seldom permitted to triumph over the bleakness of their lives, but in fact are rendered emotionally impotent in the face of insurmountable existential isolation. Always situated within an interdependent relationship absent of hope and love, Fugard's women characters are never allowed to forget the role they are expected to assume in a patriarchal society rife with political and racial overtones. This very impasse in which they are placed by Fugard generally resonates strongly with the audience, who can identify or empathise with the women, but who are not afforded an imaginative escape by Fugard. Mda's female characters are created and portrayed within a similar political and universal system which perpetuates their exclusion from power and keeps them in servitude. However, unlike the ultimately silenced women in Fugard' splays, Mda, writing partly from a historically marginalised position himself, empowers his female characters with the freedom to confront and articulate their emotions and perceptions. His female characters are inscribed in a multiplicity of social positions, within which they most often find a solution to their problems and demand an outcome which is not only determined by outsiders, but by their own inner strength. Although they are less fettered by class and ideological constraints, they are however more naively drawn than Fugard's female characters. Whilst Fugard' s female characters in the selected plays are, without exception, left on the periphery of the play as the ultimate victims of their inescapable circumstances, the female characters created by Mda more often than not dominate the stage by virtue of their indomitable resilience, rather than resignation. This dissertation will also examine Fugard and Mda's presentation of their female characters as wholly a male's construct, set in a political context which subtextually interrogates race and gender. The implied assumption concerning the authority of the male writer over women's narratives will also therefore be questioned. Reference to Fugard and Mda's own personal histories as well as their other non-fictional writing will be seen as relevant in this regard. In conclusion, this dissertation will focus on the artificially imposed passivity of Fugard' s confined and limited female characters, and will compare this to Mda's empowerment of his female characters through critical awareness. The provocative issues of voice and violence as agency in both Fugard and Mda's discourse will be viewed, in particular, from within an apartheid system of governance. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Durban-Westville, 2002.

Title page, table of contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University of Adelaide Library. / This thesis examines conflicting claims made about the fiction of British feminist writer Angela Carter." --p. iii. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1280849 / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2007

Title page, table of contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University of Adelaide Library. / This thesis examines conflicting claims made about the fiction of British feminist writer Angela Carter." --p. iii. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1280849 / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2007

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 262).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1997. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 185-200).

