This study serves as an introduction to al-Āmidī's critical thought and to one version of a hitherto unpublished section of al-Muwāzana, Cambridge University Library Ms. Qq286 (which is reproduced in anno- tated form, Appendix, D). It also examines some of the main trends in the recent study and evaluation of 'Abbasid criticism,of which al- Muwāzana has, in the Arab world, become a focus. The Appendix (A-C) discusses editions and manuscript versions of the text, providing a reconstruction of the jumbled Ms. Qq286, and concludes that those portions of the work previously considered lost are most probably to be looked for in a different form - that of complementary rather than consecutive texts, fragments of one of which are already available in the footnotes to AZZĀM's standard edition of the Diwan of Abū Tammam; these are examined in some detail. Textual problems are also examined, in the light of related problems of interpretation, in Chapter I, in which the structure of the surviving portions of al-Muwāzana, which has often been considered haphazard, is shown to serve a specific didactic purpose consistent with the details of al-Āmidī's practical criticism. Chapter II_looks at this framework in greater detail, showing to what extent Āmidī is bound by inherited techniques, but also in what ways he succeeds in promoting a novel and rigorous definition of the scope of criticism. Chapter III continues Chapter II's scrutiny of the details of al-Āmidī's critical method, and explores the key element in al-Āmidī's critical thought, the notion of poetry as 'truth'; Chapter IV shows how he attempts to justify this notion in historical terms, and how, in so doing, he succeeds - where Ibn Ṭabāṭabā had earlier failed - in establishing poetic 'truth' as a general concept of some versatility. One of the concerns of Chapters II to IV is thus to reassess al-Āmidī's originality in the light of his transformation of earlier criticism, the nature of his debt to which- has often been misunderstood. The other is to reply to the question raised in the Introduction - what is the value of 'Abbasid criticism? can we afford to neglect it in favour of a direct approach to Arabic poetry? - by contrasting al-Āmidī's conception of the relationship between critic, reader and text with the concerns which dominate Arabic literary studies today. These are shown not to be without weaknesses and inconsistencies; the conclusion suggests that al-Āmidī's concern with poetic 'realism' - a contrast is implied with the current interest in the 'phantastic' and 'baroque' elements in 'Abbasid poetry - might provide fruitful ground for future literary research.

The central thesis of this work is twofold: (1) contrary to the images perpetuated in works of criticism, there exists no sustained misogyny in the text of exemplar epics by Ferdowsi and Homer, or antagonism toward women rooted in the poets' attitude, and (2) using the principle of androcentric (rather than gynocentric) feminist literary theory we have tried to prove the existence of a "systematic inconsistency" in the roles and images assigned to the women of The Shahnameh, the Iliad, and Odyssey. We have identified the presence of a double structure concerning the question of women. Instead of endlessly praising the female characters, or fully condemning the portrayal of such figures, we have instead tried to turn the issues around and examined opposed aspects in female roles and images. We have examined the conflict of opposites and the systematic inconsistency within each text in which a double structure splits the female image in two directions: one force is represented by exalted, praiseworthy, and positive images endowing women with powerful characteristics such as prowess, courage, wisdom, insight, fearlessness, and a host of other attributes. Yet within the same text, the same woman, through another force, is not only relegated to a subservient role, but also finds imposed upon her the condition of not being taken seriously, severe handicaps regarding her full integration in the social fabric of the story, and not being allowed to use her considerable abilities. Within this paradoxical double structure, it is not that one structure eventually cancels out the other, rather the coexistence of both structures in the same work results in the readers' suspension between the conclusions each of them separately urges. / The dichotomy in the characterization of women in epic literature is not limited to a single culture; a consistent thread runs through the universal inconsistency in the make-up of women in epic. The thread runs across the border between the East and the West, wherever that border may be drawn on the map geographically, historically, or culturally.

This thesis argues that as historians of English-Canadian poetry, A. J. M. Smith, John Sutherland, Northrop Frye, and Desmond Pacey explicitly promote the value of past conflict reconciled into present harmony. They do so by claiming that such reconciliation marks the maturity of English-Canadian culture. This thesis also argues, however, that the interactive progression of their histories implicitly undermines this value. It does so because each critic appreciates a different group of poets for realizing their shared cultural ideal, thereby establishing contradictory representations of what they all claim to be the culmination of English-Canadian literary history. The thesis concludes that while their lingering sense of present cultural maturity should now be fully renounced, the value these critics place on reconciliation is well worth preserving and transforming.

