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30 years after the coining of autofiction (Doubrovsky, 1977), there is still no general consensus about its exact meaning. This research set out to discover autofiction, whether there is a need for this term, why the public has taken such an interest in autofiction. Research questions were divided into two major categories: 1. What is autofiction? What is its origin? How has it evolved? Which differences are there, if any, between autobiography and autofiction? Is there a need for the separate genre of autofiction? Why/why not? What are its general characteristics? 2. Do the three analysed women authors – Nothomb, Beyala and Bouraoui – incorporate these elements in their writing? If so, how and why? Is autofictional writing a stage/posture in the personal writing development of an author? Is there any link between the writing of the own persona and the obsession with the public persona? Concentrating on terminological and theoretical issues, extensive literature review was done in the first part of the research. Starting from main literary criticism regarding fiction and autobiography/autofiction, the theoretical side of my research dealt with narrative identity and the true/false dichotomy of fact/fiction. Together with qualitative research about intertextuality as applied by autofictional writers (difference plagiarism and intertextual borrowing) led to a functional definition of autofiction, the basis for the comparative study of the three authors. For the research into their public persona, extensive internet research and analysis of newspaper articles were undertaken to show: 1. how the authors portray themselves; 2. how they are perceived by the media; 3. how this possibly influences their writing style. Autofiction requires analysis of: 1. why authors write 2. about what they write 3. how they incorporate the Self and the world in their writing. Bouraoui compares writing to an almost sexual act of love, the most intimate possible. Writing was the only way she could deal with childhood memories and repressed homosexuality. Beyala writes to communicate with others, while Nothomb considers writing as a means to live more intensely, after anorexia. The specificities and distinctive characteristics of the texts and authors were discovered through narrative analysis (factual research into the authors’ public persona + textual analysis of literary oeuvres). In Chapter 3 (Calixthe Beyala), feminine literary criticism as well as postcolonial theories guided my reading. Chapter 4 (Nina Bouraoui) allowed reflexion on the links between memory, identity, truth and autofictional writing. All chapters included research on Doubrovsky’s link between psychoanalysis and autofiction. In conclusion, there is a strong indication that one should speak of autofictions in the plural. This research explains some of the differences between autobiography and autofiction while underlining the importance of the existence of this new, separate sub-genre. The researcher had an opportunity to reflect on human memory and re-interpretation of facts. Where does the dividing line between truth and falsehood fall when the author puts the reader deliberately on a false track by introducing his/her work as « a novel »? Recent, post-modern writing has deliberately transgressed the fine dividing line between fact/fiction. The present research corroborates this view. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2011.

The thesis examines Bolivian fiction written about the war with Paraguay (1932-35), known as the Chaco War. The study takes two different perspectives: the first considers the fiction as works of literature, and studies three major aspects of fictional writing: narrative organization, characterization arid figurative language, in order to investigate the constraints imposed upon writers who produce fiction about an historical event, (in this instance a military conflict). The second perspective views the works of fiction as historical documents and assesses their informative value by comparing factual information supplied in the novels with that provided in historiographical accounts and also by examining the kind of information which is the peculiar contribution of fiction to the understanding of an historical event. These two examinations are undertaken in Chapters V and VI respectively, and constitute the main body of the thesis. In order to place them in a wider context, the thesis considers previous critical studies of Chaco War fiction (in the Introduction). There follows a study of the relationship between the writing of contemporary history and documentary fiction (Chapter I), a brief summary of the Chaco War (Chapter II), an examination of some possible influences and precedents (Chapter III) and a survey of the writers and the works of Bolivian fiction of the Chaco War (Chapter IV). The conclusion suggests that the problems encountered by writers of documentary fiction are those faced by any naturalist writer, compounded here by the nature of the subject matter. If they cannot fully succeed on an artistic level, however, these works do provide a view of the historical facts of the war which is reasonably accurate. In addition they lead to a distinctive understanding of the war as an historical experience which no historiographical work can produce.

This thesis examines post-1945 German prose fiction dealing with the Third Reich in the light of Mikhail Bakhtin's Rabelais and his World. My review of the secondary literature in Chapter 1 shows how few Germanists have examined the role of the carnivalesque in such fiction or used Bakhtin's work systematically. Having set out the shortcomings of Bakhtin's theory and shown Carnival's ambivalent position in the Third Reich, Chapter 2 builds on this theoretical and historical foundation by giving an overview of the different ways in which authors deploy the Fool and the carnivalesque in post-1945 prose fiction. This overview provides a context for the rest of the thesis, in which I discuss in detail how four authors use the topoi of the Fool and the carnivalesque in different ways to confront the past and encourage social change. Thus, Chapter 3 analyses Hans Hellmut Kirst's 08/15 trilogy (1954-55) which describes Asch's carnivalesque subversion of the NCOs who abuse power within the Army, and his subsequent development into a positive figure of authority. Chapter 4 argues that, beneath its bleak surface, Günter Grass's Hundejahre (1963) deploys the carnivalesque to transmit a sense of mourning and rebirth after the Holocaust. Chapter 5 deals with Edgar Hilsenrath's Der Nazi and der Friseur (1977), whose Fool-protagonist provokes the reader to laugh at earlier attempts to make sense of the Holocaust in order to prioritize the act of anamnesis as an end in itself. Chapter 6 examines Gert Hermann's Veilchenfeld (1987) and Der Kinoerzähler (1990). Veilchenfeld is a carnivalesque signifier of Nature whose persecution at the hands of the people of Limbach parallels the town's ecological destruction, so that the novel can be read as a critique of the exploitation of Nature. In Der Kinoerzähler Hofmann uses Karl, a Fool-figure who narrates silent films, to encourage the development of critical faculties which combat the fatalism and authoritarianism that hamper social change. It becomes clear that the authors of the above works have anticipated the shortcomings of Carnival as a model of resistance and have thus redefined the Fool and the carnivalesque. So in my view, although the way the authors deploy these topoi maps only partially with Bakhtin's ideas about Carnival, these authors have understood the central concepts of the carnivalesque's ambivalence and its powers to subvert authority and use them productively to deal with the issues raised by the Third Reich.

