This dissertation examines the development of the female literary subject in the work of two generations of women writers of the GDR, represented by Christa Wolf (1929), Brigitte Reimann (1931--1973), Helga Konigsdorf (1936) and Helga Schubert (1941). The objectives are twofold: first, to assess the influence of two opposing discursive frameworks of subjectivity, the socialist and the psychoanalytic, on the works of these writers, and second, to examine the effects of an ideological disjuncture of two generations on their literary production. / The first generation to embark on a literary career in the GDR, with great aspirations for the socialist project, is represented by Wolf and Reimann. A shift in political parameters meant that the following generation of writers, including Konigsdorf and Schubert, was faced with a pre-determined ideological structure, unsatisfactory to them. Accordingly, a diachronic investigation of the literary subject is pursued, and reveals the shift between these generations. As a result, rifts in time, in the subject, and rifts between the subject and its time are exposed. / In the 1960s, Wolf and Reimann rejected the literary female subject's role as an agent in the implementation of socialism. Crises in GDR social structures and crises of the psyche are shown to overlap and to result in divided subjects. The non-contemporaneity of Marxism begins to surface in the 1970s, and the rift in time affects the female subjects of Wolf and Reimann, which increasingly fragment Konigsdorf's and Schubert's short prose of the late 1970s reveals a rejection of the unified Marxist subject and the move toward a notion of the self informed by Freudian psychoanalysis. In the 1980s, the effects of the socio-political environment prove fatal to the individual subject in the works by both generations, and parallels are drawn to the National Socialist past. These links instigate a fundamental reevaluation of standards in language, power and cycles of history at the crossroads of life and death. The post-Wende period witnesses a shift away from problems of subjectivity in the texts of Konigsdorf and Schubert, while Wolf initially experiments with the postmodern, and most recently, surprisingly re-consolidates the female subject.

The title of our thesis is The Myth of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe in Michel Tournier's Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique and J.M. Coetzee's Foe. We intend to show how Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe story has become a renewed, transformed myth in the fictional works of Michel Tournier and J.M. Coetzee. In the first chapter, we will analyse the attitude of critics to Daniel Defoe, Michel Tournier and J.M. Coetzee's works, and we shall review the pertinent aspects of the three novelists' life. In the second chapter, we will define the concept of myth according to the African and European thinkers. We shall also stress the types, functions and myth's expressions in literary work. In the third chapter, we shall analyse and compare the characters of the three novels following the theory of A.J. Greimas which will be enriched by Evgueni Meletinski. We will divide the characters into protagonists, accessories, opponents, neutrals and absents. Analysis and comparison of the fictional characters will identify two major groups: colonizer and colonized. There will also be an examination of the meaning of characters' names used by the three novelists as well as our opinion on the fictional characters of Defoe, Tournier and Coetzee. Analysis of plot structures will show how the three novels are composed according to a cyclical pattern. The fourth chapter will be devoted to a comparative thematic analysis of solitude, sexuality and education. This will reveal the two faces of each theme as well as the hidden philosophy of the three novelists. And the fifth chapter will identify the narrative and stylistic techniques of the novels. It will show the kind of genre used by Defoe, Toumier and Coetzee as well as the letter and journal. It will also show the types of stylistic aspects of the three novels which are present in the novels. We will examine in the sixth chapter the spaces and the time framework of the three novels. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2007.

