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This thesis is a thematic study of the work of the early Twentieth Century Chinese writer Xu Dishan (Luo Huasheng) (1894-1941). The title, "Mending the Web," is at once a reference to a specific story by Xu and an indication of the importance he placed on spiritual values in a changing world. His work represents a modest search for a solution to the dislocation of his society - his own attempt to mend the broken web of modern China. In his work Xu promoted personal solutions and individual salvation rather than the whole scale transformation of society. He stressed the importance of working for change within a given framework - he was a reformer, not a revolutionary, a moderator searching for a synthesis based on universal values rooted in both the Chinese and Western traditions. The values upheld in his fiction are uncompromising - one must follow one' s conscience, accept duty and responsibility calmly, show charity and forgiveness and, above all be true to oneself. Xu1s stress on personal and spiritual solutions marks him out from the majority of his iconoclastic contemporaries who advocated wholesale social change. In Chapter One, I try to provide an historical and ideological context for Xu, a comparative background from which to examine him in relation to his contemporary writers and the times in which he lived. The value Xu placed on a unifying framework, or a sense of order to replace chaos, is made apparent in Chapter Two, where I discuss his quest for values and the romance and mythopoeic modes which inform much of his work. In particular I look at the quest themes which influence the structure and message of his stories, concentrating primarily on an analysis of "Yuguan" and "A Daughter's Heart" based on an extrapolation of the "monomyths" of Joseph Campbell and Northrop Frye. I examine the influence of Christianity on Xu's work, his emphasis on a strongly moral vision and his search for an affirmation of life and the individual's potentiality for goodness. In Chapter Three I analyse Xu's attitude to life and fate in relation to his use of the coincidence motif which acts in his stories as a catalyst and test for action. The coincidence makes the world small, and thus provides a testing ground for characters' actions. A vital element in this is the concept of baoying or requital, whereby an individual is responsible for his or her actions and is judged accordingly. Xu believed an individual has a responsibility to make the best of an unknown fate, but still to work within given limits to have an influence for the good. A strong moral grammar informs Xu's work, providing a framework for judging the acts of his characters. In Chapter Four I look at Xu's use of female protagonists to embody his philosophy of life. Women like Yuguan and Chuntao represent Xu's ideals in their most specific form, embodying that sense of affirmation and hope so central to Xu' s work and offering models of human potentiality, an optomistic vision of life as it could be. In the conclusion I touch on the role of morality in Xu's fiction. His work is deeply moral in orientation and offers an interesting contrast to that of his contemporaries equally engaged in writing fiction for a purpose. Xu's concern for spiritual values was almost unique among writers of that period. His fiction is primarily a fiction of ideas and his themes and messages dominate. He was searching for a solution to the dislocation of his society, as were his contemporaries, but he did not suggest a radical social transformation but rather to work within the existing framework. He looked for personal solutions, believing in the innate capacity of the human being to change for the better. He advocated change, but stressed that it must first come individually, through the development of self-knowledge, on a modest scale, before the world can be transformed. His solution was modest yet profound, and filled with hope. / Arts, Faculty of / Asian Studies, Department of / Graduate

