Thesis (M.A.)--University of Delaware, 2008. / Principal faculty advisor: Kevin Kerrane, Dept. of English. Includes bibliographical references.

M.A. (English) / Much scholarship dealing with works belonging to Athol Fugard's first decade as a writer does so distortedly or inadequately. This study traces and evaluates Fugard's formative and underexplored first decade, which has only recently become available in its entirety for scrutiny, by means of a systematic study of themes and the evolution of narrative and theatrical techniques, and, in some aspects, relates it to works of later phases which fall beyond the scope of this study...

The preceding study has been prompted by the inordinate stress placed on the separation between dramatic texts as literature and stage performances as theatre an approach still widely adopted in universities and colleges of education throughout the world. The traditional distinction between the dramatic text and its stage performance is first accounted for and then re-examined in the light of the new insights gained from semiotics. In the discussion of the relationship between the, dramatic text and performance, care is exercised not to approach the subject with a bias towards the text as more important than the performance or vice versa. The performance orientation of various elements of a dramatic text is then considered with special emphasis placed on dialogue and didascalies in dramatic texts generally. The focus of attention is eventually narrowed down to the dialogue and didascalies in Athol Fugard's Plavland and My Children! My Africa! / Afrikaans & Theory of Literature / M.A. (Theory of Literature)

The preceding study has been prompted by the inordinate stress placed on the separation between dramatic texts as literature and stage performances as theatre an approach still widely adopted in universities and colleges of education throughout the world. The traditional distinction between the dramatic text and its stage performance is first accounted for and then re-examined in the light of the new insights gained from semiotics. In the discussion of the relationship between the, dramatic text and performance, care is exercised not to approach the subject with a bias towards the text as more important than the performance or vice versa. The performance orientation of various elements of a dramatic text is then considered with special emphasis placed on dialogue and didascalies in dramatic texts generally. The focus of attention is eventually narrowed down to the dialogue and didascalies in Athol Fugard's Plavland and My Children! My Africa! / Afrikaans and Theory of Literature / M.A. (Theory of Literature)

Please read the abstract in the 00front part of this document / Dissertation (MA (English))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / English / unrestricted

Thesis (MA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2000. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Most critics and academics have concentrated on the referential function of Fugard's dramatic dialogue. In this thesis I' argue that to notice just one way in which the language functions tends to limit the text. My aim, therefore, is to look at the other ways in which language functions in selected Fugard plays. I explore the way in which Fugard uses dialect and sociolect to establish a stage world that looks and sounds recognisably South African to South Africans. I investigate how .certain assumptions (on the part of the audience) accompany the acceptance of the stage world as 'real' and how Fugard uses subtextual inferences to force the audience to critically re-evaluate these assumptions. I argue that the way to consciously understand and evaluate the sub text is through a detailed investigation of the different ways in which language functions in dramatic dialogue. Therefore, by applying Pfister's theories on the multi functionality of dramatic dialogue to selected Fugard plays, I look at how characters reveal themselves to the audience through the choice of specific words, subject matter and language variant. I also investigate, by applying Quigley's observations regarding Pinter's plays to Fugard's characters, the way in which language reveals characters striving to negotiate their status within relationships. My argument is that as far as characterisation and relationships are concerned the actual referential function of the words reveals only the tip of the iceberg - the rest lies beneath this and is to be uncovered by looking at the other ways in which the language functions. Finally I look at the way in which language as the medium of communication per se is foregrounded in Fugard's plays and how this accentuates the role that language plays in communication, as well as the failure of communication, in the South African context. Related to this metalingual function of dramatic dialogue I investigate the idea, put forward by Ibitokun, that language can be used as a 'mask' behind which a person can hide his true identity. I agree with Ibitokun that this is not only a strategy for survival but that, when consciously adopted, it is also a means for challenging the status quo. The Fugard plays I have selected are Master Harold ... and the boys, Boesman and Lena, Sizwe Bansi is Dead and The Island. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die meerderheid kritici en academici het in die verlede gekonsentreer op die referensiële funksie van dramatiese dialoog in die werke van Fugard. In hierdie tesis argumenteer ek dat so 'n enkele gesigspunt op die rol wat taal speel neig om die teks te beperk. Derhalwe kyk ek in die studie na die ander wyses waarop taal in geselekteerde Fugard dramas funksioneer. . Ek begin met 'n ondersoek na Fugard se gebruik van dialek en sosiolek om 'n wêreld op die verhoog te skep wat herkenbaar Suid-Afrikaans klink vir Suid-Afrikaners. Hierna bekyk ek die wyse waarop sekere aannames (deur die gehoor) saamgaan met die aanvaarding van die "realiteit" van die verhoogwêreld en hoe Fugard subtekstuele verwysings benut om die gehoor te dwing tot kritiese herevaluering van daardie aannames. Die argument is voorts dat 'n gedetailleerde ontleding van die wyse waarop taal in dramatiese dialoog fuksioneer onontbeerlik is indien mens die subteks wil verstaan en ontleed. Deur Pfister se teorieë oor die multifunksionaliteit van dramatiese dialoog toe te pas op geselekteerde Fugard toneeltekste, kyk ek dus hoe die onderskeie karakters hulle aan gehore openbaar deur hul gebruik van spesifieke woorde, inhoude en taalvariante. Ek gebruik ook Quigley se observasies oor Pinter se stukke om te bepaal tot watter mate die taal van Fugard se karakters dui op mense wat poog om hulle status in verhoudings te vestig. My argument is dat die referensiële funksie van taal slegs die oppervlak van karakterisering en verhoudings verteenwoordig - die res lê dieper verberg en moet geopenbaar word deur te kyk na die ander wyses waarop taal funksioneer. Laastens bespreek ek die mate waartoe taal per se in Fugard se stukke na vore kom en hoe dit die rol van taal in kommunikasie benadruk, asook die tekort daaraan in die Suid- Afrikaanse konteks. Verwant aan hierdie metalinguistiese funksie van taal, toets ek Ibitokun se idee dat taal 'n masker kan wees waaragter die persoon sy ware identiteit versteek. Ek stem met Ibitokun saam dat hierdie nie slegs 'n strategie vir oorlewing is nie, maar dat dit, doelbewus aangewend, ook gebruik kan word om die status quo te bevraagteken. Die Fugard tekste wat bekyk word is Master Harold ...and the boys, Boesman and Lena, Sizwe Bansi is Dead en The Island.