The purpose of this study is to explore a phenomenon which is both literary and social: the popularity of didactic Christian novels in twentieth-century American literature. Specifically, the study is restricted to a consideration of best-selling Christian novels and an examination of the attitudes of American readers over a time of extreme social change in America, 1918-1953. Nineteen such novels were best sellers over the thirty-five years encompassed by the study. One was popular between World War I and the Depression, five were best sellers between 1929 and 1939, and the remainder were best sellers between 1939 and 1953. The data suggest that within the period 1918-1953, public interest in Christian novels increased during times of national stress but waned in times of prosperity.The popular Christian novels mirrored the concerns of the reading public, for subject matter, theme, and characterization of the novels tend to reflect the era in which a given novel is published. The one novel popular between the end of World War I and the Depression was Ralph Connor's The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land (1919), an unabashedly anti-German propaganda novel incorporating elements of Christian thought. Between 1919 and 1929, Americans were preoccupied with social change and the prosperity of the times, and thus demonstrated little interest in fictional piety.In the Depression, five novels by Lloyd C. Douglas were immensely popular: Magnificent Obsession (1929), Forgive Us Our Trespasses (1932), Green Light (1935), White Banners (1936), and Disputed Passage (1939). All were contemporaneous in setting, and paradoxically stressed the practice of altruistic self-giving along with the promise of material rewards for the follower of Christianity. Clearly, Douglas appealed to the public because his works were optimistic and because they offered to the reader the hope that Christianity might provide relief from economic distress.From 1939 through 1953, thirteen Christian novels became best sellers. Seven were historical Christian novels: The Nazarene (1939), The Apostle (1943), and Mary (1949) by Sholem Asch; The Robe (1942) and The Big Fisherman (1948) by Lloyd C. Douglas; The Song of Bernadette (1942) by Franz Werfel; and The Silver Chalice (1953) by Thomas B. Costain. The historical novels tended to become more conservative and restrained than Douglas' novels of the Depression. Their popularity points to tendencies in Americans to look to the past and to ancient values in search of answers to contemporary problems.Six Christian novels published 1939-1953 were generally contemporaneous in setting. Significantly, four were either by or about Roman Catholics: A. J. Cronin's The Keys of the Kingdom (1941), Russell Janney's The Miracle of the Bells (1946), Henry Morton Robinson's The Cardinal (1950), and Francis Cardinal Spellman's The Foundling (1951). Two by Agnes Sligh Turnbull were Protestant: The Bishop's Mantle (1947) and The Gown of Glory (1952). Four of these novels depicted clergymen as protagonists. The popularity of these novels indicated widespread concern for religion and curiosity about churchmen. The acceptance of Roman Catholicism in popular fiction is of major significance, for no popular Christian novels before 1939 were distinctly pro-Catholic. A more tolerant mood is clearly indicated for the American novel-reading public.It is clear from this study that almost all popular Christian novels widely accepted between 1918 and 1953 advanced a simplistic and rewarding Christianity. Inevitably the theology is uncomplicated, and most of the works adapt Christianity to the needs of the day. Religious attitudes are emphatically this-worldly. Little eschatological content is apparent; readers and writers alike were apparently more concerned with a religious faith which provided strength and guidance for living well in the present, rather than providing a means of preparation for a heavenly afterlife.

This thesis examines the forms of utopianism which developed in U.S. fiction after the Civil War, from Mark Twain to Jack London. It covers the genres and subgenres of the utopia of reform, the fiction of occult utopianism, the lost-race romance, the post-catastrophe utopia, and the dystopia. Its central argument is that utopianism provides a means of developing alternative horizons of historiosophy and of building images of otherness, as it is also an argumentative apparatus which allows utopists to comment on their empirical society, as the other side of otherness. Nineteenth-century U.S. utopian fiction conveyed, through an increasing deconstruction of the utopian genre, conflicting interpretations of such elements of American myth-history as the stock image of America as a new Eden and paradise of abundance, the American Dream, and Manifest Destiny. This helps explain the fragmentation of the utopian genre within literary discourse and its cooptation by modern science fiction as it developed after the first decade of the twentieth century.

This thesis examines the role of Canadian women as presented in English language novels of the 1930s written by women authors. Within the context of the Great Depression it focuses on issues that are central to women's daily lives such as work, love, marriage and motherhood. It also isolates recurring themes in the novels and attempts to understand the authors' messages within their social context. Social reform, politics and gender relationships are among the subjects explored.