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Submitted to the Faculty of Arts in fufilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English at the University of Zululand, 1999. / The objective of this study is to affirm the presence of the intentional consciousness / stance in texts which purport to depict reality or real events. Intentionality, in the context of this thesis, is not conceived as a pre-existing thought or idea, which precedes the text, but as something, which inheres in the text and is produced in it. The Cartesian split between consciousness and being which the former conception enacts is here elided and authorial intention is read and produced in the process of writing itself. This distinction is significant because the main argument of this thesis is that authorial intention in texts that purport to depict real events and intervene in a particular socio-historical process for mobilizational purposes, leads to the production of a certain kind of text which deploys specific narrative strategies that consolidate its reading and rendering of events and re-inforce narrative closures. These intentionally motivated closures are embedded in narrative strategies, which are seen as both necessary and imperative for the consolidation and legitimation of the message and to foreclose other readings. Authorially motivated closures are predominant in classic realist texts in which as Roger Webster (1990:70) argues "there is a clear hierarchy of discourses controlled by a privileged central voice or narrator". This narrative voice or, to quote MacCabe, this "authorial and authoritarian 'metalanguage' judges and controls all other discourses in the text". And in classic realist texts in which the author does not seek to mask his presence by using other narrators and overtly seeks to move his audience in a specified direction, these closures become even more evident within the texture of the text. Texts of this nature are seen as means of achieving particular ends rather than as autonomous, independent units existing in a self-referential world of significance. Much of contemporary critical theory has unfortunately tried to efface the author from the text and/ or tried to marginalize the role of the author in the text. This thesis, however, seeks to re-inscribe the agency of the author in his / her intentional stance with regard to the text, more specifically in texts which depict real events and seek to impact upon the real world and the target audience. This thesis shows how this agency is enacted within the world of the text. Very briefly, this agency, I argue, is reproduced in narrative strategies which revolve around the twin poles of authority and legitimation; and these strategies operate at two levels within the text and these are the levels of the real events depicted in the narrative and then the prevailing discursive paradigms of the times. A narrative dialectic is thus erected between these two levels in the texts and this is mediated at every point by the active presence of the authorial engagement. The first chapter, which is largely introductory, serves as the theoretical clearing ground for the thesis. In it, I argue the case for intentionality by reviewing various critical positions in contemporary theory in relation to the author and the interpretation of texts. Thereafter I move on to spell out the ways in which authorial intention is embedded in realist narratives of the kind I have described. In my argument, I draw upon the critical practices and theoretical positions of postcolonial, feminist and Third World writers and critics whose work constitute an alternative tradition in which is inscribed specifically overt socio-political agencies. In the chapters that follow, I adopt the strategy of sketching out the historical and discursive context of the text. Thus chapter two focuses on the historical and discursive context of Luke's Book of Acts while chapter three focuses on the analysis of Acts. In the same manner, chapter four focuses on the historical and discursive context of Sol Plaatje's Native Life in South Africa while chapter five focuses on the analysis of the text (Native Life in South Africa). A brief conclusion sums up the argument of the thesis. / University of Zululand

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This thesis aims to re-examine the first decade of Rebecca West's literary and journalistic career, based on an analysis of a newly discovered novel West began writing in 1909/1910. "The Sentinel", although incomplete and unrevised, is a key text to an understanding of West's early literary and feminist apprenticeship, helping to enrich reconsiderations of West's oeuvre in recent criticism. The recovery of West's writing into a female modernist canon provides a useful starting point, although the intertextual analysis of West's fiction and non-fiction during this period will show that this kind of categorisation is an inadequate representation of the complexity of her work. The limited time-frame of this study, 1910 to 1922, magnifies West's writing processes to reveal her self-conscious negotiations as a woman writer with the ferment of ideas and changes arising during the pre-war and war period, particularly in relation to contemporary feminism and an emergent male modernist aesthetic. The first chapter is concerned with identifying, dating and examining the significance of "The Sentinel" as source material for West's later published fiction and non-fiction. Many of West's pervading interests are already evident in the novel, illustrating in retrospect how her writing was shaped by differing literary contacts, feminist affiliations, the war and personal experience. Chapters Two and Three consider the impact on West's journalism and fiction of her associations with the radical feminist journal, The Freewoman, and her introduction to avant-garde writers. West's unsuccessful attempt to rewrite "The Sentinel" as the novel, Adela, is discussed in relation to selected feminist articles and the short story, "Indissoluble Matrimony", illustrating her attempts to adapt her feminist interests to aesthetic ones. Chapter Four shows how the war provided a cutting edge and a point of definition in West's writing at this time, both in her consideration of the role of art and of the gendered structures of society. The influence of writers such as H.G. Wells, Ford Madox Ford and Henry James is discussed in relation to West's preoccupation with the role of women during the Great War. This material provides an important context for the analysis of The Return of the Soldier in Chapter Five. Chapter Six is a transitional one, describing the effect of the war and its aftermath on contemporary feminist ideology, and evaluating Rebecca West's attempt to position herself as a writer and a feminist in relation to these changes. Chapter Seven argues that The Judge (1922) offers a cumulative history of West's literary and feminist apprenticeship, at once completing the cycle begun with "The Sentinel" and initiating a different stage of writing for West during the twenties.