This thesis aims to present and understand various accounts composed by medieval writers against the Isma'ilis and to determine the substance of the arguments forged by each writer to counter the Isma'ilis. Such writings were accepted without question by earlier researchers, and although a revision has been undertaken in more recent studies, the specific nature and orientation of anti-Isma'ili polemics has not been adequately investigated. / Through a careful study of different arguments--arguments at times quite sophisticated and difficult to appreciate fully--, we try to show the evolution and development of the style of anti-Isma'ili polemics, the different temperaments of the polemicists studied, and some of the permanent and complimentary features within this tradition. / An additional question examined in this study is the extent to which social, cultural and political factors had an impact on the shaping of this tradition and the various arguments employed within it.

This thesis focuses on the 'challenge of the image' to self-perception and a central sense of selfhood. It suggests that, as a result of the trigger provided by this challenge, new intuitions of selfhood and new forms of representation have been developed in auto(bio)graphical writing. The dynamic reciprocity of challenge and response is studied in three strategically chosen authors, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Paul Valéry and Roland Barthes, whose works span over more than three centuries and who allow a complete cycle of ideas on the self and the possibilities of self-representation to be explored in the perspective of the generating mechanism identified. The increasing reflexivity of Western consciousness as exemplified by each of these authors, is seen to engender by this means new and increasingly subtle forms of self-representation in order to convey adequately a progressively complexified view of the subject or self. In following the emergence and development of auto(bio)graphy in this way, the thesis contributes to an ongoing diagnosis of the nature and origin of a contemporary crisis in auto(bio)graphy, a crisis in which the relation between selfhood and its representational forms and language has been placed under increasing scrutiny or suspicion. It is argued here that there can be no simple expulsion of the subject from the domain of auto(bio)graphy. The challenge of the image suggests, on the contrary, that it is precisely the sense of a central 'I', however elusive and irreducible to theory this may be, which ultimately still provides the impetus for new and innovative auto(bio)graphical production.

Since Truman Capote's In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences was published in 1965, there have been many attempts to define and explain the phenomenon of the "non-fiction novel" as a unified narrative genre. Some of these attempts have been highly theoretical and scholarly, but most have been rather loose definitions referring to an extremely wide range of diverse factual narratives. Over the years, so many different works have been called "non-fiction novels" that it now seems as if the notion of such a unified genre is questionable. Surely it is not generically useful to say that such functionally distinct works as Oscar Lewis's La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty (1967) and Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart ot the American Dream (1971) belong in the same narrative category. The purpose of this study is to show that many of the works routinely referred to as "non-fiction novels" perform fundamentally different narrative functions and do not belong together in a unified genre. Roman Jakobson's model of communication and his notion of the "dominant function" are used to identify three functional categories into which the narratives discussed in the study logically fall: first, there are predominantly sociological works in which the referential function is the most important element of the communication; second, there are predominantly journalistic works in which the opinions of the writer or emotive function constitute the central narrative concern; and thirdly, we have works performing a dominant novelistic or aesthetic function in the sense that the secondary meanings and themes implied are the most important elements communicated. The thesis follows the following structure. In the introductory chapter, a critique of some of the major generic theories of the "non-fiction novel" as unified genre is offered. The purpose here is not to caricature what are sometimes extremely sophisticated studies. (Indeed, in my own analysis of texts, I am often indebted to the critical insights of the scholars whose theories I question in the introduction.) My purpose is merely to show that the corpus of works each writer refers to can be divided more logically between different dominant narrative functions. The introduction ends with a more detailed explanation of the adaptation of Jakobson's notion of "the dominant" and how it relates to the functional categories identified. Chapter 2 offers analyses of a group of documentary narratives that perform a dominant sociological function but have often been referred to as "non-fiction novels." The chapter starts with an analysis of James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), a text widely regarded as the first real American example of the "genre." This is followed by an examination of the anthropological works of Oscar Lewis: Five Families: Mexican Case Studles in the Culture of Poverty (1959), The Children of Sanchez: Autobiography of a Mexican Family (1964), Pedro Martinez: A Mexican Peasant and his Family (1964) and La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty. I conclude the chapter with an analysis of the recent sociological works of Studs Terkel: Division Street: America (1968), Hard Times: An oral History of the Great Depression (1970) and Working: People talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do (1974). In Chapter 3, the notion of subjective participation journalism is explained. This is followed by an analysis of three of the most famous and creative of the works that fall into this functional category: Hunter S. Thompson's Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of an Outlaw Motorcycle Gang (1966), Michael Herr's Vietnam classic, Dispatches (1977), and Norman Mailer's account of a famous protest march, The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History (1968). Chapter 4 offers a discussion of three works that perform a dominant novelistic function in the realistic tradition of Dostoevski's Crime and Punishment. All three are based on actual murder cases, but the facts of the stories are subordinated to the novelistic themes the author wishes to abstract. They are: Meyer Levin's Compulsion (1957), Mailer's The Executioner's Song (1979) and Capote's In Cold Blood. From this outline, it may appear as if the study is loaded in favour of the sociological works discussed in Chapter 2. This is intentional because, although many critics have referred to them as "non-fiction novels", very little systematic and detailed analysis of these works as a corpus has been forthcoming. This long chapter is an attempt to redress the balance.

