This thesis concerning women's histories in the Indian sub-continent and Africa looks at the representation of native women at the intersections of colonial, nationalist, and post-colonial discourses. The histories concern raped and "abducted" women during the communal violence following the partition of India in 1947, their treatment by the law, and their representation in post-colonial literary imaginings, women caught between the "development" machine and euro-centric ecological justice in countries of the South, and the production of the domestic sphere in colonial Africa through structures of exclusion, and its representations in post-colonial novels. The central argument in this thesis is that it is through strategic uses of native women's bodies that social space was made governable during colonialism, and nationalist movements came into being through appropriation of women's bodies in representations of the nation. How those two structures of violence have passed into post-colonial imaginings, along with the legacies of the Enlightenment project that shape the policies of the post-colonial state, are read in details. Through feminist subaltern historiography, and post-colonial eco-feminism, alternate structures of narratives and representation are sought to frame resistance writings.

Literary utopianism and naturalism present apparently polar views regarding the possibilities and limitations of human agency: the former portrays humanity as having created a communal society based upon rationality, while the latter argues that people are victims consumed by their desires. This comparative study of Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888), Frank Norris' McTeague (1899), Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie (1900), and Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz (1900), postulates these fictions as examinations of whether life in America at the end of the nineteenth-century is inevitably caught in state of flux or whether it is possible to attain stability. Yet these works are less interesting for their ostensibly dominant perspectives on the human condition, than for their complicating elements which elevate the works above their prevailing philosophies and prevent them from remaining mere manifestos.

The creative section of this thesis is a translation of five (5) short stories drawn from the anthology Cuentos de Bloomsbury by the Spanish author Ana Maria Navales. This book is a free literary recreation of the life of some of the artists and intellectuals, in particular Virginia Woolf, who made up the Bloomsbury Group. This translation is meant to be more source-oriented than target-oriented; however, even though it is rather true to the source text, our priority consists above all in creating a translation possessed of its own literary unicity. In this way, we attempt to show that the translated work is another work, autonomous and separated from the original version, but still linked to the latter by means of their respective literary unicity, rendering the fundamental signifiers of the original in the translation. / In recognizing the literary unicity of both authors and in receiving inspiration from the thoughts of Octavio Paz and Antoine Berman, we try to bring the literary unicity of our translation to light, and at the same time, to experience an open-mindedness towards that which is "other". (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Among the different theories of translation, the work of critic Antoine Berman is most remarkable. In Pour une critique des traductions: John Donne, published in 1994, Berman suggests, in the segment entitled "Le projet d'une critique 'productive'", a critical method of translation that is not a "model", but a possible analytical process. By following the steps devised by Berman, we will endeavor to apply this method to a translation of several short stories by the American writer Raymond Carver, chosen from the collection Will You Please Be Quiet Please?, first published by McGraw-Hill in 1976. The work has only been translated into French once, by Francois Lasquin in 1987. Our analysis will be based on this version. / The creative component of our Master's Thesis will consist in a new translated versions of the selected short stories from Carver's collection, namely: Fat, They're Not Your Husband, Are You A Doctor?, Nobody Said Anything, Night School, The Student's Wife and Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarets . / Subsequent to the applications of the possible analytical process , we will compare the version presented in the first part of this Thesis with Francois Lasquin's, using the tools proposed by Berman. This comparison will be based on the deformation tendencies theory found in Berman's essay: "La traduction et la lettre ou l'auberge du lointain", published in 1985 in les tours de babel. Finally, we will re-emphasize the recurrent changes suggested in the version we are presenting. This analysis leads us to a discussion of our own conceptions of translation, and the elements that motivate and justify our choices concerning translation and translating.

<p> From Madame Le Prince de Beaumont to Francesca Lia Block, Walter Crane to Mercer Mayer, and Jacques Cocteau to the Walt Disney Company, authors, artists, and filmmakers are drawn to recreating "Beauty and the Beast." As a result "Beauty and the Beast" is reformatted to reflect shifts in cultural assumptions, particularly ideas of gender roles, sexuality, and identifying the Other. Therefore, by examining the recurring motifs of the feminine ideal, the Beast as Other, and the transposition of the tale to an Orientalized setting, within adaptations of "Beauty and the Beast," it becomes clear that the tale is a multi-voiced tool with which authors and illustrators use to simultaneously support and subvert the hegemonic status quo. Examining the significance of "Beauty and the Beast" offers insight as to the power that revised texts have over their precursor texts and their producing culture. By understanding the importance of "Beauty and the Beast" as a symbiotic text, one can understand how it functions within its cultural context. Such an examination reveals that not only does culture dictate the tales we tell, but also that the tales we tell dictate our cultural identity. Ultimately this project concludes that this tale works within Western culture to convey shifting cultural messages about Otherness, women, and Islam.</p>

Thesis--Copenhagen.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Toronto, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Maryland, College Park, 2006. / (UnM)AAI3212044. Adviser: Phyllis Peres. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-03, Section: A, page: 0927.

Diss.--Zürich. / Bibliography: p. 113-115.

"This thesis was accepted for the Ph. D. degree by the University of Aberdeen, July, 1937."