Athol Fugard was born in Middelburg, Karroo, on the 11th June; 1932, his mother an Afrikaner, his father an English-speaking South African, possibly of Irish descent. When he was three years old, the family sold the small general dealer's store in the village and moved to Port Elizabeth, which has been his home ever since, though he has lived at various times in Europe, America, and other parts of Africa. After schooling at Port Elizabeth Technical College, he went to the University of Cape Town in 1950, where he read philosophy and social anthropology, supporting himself by working in the vacations as a waiter on the South African Railways. Chapter 1, p. 1.

This thesis examines three South African memoirs using M. M. Bakhtin’s theories of the dialogical relationship in language and literature. By offering an alternative to a postmodern or multicultural interpretation of autobiographies, Bakhtin’s precepts, that define a dialogic, help to reframe a way of discussing memoirs and avoiding dead-ends previously arrived at by essayists in James Olney’s 1980 collection. Bakhtin’s ideas discussed here, which include the “once-occurrent moment”, “architectonic contraposition”, ”emotional-volitional tone”, “alibi”, “non-alibi”, and “centripetal” and “centrifugal” force, help to rebuild a discussion based on temporary and evolving self truth rather than fiction, the postmodern interpretation, or confession, the new-age secular spiritualism based on multicultural and politically correct standards. For this, each author’s memoir had to be examined separately and a conclusion was arrived at through inductive analysis. Rather than try to find similar characteristics, I focused on what made each memoir different and unique. Janet Varner Gunn’s Autobiography: Toward A Poetics of Experience (1982) refocused the debate over autobiography on process. The question, what steps did each author take toward writing about himself, led the discussion to an examination of the priorities each author exemplified. Beginning with Fugard who emphasized spatial, concrete, and sensory detail to help him contain his emotional life, the thesis moves on to an examination of Coetzee’s sense of justice. From the physical and intellectual world follows Breytenbach’s spiritual space-making. In each memoir, control of space is evident on different levels of experience. Articulating space inevitably leads to a discussion of boundaries. Here, Charles Taylor’s emphasis on the modern self’s need to articulate a horizon or a framework is helpful in generalizing the effect of the autobiographical process. The conclusion reached is that autobiography is inherently centrifugal: it moves away from the center of cultural thinking because its “truth” bolsters itself on dialogical process which does not depend on a fixed authority but rather on communicative exchange. As an example of exchange, autobiography’s central truth is that it returns to a “unique point of origin”, namely the self, only to reconnect to the other in a potentially eternal exchange of responsiveness moving away from the center.

M.A. (English) / The aim of this d i s s e r t a t i on is to identify the influence of Bertolt Bretht on Fugard's life and work in South African theatre. As Fugard himself is not German-speaking, and his experience of Brecht is perforce through translations of Brecht into English, this is not a comparative study bet veeri the dramatists. It merely uses Fugard's own statements about his reading of Brecht in English at various points in his career, from the 1950s to the present, to show this particular aspect of his own development as a dramatist. The standard works on Fugard - Athol Fugard, Stephen Gray (ed.) (Johannesburg: McGraw-Hill, 1982), Dennis Walder, Athol Fugard (London: Macmillan, 1984) and Russell Vandenbroucke, Truths the Hand can Touch (Johannesburg: Donker, 1986) - refer only glancingly to this possibility. The introduction establishes the many references Fugard has made to Brecht in his writing - which includes not only his plays, but his novel, filmscripts, notebooks, letters and interviews and interprets how Fugard perceives various Brechtian theatre principles, such as the use of the alienation effect, the epic nature of drama and the function of theatre in the community. In the following chapters Fugard's vorks are examined, in order to show how Brecht has been of use to him at various key points in his career. This is done chronologically, so that a larger picture of the influence on Fugard's development as a dramatist and his changing use of Brecht as a source may be seen. The conclusion of this dissertation takes the findings of the previous chapters and assesses the nature of the BrechtFugard link, taking into account the different aspects and levels. This is briefly compared to the findings of the latest critical work to have corne out in which Fugard features - Martin Orkin, Drama and the South African State (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1991) - in an attempt to show how using the methodology of a source and influence study like this is of value in coming to a deeper understanding of the dramaturgy of a writer like Fugard...

This dissertation seeks to address the multiple ways face or one’s public self-image is attacked, supported and maintained in Athol Fugard’s The Road to Mecca, My Children! My Africa! and Valley Song, and through this discussion demonstrate how the notion of face can make a contribution to the study and understanding of Athol Fugard’s work. In the pursuit of their goals/objectives, interactants perform speech acts which may threaten the face of other participants. The choice of strategies available to participants in the performance of these face-threatening acts (FTAs) includes going on record, off record (indirectly) or avoiding the FTA altogether (saying nothing). Each text offers a fresh perspective from which face can be analysed: rebelliousness against conformism (The Road to Mecca); the perspective of the cross-racial, cross-cultural relationships (My Children! My Africa!); and the context of a closely-knit family relationship (Valley Song). / English Studies / M.A. (Theory of Literature)