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No. of bitstreams: 1 wiechmann_nh_dr_arafcl.pdf: 1389999 bytes, checksum: e49f465ba62565f942cdeef5d313bc04 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-10-31 / O objetivo desta tese de doutorado consiste em analisar a poesia de Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) sob a perspectiva da crítica literária feminista estadunidense utilizando o conceito de subtexto literário enquanto recurso poético que revele na obra dickinsoniana diversas formas de subversão de normas sociais e literárias do patriarcado. Para isso, nosso corpus de análise se compõe de dezoito poemas e nosso trabalho está estruturado em quatro seções. A primeira discute algumas questões caras à crítica literária feminista estadunidense, como o conceito de autoria feminina e a tradição literária para, então, teorizar sobre o conceito de subtexto literário relacionando-o à ideia de subversão. Também nessa primeira seção analisamos do poema “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant – ”. Já na segunda parte de nossa tese apresentamos o contexto da produção literária estadunidense no século XIX e discutimos o fato de Emily Dickinson ter se recusado veementemente a publicar seus poemas. Os poemas analisados nessa seção são “Publication – is the Auction”, “Fame of Myself, to justify”, “Fame is the tint that Scholars leave”, “Fame is the one that does not stay” e “Fame is a fickle food”. Na sequência, examinamos o ideal de feminilidade do século XIX e as formas como Dickinson subverte esse ideal nos poemas “To own a Susan of my own”, “Her breast is fit for pearls”, “I gave myself to Him – ”, “She rose to His Requirement – dropt”, “Title divine – is mine!” e “I started Early – Took my Dog – ”. Por fim, analisamos poemas em que Dickinson empreende a subversão da imagem de Deus ao apontar as vulnerabilidades da fé e da condição humana e questionar preceitos religiosos: “I never lost as much but twice”, “It’s easy to invent a Life – ”, “A Shade upon the mind there passes”, “God is indeed a jealous God – ” e “God gave a Loaf to every Bird – ”. Como suporte teórico, recorremos a diversos autores que compõem a fortuna crítica de Emily Dickinson bem como a importantes nomes da crítica literária feminista estadunidense, além de outros autores cujos estudos também dialogam com nossa pesquisa. Alguns dos autores utilizados neste trabalho são Virginia Woolf, Sandra Gilbert e Susan Gubar, Elaine Showalter, Betsy Erkkila, Helen Vendler, Maria Rita Kehl, Susan Howe e Carlos Daghlian. / The aim of this dissertation is to analyze the poetry of Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) from the perspective of American feminist literary criticism drawing on the concept of literary subtext as a poetic resource that reveals in Dickinson’s work several ways of subverting the social and literary norms of patriarchy. To these ends, I analyze a corpus of eighteen poems, and the text is organized into four sections. The first section discusses some issues that are important to American feminist literary criticism, such as the concept of female authorship and literary tradition; it is then theorized about the concept of literary subtext and I relate it to the idea of subversion. Also, in this first section, I analyze the poem “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant – .” In the second part of this work, the context of American literary production in the nineteenth-century is presented and the fact that Emily Dickinson emphatically refused to have her poems published is considered. The poems analyzed in this section are “Publication – is the Auction”. “Fame of Myself, to justify”, “Fame is the tint that Scholars leave”, “Fame is the one that does not stay” and “Fame is a fickle food”. After the discussion of the poems, in the third section I examine the ideal of womanhood in the nineteenth century and the ways Dickinson subverts this ideal in the poems “To own a Susan of my own”, “Her breast is fit for pearls”, “I gave myself to Him – ”, “She rose to His Requirement – dropt”, “Title divine – is mine!” and “I started Early – Took my Dog – ”. Finally, in the closing section I study some poems in which Dickinson undertakes the subversion of God’s image, points out the vulnerabilities of faith and human condition, and questions religious precepts: “I never lost as much but twice”, “It’s easy to invent a Life – ”, “A Shade upon the mind there passes”, “God is indeed a jealous God – ” and “God gave a Loaf to every Bird – ”. To provide theoretical underpinning, several critics who have written on Dickinson’s work were consulted and significant names in American literary feminist criticism are also discussed, as well as other authors whose studies intersect with our research as well. Included among the writers, critics and researchers mentioned in our work are Virginia Woolf, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Elaine Showalter, Betsy Erkkila, Helen Vendler, Maria Rita Kehl, Susan Howe, and Carlos Daghlian.

No description available.

Thesis (MA (Afrikaans and Dutch))—University of Stellenbosch, 2005. / The aim of this study is to investigate the position that has been allocated to women authors by literary theorists. Some literary theorists are of the opinion that the action of writing can be compared to fatherhood, ownership and being a creator, all of which are male dominated images. Women writers have historically been marginalized by literary theorists, since there is a perception that women cannot write because they are not male. Harold Bloom has postulated that a male writer looks to a precursor in order to write and find his own voice. Before the writer can claim his own, original voice, he must enter into an Oedipal battle with the precusor, and, figuratively speaking, ‘kill’ him in his writing. According to Gilbert & Gubar, who serve here as representatives of the feminist literary theorists, women writers make use of monsterlike figures which serve as metaphors for the inner battle they have to endure to put pen to paper. The problem, however, is that women writers have no (female) precursors to look to. Elaine Showalter postulates 4 models that women writers may use in search of a female precursor or female body of writing, but she does not offer a clear solution. I am of the opinion that women writers can identity with a female figure or role model. The figure that I propose is Scheherazade, a storytelling character from the Thousand and One Nights, who told stories for a thousand and one nights in order for escape death. I identify a few texts from international literature that make use of this figure, whether as a character in the text, a metaphor for the female character who tells stories or as a metaphor for the author herself. This study focuses on texts from 3 genres in Afrikaans literature, namely children’s stories, short stories and a novel. It appears from the analysis of the texts that women writers have successfully made use of the Scheherazade character, to address issues concerning the social role and position allocated to women by a patriarchial society. Along with this women writers’ search and longing for a voice of their own and their own identity gets highlighted with the use of a Scheherazade-like female character who tells stories. Lastly it became clear that this figure is also being used by women writers to contemplate the dynamics of writing and to contextualise the role that self-doubt and self-actualisation play in telling and writing stories. Scheherazade thus becomes a vehicle for finding a voice as well as agency.