According to Francois Ricard in La generation lyrique: essai sur la vie at l'oeuvre des premiers-nes du baby-boom , the group born in Quebec during the decade immediately following the Second World War is primarily characterized by "[...] un amour eperdu de soi-meme, une confiance categorique en ses propres desirs et ses propres actions, et le sentiment d'un pouvoir illimite sur le monde [...]" (p. 8). / The objective of the present research was to determine more precisely whether the first novel of writers of the lyric generation reflected the spirit particular to that generation, in what way and to what extent. In other words, the present work consisted of either confirming or invalidating Ricard's hypothesis by analysing it in the light of the literary works themselves. / Twenty-three novels were chosen according to the year of their publication (1967--1975) and the age of the authors at the time of publication (between 21 and 31 years). / An analysis of the works clearly confirmed Ricard's intuition: egocentricity and introspection, revolution and reinvention of literary style and narcissism were consistently present in the novels studied. These characteristics stem from a clear dominance of the autodiegetic narration style, the control of elements of time and space by the narrator, who is often personally identifiable with the author and finally from an upheaval of scriptural standards. The thematic of the style of writing as an outlet, a pleasure or an experimentation is ever present. The narrators themselves dominate the stage and their narcissistic personalities are evident throughout.

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iv, 374 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.1980) from the Dept. of English, University of Adelaide

[Truncated abstract] This thesis argues that the non-representation and under-representation of mothering in contemporary Australian literature reflects a much wider cultural practice of silencing the mother-as-subject position and female experiences as a whole. The thesis encourages women writers to pay more attention to the subjective experiences of mothering, so that women’s writing, in particular writing on those aspects of women’s lives that are silenced, of which motherhood is one, can begin to refigure motherhood discourses. This thesis examines mother-as-subject from three perspectives: mothering as a corporeal experience, mothering as a psychological experience, and the articulations and silences of mothering-as-subject. It engages with feminist, postmodern and fictocritical theories in its discussion of motherhood as a discourse through these perspectives. In particular, the thesis employs the theoretical works of postmodern feminists Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva in this discussion . . . A fictional narrative also runs through the critical discussion on motherhood. This narrative, Catherine’s Story, gives a personal and immediate voice to the mother-as-subject perspective. In keeping with the nature of fictocriticism, strict textual boundaries between criticism and fiction are blurred. The two modes of writing interact and in the process inform and critique each other.

This thesis investigates acts of ‘re-telling’ in four selected novels by Jeanette Winterson and Alan Warner.Re-telling, as I have defined it, refers to the re-imagining and re-writing of existing narratives from mythology, fairy tale, and folktale, as well as the re-visioning of scientific discourses and historiography. I argue that this re-telling is representative of a contemporary cultural phenomenon, and is evidence of a postmodern genre that some literary theorists have termed re-visionary fiction. Despite the prevalent re-telling of canonical stories throughout literary history, there is much evidence for the emergence of a specifically contemporary trend of re-visionary literature. Part One of this thesis comprises two chapters which deal with Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry (1989) and Weight (2005) respectively. In these chapters, I argue that, although the feminist and historiographic elements of her work are significant, there exist further motivations for Winterson’s acts of re-telling in both Sexing the Cherry and Weight. In Chapter One, I analyse Winterson’s subversion and re-imagining of historiography, as well as her re-telling of fairy tale, in Sexing the Cherry. Chapter Two provides a discussion of Winterson’s re-telling of the myth of Atlas from Greek mythology, in which she draws on the discourses of science, technology, and autobiography, in Weight. Part Two focuses on Warner’s first two novels, Morvern Callar (1995) and These Demented Lands (1997). In both novels, Warner re-imagines aspects of Christian, Celtic and pagan mythology in order to debunk the validity of biblical archetypes and narratives in a contemporary working-class setting, as well as to endow his protagonist with goddess-like or mythical sensibilities. Chapter Three deals predominantly with Warner’s use of language, which I argue is central to his blending of mythological and contemporary content, while Chapter Four analyses his use of myth in these two novels. This thesis argues that while both Winterson and Warner share many of the aims associated with contemporary re-visionary fiction, their novels also exceed the boundaries of the genre in various ways. Winterson and Warner may, therefore, represent a new class of re-visionary writers, whose aim is not solely to subvert the pre-text but to draw on its generic discourses and thematic conventions in order to demonstrate the generic and discursive possibilities inherent in the act of re-telling.