Tradi tionally, in Isaianic studies, the aim of many commentators SInce the time of Duhm has been to try to rediscover the words of the eighth century prophet of Jerusalem. Descriptive words such as "a u then tic" and "secondary" betray the misconception tha t material which does not reach back to the time of the prophet is somehow less authentic and authoritative. The present study follows more recent trends in looking at the Book of Isaiah as a literary whole and in arguing that each section must be understood and interpreted not only in the light of its immediate context but also in the light of its place and function within the entire book. Six chapters (Isaiah 28-33) are analysed in two ways. Firstly the vocabulary is examined to establish linguistic and thematic similarities with other parts of the book and with the rest of the OT; secondly the many subsections within the six chapters are looked at contextually to determine how they relate to each other and consequently reveal a consistent and unified message. The way in which the material is arranged in chs 28-33 to highlight various themes may be seen as a microcosm of what is happening throughout the en tire book. One of the techniques used to actualize and unify composite traditions may be the concept of wisdom which seeks to instruct the reader in the way of righteousness. This analysis of chs 28-33 complements a similar one carried out by Sweeney [1988] on chs 1-4. The conclusions, too, are similar in that both studies emphasize that any section of Isaianic material, large or small, only makes sense ,*hen looked at in the light of the entire book.

A reading of the first volume of Sigmund Freud's Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1916-17 [1915-17]), concentrating on the account of the technique for the interpretation of dreams. In these lectures Freud attempts to elaborate an empirical model for the investigation and explanation of the dream. Closer examination of this argument, however, quickly brings to light certain diffIculties that allow us to question whether the validity of psychoanalytic procedures could ever be sustained in these terms. It is suggested that this account requires the introduction of conditions and assumptions of another order. This argument amounts to a critique of the attempt to provide empirical foundations for certain key psychoanalytic concepts, in favour of a deduction of the validity of those concepts at the level of formal conditions of the technique of interpretation itself. It suggests that the legitimacy of that technique of interpretation depends upon a particular mode of deduction that can be considered characteristic of psychoanalytic procedure in general. The validity of the central concepts of psychoanalysis is then to be considered in terms of the procedure of argument from which their status is derived. Two models of psychoanalytic investigation are considered - an empirical model for the explanation of the dream and a more formal account of the fundamental principles of interpretation. The thesis concludes that these two models are not in fact exclusive but are rather complementary, and that a comprehensive statement of the conditions of validity of the technique of psychoanalytic interpretation can only be achieved through their interaction and articulation. At the same time it attempts to demonstrate that these issues have a fundamental influence upon our conception of the orientation and goals of that technique of interpretation.

The purpose of this study was to compare the philosophical stance, terminology, methodology, and research findings of two representative and influential investigators in the field of nonverbal behavior, Ray L. Birdwhistell and Paul Ekman, drawing theoretical implications and practical applications for oral interpretation. The study found that while Birdwhistell has maintained that all nonverbal behavior is culturally learned and must be examined within the communication gestalt, Ekman has emphasized the innate, universal, and expressive elements of bodily movement, especially that of the face. Ekman has recognized the role of cultural learning, however. It was found that neither Birdwhistell's nor Ekman's research has rendered support for any of the theoretical approaches to nonverbal behavior which oral interpreters have entertained in the past. However, it was found that Birdwhistell's and Ekman's approaches to nonverbal behavior do justify a more deliberate training strategy in oral interpretation. It was found that Ekman's external variable research methodology which encompasses both indicative and communicative methods offers more chance of generating meaningful and useful research in oral interpretation than does Birdwhistell's structural approach. It was also found that Ekman's constructs of emblem, illustrator, regulator, adaptor, and affect display offer the most workable vocabulary with which to discuss and elucidate nonverbal behavior, and that Ekman's research which is continually updating and expanding these categories illuminates concepts with which oral interpretation scholars have been grappling for years.

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