D.Litt. et Phil. / The main aim of this thesis is to study ambiguity in Northern Sotho. Ambiguity, often referred to as 'double or multiple meaning', is, as Scheffler (1979:i) observes, "deserving of systematic study" in its own right. In this study, an attempt is made to give it the attention it deserves insofar as research is concerned. Life is full of verbal (and visual) tricks that are constantly teasing the interlocutors and never allow their interpretative faculties to come to rest. Such verbal tricks sometimes lead to confusions and misunderstandings that often result in unnecessary conflicts. It is the main aim of this investigation to investigate such misunderstandings by revealing what these tricks are, and try to make people aware of such verbal tricks.

No description available.

Olu phando luza kugxila kuphononongo lobume bengqondo ephazamisekileyo, lujonge izimo zabalinganiswa nendlela abacinga nabenza ngayo izinto. Kuza kube kugocwagocwa ubume bengqondo yabalinganiswa abakwezi ncwadi zintathu zilandelayo: Incwadi kaTamsanqa ethi, „Buzani Kubawo,‟ ekaJordan ethi, „Ingqumbo Yeminyanya‟ neka Jongilanga ethi, „Ukuqhawuka Kwembeleko.‟Apha kuza kukhokela intshayelelo equlathe izinto ezininzi eziquka amagama amatsha aza kusetyenziswa, indlela oza kuma ngayo umsebenzi kunye nembali ngababhali. Oku kulandelwa yingcingane eza kuthi ibe sisiseko solu phando, ingcingane yobume bengqondo, ingcingane yemeko engaqhelekanga kunye nezayamileyo; ingcingane yokuqonda kunye nengcingane yenkcubeko nentlalo. Kuza kuthi kutyhilwe iimeko abantu abaphila phantsi kwazo emakhaya nasentlalweni ngokubanzi. Iingcali zophando zizamile ukuza neendlela ezizizo zokwazi unobangela wokuphazamiseka kwengqondo ukuze zikwazi ukuza nonyango oluchanekileyo. Ekugqibeleni kuza kuthi kushwankathelwe wonke lo msebenzi, kuvezwe namacebo anokunceda abafundi nababhali kuncwadi. Kuza kucetyiswa ababhali ukuze babethelele ingcamango yokuba kubekho uncedo okanye unyango kubalinganiswa abanesimo sengqondo esiphazamisekileyo, xa kuphononongwa le ngcingane yesimo sengqondo.

