In this dissertation the boundaries between normality and disability are investigated, as well as how these boundaries can be represented and changed through literary works. The purpose of this study is to examine the representation of disabled characters according to the theoretical insights of cognitive narratology. In order to analyse the boundary between normality and disability, this study focuses on focalisation and the narration as narrative techniques. The representation of disabled characters is a well-known phenomenon in literature in general but this dissertation analyses and discusses four novels which have been identified as texts in which the representation of disabled characters plays a significant role. These novels are: Is Sagie (1987) by Jan van Tonder, Raaiselkind (2001) by Annelie Botes, Siegfried (2007) by Willem Anker en Een vir Azazel (1964) by Etienne Leroux. Disablility, as a deviation from normality, is represented in different ways in literature, and has different functions. The theoretical argument is that the investigation and interpretation of the representation of disablilty in literature will provide insight in disability as a social phenomenon, as a literary act and as an act of understanding. Cognitive narratology uses the theoretical concepts of frames and scripts to describe the way in which human perceptions are structured and may even become fossilised in the human mind. Subsequent expreriences and information are therefore determined by existing codes and rules. The understanding or negotiation of new information is based on preferences that evolve from prior knowledge and programming. Cognitive choices are made on the basis of existing frames and scripts and determine whether a concept is new, standard, stereotypical, unusual, indefinite or ambiguous. This study shows how frames and scripts on disability are undermined within the novels and how disability is used as a functional novel element. / Thesis (MA (Afrikaans and Dutch))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

In this dissertation the boundaries between normality and disability are investigated, as well as how these boundaries can be represented and changed through literary works. The purpose of this study is to examine the representation of disabled characters according to the theoretical insights of cognitive narratology. In order to analyse the boundary between normality and disability, this study focuses on focalisation and the narration as narrative techniques. The representation of disabled characters is a well-known phenomenon in literature in general but this dissertation analyses and discusses four novels which have been identified as texts in which the representation of disabled characters plays a significant role. These novels are: Is Sagie (1987) by Jan van Tonder, Raaiselkind (2001) by Annelie Botes, Siegfried (2007) by Willem Anker en Een vir Azazel (1964) by Etienne Leroux. Disablility, as a deviation from normality, is represented in different ways in literature, and has different functions. The theoretical argument is that the investigation and interpretation of the representation of disablilty in literature will provide insight in disability as a social phenomenon, as a literary act and as an act of understanding. Cognitive narratology uses the theoretical concepts of frames and scripts to describe the way in which human perceptions are structured and may even become fossilised in the human mind. Subsequent expreriences and information are therefore determined by existing codes and rules. The understanding or negotiation of new information is based on preferences that evolve from prior knowledge and programming. Cognitive choices are made on the basis of existing frames and scripts and determine whether a concept is new, standard, stereotypical, unusual, indefinite or ambiguous. This study shows how frames and scripts on disability are undermined within the novels and how disability is used as a functional novel element. / Thesis (MA (Afrikaans and Dutch))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

Generic transformation of the castaway novel is made evident by the various ways in which the narrative boundaries that separate fiction from reality and history, the past from the present, and the rational from the irrational, are reconfigured in Umberto Eco’s The Island of the Day Before (1994), J.M. Coetzee’s Foe (1986) and Yann Martel’s Life of Pi (2002). The dissolution of boundaries reflects the dominant shift that has occurred in the castaway novel from the 18th century literary context to the present postmodern, postcolonial context. In this regard, the narrative utilizes various narratological strategies, the most significant being intertextuality, metafiction, historiographical metafiction, allegory, irony, and the carnivalesque. These narratological strategies rewrite, revise, and recontextualize those generic conventions that perpetuated the culture of masculinity and conquest that defines colonialism and the traditional castaway novel epitomized by Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). From a postcolonial perspective, the castaway’s state of being reflects on the condition of the colonized as well as the colonizer: his/her experience of displacement is similar to colonized peoples’ separation from their cultural, spiritual and personal identities; simultaneously, processes of appropriation, adaptation and control of space resemble colonization, thereby revealing the constructed nature of colonial space. As such, space is fundamental to individual orientation and social adaptation and consequently, metaphorically and metonymically linked to identity. In the selected postmodernist and postcolonial texts, the movement from the position of castaway to colonist as originally manifested in Robinson Crusoe is therefore reinterpreted and recontextualized. The postmodernist and postcolonial contexts resist fixed and one-dimensional representations of identity, as well as the appropriation and domination of space, that characterize shipwreck literature from pre-colonial and colonial periods. Rationalist notions of history, reality and truth as empirically definable concepts are also contested. The castaway identity is often characterized by feelings of physical and spiritual displacement and estrangement that can be paralleled to postmodernist themes of existential confusion and anxiety. / Thesis (PhD (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013

