The genre of the romance has a long and complex history, encompassing a diversity of literary forms. In this dissertation, I focus on the sub-genre of the domestic romance and on the ways in which this form has represented the problematics of gender as they are constructed within the home and family under patriarchy. I examine the notion of the dichotomy between public and private worlds and the demarcation of these zones as gendered, as domains of masculine and feminine activity respectively. This opposition is a consequence of the development of the middle-class family unit in England attendant on the emergence of capitalism from the late sixteenth century onwards, which resulted in a gendered division of labour. The domestic romance bears the traces of these historical processes as it negotiates the position of women as wives and mothers in domestic worlds ordered by patriarchy. I trace these mediations through three texts. Wuthering Heights, I argue, enacts a bold disruption of the organisation of the unregulated libidinal energy of its protagonists Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff. The restoration of domestic harmony at the text's closure is an uneasy one. The Thorn Birds is situated within the mass literary culture peculiar to the twentieth century. Working from within the limitations and formulae of the contemporary romantic 'bestseller', the text offers multiple examples of female discontent and of acts of rebellion by women against the structures and practices constraining their lives, but these rebellions are circumscribed and contained by the text's endorsement of the figure of the 'proper woman - the dutiful wife and mother - as the realisation of femininity. Possession relocates the romance within the framework of academic theoretical discourse, addressing questions of the patriarchal construction of the feminine informed by the new conceptual and narrative categories of postmodernism. The novel ultimately affirms the romantic recoding of history in its own closure, positing its endless narrative possibilities. In the final analysis, I situate the romance as offering manifold narrative possibilities to women in very different historical dispensations. Bibliography: pages 91-94.

This paper will examine moments in literature where the narratives of baseball as American myth and those involving African Americans converge, moments where authors confront (either consciously or not) the implications of both narratives within the same shared space. It is at these moments of convergence that the mythic language surrounding the game and its interaction with African Americans are thrown into dramatic relief. A myth, says Roland Barthes in his Mythologies, is a kind of "metalanguage," a narrative which refers to and talks about another narrative; it is at least twice removed from any referent which exists in reality. "What is invested in the concept," writes Barthes, "is less reality than a certain knowledge of reality." Examining this space will reveal how myths operate and continue to affect an understanding of personal and national identities, especially since this space involves the intersection of the emblematic discourse of baseball with a black presence that appears to question the very tenets of established national memory.

Summary in English. / Bibliography: pages 148-152. / This study seeks to understand the visual dynamics of contemporary science fiction cities in film by exploring a number of diverse architectural and cinematic influences. The argument is initiated through a consideration of utopianism and science fiction, before moving onto specific architectural analysis focused on utopian plans from the modernist period, and the growth of New York during the 1920s. Through a brief reading of German Expressionist Cinema in Chapter 3, the spatial and architectural groundwork is laid for the analysis of several films in Chapters 4-6: Disclosure, Blade Runner, Selen, The Devil's Advocate, 12 Monkeys and The Fifth Element. (While not all the films would be considered as science fiction, those non-science fiction films offer provocative readings of the city as a whole). Within the discussion of these films, the paradigmatic nature of New York and Los Angeles is also analyzed. The author finds that the central thesis holds, though discussion of other contemporary films not dealt with here could produce an alternative interpretation. Specifically, the work of Edward Soja and Michel Foucault provide fruitful lines of examination through an engagement with the spatiality of postmodernism, though postmodernism is not analyzed in itself. The dissertation aims to have current application, in terms of the recent release of some of the films, but is also written with the aim of future expansion, stressing the design aspect of contemporary film.

Includes bibliography. / I have taken my notion of 'Post-Environmentalism' from John Young's book of the same name which seemed to me to provide an eclectic and essentially deconstructive approach to the debate surrounding 'the environmentalist crisis'. As the term suggests, the debate is one subject to essentialist thinking which constitutes it as simple and singular. In particular I am interested in the ways in which that logic is one of specularity, forwarded by a scientific privileging of ocular epistemology. I therefore use the strategy of 'Post-Environmentalism' in so far as it provides a way of making use of the historical and political importance of all the discourses involved, in particular Deep-Ecology and Ecofeminism, without privileging one over another. However, I also point out ways in which this mapping project is subject to the same specular logic. In so far as Surfacing is a postmodernist text which constantly relativizes the discourses of, in particular but not exclusively, ecofeminism and science, it functions like 'Post-Environmentalism' to deconstruct the specific problems of each. In particular I look at the way in which the narrator uses metaphor to deconstruct rational masculinist thought and create the possibility of an empowering subject position for women, nature and fiction as a marginalized genre.