Si nous nous mettons à la place du lecteur devant le titre du présent Essai, nous imaginerons facilement les questions qui peuvent lui venir a L’esprit. Pourquoi Haïti? Pourquoi le vaudou? L'écrivain haïtien Jean Price-Mars a du imaginer la réaction d'un tel lecteur quand il a écrit: [. . .] a quoi bon de se donner tant de peine a propos de menus problèmes qui n'intéressent qu'une très infime minorité d'hommes, habitant une très infime partie de la surface terrestre?¹ Sa réponse à sa propre question est sans équivoque: […] ni l'exiguïté de notre territoire, ni la faiblesse numérique de notre peuple ne sont motifs suffisants pour que les problèmes qui mettent en cause le comportement d'un groupe d'hommes soient indifférents au reste de l'humanité. Une analogie nuancée de la pensée de John Donne ajoute a l'idée de la pertinence d'une étude sur Haïti: tout comme nul homme n'est une lie indépendante du continent, nul peuple n'est indépendant du monde qui l'entouré, surtout en cette époque du "village planétaire" ou rétrécissent les dimensions de l'univers par les communications et l'avion a réaction. Par ailleurs, Haïti, nation surpeuplée, exploitée, nous semble un microcosme qui peut nous apprendre sur nous-mêmes les erreurs à éviter en matière de conservation de ressources naturelles ainsi qu'en matière des droits de la personne. Le déboisement et l'épuisement de la riche terre haïtiennes ont laisse une marque qui imprime jusqu'a l'amé de l'infortune Haïtiens; l'oppression de l'Haïtien par des gouvernements étrangers racistes et des régimes domestiques totalitaires a fait une plaie dont la guérison n'est pas pour demain. Si nous acceptons la pertinence d'une étude sur la culture haïtienne, la justification d'un examen de sa littérature coule de source, la littérature étant une discipline qui enregistre l'essentiel de la pensée, des rêves et des aspirations d'un peuple, a la croisée du cultuel, du mythique et du linguistique. Mais reste la question du vaudou. A-t-elle sa place dans notre étude qui se veut littéraire? En effet, cette religion populaire est ce qu'il y a de plus essentiellement distinctif dans le roman haïtien. Qui plus est, le vaudou racheté les pires défauts du roman haïtien, en général, et en fait oublier les caractéristiques qui ont le plus tendance a lasser le lecteur étranger, dont d'abord l'imitation quasi systématique de modèles qui sont les classiques de la littérature haïtienne, notamment Gouverneurs de la rossée; ensuite la banalité de thèmes rebattus: misère, souffranee et malheur du roman paysan; et finalement, le style qui semble viser a reproduire chez tous les romanciers celui de Jacques Roumain. II existe, bien sur, bien des textes non-romanesques sur le vaudou. Certains d'entre eux sont de haute tenue, d'autres s'embourbent dans le sensationnalisme a la Hollywood, d'autres enfin sont à dormir debout. Un lecteur profane en apprendra plus sur le vaudou par une lecture des romans haïtiens que par ceux-là; car, à travers les personnages se révèle la signification religieuse et affective du culte pour l'individu. Le lecteur se documentera amplement en même temps sur la société haïtienne, pour laquelle le vaudou reste un élément culturel fondamental. La plupart des romans haïtiens - c’est-à-dire écrits par des Haïtiens et ayant Haïti comme référent - et presque tous les romans paysans haïtiens traitent du vaudou, souvent comme thème principal. Par la voie du vaudou romance, le lecteur prend conscience du caractère diglossique et bi-culturel de la civilisation haïtienne, la filiation avec l'Afrique et la France se révélant dans les rites cultuels ou se retrouvent des éléments linguistiques et liturgiques provenant de sources africaine et française. Les propos précédents suggèrent une approche socio-historique. C'est que, aujourd'hui comme autrefois, Haïti reste isolée du reste du monde a plusieurs égards. Le roman n'en fait pas exception: Le romancier haïtien a certes toujours été au courant des nouvelles techniques romanesques mises en œuvré en France ou ailleurs. Mais elles ne semblent l'avoir intéresse qu'accessoirement.² Se souciant peu des nouvelles techniques, le romancier haïtien se concentre Sur les préoccupations de son pays. . Cette présente étude vise done à analyser le roman haïtien d'un point de vue interne plutôt que comparatif. Pour ce qui est de la portée de ce travail, nous proposons un survol de l'histoire physique, ethnique et littéraire haïtienne, suivi d'un compte-rendu du corpus du roman vaudou et finalement, l'analyse de trois visions romanesques du vaudou. Notre conclusion sera une interrogation non seulement sur l'avenir du vaudou mais également sur la direction future du roman haïtien. / Arts, Faculty of / French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of / Graduate