In this dissertation I argue that invisible characters, as they appear in Paul Auster’s novels, serve a very specific function within the interpretative framework of a text and that they should be considered to play a functional role, in order to arrive at a more holistic interpretation of the text and a more accurate analysis of said texts. I argue that Auster knowingly includes these characters in his novels as part of his narrative technique, in order for them to serve specific functions and to contribute to the structure of postmodern fiction. I make use of a contextualized close reading of five of Auster’s novels and attempt a hermeneutic interpretation of these novels to arrive at a hermeneutic circle when combining these novels into an integrated whole, individual, work of fiction. Certain parallels can be drawn between Auster’s various novels and these parallels contribute to the various motifs and themes found throughout his work. The importance of space in Auster’s novels is also highlighted with emphasis on liminality which serves as an instigator for transgression to occur between different fictive worlds. / Thesis (MA (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

Generic transformation of the castaway novel is made evident by the various ways in which the narrative boundaries that separate fiction from reality and history, the past from the present, and the rational from the irrational, are reconfigured in Umberto Eco’s The Island of the Day Before (1994), J.M. Coetzee’s Foe (1986) and Yann Martel’s Life of Pi (2002). The dissolution of boundaries reflects the dominant shift that has occurred in the castaway novel from the 18th century literary context to the present postmodern, postcolonial context. In this regard, the narrative utilizes various narratological strategies, the most significant being intertextuality, metafiction, historiographical metafiction, allegory, irony, and the carnivalesque. These narratological strategies rewrite, revise, and recontextualize those generic conventions that perpetuated the culture of masculinity and conquest that defines colonialism and the traditional castaway novel epitomized by Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). From a postcolonial perspective, the castaway’s state of being reflects on the condition of the colonized as well as the colonizer: his/her experience of displacement is similar to colonized peoples’ separation from their cultural, spiritual and personal identities; simultaneously, processes of appropriation, adaptation and control of space resemble colonization, thereby revealing the constructed nature of colonial space. As such, space is fundamental to individual orientation and social adaptation and consequently, metaphorically and metonymically linked to identity. In the selected postmodernist and postcolonial texts, the movement from the position of castaway to colonist as originally manifested in Robinson Crusoe is therefore reinterpreted and recontextualized. The postmodernist and postcolonial contexts resist fixed and one-dimensional representations of identity, as well as the appropriation and domination of space, that characterize shipwreck literature from pre-colonial and colonial periods. Rationalist notions of history, reality and truth as empirically definable concepts are also contested. The castaway identity is often characterized by feelings of physical and spiritual displacement and estrangement that can be paralleled to postmodernist themes of existential confusion and anxiety. / Thesis (PhD (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013

In this dissertation I argue that invisible characters, as they appear in Paul Auster’s novels, serve a very specific function within the interpretative framework of a text and that they should be considered to play a functional role, in order to arrive at a more holistic interpretation of the text and a more accurate analysis of said texts. I argue that Auster knowingly includes these characters in his novels as part of his narrative technique, in order for them to serve specific functions and to contribute to the structure of postmodern fiction. I make use of a contextualized close reading of five of Auster’s novels and attempt a hermeneutic interpretation of these novels to arrive at a hermeneutic circle when combining these novels into an integrated whole, individual, work of fiction. Certain parallels can be drawn between Auster’s various novels and these parallels contribute to the various motifs and themes found throughout his work. The importance of space in Auster’s novels is also highlighted with emphasis on liminality which serves as an instigator for transgression to occur between different fictive worlds. / Thesis (MA (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

