The end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth saw many women writers from numerous social ranks, political affiliations and religious denominations reading, writing, circulating and publishing polemical prose and poetry in defence of their sex. During this surge of protofeminist activity, many of these women decried 'Customs Tyranny' by advocating a more egalitarian status for themselves, especially in regard to marriage, education and religion. This thesis, then, is a socio-historic study of the lives and writings of several polemical women writers, namely, Mary Astell (1666-1731), Mary, Lady Chudleigh (1656-1710) and Elizabeth Thomas (1675-1731). It also considers how and why protofeminism evolved in the late seventeenth century and reached a climax between 1694, when Astell published A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, and 1710, when Chudleigh published Essays upon Several Subjects. Until now, scholars of early women writers have labelled Astell the foremost English feminist of her day. Consequently, many of her contemporary protofeminist writers have been neglected. By contextualizing their lives and texts within the political and literary activity at the turn of the eighteenth century, this thesis ultimately argues that women polemicists, such as Chudleigh and Thomas, who followed Astell into print, were not merely echoes and disciples. Rather, they furthered the evolution and secularization of a genre that anticipates feminism proper, which began to develop in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In order to uncover and rediscover the personal and professional details of these women's lives their class, education, friendships and patronage relationships this thesis relied heavily upon material evidence such as letters, parish records, legal records, prison records and wills. As a result, it combines feminist, materialist inclinations with traditional methodology, such as historical and archival research.

In the Islamic tradition, as in other religious traditions, female saints are relatively few and not much scholarly attention has been given to them. Fatimah, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, is one such example. It is, however, a point of interest in her case is that in the twentieth century she has captured the attention of writers of Muslim religious literature to such an extent that there now exist at least eleven fairly recent biographies of her in Urdu, English, Arabic and Persian. This is remarkable, given that the earliest sources of Islamic history contain only a minimal amount of information on her. These modern biographies present Fatimah in a manner which interweaves historical information with hagiographic accounts, thus reinforcing her status as a saint. / This thesis attempts to identify, from the earliest available sources, the details concerning Fatimah as a historical person but ultimately shows that there is little real evidence for her life and even what facts do exist are the subject of controversy. Following this it examines the growth of the hagiographical tradition which created out of her a true Muslim saint and discusses its significance particularly for the Shi'ah. Finally, the conclusion presents some of the possible reasons for Fatimah's exalted status and for the resurgence of interest in her in the context of the modern Islamic world.

This study explores the literary representations of the post-colonial margin, and develops this site as a place of possibility to transform self identity and acquire power. This exploration of Caribbean-Canadian literature, from writers born in the Caribbean who emigrated to Canada indicates the potential for power in the margins without idealizing this space. / Close readings of fiction by Neil Bissoondath, Dionne Brand and Marlene Nourbese Philip illustrate various struggles within the margin based on race, gender, economics, and education. Despite vast ideological differences regarding identity, all three authors concur in their characterizations of the margin. In each work, the margin is not a monolithic entity, but rather a diverse space which allows for the constitution of various identities. / This textual analysis in conjunction with critical analysis also addresses issues of language appropriation and cultural ghettoization, by critiquing the right of one group to speak for another in a racially mixed society such as Canada, as well as by critiquing the homogeneity of identity within one racial group. Ultimately, by illuminating these textual and critical trends, this study looks toward possible future directions for Caribbean-Canadian literature.

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Typescript. / Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1982. / Bibliography: leaves [230]-238. / Photocopy. / x, 238 leaves, bound 29 cm

Typescript. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1975. / Bibliography: leaves 399-404. / 404 leaves

Narratives of place have always been crucial to the construction of Australian identity. The obsession with identity in Australia betrays longstanding uncertainty. It is not difficult to interpret in this uncertainty a replaying of the deeper insecurities surrounding the settler community's legal and more broadly cultural claims to the land. Such insecurities are typically understood negatively. In contrast, this thesis accepts the uncertainty of identity as an activating principle, appropriate to any interpretation of the narratives and themes that inform what it means to be Australian. Fundamental to this uncertainty is a provisionality in the post-colonial experience of place that is papered over by misleadingly coherent spatial narratives that stem from the imperial inheritance of Australian mythology. Place is a model for the tension between the coherence of mythic narratives and the actual rhizomic formlessness of daily life. Place is the ???ground??? of that life, but an ambivalent ground. An Ambivalent Ground approaches postcolonial Australia as a densely woven text. In this text, stories that describe the founding of a nation are enveloped by other stories, not so well known, that work to transform those more familiar narratives. ???Re-placing Australian literature??? describes the process of this transformation. It signifies an interpretative practice which seeks to recuperate the open-ended experience of place that remains disguised by the coherent narratives of nationhood. The process of ???re-placing??? Australian literature shifts the understanding of nation towards a landscape that speaks not so much about identity as about the constitutive performances of everyday life. It also converges with the unhomely dimension that is the colonist's ambiguous sense of belonging. We can understand this process with an analogy used in this thesis, that of music ??? the colonising language, and noise ??? the ostensibly inchoate, unformed background disruptive to cultural order yet revealing the spatial realities of place. Traditionally, cultural narratives in Australia have disguised the much more complex way in which place noisily disrupts and diffracts those narratives, and in the process generates the ambivalence of Australian identity. Rather than a text or a narrative, place is a plenitude, a densely intertwined performance space, a performance that constantly renders experience ??? and its cultural function ??? transgressive. The purpose of this thesis is not to displace stereotypical narratives of nationhood with yet another narrative. Rather, it offers the more risky proposition that provisionality and uncertainty are constitutive features of Australian social being. The narrative in the thesis represents an aggregation of such an ambivalent ground, addressing the persistent tension between place and the larger drama of colonialist history and discourse.

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Most contemporary literary theories are either explicitly or implicitly atheistic. This thesis describes a literary theory whose principles are derived from or consistent with Christian theology. It argues against modern objections to such a theory that this is a rationally and ethically legitimate mode of contemporary literary theory. The first half of the thesis constitutes an analysis of deconstruction, of Marxism and of psychoanalysis. These are three of the most influential discourses in modern literary theory, each of which constitutes a significant argument against the existence of God, as this has traditionally been understood in Christian theology. In a chapter devoted to each theory, I examine its relation to Christian theology, and argue that it does not constitute a conclusive argument against the truth-content of such theology. I go on to assess which of its principles can be used in modem Christian literary theory, and which cannot. The second half of the thesis constitutes an analysis of a Christian tradition of thought that pertains to literary theory. In the fourth chapter, I examine the concepts of language and of art expressed or implied in the Bible, St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, and assess which of these concepts could be used in Christian literary theory today. In the fifth chapter, I examine certain twentieth-century Christian philosophers and literary critics, and assess how their thought could be used in contemporary Christian literary theory. In the final chapter, I synthesize the conclusions to these arguments into the outline of a literary theory that both derives from Christian theology and takes account of the objections to such theology posed by contemporary literary theory.