An investigation into the works of poet Olga Kirsch according to psychoanalytical theories reveals interesting possibilities about Afrikaans's sole expressly Jewish poet and only the second female poet to get published in this language. Her yearning to be accepted in Afrikaans circles seems to have been thwarted by the rise of racist Nationalist power. Motherhood, a career as educator and having an allochthonous creative language in Hebrew-speaking Israel were some of the factors that muffled the immigrant Kirsch's poetic voice for more than two decades after arriving in Israel in 1948. An inability to make a breakthrough in Modern Hebrew or English redirected her attention to the language she felt best at home in - Afrikaans. Kirsch, however, could not continue writing poetry indefinitely in a language she had been isolated from for so long. Psychoanalysis explores the drives behind Kirsch's writings: the flight from the phallic mother, loss of the paternal love object, longing for wholeness in the safety of the chora, as well as self-actualisation and jouissance through the creative process. Kirsch is reaffmned as an important Afrikaans poet who, with each volume of poetry, shared her life as a sujet en proces with her Afrikaans-speaking readers. Whereas Sigmund Freud's basic tenets and further developments in psychoanalysis by Jacques Lacan form the underlying structure of this research, extensive insights from the prolific theoretician Julia Kristeva have been employed to counterpoint the masculine and arguably paternalistic views of the former two psychoanalysists. Some rediscovered poems have been included in this thesis and comments by Kirsch's family also add a new dimension to our understanding of her as a person and of her creative output. Further sources of information were found in a documentary about the poet, recordings for radio and articles in newspapers and literary magazines. In order to establish Kirsch's value and durability as an Afrikaans poet, the canonisation process and possible changes to the poet's position in it were also taken into account. It appears from these that Olga Kirsch is, albeit not one of the greatest poets due to her increasingly dated language, nevertheless an indispensable part of the Afrikaans literary canon.

The walls in the conference room were gray, the color of indecision and sorrow, Margaux's mother would say. Not good for a Cancer, already prone to this sort of thing. Cancers should surround themselves with reds and oranges, hues to warm their watery natures. Margaux no longer believed in her mother's folklore, but she continued to think in those terms. She was, after all, still a Barbaret.

Includes bibliographical references / It appeared to me that the differences and a particular atmosphere I found in Irish writing were due to more than the syntax of Hyberno-English. I was curious and to investigate further I returned to university to add English literature as a major to an existing degree in Psychology, Anthropology, Linguistics and the relevant ancillaries. The literary approach to the few - mostly Anglo-Irish - writers on which single courses were offered left my questions mostly unanswered. My own research continue along historical and psycho-sociocultural lines. I believe this approach discovered what I sought.

Bibliography: leaves 376-401. / This thesis investigates the ways in which three eighteenth-century writers, Bishop Thomas Sherlock, Hannah More and Jane Austen embody orthodox Anglican doctrine according to their individual perceptions of the enlightening properties of Protestant Christianity. After situating them in their respective gender, literary and ecclesiastical contexts, I examine some of their key doctrines and analyse excerpts from their works. My selection of passages from Sherlock's works is fairly comprehensive, but in the case of More and Austen, where there is already a formidable body of literary criticism, it is more selective. Thus, I focus on doctrine in More's tracts, Strictures on the System of Female Education, An Essay on St Paul and most especially Coelebs in Search of a Wife and in the case of Austen, on her prayers and select passages from Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park. I conclude that, although diverse in their particular kind of Anglicanism (High, Evangelical and Median) and in their choice of genre, transparency or obscurity (anonymity and pseudonymity) and the various narratological strategies some of them invoke to circumvent certain taboos, Sherlock, More and Austen champion the same central orthodox doctrines, defend them against current alternatives to orthodoxy such as Latitudinarianism, Deism and various forms of Freethinking, and promote similar moral and ecclesiastical reforms. However, indirectly (through female characters who resist male representation or control) the women writers subject their ostensibly authorially-endorsed male narrators/characters to scrutiny and sometimes (when the males objectify the women) subversion.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 209-231). / Malawian theatre, like most theatre in the southern region of Africa, is composed of two distinct forms; oral traditional theatre mostly comprising of masks, music and dance, as well as popular theatre which seeks to follow the definition of modern Western theatre. This thesis seeks to show how, of all the elements inherent in both types of theatre, the theme of satire is a recurrent feature and is often found to be the foundation of both types of theatre. The thesis considers how both traditional and modern theatres explore and exploit satire, and how this theme has contributed to theatre as a whole. It also looks at the history of theatre in Malawi, its role in society as well as the impact it has had on the nation as a whole, for example where it has been used as a social tool.

Satire and power are inseparably interconnected. This study investigates satire and power as contextually informed by their socio-political milieu. The origins of satire, both etymologically and as genre, constitute the first section. This is followed by a description of the primary aims of satire. The focus is on three contrasting mediums of era-specific satirical delivery, namely: 1) Etienne Leroux’s satirical novels within the Apartheid era; 2) Bitterkomix and the impact of the satirical image in postApartheid South Africa; and 3) multimedia satire in the 21st century. Shifts in power, moral codes and satirical targets are analysed and deconstructed within the context of each timeframe. Considering the reconceptualisation of traditional power dynamics with regard to gender and identity within a post-colonial context, the question arises: What is the future of satire?