The Portrait of a Lady (1881), obra de Henry James, conta a história da formação de Isabel Archer, uma jovem americana que se destaca por desejar ser livre e independente em um contexto em que se esperava da mulher que desempenhasse um papel apenas decorativo; por isso, é possível que sua caracterização seja associada a uma protagonista com características feministas. Porém, o desenvolvimento do enredo a leva a um casamento infeliz motivado por determinantes alheios, principalmente pelo interesse financeiro de outras personagens. Este trabalho tem o objetivo de analisar de que maneira a construção da subjetividade feminina da protagonista reflete, ou não, as questões sócio-históricas que marcaram seu contexto de criação, dentre os quais se destacam o início de uma consciência voltada à valorização feminina e busca pelos direitos das mulheres demonstrada pelo movimento pelo sufrágio universal. Em nossa análise consideramos os fatores sociais e políticos da época em que a obra foi escrita e revista, assim como os pressupostos da crítica literária feminista e crítica materialista, de forma a detectar na narrativa jamesiana as características que corroborem com um ponto de vista feminista sobre Isabel Archer, estendendo nossa leitura às personagens e fatos mais relevantes da obra. Assim, chegamos à conclusão de que a protagonista de The Portrait of a Lady apresenta características feministas, como o desejo pela independência, mas não pode ser considerada uma personagem feminista por ter sido subjugada e oprimida pelo poder patriarcal representado pelas figuras masculinas mais importantes à sua volta, principalmente por Gilbert Osmond, seu marido, que personifica nesta obra a dominação masculina total sobre a mente feminina. Contudo, sentimos que o enredo contém outras personagens e fatos que demonstram a força do insconsciente político daquele contexto, que se faz presente mesmo à revelia de seu autor, dentre eles outras personagens que caracterizam atitudes feministas. A importância deste estudo é posicionar uma forte protagonista feminina de Henry James dentre os estudos feministas sobre o Realismo do século XIX. / The Portrait of a Lady (1881), Henry James novel, tells the story of the formation of Isabel Archer, an young American lady who stands out for her desire to be free and independent in a context where nothing more was expected from a woman than having a decorative role; for that, it is possible that her charcterization is associated to a protagonist with feminist traits. However, the development of the plot leads her to an unhappy marriage motivated by outward determinants, especially by other characters financial interest. The objective of this work is to analyze how the construction of the protagonists feminine subjectivity either reflects or not the social and historical matters that marked its context of creation, among which the beginning of a consciousness aimed at a feminine appreciation and the search for the womens rights shown by the international suffrage movement. In our analysis we consider the social and political factors of the time when the novel was written and revised, as the assumptions of the feminist literary criticism and materialist criticism, in order to detect, in the Jamesian narrative, the characteristics that corroborate with a feminist point of view about Isabel Archer, and we extend our reading to the most relevant characters and events of the novel. So, we got to the conclusion that the protagonist in The Portrait of a Lady shows feminist characteristics, as the desire for independence, but she cannot be considered a feminist character for having been subjugated and oppressed by the patriarchal power represented by the most important masculine figures around her, mostly by Gilbert Osmond, her husband, who impersonates the total male domination over the female mind in this novel. Nevertheless, we feel that the plot contains other characters and events that demonstrate the strength of the political unconscious from a context that makes itself present even if unwanted by its author, and among them there are other characters that show feminist attitudes. The importance of this research is to establish a Henry James strong feminine protagonist in the feminist studies about the 19th century Realist literature.

Thesis (M.A.)--Wichita State University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Elliott School of Communication