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

This study explores the interaction between feminist science fiction and feminist theory, focusing on the body and embodiment. Specifically, it aims to demonstrate that feminist science fiction novels of the 1990s offer an excellent platform for exploring the critical theories of the body put forward by Judith Butler in particular, and other feminist/queer theorists in general. The thesis opens with a brief history of science fiction's depiction of the body and feminist science fiction's subversions and rewritings of this, as well as an overview of Judith Butler's theories relating to the body and embodiment. It then considers a wide range of feminist science fiction novels from the 1990s, focusing on four key areas; bodies materialised outside patriarchal systems in women-only or women-ruled worlds, alien bodies, cyborg bodies and bodies in cyberspace. An in-depth analysis of the selected texts reveals that they have important contributions to make to the consideration of bodies as they develop and expand the issues raised by theorists such as Butler, Elisabeth Grosz, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva.

This study interrogates how Shona novelists conceptualise and depict the African communitarian worldview of unhu (humanity to others). The study relies on content analysis of selected Shona novels, critical reviews from various scholars, journals, newspapers and theses, augmented by interviews and questionnaires. The theoretical framework is guided by Afrocentricity and Africana Womanism which are pivotal to the explication of meaning from selected texts, with the view to examining whether or not the writers‟ portrayal and understanding of unhu helps Africa‟s socio-cultural and political liberation. Given that the African worldview of unhu celebrates virtues central to mutual social responsibility, mutual respect, trust, self-reliance, caring, among other attributes. These tenets help to revitalise and rejuvenate the decaying socio-cultural fabric of Zimbabwe. The study intimates that unhu principles could be fruitfully embraced in charting a dispensation in which all people of Zimbabwe could subordinate their personal interests to the interests, respecting one another, thus forging enduring peace and development while, at the same time, the leadership would be governed by democratic tenets espoused through unhu. / African Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)

This study is a comparison of female characters portrayed by different authors in selected Venda novels. Chapter One comprises the aim of the study, approach, life history of authors, comments on their work, a short summary of the selected novels, cultural fulfilment of a Venda woman, and the scope and composition of chapters. Chapter Two deals with characterization. The definition and methods of characterization are discussed in this chapter. The merits and demerits of various methods of character portrayal are also examined in some detail. Chapter Three discusses the different female characters portrayed in the selected novels. Chapter Four comprises a comparison of female characters in the selected novels. Chapter Five is the general conclusion to this study / African Languages / M.A. (African languages)

Orientador: Marcia Azevedo de Abreu / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-10T22:12:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Ribeiro_CristinaBetioli_D.pdf: 1229731 bytes, checksum: f2bcd1cbc244bf523e052b4225436039 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008 / Resumo: Esta tese baseia-se no estudo e análise do conjunto de romances de Franklin Távora, denominado por ele de Literatura do Norte. O principal objetivo é mostrar em que medida o autor se vale da cultura popular, das memórias e da cor local nortistas como instrumentos para fundar história e literatura nacionais. Nesta perspectiva, apresentamos as principais discussões sobre folclore e nacionalidade, as idéias fundamentais da Escola de Recife e a interação do romancista com o pensamento da ¿geração de 70¿ do século XIX. Além de focalizar a trajetória intelectual do escritor, examinamos o seu conhecido embate com José de Alencar, travado nas Cartas a Cincinato, e os métodos de composição que foram sendo sedimentados na sua prosa de ficção, ao longo de suas críticas e no seu projeto literário. Por fim, apresentamos as análises dos cinco romances da Literatura do Norte: O Cabeleira, O Matuto, Lourenço, Um Casamento no arrabalde e O Sacrifício / Abstract: This thesis intends to investigate the literary project of Franklin Távora, that he called by Literatura do Norte. The most important objective is to show how folklore, memories and local colors of North are utilized to build national history and literature. In this way, we introduce the principal discussions about folklore and nationality, the fundamental ideas of Escola de Recife and how the author is envolved by 70th generation of XIXth century. Moreover, we examine the polemic with José de Alencar, in Cartas a Cincinato, and the creation methods developed by Távora in his criticism and literary project. At last, we analyse the five novels of Literatura do Norte: O Cabeleira, O Matuto, Lourenço, Um Casamento no arrabalde e O Sacrifício / Doutorado / Literatura Brasileira / Doutor em Teoria e História Literária