viii, 233 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / This dissertation argues that certain iconic poems have shaped the canon of American poetry. Not merely "canonical" in the usual sense, iconic poems enjoy a special cultural sanction and influence; they have become discourses themselves, generating our notions about American poetry. By "iconic" I mean extraordinarily famous works like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride," Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself," and Claude McKay's "If We Must Die," that do not merely reside in the national memory but that have determined each poet's reception and thus have shaped the history of American poetry. Through case studies, I examine longstanding assumptions about these poets and the literary histories and myths surrounding their legendary texts. In carefully historicized readings of these and other iconic poems, I elucidate the pressure a single poem can exert on a poet's reputation and on American poetry broadly. I study the iconic poem in the context of the poet's corpus to demonstrate its role within the poet's oeuvre and the role assigned to it by canon makers. By tracing a poem's reception, I aim to identify the national, periodic, political, and formal boundaries these poems enforce and the distortions they create. Because iconic poems often direct and justify our inclusions and exclusions, they are of particular use in clarifying persistent obstacles to the canon reformation work of the last thirty years. While anthologies have become more inclusive in their selections and self-conscious about their ideological motives, many of the practices regarding individual poets and poems have remained unchanged over the last fifty years. Even as we include more poets in the canon, we often ironically do so by isolating a particular portion of the career, impulse in the work, or even a single poem, narrowing rather than expanding the horizon of our national literature. Through close readings situated in historical and cultural contexts, I illustrate the varying effects of iconic poems on the poet, other poems, and literary history. / Committee in charge: Dr. Karen J. Ford, Chair; Dr. John T. Gage, Member; Dr. Ernesto J. Martinez, Member; Dr. Leah W. Middlebrook, Outside Member

This research is premised on Armstrong's (1990:7) argument that „every interpretive approach reveals something only by disguising something else, which a competing method with a different assumption might disclose.‟ This statement indicates that preference or marginalisation of some literary theories impedes progress in African-language literary criticism because different literary theories tend to focus on one or a few selected aspects of a work art. This flows from the assumption that no literary theory can unearth all aspects and meanings of a literary text. This research comes against rigidity, conservatism and narrow-mindedness of those literary critics and scholars who refuse to open up and embrace literary theories which they are opposed to. The research is an attempt to demonstrate the benefit of flexibility and ability to accommodate even those opposing literary views that can make positive contribution in the field of African-language literary criticism. The research further calls for pragmatism, tolerance and co-existence of opposing literary views for the benefit of progress in the field of African-language literary criticism. This research is an acknowledgement of the fact that no literary theory is infallible because all literary theories have their own strong and weak points. In this research, a survey of literary approaches commonly applied in African-language criticism is conducted. This is followed by an analysis of a Tshivenḓa novel (i.e. A si ene) from different literary angles to prove that every literary theory can help to unmask a particular meaning of a literary text which no any other literary theory can do. For example, the intrinsic literary approaches will, most certainly, unlock the meaning of a literary text differently from the way the extrinsic literary theories do because diverse literary approaches focus on different aspects or elements of a work of art. This research is an endorsement of the argument that through multiple-reading of a literary text, readers‟ understanding of the same literary text is broadened and deepened. / African Languages / D. Litt. et Phil (African Languages)

