This dissertation offers an ecocritical reading of Italo Calvino’s Fiabe italiane, a collection of traditional oral tales published by Einaudi in 1956, and argues that the two-hundred folktales function as a repository of ecological motifs, showing the relationship between humans and the environment as not necessarily exploitative, but rather as a relationship of coexistence and entanglement. The dissertation shows that the critical language that Calvino uses, influenced by a long tradition of folklore studies, rests on two key metaphors to express belonging in a political and national community: rootedness and groundedness. Through the reading of several tales, I show that the folktales themselves actually reveal a fabulist ecology concerned much more with entanglement and enmeshment with the natural landscape, and offer imaginative tools to recover, at the time of the Anthropocene, an enchanted view of the environment. In the first chapter, I argue that the morphology of the folktale that Calvino draws from the Russian formalist Vladimir Propp rests on a conception of the folktale as a plant that can be dissected with the same tools used by a botanist. I show how observations that Calvino makes about tales of metamorphosis of women into plants betray an investment in rootedness as a metaphor for belonging in a political and national community. Drawing from material ecocriticism, I argue that plants, rather than signposts for stasis and belonging, can be read as signs of mixture, coexistence, and symbiosis with the environment. I also argue that the frequent metamorphosis of female characters into plants points toward a trans-corporeal conception of subjectivity. In the second chapter, I show how Calvino contradictorily engages with the legacy of the Brothers Grimm, for whom the forest stands as a metaphor of the lost unity of the German nation. Through a close reading of “Hansel and Gretel,” and Calvino’s rewriting of this tale, “Pulcino,” I show that forests, be they material or fictional, can also be read as environments that preserve an agrarian ecology of subsistence, populated by othered figures such as witches and ogres that depend on a non-exploitative relationship with the environment of the forest. This ecology is preserved in Calvino’s own Marcovaldo, a collection of modern urban fairy-tales that he authored in the same period. Ultimately, I conceive of trees as markers of deep time and connectors between human and geological history. In the third chapter, I turn to the second metaphor identified by my project, groundedness. I briefly reconstruct the cultural milieu in which Calvino operated, and the development of postwar folklore studies after the publication of Antonio Gramsci’s Quaderni del carcere. Therefore, I examine the “Observations on Folklore,” showing how much of Gramsci’s theoretical language engages metaphorically with geology. Calvino himself is indebted to this idea of stratification. His folktales, especially “Cola Pesce,” then become a site where human history and geologic time intersect, and many stories function as repositories of folk knowledge about the telluric landscape of Southern Italy and about the porosity of humans and stones. In the conclusion, I offer an overview of the material and I consider Calvino’s revisiting, in the 1970s, of his earlier folkloric work and how his thoughts on storytelling and belonging evolve in the course of two decade, arguing that they constitute a literary ecology.

Cette thèse a pour objectif de montrer un des impacts de l'esclavage sur l'histoire des peuples africains et leurs descendants. Comment ce fait a pu façonner la vie spirituelle des diasporas des Amériques, et en particulier du Brésil, et de quelle manière ces différentes populations ont su dialoguer entre elles, mais aussi s'approprier et transformer les valeurs culturelles des peuples qui les ont soumis. Tout en s'adaptant à ces nouveaux contextes, elles ont préservé leurs mémoires spirituelles en créant des intermédiaires cultuels comme l'entité du Seja Hundê, Candomblé jeje de Bahia, le vudum Lebabimibome, qui fusionne le singe et le Messager des religions ancestrales fon et yorouba Eshu-Legba. Par l'adoption de cette nouvelle manifestation religieuse, elles ont également su recycler l'image utilisée par les colonisateurs à l'encontre des Africains, associé à des singes et décrit comme un chaînon manquant entre l'homme et l'animal, ainsi des individus ont pu échapper à l'esclavage en refusant l'usage de parole. Aussi, par la ruse des singes des contes populaires, l'histoire sociale des esclaves et des libres subalternes vivant dans cette société est racontée ce qui constitue une archive de l'époque. / This dissertation aims to show how the enslavement of African peoples on the African continent and in the Americas has deeply influenced the spiritual and intellectual lives of Africans both on the continent and in the diaspora, particularly in Brazil. African peoples learned from the beginning how to dialogue with other Africans ethnicities and how to assess the cultural values being imposed by those people who dominated them. They could transform those values to their needs. Also they managed to safeguard their ancestral spiritual heritage, creating a vudu, known as Lebabimibome, merged with the Messenger of the Fon/Yoruba religion Eshu-Legba, and with a monkey. In this way they wittingly illustrated the European idea that Africans were the missing link between men and monkeys. Some Africans strategically accepted this image and used it to escape slavery by refusing to use spoken words in their relationship with Europeans and Native Americans. By using the monkey's guile, as described in these animal tales, the oral tradition could integrate the hermeneutical aspect of Eshu-Legba to translate the social history of the enslaved and subaltern peoples within these fables which function as archives in Brazilian society. / O objetivo desta tese é de demonstrar um dos impactos da escravidão na historia de povos africanos e afrodescendentes, de como este fato marcou a vida espiritual e intelectual das diasporas nas Américas, e da brasileira em especial Também, teatamos mostrar como estas populações souberam dialogar primeiramente entre elas e em seguida apropriar-se e transformar e transformar os valores culturais dos povos que os subjugaram Ao mesmo tempo que adaptavam aos novos contextos, estas populações souberam preservar suas memorias espirituais e conseguiram criar intermediarios sagrados como aquele do Seja Hundê, Candomblé Jeje da Bahia, o vudum Lebabimibome, hibrido do Messageiro das religiões ancestrais fon e ioruba Exu-Legba e de um macaco Pela adoção desta nova manifestação religiosa, esses povos souberam estrategicament reciclar ao mesmo tempo uma velha idéia construida pelos colonizadores sobre os africanos, que os associavam aos macacos, que eles eram o elo que ligava o homem ao animal, mas para poder escapar à escravidão certos grupos africanos utilizaram a mimica como meio de comunicação com os estrangeiros; por outro lado pelas artimanhas dos macacos dos contos populares, a vida social dos escravos e dos livres subalternos desta sociedade é também contada, transformando-os em arquivos de suas épocas