This project surveys representations of the African city in contemporary Nigerian and South African narratives by focusing on how they employ Gothic techniques as a means of drawing the African urban landscape into being. The texts that comprise my objects of study are South African author Henrietta Rose-Innes's Nineveh (2011), which takes as its setting contemporary Cape Town; Lagoon (2014) by American-Nigerian author Nnedi Okorafor, who sets her tale in present-day Lagos; and Zoo City (2010) by Lauren Beukes, another South African author who locates her narrative in a near-future version of Johannesburg. I find that these fictions are bound by a shared investment in mobilising the apparatus of the Gothic genre to provide readers with a unique imagining of contemporary African urbanity. I argue that the Gothic urbanism which these texts unfold enables the ascendance of generative, anti-dualist modes of reading the contemporary African city that are simultaneously real and imagined, old and new, global and local, dark and light - modes that perform as much a discourse of the past as a dialogue on the future. The study concludes by making some reflections on the future-visions that these Gothic urban-texts elicit, imaginings that I argue engender useful reflection on the relationship between culture and environment, and thus prompt the contemporary reader to consider the global future - and, as such, situate Africa at the forefront of planetary discourse. I suggest that Nineveh, Lagoon and Zoo City produce not simply a Gothic envisioning of Africa's metropolitan centres, but also a budding Gothic aesthetic of the African Anthropocene. In contrast to the 1980's tradition of Gothic writing in Africa, these novels are opening up into the twenty-first century to reflect on the future of the African city - but also on the futures that lie beyond the urban, beyond culture, beyond the human.

Bibliography: pages 153-158. / Gustav Freytag's Soll und Haben (1855) and D. F. Malherbe's Hans-die-Skipper (1929) can both be read as reactions to early industrial capitalism, although neither text refers directly to this phenomenon. This dissertation attempts to show that both novels display a similar, ambivalent attitude, whilst defending the "logic of the market" against proponents of the moribund semi-feudal system, they pre-empt the moral indifference of the market by positing a "new" value in absolute terms. In either case, this value is "industry", in both the economical and the moral sense of the term. This aspect of both texts is analysed in terms of the literary theory of Peter V. Zima. On closer inspection, it is found that both authors attribute the moral value of "industry" exclusively to one social group, namely the group whose interests they hope to advance. In Freytag' s case, this is the conservative, pre-industrial German bourgeoisie; in Malherbe's case, the impoverished, Afrikaans-speaking rural population of the early 20th century. However, in translating their "ideological projects" into a literary "figuration" (in the sense of Pierre Macherey), both authors encounter certain problems, which only appear in the "absences" and the "silences" of their texts. These are analyzed in terms of the literary theory of Pierre Macherey. Finally, in both texts, the moral value of "industry", and the social hierarchy established in its name, are subliminally or temporarily threatened by the "pleasure principle". This aspect is analyzed- in terms of Klaus Theweleit's findings gained from "pre-fascist" texts of the early 20th century.

In this thesis, I attempt to show how the concept of reading as literary interpretation has been influenced by the insights of the psychoanalyst and theorist Jacques Lacan (1901-1981). Broadly speaking, I call for a revised view of the role of the reader and the act of reading in the light of arguments such as the following: firstly, that the linguistic subject is "split" rather than "autonomous"; secondly, that since language is a representational rather than transparent medium, "truth" can only ever be regarded as partial and irreducibly open to revision; and thirdly, that reading as an interpretive activity arises from the unconscious Desire to resolve the sense of incompleteness which language acquisition produces in the linguistic subject. Following the lead of various interpreters of Lacan's theory and psychoanalytic procedure, I offer an introductory outline of his thought and its relevance to literary theory and criticism. Then in the four chapters which follow, I attempt to demonstrate this relevance through readings of a selection of novels. In the first chapter, I come to the conclusion that reading should be viewed less as a quest after "the truth" of the text, than a quest to discover what "the truth" must disregard in order to be "the truth." In the second chapter, I conclude that narration is an effect of reading, that the relationship of the narrator and the reader is therefore supplementary, and that the notion of literary "truth" is established by consensus. In the third chapter, I conclude that the attempt to satisfy Desire by an attainment of a "full disclosure" of "truth" or "meaning" must result in a loss of meaning per se. Finally, in the fourth chapter, I attempt to synthesize the conclusions of the earlier chapters in the argument that the reader is potentially both the unveiler of the authorial unconscious and the unwitting performer of the conflict of meaning dramatized in the discourse of narrative.