This study is an interpretive analysis of Zimbabwean political auto/biographical narratives in contexts of changing culture, race, ethnicity and gender identity images of the self and nation. I used eclectic theories of postcolonialism to explore the fractured nature of both the processes of identity construction and narration, and the contradictions inherent in identity categories of nation and self. The problem of using autobiographical memory to recall the momentous events that formed the contradictory identities of self and nation in the creative imagination of the lives of Ian Smith, Maurice Nyagumbo, Abel Muzorewa, Joshua Nkomo, Doris Lessing, Fay Chung, Judith Garfield Todd, Tendai Westerhof and Lutanga Shaba have been highlighted. The study concluded that there are narrative and ideological disjunctures between experiencing life and narrating those experiences to create approximations of coherent identities of individual selves and those of the nation. The study argued that each of the stories analyzed in this study contributed a version of the multiple Zimbabwean narratives that no one story could ever tell without being contested by others. Thus the study explores how white Rhodesian auto/biographies depend on the imperial repertoire to construct varying, even contradicting, images of white identities and the Rhodesian nation, which are also contested by black nationalist life narratives. The narratives by women writers, both white and black, introduced further instabilities to the male authored narratives by moving beyond the conventional understanding of what is ‘political’ in political auto/biographies. The HIV and AIDS narratives by black women thrust into the public sphere personalized versions of self so that the political consequence of their inclusion was not only to image Zimbabwe as a diseased society, but one desperately in need of political solutions to confront the different pathologies inherited from colonialism and which also have continued in the post-independence period. / English Studies / (D. Litt. et Phil. (English))

The new dawn that brought about democracy in South Africa in 1994 and the social and political experiences have since changed the expectations of women’s roles in society. Literature is the important part of this experience because it mirrors and interprets the experience from the point of view of those who write about it. This study, therefore, attempts to examine the image of women in Xitsonga literature, to investigate whether there is a link in the expected cultural roles of Vatsonga women and their roles as characters in Xitsonga literature; and whether there is a shift in the way women characters are portrayed to represent the current social and political reality. The study employs African feminist literary criticism as a tool in critically analysing the various literary genres. It also adopts purposive sampling of Xitsonga novels, poetry and proverbs that have women characters in them and analyse how these women characters have been portrayed. The naming of female characters is examined in relation to their roles in the texts and the titles of the texts are also investigated and critically analysed to establish whether they portray any gender stereotypes. The themes of the selected texts are also examined to establish if there is any gender biasness. Both male and female-authored texts have been investigated to explore whether male authors depict women differently from their female counterparts. The study concludes that there is gender-biasness in the manner in which women characters are depicted that do not reflect the current political and social order, however, some women authors, unlike their male counterparts do not reflect gender-biasness in their depiction of female characters. / African Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)

This thesis examines Ratnakarasanti's (ca. 970-1045 C.E.) explication of Prajnaparamita in his doxographical works and his Saratama. Based on extant Sanskrit and Tibetan primary sources, it argues that Ratnakarasanti's main teacher was Dharmakirtisri (late 10th C.E.) and that Ratnakarasanti's Saratama sought to replace his teacher's Yogacara-Madhyamika framework with a causal explanation of Prajnaparamita through redefining the term Prajnaparamita as the path to awakening, rather than its goal. By unpacking that causal explanation in light of his broader system, the thesis demonstrates the way that Ratnakarasanti's own version of Nirakaravadin-Yogacara-Madhyamika refutes cognitive images (akara) as unreal ultimately, but claims they are still perceived by buddhas out of compassion. This conclusion debunks the long-standing theory that Ratnakarasanti was an Indian proponent of the controversial Tibetan gZhan-stong despite later gZhan-stong propon-ents' attempts to claim him as their own. There are two parts to the study. The first part introduces Ratnakarasanti's life, philosophy and doxography based upon evidence from a Tibetan colophon to his Madhyamika commentary and the Tibetan hagiography of his student Adhisa (a.k.a. Atisa) and upon a comparative analysis of his doxographical works that are prerequisites for reading his Saratama. The second part consists of an annotated translation of the Saratama's introductory section, contrasted with the prior standard interpretation by Haribhadra's (9th century C.E.). In the two appendices are included a Tibetan critical edition and a separate hybrid Sanskrit and Tibetan critical edition of the Saratama's first parivarta based on the extant 11th and 13th century incomplete MSS and on the Tibetan translations in the sDe dge, Peking and sNarthang editions. The hybrid edition also includes my provisional critical edition of the root text - i.e. the first parivarta of the Aryasta - sahasrikaprajnaparamitasutra - and my own translation of two small sample sections of the Saratama, which are extant only in Tibetan, back into Sanskrit.