The question which I explore is to what degree, and in what way, the paradigm of anti-apartheid literature gives way to its post-apartheid successor. More particularly, I explore how post-apartheid South African novels perpetuate, displace or transmute the narrative forms and conventions characteristic of anti-apartheid writing. I therefore read the forms and conventions in certain post-apartheid novels through the lens of anti-apartheid discourse, in particular its demand for politically engaged realism, tracing continuity and change. I argue that The Good Doctor (2003) by Damon Galgut and Karoo Boy by Troy Blacklaws (2004) reiterate anti-apartheid conventions through devices that become anachronistic, in that they reproduce antiapartheid literary dynamics without adaptation to the post-apartheid conditions represented or implied in these texts. Formal reinvention, however, is evident in the following novels. In The Restless Supermarket (2002), Ivan Vladislavi displaces political engagement from narrative form into the speech acts of his narrator. This text thereby stages a lexical meditation that displaces the typical realist sequence of symptomatic events. Despite this innovation, there are continuities between his work and the early writing of J.M. Coetzee, which suggest that Coetzee anticipated characteristic post-apartheid narrative strategies ahead of their time. Further, the innovative magic realist forms of Zakes Mda's Ways of Dying (1995) and Phaswane Mpe's Welcome to Our Hillbrow (2001) engage with crises of transition so dire that death becomes their central metaphor. Both writers introduce the device of orature as assertions of African identity. However, Mda counterposes orature against death, injecting through it a humanising principle. In Mpeâs novel, by contrast, orature acquires a murderous agency. I trace variants of what I term "fractured form", namely form that is duplicitous, or otherwise dualistic, through a further group of novels. My premise is that the social fracture represented as content scripts the formal fracture/fractiousness in their narrative forms. An attendant property is to disrupt nationalist discourse in its dominant post-apartheid manifestation, namely the rainbow nation mythos. The texts in this group are Disgrace (1999) by J.M. Coetzee, David's Story (2000) by Z Wicomb, Achmat Dangor's Bitter Fruit (2001), Zakes Mda's The Madonna of Excelsior (2002), and What Kind of Child (Barris 2006). In conclusion, the central question to which I attend has been raised by Michael Green (1997: 7), namely how a body of texts generated within the episteme of anti-apartheid can be meaningfully related to the literary paradigm that replaces it. I find that in the collective formal inventions, fractures and displacements demonstrated in this thesis, an emergent post-apartheid episteme becomes discernable.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 152-160). / It is not unusual for a student to study French from secondary school to university level and still not be able to communicate effectively with a native speaker. In addition, for many years, apart from translation diplomas, the traditional Bachelor of Arts degree in French prepared students for little more than teaching the language. In South African universities, the introduction of courses in Business French is relatively recent. An individual might be motivated to learn a foreign language because of its aesthetic value or practical use. Howevere, in South Africa, the decision to allocate state funds and school-learning hours towards the promotion and teaching of a foreign language has deeper implications, particularly when there are eleven official languages competing for recognition. In India in early 1900, Michael West had attempted to establish why Indian people should learn English ("in order to read") and how they should learn English ("through reading"). Abbot (1981: 12) called this random teaching of a foreign language "TENOR (teaching English for no obvious reason "'. Similarly, the question as to why South Africans should be taught French or any other foreign language needs to be answered. If not, we risk falling into he same trap as "TENOR" except in this case we will be teaching French for no apparent reason. While the purpose of this research is not to discredit those students who desire to learn French for personal reasons, the main argument presented in this thesis is based on whether South Africans should learn French in order to trade more effectively with Francophone countries. Combining qualitative and quantitative research, preliminary conclusions indicate that an in-depth cost and benefits analysis might prove the link French language acquisition with economic expansion. However, within the limitations of this research, there is insufficient justification for the allocation of state funding for foreign language acquisition over and above the need for other mainstream school disciplines. A more viable solution would be to train and to employ South Africa's new language resource, that of the Francophone refugees currently living in the country, assuming that they are willing to remain in this country.

The dissertation manuscript Gog chronicles my experiences as a Jehovah's Witness from a working-class family, investigating larger issues of poverty, religious persecution, and generational cycles of violence while also exploring the fraught relationship between art-making and religious belief in rural America. One of the main characters, Gog, as biblical harbinger of the apocalypse and symbol of religious fervor, antagonizes the speaker in dreams and visions. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2016. / February 12, 2016. / Includes bibliographical references. / David Kirby, Professor Directing Dissertation; Eva Amsler, University Representative; S.E. Gontarski, Committee Member; Barbara Hamby, Committee Member; James Kimbrell, Committee Member.

Since the 1990s, a large number of texts has been labeled as ‘pop literature'. Although the definition of this term varies broadly depending on the research interest, most scholars come to the conclusion that adolescence and the search for identity are the central themes. However, this is not a phenomenon specific to pop culture but rather occurs in various other texts throughout the history of German literature. For instance, The Sorrows of Young Wether by Goethe is often called the ‘Urtext' of German pop literature. Therefore, this thesis seeks to investigate inherent characteristics of texts that cause them to retain their popularity and relevance even in contemporary academic research. The Sorrows of Young Werther, Tonio Kröger and Faserland serve as textual material for the analysis. The characteristics of popularity are manifested in three major dimensions: Immediacy, the protagonist, and relatedness to the audience. Immediacy in the narrative style enables the reader to obtain direct access to the protagonist of the text. The more immediate the it is, the more likely the reader identifies with the main character. The protagonist himself suffers from the fragmentation of his personality and the inner conflicts he develops. The reader can easily relate to the state of limbo the protagonist enters when describing his inner conflicts as well as his lack of societal affiliation. Furthermore, by being young themselves, the authors come across as authentic and authorized to depict the struggles of their own generation. Drawing parallels to their own biography in the text, they further inspire a curiosity about the protagonists and the narrative style challenges the reader to identify with them. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the Master of Arts. / Spring Semester 2017. / March 10, 2017. / Includes bibliographical references. / Christian Weber, Professor Directing Thesis; Tatjana Soldat-Jaffe, Committee Member; Alina Dana Weber, Committee Member.