published_or_final_version / English / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rhode Island, 2003. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 176-190).

Thesis (Th. M.)--Dallas Theological Seminary, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [59-62]).

Thesis (M.C.S.)--Regent College, 1990. / Includes abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-121).

Inaug.-diss.--Würzburg. / Lebenslauf. Bibliographical foot-notes.

In this study I attempted to examine the politico-literary strategies of some "Third World" writers. I used the Marxian notions of class and ideology in order to investigate how writers' biographies determined their literary interpretations. Basic writings of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels and the theoretical work of Janet Wolff were used in this respect. I also used the Marxian concept of Historical Materialism in order to distinguish progressive interpretations from reactionary ones. The critical writing of Ernst Fischer was used in order to show that there was no unbridgeable gap between theoretical work in the "Third World" and the development of the aesthetic in Europe. The notion of socialist realism was of particular interest here. Notions of neo-colonialism and cultural imperialism were examined in order to set the context in which "Third World" authors write. The use of the mode of realism by these authors was investigated. The work of Hayden White was used to establish the fact that versions of history depend upon an author's moral purpose. The link was made between authors' moral purposes, their ideologies and their literary strategies. Literary analysis of some works by "Third World" authors was undertaken in order to see whether or not the authors succeeded in their attempts to give progressive interpretations of their historical contexts. Three "Third World" novels, that is, Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Petals of Blood, Sembene Ousmane's God's Bits of Wood and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude were examined in this regard. It was finally concluded that literary strategies have a material basis which is founded on the authors' life experiences and the historical context in which they write. This material bas is to the creative act is proposed as a way out of the labyrinth of textuality to which a "deconstructionalist" approach leads the critic.

Chapter one of this thesis attempts to explicate and analyze the controversy that has historically surrounded the grotesque. Contention over the grotesque has existed since the earliest known discourses on the subject by Horace and Vitruvius. The indeterminacy and paradoxical nature of the grotesque, which disturbed these men of antiquity, has continued to generate debate among modern theorists such as Mikhail Bakhtin and Wolfgang Kayser whose ideas serve as touchstones throughout this work. Understandably, theorists, who strive to create systems of ideas which attempt to explain and define phenomena, are drawn to the grotesque. However, they are inevitably placed in the paradoxical position of trying to categorize something which ultimately subverts the conventional logic which underlies that process. Furthermore, the standards of mimesis and decorum, from which the grotesque gets its disruptive force, are subject to society. Societies provide the different conventions and assumptions that determine the form of the grotesque. Therefore, the grotesque will always have to be approached in its historically specific contexts of production and reception. What becomes apparent in analysing the grotesque is that attitudes toward its indeterminacy and paradoxical nature, which transgress the monologic binaries and implied hierarchies of Western thought, reflect the position of the observer or producer of the grotesque. If one espouses the cause of the low, as does Balch tin, then the indeterminacy and paradox of the grotesque provides an egalitarian possibility for the marginalized. If one stands with the status quo, as does Kayser, the transgressing of the definitions and distinctions which support the status quo is experienced as frightening and sinister (Harpham, 73). The differences noted between Kayser and Balch tin as observers of the grotesque may also be made between Federico Fellini and Angela Carter as producers of grotesque texts. The following two chapters of the thesis explore how the grotesque is used in Fellini's films (chapter two) and Carter's novels (chapter three). Carter, like Bakhtin, celebrates the grotesque as a means of empowerment, particularly for women and her work seems to employ the Bakhtinian theory of the carnivalesque. Fellini's films also use images of carnival, but Fellini, like Kayser, sees the grotesque as an isolating aspect of the human condition. Fellini uses the grotesque only to show humanity's alienation from a knowable world, whereas Carter uses it to demonstrate the possibilities of a totally new one. Carter appears to take the Fellinian, Kayserian, negative attitude towards the grotesque and turn it around for her feminist cause. She utilizes the emancipatory aspect of the grotesque inherent in its denial of hierarchy without, however, idealizing it as Bakhtin appears to. She is well aware that carnivals, like her novels, are author(ized). In analyzing the continuum of Fellini's and Carter's works, both artists show an increased dependence on the use of the grotesque combined with postmodern strategies to support their intentions. However, the continuum of Fellini's oeuvre suggests the development of a modernist approach which attempts closure, but faced with the impossibility of final determinacy, turns to the quagmire of simulacra where no meaning is possible. Carter, on the other hand, increasingly uses the grotesque and postmodern strategies not only to reveal and deconstruct oppressive representations, but to allow agency for the reconstruction of new subjectivities. As this thesis will demonstrate, the grotesque's indeterminacy may provide a way to understand "reality" or the means to construct a better one.

Bibliography: pages 111-118. / This essay sets out to explore Lukács's views on realism and its polar opposite. anti-realism, in nineteenth and twentieth-century literature. As a Marxist, Lukács's views on literature are closely interwoven with his views of society and and social development. This necessitates first looking at Lukács's theory of society and history as expressed in the epochal History and Class Consciousness. The essay firstly attempts to present and criticize the central Lukácsian concept of concrete totality. Totality, for Lukács, is not a static concept but a dynamically evolving, ever-changing idea. However, he tends to view totality as simply a concept of contemplation. Lukács indicates the proletariat as the subject-object of Western European history.

'Popular Romance and the Woman Reader' is divided into three parts. The first is an analysis of theories of reading, of the woman reader and of how we read popular texts. The first section discusses women readers and popular romance in a Western context, with special reference to an American study by Janice Radway, Reading the Romance, and the second looks at how similar issues might apply amongst African women readers. Part II is a textual analysis of several romance texts. The final part is an account of four interviews in which black South African women talk about their romance reading. Although the focus of the study is on popular romance, I also intend it to re-examine the categories of 'woman reader' and 'black woman reader in South Africa'. As new freedoms are opened to the reader in South Africa, it is offered as a contribution to an understanding of how reading, and the construction of subjectivity itself, can be transformed in the future.

Includes abstract.|Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 91-95). / Post-colonial translations are located in 'contact zones'. They mediate in the interface of disparate cultures and languages. The multiple determinations and effects of this decisive mediation process are examined in a close reading of the Afrikanissimo-project and the translation of Tsitsi Dangarembga's novel Nervous Conditions. They represent an attempt to engage 'Africa' through literature from a German perspective. Such dialogue is caught in the aporetic tension between the preservation of linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text and the domestication of the cultural other by dominant values in the target-language culture.