The critical discussion of metatheatre has historically connected a series of reflexive dramatic strategies—like soliloquy, chorus, dumb show, the-play-within-the-play, prologue, and epilogue—and assumed that because these tropes all involve the play's apparent awareness of its own theatrical nature they all have similar dramaturgical functions. This dissertation, by contrast, shows that the efficacy derived from metatheatrical moments that overtly reference theatrical production is better understood in the context of restaged non-theatrical cultural performances. Restaged moments of both theatrical and non-theatrical social ritual produce layers of performance that allow the play to create representational space capable of circumventing traditional power structures. The Reflexive Scaffold argues that this relationship between metatheatricality and restaged moments of culture is central to interrogating the complexities of dramatic genre on the English Renaissance stage. This project asserts that a great deal of early modern English drama begins to experiment with staged moments of cultural performance: social, cultural, and religious events, which have distinct ramifications and efficacy both for the audience and in the world of the play. However, while these restaged social rituals become focal points within a given narrative, their function is determined by the genre of the play in which they appear. A play or a feast inserted into a comic narrative creates a very different sort of efficacy within the world of the play from that which is created when the same moment appears in a tragic narrative. These various types of performance give us a glimpse into the ways that early modern English dramatists understood the relationship between their works and the audiences who viewed them. I argue that the presentation and reinterpretation of early modern social ritual is utilized by many of the major playwrights of the English Renaissance, including Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, John Marston, Thomas Middleton, and Philip Massinger to redefine genre. These moments of reflexivity construct efficacy that, depending on the genre in which they appear, runs the gambit from reinforcing social order to directly critiquing the dominant cultural discourse.

Includes bibiographical references (pages 236-271). / It is my purpose to show that in Southern Africa African English literature as defined above has absorbed the culture of the West and has begun to reciprocate by adding its own distinctive features. My contention will be based on an investigation of the trends and ideas which appear in the novels, short stories, poetry, drama, autobiographical and critical writing of Africans.

Bibliography : pages 312-319. / The present study sets out to accomplish two things: first, to demonstrate that space and spatiality is the domain in which discourse partakes of the colonial project, and second, to isolate a number of textual strategies employed in the discursive production of colonial space. The first aim requires a lengthy theoretical discussion which occupies the first part of the study. Here I develop the thesis that spatiality as a philosophical preoccupation has never been divorced from the questions of sigmfication and subjectivity, and that the production of significant and subjective space is always a production of social space. In support of this thesis, it is shown that vision and writing are the two functions in which subjective space becomes meaningful, and that in both cases it becomes meaningful only as social space. It is thus in the context of looking and writing that the production of colonial space may be examined as a social space within which meaning and subjectivity are possible. The second aim requires an analytical study of a number of colorual texts, which I undertake in part II of the study. For simplicity, I have confined myself to the colonial discourse of German South West Africa in the period 1884-1915. The central thesis developed here is that discourse develops strategies for enclosing spaces by demarkating borders, privileging certain passages between spaces and blocking others. This organization of space is presented as the ordering of a chaotic multiplicity and, as such, as a process of civilization. The contradiction between the blocking and privileging of passages results in what I call a "ritual of crossing": an implicit set of rules prescribmg the conditions of possibility for crossing the borders it establishes. As a result, in its production of space, the colonial text assumes a mythical function which allows it to transcend the very spaces it produces. It is here that I attempt to situate colonial discourse's claims to uruversal truth. In conclusion, the detailed analysis of the production of space in colonial discourse may be understood as a strategic intervention. It attempts to use the texts of colonisation to counter colonization's claims to universal truth and a civilizing mission.

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"Ich suche ein unschuldiges Land": Reading History in the Poetry of Ingeborg Bachmann" reads the discourse on fascism as one among multiple discourses in the poetry (1948-1967) of the postwar Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann. In Chapter One I position myself in relation to previous work on Bachmann's poetry, as I argue for a reading of her poetry that examines her engagement with the legacy of National Socialism. Chapter Two presents a reading of Bachmann's early poems (1948-1952), in which the poetic subject can be seen flying over a ruined "landscape of history," recalling Walter Benjamin's angel of history flying over debris and rubble. Historiography and historical discourse were as much in rubble as the physical landscape of the former German Reich; the imposing structures that had previously dominated the figurative landscapes of history and literature were in ruins. In Chapters Three and Four, poems from Die gestundete Zeit (1953) are examined in the context of a gap in historical discourse during the early 1950s--a period in which this discourse is suspended because of "das Unsagliche" of National Socialism. The poems discussed in Chapter Four, although dealing predominantly with poetological questions, also represent a self-reflexive "Engagement" with the legacy of National Socialism in the "afterbirth of horrors." Chapters Five and Six are devoted to Anrufung des grossen Baren (1956). Chapter Five focuses on landscapes of night and darkness as metaphors for the aftermath of National Socialism. The second part of the chapter explores the concept of an "unbeschriebenes Land," and the nexus of guilt, memory, and language that are brought together in these poems. The sixth chapter discusses Bachmann's presentation of Italy as an anti-idyll that forbids the possibility of escape from history into an "unschuldiges land" (Ungaretti). The final chapter treats the late poems (1957-1961; 1964-1967) that have traditionally been read as signaling Bachmann's "Sprachkrise," but which also problematize what it means to write "das unbeschriebene Land." Like Benjamin's angel, the poetic subject of Bachmann's poetry, very often flying over this landscape of history, seeks the "unschuldiges Land" but ultimately articulates the impossibility of innocence and nationhood.