The main focus of this study concerns the contribution of focalisation to the creation of fictional worlds through the combination of the “building blocks” of a fictional world, namely the central focalising and focalised character(s), focalised social contexts, events and spaces, in Hermann Hesse’s Demian (1919), Narziß und Goldmund (1930), E.L. Doctorow’s Welcome to Hard Times (1960) and Homer & Langley (2009). The relationship between the focalisers and their social contexts influence their human, subjective perspectives and represented perceptions of their textual actual worlds. Focalisation is constructive in the synergistic relationship between the “building blocks” that leads to the creation of fictional worlds. Chapter 2 discusses the theoretical basis of the thesis which is formed by the concepts of M. Ryan, L. Doležel, R. Ronen and T.G. Pavel with regard to possible worlds and fictional worlds. G. Genette’s and M. Bal’s theories provide the foundation of this study with regard to this concept as regards focalisation. Chapter 3 contextualises focalisation and fictional worlds as possible worlds in Hesse’s and Doctorow’s fiction and as such constitutes part of a twofold basis for the following analyses and comparisons. Four textual analyses of the individual novels by Hesse and Doctorow then follow. In the textual analysis of Demian the notions of M. Bal, M. Ryan and A. Nünning provide a theoretical basis that is specifically relevant for the argument that through his consciousness the individual, Emil Sinclair, creates the fictional world, i.e. by “transforming” textual actual world components into individualised fictional world ones. The views of Viktor Frankl, feminist activists against prostitution such as M. Farley, M.A. Baldwin and C.A. MacKinnon as well as the views of Talcott Parsons (in conjunction with those of G.M. Platt and N.J. Smelser) offer a theoretical underpinning for the analysis of the social context as the product of the mindset in the community in Doctorow’s Welcome to Hard Times and the mindset of the focaliser, Blue, that concurs with the mindset of the community. Focalised events are considered as psychologically credible and as contributing to the fictional world in Hesse’s Narziß und Goldmund. In this textual analysis the theoretical points of departure were based on theories proposed by D. Cohn, M. Ryan and S. Chatman. Concepts advanced by J. Lothe, J. Lotman, H. Lefebvre, L. Doležel, N. Wolterstorff and D. Coste comprise the theoretical basis of the analysis of social spaces in Doctorow’s Homer & Langley. Chapter 8 consists of comparative analyses of the said focalised “building blocks” of Hesse’s and Doctorow’s novels. The analyses and comparisons argue that focalising characters “filter” their actual worlds and “transform” them through their individualistic and subjective representations, as actual people do. Even if characters are “non-actual individuals” their mindsets or physical, social and mental properties (Margolin, 1989:4) are like those of actual people, i.e. “psychologically credible”. Ryan (1991:45) identifies “psychological credibility” or “a plausible portrayal of human psychology” as an “accessibility relation”, i.e. one that allows the mental properties of a fictional character to be accessible from and possible for the actual world. The interaction between a focalising character and his social context that affects his consciousness and focalisation is comparable to the interaction between a hypothetical actual person and his social world, that would also influence his mindset and how he communicates about the actual world. Perspectives of characters such as Sinclair, Blue, Goldmund and Homer Collyer are recognisable to hypothetical actual world readers as psychologically credible. In the light of Bal’s (1990:9) argument that the whole text content is related to the (focalising) character(s), one could say that the elements of a textual actual world become, as it were, focalised “building blocks” of the fictional world. The central finding is that focalisation contributes to the creation of fictional worlds. The relationship between a fictional world and the actual one becomes apparent in literary texts through focalisation that transforms the textual actual world and its elements, i.e. the central (self-focalising) character, the social context, events and space(s), through a focaliser’s consciousness. The focaliser’s consciousness in Hesse’s and Doctorow’s fiction is marked by psychological credibility. A fictional world is comparable to the actual world with regard to other accessibility relations that Ryan (cf. 1991:31-47) identifies, but focalisation specifically allows a fictional world to become possible in actual world terms by creating credibility of this kind. A fictional world is plausible not in mimetic terms, as a factual text presents itself to be, but in possible terms, i.e. through the comparability of human psychology in fictional worlds and the actual world. Focalisation significantly contributes to the creation of a fictional world through the interaction between psychologically credible subjectivity and the imaginary level of the text on which the textual actual world obtains human value through focalisation. A fictional world is, in this sense, a possible world and, in fact, comes about through being a possible world. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Applied Language and Literary Studies))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.