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-04-09T12:28:30Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2014-02-25Bitstream added on 2015-04-09T12:47:17Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 000814037.pdf: 874349 bytes, checksum: d9556c363047190ecaf03badbd6ee2da (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / A análise crítica dos contos de Famílias terrivelmente felizes (2003), de Marçal Aquino, tem por objetivo identificar o uso que o autor faz de uma linguagem da violência que perpassa a articulação de temas e motivos, a constituição dos narradores, a caracterização das personagens e a materialidade dos textos. Quanto ao conteúdo, essa violência está ajustada às imagens da morte, seja de modo predominante ou incidental, física, psicológica, social e simbólica, traços de uma sociedade brasileira autoritária e matéria-prima da linha de produção do novo realismo que se faz presente na ficção brasileira contemporânea. Assim, a função dessa linguagem é ambígua, graças ao acontecimento irônico, sendo que sua ação é marcada pela sutileza, mas também totalmente perversa, se instalando na vida íntima dos intérpretes da ironia que experimentaram o esvaziamento do espaço público no período social e político brasileiro pós-regime militar. Nestes termos, símbolos nacionais relacionados à metáfora da família são questionados pelos contos de Aquino, tais como àquele representado pela família supra-nacional, o Estado-nação, e o representado pelo modelo ideal de família burguesa / The critical analysis of Famílias terrivelmente felizes (2003) short stories, by Marçal Aquino, aims at identifying the use that the author makes of a violence language that pervades the articulation of themes and motifs, the constitution of narrators, the characterization of characters, and the materiality of texts. In regard to content, this violence is adjusted, either predominantly or incidentally, to images of physical, psychological, social, and symbolical death, features of an authoritarian Brazilian society and raw material for the production line of a new realism present in contemporary Brazilian fiction. Therefore, the role of this language is ambiguous, thanks to the ironic happening, with its action marked by subtlety, but also being completely perverse, installing itself in the intimate life of irony interpreters that experience the emptying of public space in the Brazilian social and political post-military regime period. In these terms, national symbols related to family metaphor are questioned by Aquino’s short stories, such as to that represented by the supranational family, the Nation-state, and the one represented by the ideal model of bourgeois family

Made available in DSpace on 2015-04-09T12:28:30Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2014-01-27Bitstream added on 2015-04-09T12:47:17Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 000813704.pdf: 9896985 bytes, checksum: fb3ab8a3216dc6e69615fcb99a80aff5 (MD5) / A Gazeta de Notícias foi uma importante divulgadora das mudanças operadas pela polêmica reforma urbana do Rio de Janeiro na virada do século XIX para o XX. Desde o início, o jornal se mostrou favorável e otimista quanto às medidas dos Poderes Executivo e Legislativo em prol da modernização e “civilização” da cidade. Em 1904, o cronista Paulo Barreto, sob o pseudônimo “João do Rio”, publicou, entre os meses de maio e junho, A pobre gente, uma série composta por seis longas crônicas, nas quais expunha, aos leitores, o mundo da miséria existente na cidade da belle-époque. Em suas crônicas-reportagem, João do Rio deu voz às pessoas que viviam à margem da sociedade, estabelecendo um interessante diálogo entre seus escritos e as demais rubricas da Gazeta em que a “pobre gente” foi também a principal personagem. Em 1908, quatro das seis crônicas divulgadas na série passaram do jornal ao livro A alma encantadora das ruas e a análise desse processo evidencia a importância da relação entre o texto e as características materiais do seu veículo. Assim, pudemos concluir que as reportagens de João do Rio dialogam com o discurso da Gazeta