This diploma thesis has been focused on the relationship of pupils in the 1. -3. grade of elementary school to the contemporary fairy tales. The theoretical part of my work is focused on the fairy tale as a genre (classic folk and modern fairy tale), on the media influence of the fairy tale, on its current status, development trends, the influence of recipient etc. My work has an investigative character too. It has been focused on the reading behavior of pupils, their behavior, the influence of family and school, on the development of reading, respectively focusing on this genre, on the influence of media etc. Based on questionnaires and interviews with pupils and their parents I will try to capture the current status. The research results are compared with the theoretical part and are supported with the attachment. The results are interpreted in the conclusion.

A feminist examination of the life of the Afrikaans poet Ingrid Jonker is preceded by a look at the conventional literary biography with its unique dual nature: scientific enquiry combined with the art of storytelling, which is aptly called “fiction under oath” (Gutiérrez 1992: 49). Subsequently, an overview of the theoretical basis of feminist ideology and literary approaches is presented with the emphasis on the psychoanalytical point of departure, which views women’s marginalized position as social instead of biological in origin, and therefore as changeable. Biography owes its important place in contemporary women’s writing to the fact that it documents the history and experience of women in the patriarchal system. Feminist biographers, influenced by Postmodernism, force the genre from its traditionally linear form and narrow focus on a famous, usually male subject. The result is a more fluid, cyclical portrayal of (usually) influential women, shedding more light on the social, domestic and personal spheres. Because this kind of biography does not claim to be authoritative, the biographer’s personal contribution and her methods are made explicit. The intuitive and experimental nature of feminist biography makes it suitable for an intertextual and even interdisciplinary approach. Jonker’s life is analysed against the background of a folk tale, The Red Shoes, which is an allegory for the sacrifice of the instinctive creative self or archetypal “wildish woman”. Ancient myths, which narratives of almost every culture share, are seen as responsible for the tenacious survival of the patriarchy through time, social change, and across cultural boundaries. For this reason, feminists see the creation of new myths or infusing old myths with new meaning as the key to women’s emancipation. Against this background, the following subtexts also act as shaping elements in the Ingrid Jonker biography: · The concept of a person’s life “script” unfolding according to repetitive messages laid down in the unconscious by authority figures; · The “conspiracy” between a biographee and her biographers in forming her public image; and · Six archetypes in the Jungian idiom that characterise a person’s journey to spiritual maturity, Examined with these subtexts in mind, Ingrid Jonker’s life story unfolds as follows: A poet in conflict with her time and “abandoned” by her parents, is displaced in pre-adolescence from a unstructured rural milieu where her instinctive creativity was allowed to develop freely, to a highly structured, limiting and artificial urban environment. She seems prophetically destined for a tragic end. Her obsession with death is fed by an inability to have meaningful relationships and to adjust to society’s double standards. Ever the victim of imagined or real betrayal, she joins the ranks of other female artists who follow the same destructive archetypal pattern. She is spurred on not only by her own feral recklessness, but also by other artists who are inspired by her flirtation with death. Upcoming generations are mesmerised by her “moth around a flame” life and, like children, ask time and again for the disastrous though darkly romantic story with its mythical proportions, which turned Jonker into an icon. In doing so, they manage their own collectively unconscious fear of the annihilation of death. The Red Shoes links with Kristeva’s distinction between semiotic and symbolic language. The former is non-rational, intuitive and signifies the maternal whereas the latter represents language that is masculine, rational, linear and therefore patriarchal and logocentric. / Dissertation (MA (Afrikaans))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Afrikaans / unrestricted

Les Yokai sont les créatures mythiques qui tapissent le folklore japonais. Bien qu’on traduise souvent le mot Yokai par « monstre », ils ne sont pas toujours méchants. En fait, un même Yokai peut être à la fois bon ou mauvais – leur personnalité est changeante selon les histoires. Je me demande alors si le contexte historique peut expliquer ces changements caractériels. J’observe donc lors de mon étude trois différents Yokai (Kappa, Tanuki et Tengu) dans les contes de trois ères historiques japonaises différentes afin de voir s’il y a vraiment un lien – et à l’inverse, voir s’il est possible de dater un conte de par le comportement du Yokai qui y figure. / Yokais are mythical creatures found in Japanese folklore. This word is often translated with “monster”, however this does not mean that they are always evil. In fact, one same creature can be both good and bad – their personalities vary depending on the tale. I am thus wondering if historical context can explain these characteristic changes. Therefore, I will here study the behaviour of three different Yokais (Kappa, Tanuki and Tengu) in tales of three different Japanese eras to see if there is indeed a connection – and also the other way around, to see if it would be possible to date a tale based on its Yokais’ behaviour.