The main focus of this study concerns the contribution of focalisation to the creation of fictional worlds through the combination of the “building blocks” of a fictional world, namely the central focalising and focalised character(s), focalised social contexts, events and spaces, in Hermann Hesse’s Demian (1919), Narziß und Goldmund (1930), E.L. Doctorow’s Welcome to Hard Times (1960) and Homer & Langley (2009). The relationship between the focalisers and their social contexts influence their human, subjective perspectives and represented perceptions of their textual actual worlds. Focalisation is constructive in the synergistic relationship between the “building blocks” that leads to the creation of fictional worlds. Chapter 2 discusses the theoretical basis of the thesis which is formed by the concepts of M. Ryan, L. Doležel, R. Ronen and T.G. Pavel with regard to possible worlds and fictional worlds. G. Genette’s and M. Bal’s theories provide the foundation of this study with regard to this concept as regards focalisation. Chapter 3 contextualises focalisation and fictional worlds as possible worlds in Hesse’s and Doctorow’s fiction and as such constitutes part of a twofold basis for the following analyses and comparisons. Four textual analyses of the individual novels by Hesse and Doctorow then follow. In the textual analysis of Demian the notions of M. Bal, M. Ryan and A. Nünning provide a theoretical basis that is specifically relevant for the argument that through his consciousness the individual, Emil Sinclair, creates the fictional world, i.e. by “transforming” textual actual world components into individualised fictional world ones. The views of Viktor Frankl, feminist activists against prostitution such as M. Farley, M.A. Baldwin and C.A. MacKinnon as well as the views of Talcott Parsons (in conjunction with those of G.M. Platt and N.J. Smelser) offer a theoretical underpinning for the analysis of the social context as the product of the mindset in the community in Doctorow’s Welcome to Hard Times and the mindset of the focaliser, Blue, that concurs with the mindset of the community. Focalised events are considered as psychologically credible and as contributing to the fictional world in Hesse’s Narziß und Goldmund. In this textual analysis the theoretical points of departure were based on theories proposed by D. Cohn, M. Ryan and S. Chatman. Concepts advanced by J. Lothe, J. Lotman, H. Lefebvre, L. Doležel, N. Wolterstorff and D. Coste comprise the theoretical basis of the analysis of social spaces in Doctorow’s Homer & Langley. Chapter 8 consists of comparative analyses of the said focalised “building blocks” of Hesse’s and Doctorow’s novels. The analyses and comparisons argue that focalising characters “filter” their actual worlds and “transform” them through their individualistic and subjective representations, as actual people do. Even if characters are “non-actual individuals” their mindsets or physical, social and mental properties (Margolin, 1989:4) are like those of actual people, i.e. “psychologically credible”. Ryan (1991:45) identifies “psychological credibility” or “a plausible portrayal of human psychology” as an “accessibility relation”, i.e. one that allows the mental properties of a fictional character to be accessible from and possible for the actual world. The interaction between a focalising character and his social context that affects his consciousness and focalisation is comparable to the interaction between a hypothetical actual person and his social world, that would also influence his mindset and how he communicates about the actual world. Perspectives of characters such as Sinclair, Blue, Goldmund and Homer Collyer are recognisable to hypothetical actual world readers as psychologically credible. In the light of Bal’s (1990:9) argument that the whole text content is related to the (focalising) character(s), one could say that the elements of a textual actual world become, as it were, focalised “building blocks” of the fictional world. The central finding is that focalisation contributes to the creation of fictional worlds. The relationship between a fictional world and the actual one becomes apparent in literary texts through focalisation that transforms the textual actual world and its elements, i.e. the central (self-focalising) character, the social context, events and space(s), through a focaliser’s consciousness. The focaliser’s consciousness in Hesse’s and Doctorow’s fiction is marked by psychological credibility. A fictional world is comparable to the actual world with regard to other accessibility relations that Ryan (cf. 1991:31-47) identifies, but focalisation specifically allows a fictional world to become possible in actual world terms by creating credibility of this kind. A fictional world is plausible not in mimetic terms, as a factual text presents itself to be, but in possible terms, i.e. through the comparability of human psychology in fictional worlds and the actual world. Focalisation significantly contributes to the creation of a fictional world through the interaction between psychologically credible subjectivity and the imaginary level of the text on which the textual actual world obtains human value through focalisation. A fictional world is, in this sense, a possible world and, in fact, comes about through being a possible world. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Applied Language and Literary Studies))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.