Includes bibliographical references. / The so-called 'hard-boiled' detective story is probably one of the most successful formulaic fictive patterns to be developed this century; and has been translated very effectively into popular film and television drama. Its founding fathers are normally deemed to be Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald. A study of their works should provide a valuable insight into the structure of their patterns and how they are made to work to the public's satisfaction. After all, the one indisputable and verifiable matter in the whole business is that these sort of texts appeal to great numbers of people who read them because they enjoy reading them. Some of the interesting questions thus revolve around the issue of why these fictions are so well liked. However, a study of literary formulas assumes the necessity of demonstrating what those particular formulas are. There are three predominating structures which, to my mind, build this kind of fiction into its finished shape. Firstly, there are the comfort factors which offer the reader a sense of security. Secondly, there is their sense of moral fantasy which allows the reader to escape from the confines of their everyday lives. And thirdly, in the best of these works, there is some element of the new and/or the unconventional, often in the form of social and political criticism encapsulated within the safe formulas of the text. This adds the necessary spice to the life of the construct.

This thesis explores various aspects of contemporary American drama by women. The study is facilitated by examining one work by each of seven playwrights and two performance artists who have transcribed their work, namely, Miriam's Flowers by Migdalia Cruz, Abundance by Beth Henley, Bitter Cane by Genny Lim, Traveler in the Dark by Marsha Norman, The Death of the Last BlackMan in the Whole Entire World by Suzan-Lori Parks, spell # 7 by Ntozake Shange, The Sisters Rosensweig by Wendy Wasserstein, The Constant State of Desire by Karen Finley, and World Without End by Holly Hughes. The works chosen, first performed between 1976 (spell #7) and 1992 (The Sisters Rosensweig), include an array of the vast variety of work being done in contemporary theatre. All of the writers are still living and actively working and were selected to provide a sampling of women from the various subcultures in the United States. Neither the works nor the writers are meant to be inclusive or representational of the diversity of American theatre. The thesis briefly discusses each work and then considers several breaches within the American feminist movement and how the plays reflect the issues of each conflict. The areas of contention within the feminist movement that are considered are: the strengths and shortcomings of liberal feminism, the most visible face of contemporary American feminism; whether pornography or its censorship is ultimately more harmful to women; how a binary division of gender, which can be understood as fundamental to the concept of feminism, is simultaneously oppressive; should feminists as a whole and within various racial, religious, and sexual subgroups attempt to find common ground or embrace the diversity of difference; how does the contemporary political rhetoric of family fit into a feminist vision; can there be a feminist style or is the search for one inherently essentialist; and, finally, how to account for the failure of the movement evident in the success of women who appear to imitate the work of male writers. The thesis concludes that feminist playwrights and their work, like the feminist movement itself must negotiate between efficacious unity and inclusive diversity. Similarly, plays that seek to alter the status quo must walk a fine line between transgression and commercial appeal. Each of the women considered navigates these paths differently, with diverse styles and goals.

In this essay I examine the political implications of the shifts in definition of the term, "magic realism". Magic realism as it was originally employed in the Latin-American context signified a concept different to what it is currently held to suggest in metropolitan literary discourse. Magic realism in the first world has come to be regarded as a third world reflection of its own cultural dominant, postmodernism, without an acknowledgement of the alternative material realities which inform it. I investigate these ideas through an analysis of the work of two novelists, namely, the Colombian, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and the American, John Barth. In a well-known essay titled "The Literature of Replenishment", Barth names Garcia Marquez as the foremost postmodern writer. This is deceptive, I argue, since although in the essay Barth presents postmodernist fiction as a political advance on the earlier styles of realism and modernism, his own fictional practice contradicts his claim. While in the essay Barth presents postmodernism as politically significant by virtue of its "democratic impulse", his novel, Chimera, seeks to avoid the political through a flawed understanding of textuality. Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude stands in stark contrast with Chimera since it underscores the political consideration central to discourse through stressing the text's material, historical context. This distinction between the two novels is brought to light particularly through the incremental differences in their use of the techniques of "narrative circularity" and repetition. I argue, furthermore, that Garcia Marquez's emphasis on language as a material practice is, at least in part, owing to the specifics of the style of magic realism. While postmodernist fiction, one of the cultural effects of an advanced capitalism, may slide ineluctably into notions of pure textuality, magic realism, constituted as it is at the interface of pre-capitalist and capitalist modes of production, compels an acknowledgement of the material world.