In the 1980s Rainer Werner Fassbinders Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod (1976) and Thomas Bernhard’s Heldenplatz (1988) caused two of the biggest theatre scandals in the history of German-language literature, leading to extensive debates in the media. A comparative examination of the “Fassbinder-Kontroversen” (1976, 1984, 1985) and the “Causa Heldenplatz” (1988) reveals many crucial similarities. Both scandals must be understood within their historical and political context. Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod was highly criticized as an anti-Semitic play, while Heldenplatz was said to slander crassly the Austrian people. Bernhard was also attacked for using Jews in a way which could reinforce latent anti-Semitic sentiments. This thesis questions such premises for their reductive readings of these texts. Bernhard’s Heldenplatz can certainly be perceived as a play that was made to be scandal-provoking. Sigmund Freud’s and William G. Niederland’s theories on trauma, however, can lead to a deeper understanding of the text beyond the obvious level of provocation. Most commentary on the play criticizes it for portraying Jews as psychically diseased. My claim, by contrast, is that their neuroticism or traumatization should not be interpreted as limiting the political validity of their comments, but rather as an essential aspect of their protest against Austria’s repression of its involvement in Nazi crimes. Like Heldenplatz, Fassbinder’s Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod can be seen as a text that refutes the denial that there is no anti-Semitism in post-war German-speaking societies. The difference is that Fassbinder deals with the traumatization of his characters counter-intuitively, namely, by introducing the ironic, distancing effects of camp. In her essay „Notes on ‚Camp‘“, Susan Sontag claims that camp “sees everything in quotation marks”. An analysis of Fassbinder’s play reveals it to be a montage of citations and stereotypes. He thereby deconstructs and denounces stereotypes about Jews.

ABSTRACT In this thesis, it is argued that the performance of three plays written by Daniel David Moses: Brébeuf's Ghost, The Indian Medicine Shows and Almighty Voice and his Wife function as healing ceremonies. This healing - so necessary after the cultural genocide wrought upon First Nations peoples by the Canadian government's attempts to legislate and educate them out of existence - is brought about through Moses' examination of the dichotic underpinnings of euro-western notions of absence and presence and how this dichotomy leads to conflict between the euro-western concept of disease as a purely physical phenomena and the indigenous view of disease as being the physical manifestation of spiritual imbalance, of not living in accord with the land. The link Heidegger makes between absence and the essence of things - an example of this being his assertion that the essence of a wine jug "does not lie at all in the material of which it consists, but in the void that holds" ("The Thing" 169) - is representative of the viewpoint of the euro-western characters of the play, most of whom base their understanding of the world and the things in it on their perception of voids. For both euro-western and native characters in these plays, physical and psychological disease is linked to the idea of absence. Disease, as a social construct, is argued as a manifestation of the physical and spiritual voids created by a preoccupation with absence. The euro-western relationship to 'things' and commodities to fill the absence of 'self' is. I argue that the performance of the text is a type of ceremony designed to physically manifest the spiritual, akin to such rituals as the Hopi katina ceremony and the Navajo red ant ceremony, whose aims are to restore the wellness of an individual and, thus, the group. It is the performance of absence which is the key to understanding the works' healing value.

C. S. Lewis’s novel, Till We Have Faces, has been misunderstood by both scholars and readers alike. This paper seeks to read the text through the lens of Lewis’s own literary criticism. It begins by presenting Lewis’s fundamental dilemma of the mind, the rift between the rational and the imaginative faculties. Lewis posits myth as a “partial solution” to this problem. This paper traces Lewis’s ideas from his early position on myth as “beautiful lies” to the more nuanced, later position where myth is connected with terms like “truth,” “reality,” “fact” and “history.” Using the text of “On Stories,” and the chapter “On Myth” from Lewis’s book An Experiment in Criticism, this paper argues that Lewis, because of the basic elusiveness of mythic experience, steps into the use of story or narrative as a provisional solution for the dilemma of the mind. This is then applied to Till We Have Faces, arguing that the story is not a myth or an allegory, but a realistic novel with a hidden mythic reality, a Lewisian narrative that fulfills his requirements of Story. A close reading of Till We Have Faces connects the text with Lewis’s realism of content and realism of presentation. This reading then places the text within the problem of rationality set against imaginative reception. Till We Have Faces is a test case for Lewis’s extensive ideas about Divine Myth, its hiddenness behind and within narrative, and its power to heal a divided mind. The narrative of Till We Have Faces, for the main character Orual, as well as for the receptive reader, comes to embody the transformative power of extra-literary myth within the containment of word-dense, tensed story.

C. S. Lewis’s novel, Till We Have Faces, has been misunderstood by both scholars and readers alike. This paper seeks to read the text through the lens of Lewis’s own literary criticism. It begins by presenting Lewis’s fundamental dilemma of the mind, the rift between the rational and the imaginative faculties. Lewis posits myth as a “partial solution” to this problem. This paper traces Lewis’s ideas from his early position on myth as “beautiful lies” to the more nuanced, later position where myth is connected with terms like “truth,” “reality,” “fact” and “history.” Using the text of “On Stories,” and the chapter “On Myth” from Lewis’s book An Experiment in Criticism, this paper argues that Lewis, because of the basic elusiveness of mythic experience, steps into the use of story or narrative as a provisional solution for the dilemma of the mind. This is then applied to Till We Have Faces, arguing that the story is not a myth or an allegory, but a realistic novel with a hidden mythic reality, a Lewisian narrative that fulfills his requirements of Story. A close reading of Till We Have Faces connects the text with Lewis’s realism of content and realism of presentation. This reading then places the text within the problem of rationality set against imaginative reception. Till We Have Faces is a test case for Lewis’s extensive ideas about Divine Myth, its hiddenness behind and within narrative, and its power to heal a divided mind. The narrative of Till We Have Faces, for the main character Orual, as well as for the receptive reader, comes to embody the transformative power of extra-literary myth within the containment of word-dense, tensed story.