sobre a “pobre gente”, reforçando-o. Mas, em um segundo momento, mostraremos um segundo nível de relação entre os textos de João do Rio e o jornal, considerando a mudança de status das reportagens – que passam a ser chamadas de crônicas quando republicadas na forma material livro –, por meio do discurso da própria Gazeta sobre o livro A alma encantadora das ruas, composto pelas antes reportagens publicadas por esse mesmo jornal. Faremos isso pela ótica da Fortuna Crítica de João do Rio, de alguns textos de Barthes, Bakthin e Genette sobre a análise da narrativa e de seus paratextos e, principalmente, por meio da História Cultural, e nesse domínio, dos escritos de Roger Chartier acerca da importância dos suportes e de suas características materiais como ... / The Gazeta de Notícias was an important discloser of the changes brought by the polemic urban reform of Rio de Janeiro in the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. Since the beginning, the newspaper showed itself favorable and optimistic about the measures of the Executive and Legislative Powers in favor of the modernization and ‘civilization’ of the city. In 1904, the chronicler Paulo Barreto, under the pseudonym of ‘João do Rio’, published, between the months of May and June, A pobre gente, a series of six long chronicles, in which he exposed, to the readers, the world of misery existing in the city of the belle-époque. In his chroniclereportage, João do Rio gave voice to the people that lived on the edge of society, establishing an interesting dialogue between his writings and the other headings of the Gazeta in which ‘the poor people’ was also the main character. In 1908, four of the six chronicles made public in the series passed from the newspaper to the book The Enchanting Soul of the Streets, and the analysis of this process highlights the importance of the relation between the text and the material characteristics of its media. Thus, we can conclude that the reportages of João do Rio dialogue with the discourse of the Gazeta about the poor people, reinforcing it. But, in a second moment, we will show a second level of relationship between the texts of João do Rio and the newspaper, considering the change of status of the reportages – that start being called chronicles when republished in the form of book –, through Gazeta’s own discourse about the book The Enchanting Soul of the Streets, composed by the later reportages published by that same newspaper. We will do it through the eyes of the critical fortune of João do Rio, of some texts by Barthes, Bakthin and Genette about the analysis of the narrative and its paratexts and, mainly, through the cultural history, and in this field, the writings of Roger ...

Made available in DSpace on 2015-04-09T12:28:31Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2014-02-24Bitstream added on 2015-04-09T12:47:15Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 000812894.pdf: 717593 bytes, checksum: 64207f443aba4c1eaca9fa2d4f2e8a1d (MD5) / Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Este trabalho consiste em um estudo comparado da trilogia de Antônio Torres, composta pelos romances Essa terra (1976), O cachorro e o lobo (1997) e Pelo fundo da agulha (2006). Tomando o elemento memorialístico como objeto de análise, examinamos o modo como os narradores o articulam nos enredos dos três romances, relacionando-o com os dados espaciais predominantes nessas narrativas. Trabalhamos com a hipótese de que, nesses romances, assim como na obra de Antônio Torres de uma maneira geral, pela memória de seus narradores ou personagens recupera-se, essencialmente, a antinomia entre a cidade e o sertão, com o intento de comprovar que a recorrência a esse contraste se caracteriza como uma obsessão temática do autor. Relacionadas a essa oposição basilar espaço-temporal que perpassa esses romances, surgem diversas questões, que vão da caracterização de problemas existenciais do homem, passando por aspectos relevantes da realidade social brasileira. Desse modo, além da averiguação das categorias narrativas de tempo e espaço nos romances, o objetivo é mostrar, como parte de nossa hipótese, a importância dos procedimentos utilizados como solução formal para a apresentação e desenvolvimento dos temas abordados. Buscamos mostrar como a instância memorialística norteia o processo de composição de Antônio Torres e é fator de alternância espacial, evidenciando uma relação de consonância entre estrutura e conteúdo romanescos, de modo a espelhar a condição psicológica dos personagens, sobretudo do protagonista da trilogia, Totonhim, associada à sua constituição identitária / This project consists of a comparative study of the trilogy composed of the novels Essa terra (1976), O cachorro e o lobo (1997) and Pelo fundo da agulha (2006), by Antônio Torres. Using the memorialistic