<p> &ldquo;The Art of Information Management&rdquo; explores the ways that information technologies influence thought and take shape in imaginative works of literature at the turn of the seventeenth century in early modern England, from 1580 to 1605. Imaginative literature becomes a space for articulating the challenges presented by discourses perceived to have been unalterably expanded and amplified through technology, as well for experimenting with strategies to respond to those challenges.</p><p> Drawing on studies of early modern Materialism, New Historicism, Literary History, Digital Humanities, and Media Archeology, this project seeks to move the understanding of the role information technologies as agents of change forward by relocating debates concerning technology to the spaces imagined in early modern English literature of the fantastic: Thomas Nashe&rsquo;s multi-modal London and ocean-sanctuary Yarmouth, Edmund Spenser&rsquo;s Faery Land, William Shakespeare and Robert Armin&rsquo;s holiday Kingdom of Illyria, and Samuel Daniel&rsquo;s pastoral Arcadia. In each imagined space, this project looks at the printing press and beyond to attendant technologies in order to develop a better understand of the period&rsquo;s relationship to our own. </p><p> The works considered here expose a moment of feverish innovation with regard to the rhetorical construction of authenticity, political expression, and right behavior. The first two chapters argue that the writings of Thomas Nashe and Edmund Spenser reflect a heightened sensitivity to the speed and timings associated with technologically-mediated discourse. The final two chapters examine the efforts of William Shakespeare, Robert Armin, and Samuel Daniel, as they sort through the solidifying perception of discourse structures outpacing traditional modes of thought and learning.</p>

This thesis uses a multidisciplinary approach drawing primarily on archival and bibliographical research as well as the fields of children’s literature, book history and translation to explore British translation of Nordic children’s fiction since 1950. Which works of Nordic children’s literature have been published in the UK during the period in question? And how were Nordic children’s authors and texts selected by British publishers, along with British translators and illustrators? Chapter One gives an overview of limited past research in this area, focusing on publishing and book history and Translation Studies (particularly Polysystem Theory). Chapter Two considers bibliographical research already undertaken in Children’s Literature Translation Studies and is followed by a detailed study of the British National Bibliography (1950-2000). This methodological approach has documented for the first time the depth and breadth of the corpus of British translations of Nordic children’s fiction since 1950, enabling key authors, publishers, translators and genres to be identified. A brief analysis is given of the Golden Age of Nordic children’s literature in British translation up to 1975, followed by a decline into the twenty first century. The thesis then goes on to examine the principles and practices of text and translator selection as its second major research element, with extensive use made here of archival sources. Chapter Three explores publishing archives as a research resource and details issues in their distribution and potential use. Chapter Four gives an overview of the key role of the editor as a centre pin in the process of publishing works in translation, drawing on a wide range of publishing archives as well as introducing the case study part of the thesis which examines an independent press and a major international academic publishing house. Chapter Five looks in detail at the role of author-educator-publisher Aidan Chambers in publishing Nordic children’s literature in the early 1990s through small press Turton & Chambers. Chapter Six examines the role of Oxford University Press in publishing Nordic authors from the 1950s to the 2010s, in particular Astrid Lindgren. This thesis aims to make a significant and unique scholarly contribution to the hitherto neglected study of the translation of children’s literature into British English, offering a methodological framework (bibliographical and archival) which has potential for use with other language systems and with adult literature in translation.

published_or_final_version / English Studies / Master / Master of Arts

<p> This research generates an alchemical hermeneutic analysis of four archetypes as found in certain ancient Egyptian texts and the contemporary dream text <i> Heart of the Inner Chamber</i>, the landscape of which is the &ldquo;world&rsquo;s geography of love.&rdquo; As symbols of transformation, these four archetypal energies are essential reagents in the dramatic process of individuation, as understood in the depth psychological tradition. These archetypes are (a) the triptych of disintegration-death-resurrection, (b) the dying heroic masculine, (c) the feminine incorporatio (who incorporates the corrupt and dying heroic masculine into her body), and (d) love as the glutinum mundi (glue of the world). Certain ancient Egyptian ritual and mythic texts describe the sungod Re undergoing a recursive renewal of his life-giving force, which is facilitated by the love and ministrations of particular feminine figures. One such figure is the ancient Egyptian sky goddess Nut, a personification of both realms of heaven and netherworld, who swallows the failing Re at sunset, and in whose body the mysterious processes of his regeneration take place so he may be reborn at dawn. A Nut like figure appears in <i>Heart of the Inner Chamber </i> linking the psyche of the dreamer to symbols of transformation from ancient Egypt. </p><p> As symbols of transformation, love as the glutinum mundi and the feminine incorporatio are not well articulated in the field of depth psychology, and particularly so regarding individuation. This research deepens the articulation of the archetypes of love as the glutinum mundi and the feminine incorporatio. As well the research invites a deeper valuation of a conscious engagement with these symbols of transformation, especially as they may serve us when we find ourselves in those ineffable and inevitable, chaotic, shadowy, and emotionally confounding places of being where we feel that we are dying or dead and hope for the miracle of our transformation and rebirth. </p>

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