Chapter One begins by outlining the space magic occupies in Western culture, clarifying what I mean by the term "magic". I examine aspects of indigenous American sacred traditions which have influenced and which prefigure magic realism. I review the development of the aesthetic in its Latin American context, touching on the Chronicles, the role of nationalism and erotic rhetoric, the influence of European modernism and the role of the intellectual in Latin American society. Chapter Two examines the development of a realist aesthetic in Europe since the Enlightenment. This review of its manifestations and counter-traditions in European culture is founded upon a discussion of aspects of the philosophy of Kant. I focus on the influence of Surrealism which is particularly illuminating of Latin American magic realism. The impacts of anthropology and psychoanalysis on Latin American writers are also reviewed. Chapter Two includes a review of formulations of magic realism influential in the field of English studies and concludes with a working definition which is used as a basis for the discussions of the three novels analysed in this study. Chapter Three is a study of the development of Alejo Carpentier's version of magic realism culminating in the writing of The Kingdom of this World in 1949. Through using both European and indigenous American techniques and perspectives he hoped to create a literature which could represent the complex realities of Latin American life and establish a mythology for the founding of a unified Latin American identity.

This thesis is an examination of the Gothic elements present in a selection of works by Canadian playwright Judith Thompson. The Gothic genre is marked by continual flux and adaptation, ensuring that its ability to inspire terror, as well as its relevance as a form of cultural critique, remains undiminished. Gothic texts seek to uncover the anxieties and uncertainties that societies would prefer to repress, and then forcing a confrontation with those elements. Frequently this pattern of repression and return takes the form of various kinds of hauntings, as well as the monstrous. As this emphasis on the “return of the repressed” would suggest, psychoanalysis will figure prominently in my analysis of Thompson’s work and is woven throughout the four chapters. Chapter One concentrates on establishing a working definition of the Gothic, its history and development, and the three subcategories of the genre that I will be focusing on in the subsequent chapters: the postmodern Gothic, the feminist Gothic and the Canadian Gothic. All three Gothic subgenres share their affinity for translating late twentieth-century anxieties into the language of the Gothic. They also share a resistance to closure or solutions of any kind, even if such solutions would seem to be advantageous to the author’s putative ideological stance. The works by Thompson I have chosen evidence her preoccupation with postmodern, feminist and contemporary Canadian concerns. She expresses these concerns in a unique style that blends contemporary literary techniques with the more timeless elements of the Gothic tradition.

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This thesis is an examination of the Gothic elements present in a selection of works by Canadian playwright Judith Thompson. The Gothic genre is marked by continual flux and adaptation, ensuring that its ability to inspire terror, as well as its relevance as a form of cultural critique, remains undiminished. Gothic texts seek to uncover the anxieties and uncertainties that societies would prefer to repress, and then forcing a confrontation with those elements. Frequently this pattern of repression and return takes the form of various kinds of hauntings, as well as the monstrous. As this emphasis on the “return of the repressed” would suggest, psychoanalysis will figure prominently in my analysis of Thompson’s work and is woven throughout the four chapters. Chapter One concentrates on establishing a working definition of the Gothic, its history and development, and the three subcategories of the genre that I will be focusing on in the subsequent chapters: the postmodern Gothic, the feminist Gothic and the Canadian Gothic. All three Gothic subgenres share their affinity for translating late twentieth-century anxieties into the language of the Gothic. They also share a resistance to closure or solutions of any kind, even if such solutions would seem to be advantageous to the author’s putative ideological stance. The works by Thompson I have chosen evidence her preoccupation with postmodern, feminist and contemporary Canadian concerns. She expresses these concerns in a unique style that blends contemporary literary techniques with the more timeless elements of the Gothic tradition.

In indigenous African societies, cultural expectations compel women to restrict themselves from excelling in whatever they do as a way of conforming to prevailing customary expectations. This is because those women who are said to disregard cultural expectations by aspring to achieve more than their male conterparts face societal consequences. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2020. / Andrew Mellon Foundation. / African Languages / PhD / Unrestricted

Bibliography: pages 74-77. / This paper represents a study of contemporary narrative theory in relation to the late style of Henry James. Using the work of various narrative theorists it examines the concepts of the Narrator, Speech Representation, Focalization and Figural Narration. This is the main emphasis of part I. The work of the different theorists is examined selectively in order to give a concise but comprehensive summary of the chosen narrative concepts. Part II of the dissertation deals with the relationship of Henry James to the ideology of modernism. The modernist notions of 'showing' and 'telling' are discussed in relation to the narrative theory of part I. This section also deals with James's notions of dramatization, foreshortening and impersonal narration. The narrative style of Henry James's later novels is discussed in relation to the concepts of narrative theory examined in part I. Furthermore, part II examines the difficulties James faced m constructing his narratives and how they are manifested as discrepancies in his novelistic project. The specific facets discussed are those of the effacement of the authorial narrator and the representation of consciousness; this discussion also deals with James's approach to these facets of narrative representation. Part III consists of an examination of selected 'Prefaces' to James's novels, and discusses these as a reflection of James's ideas of narrative. It combines parts 1 and II in a discussion of James's notions of narrative, and utilizes the contemporary narrative theory to order to illuminate some of these notions. In order to show how James utilized certain narrative techniques an analysis of extracts from The Wings of the Dove is undertaken. This section examines James's use of the Narrator, Speech Representation, Focalization and Figural Narration. Part III also deals with the extent to which James succeeds in his project and furthermore, shows that certain narrative devices James employed contradict his notions of dramatization and objectivity.