element as analysis object, I examine the way the narrators articulate it in the three novels’ plots, associating it with the spatial data predominant in these narratives. I work with the hypothesis that, by the memory of their narrators or their characters, the antinomy between the city and the backwoods is essentially recovered, with the objective to verify that the recurrence of this contrast characterizes a thematic obsession of the author. Several issues arise then related to this fundamental spatiotemporal opposition that pervades these novels, which goes from the characterization of man’s existential problems to relevant aspects of Brazilian social reality. Thereby, besides the verification of the narrative categories of time and space in these novels, I aim to present, as part of my hypothesis, the importance of the procedures employed as a formal solution to the introduction and development of the issues discussed. I seek to demonstrate how the memorialistic instance guides the author’s process of composition as a factor of spatial alternation, evidencing a consonance relation between the novels’ structure and content, in order to mirror the psychological condition of the characters, especially of the trilogy protagonist, Totonhim, associated to his identity constitution / FAPESP: 2010/05456-4

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-14T16:53:06Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2014-04-30Bitstream added on 2015-05-14T16:59:25Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 000822831.pdf: 1439296 bytes, checksum: dedde1e032820dddd90aaf8a5313d447 (MD5) / Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) / Este trabalho analisa as Odes e elegias, livro de poemas de Carlos Magalhães de Azeredo (1872-1963), publicado em 1904, focando em sua tentativa de transposição dos metros clássicos gregos e latinos para a língua portuguesa. Magalhães de Azeredo foi o mais jovem fundador da Academia Brasileira de Letras, e procurou imitar, em seu livro, os versos das Odi barbare, do italiano Giosuè Carducci (1835-1907). Carducci chamava a seus versos metros bárbaros, por contraste com os versos clássicos que imitara. Sabe-se que a métrica utilizada por poetas e tratadistas da Antiguidade baseava-se em características fonológicas e prosódicas das línguas latina e grega que não se encontram mais nas línguas românicas. Assim, toda tentativa de transposição desta métrica em português - uma língua românica - é um problema que exige algum artifício poético como solução. O que se entende por metro clássico em cada época e círculo literário define as condições de recepção dos poemas gregos e latinos nos mesmos círculos; influi, por consequência, na elaboração dos sentidos que vão ser atribuídos à estrutura formal dos poemas. A análise de Odes e elegias, portanto, abrange suas condições tanto quanto seus resultados: não apenas qual foi sua proposta métrica, mas por que se propôs, ao que atenderia tais propostas, qual o contexto de suas tentativas de transposição da métrica clássica. Neste sentido este trabalho se propõe a contribuir para um campo de investigação que tem merecido um interesse crescente no Brasil, qual seja os estudos de história da tradução e da recepção dos clássicos, o que tem condicionado também um aumento de interesse na história das estratégias formais em tradução de poesia antiga / This work analyzes Carlos Magalhães de Azeredo‘s 1904 Odes e elegias, focusing on his transposition of classical meters to Portuguese. Magalhães de Azeredo (1872-1963) was the youngest founder of the Academia Brasileira de Letras (Brazilian Academy), and he emulated, in his book, the verses of Giosuè Carducci‘s Odi barbare, made in what Carducci (1835-1907) called barbarian meters, contrasting with the true classical verse. It is widely known that ancient metrics was quantity-based-which is to say that it was grounded on Greek and Latin phonological and prosodical features alien to Romance languages. Therefore, every attempt to transpose its meters to Portuguese demands some poetic device to make it work. What, in time and space, is understood as classical meter defines the conditions of ancient poetry reception in literary circles; it has an influence, so, in the meanings attributed to the poems‘ formal structure. Odes e elegias, then, is to be analyzed in a way that keep in mind conditions as well as results: not only what was the metrical contract, but why was this contract proposed, what demands this contract, and what is its context. In this way, this work aims to add to an interesting and new field of investigation in Brazil: the studies on classics‘ translation and reception. These studies are conditioning a crescent interest on the history of formal strategies to translate ancient poetry

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