Den här är ett utdrag ur en relationsroman, ett psykologiskt kärleksdrama, som kretsar kring tre nära och svåra kärleksrelationer: till en döende mor, en psykiskt belastad syster och en sjukligt svartsjuk partner. De flesta människor vill kärlek: vi vill bli älskade, ha någon att älska. Men redan det där lilla ordet i den förra satsen kan bli tuvan som stjälper hela lasset: att ”ha” någon. Trots att kärlek är vad vi i våra hjärtan önskar så kan det ibland tyckas som att vi gör allt vi kan för att förstöra möjligheterna för den: vi sätter upp villkor för oss själva, den andre eller för kärlekens uttryck, vi saboterar den med nedvärderingar eller orimliga krav, vi skjuter den på framtiden när vi är redo och tillräckligt mogna eller har tiden och utrymmet, eller vi har en tidigare kärlek som mall för hur kärlek ska se ut. Sätten är förstöra möjligheterna är närmast oändliga. Mötet mellan Minna och Bruno är drabbande starkt. Det är som att de stiger in i en relation som redan är etablerad och får aldrig möjlighet att välja varandra. Efter bara några veckor flyttar Bruno in hos Minna. Snart utvecklar Bruno en sjuklig misstro och svartsjuka. Minnas och Brunos väg tillsammans är dramatisk och brinnande intensiv, både känslomässigt och i yttre händelser. Minnas mamma drabbas av en hjärntumör. När Minna följer sin mamma på hennes långsamma väg mot slutet blir de negativa livsmönster hon övertagit från sin mamma tydliga i hennes egen relation till Bruno. Mamman kommer dö, men arvegodset hon fått med sig har hon kvar. Brunos kontrollnät dras åt allt hårdare runt Minna och relationen blir allt mer ohållbar, men orkar hon mista både sin mamma och sin partner på samma gång? Berättelsen handlar om det stora och det plågsamma i att älska. Den handlar om mod och att övervinna sig själv. Om att ge upp, att välja och att växa.

Bibliography: pages 67-70. / The essay departs from the iconographical and interpretative studies of the Warburg Institute in the field of art history, seeking to define pictorial context in a way that avoids the notion of a fixed content behind works of art. Specific paintings are contextualised according to the psychological/physiological accidents of vision. A theoretical precedent for this approach within "art history" has been established by Norman Bryson, and the methods of Bryson, of J. Derrida and of J. Lacan are applied to specific works. The essay defines a motif common in Florentine and Roman mannerist religious paintings: the central significance given to Christ's torso in many works. This motif is related to its sources (Michelangelo and antique sculpture), and developed through an analysis of three paintings, J. Pontormo's Descent from the Cross, Rosso's Dead Christ with Angels and the Deposition by the Roman artist D. Ricciarelli da Volterra. The paintings are analysed according to their status as fictions, as devotional images and as representations of the human body. Various definitions of maniera are offered. The essay concludes with an appeal that visual ambiguity be recognised as central to the understanding of pictorial representations.

This thesis will attempt to show that the three major works of Conrad's middle period -- Nostromo, The Secret Agent, and Under Western Eyes -- are essentially literary epics.

The Woman in the Box is Smiling is a collection of poems, prose poems, short-short stories, and short stories. The introduction is a personal essay which discusses form as a device used to gain control over subject matter.

The growing interest in South African cabaret together with the unavailability of relevant information persuaded me that this part of South African theatre life and literature is a neglected phenomena. It needs urgent attention, not only for the literary importance, but also for the social relevance. Towards this end the assistance of Hennie Aucamp, who gave me access to his entire extensive cabaret collection, was of invaluable importance. Other information was collected in Europe in 1991. Cabaret performances in different countries were attended, libraries and museums visited and television programmes viewed, all in an attempt to experience at first hand and analyse the differences and similarities. One of the conclusions was that "cabaret", "music hall", "musical", "chanson", "revue", etcetera, have a lot in common, but are definitely not the same. Many people associate cabaret with almost naked girls with fish net tights. This idea was brought about by inter alia the film Cabaret, but is not what cabaret really is about. South African cabaret, especially our literary cabaret, is based on German "Kabarett". Literary cabaret works with literary conventions and is therefore important to South African literature and theatre. We are experiencing similar political and social changes to those in Europe during the fin-de-siècle. Cabaret in South Africa is growing because of these uncertainties. For example, the Dutch cabaret artist finds himself in a position where there is social welfare and political peace - and nothing is sacred anymore. It is very difficult for him then to make a statement in a climate where everything is allowed and possible. Germany is experiencing political uncertainties and cabaret is flourishing. This tendency can also be seen in other unstable countries, also in South Africa. This proves that, for cabaret to thrive, there must be specific political and social circumstances. Cabaret is the perfect way to remind us of our original reason for living: to love, to accept one another and to live in peace. While this is not possible, there will always be something to say and statements to make.

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This thesis is a critical inquiry into the nature of the postcolonial African city as represented in fiction. It examines how the Nigerian novel represents the postcolonial African city and the extent to which it confirms or contests the dominant paradigms of scholarship in urban studies. In it, perspectives from urban studies are brought into conversation with literary representations of the postcolonial African city in contemporary Nigerian fiction thereby creating a nuanced synthesis of postcolonial literary studies and urban scholarship. Its provocative argument is that the postcolonial African city is both functional and legible despite its arguably squalid state and the undesirable living conditions of its subjects. Approaches that denigrate so-called Third World cities as particularly dystopic and illegible do not present the whole picture and are therefore one-sided and misleading. The Nigerian novel, it argues, reflects the need for rethinking of the dominant templates of urban studies to take into consideration the particularities and complexities of postcolonial cities. The thesis examines representations of the postcolonial city in four recent Nigerian novels: Ben Okri's The Famished Road (1991), Okey Ndibe's Arrows of Rain (2000), Chris Abani's GraceLand (2004), and Sefi Ata's Everything Good Will Come (2006). The selected novels' analyses foreground the argument that there is no universal template for theorizing the city; hence, there is a legitimate basis for talking about the postcolonial city both in conception and fictional representation. The thesis begins with an introduction which encompasses the aim, focal question, rationale, design/structure and the definition of key terms. This is followed by Chapter One which gives an insight into the state of the research field. The chapter reviews relevant scholarship with a view to situating modernity and the postcolonial city in Africa. In Chapters Two, Three, Four and Five, the primary texts, under various subtitles, are analyzed. The novels' representation(s) of the postcolonial (African) city, from different perspectives – like the problematic of legibility and spatial morphology, infrastructure, agency, urban governmentality, etc. – are critically examined. Chapter Six examines the place of bars and gender in determining the metro poetics of the postcolonial African city and how they are depicted in the selected novels. This is followed by the Conclusion, which summarizes the thesis by restating and highlighting its major argument and the ways in which it is elaborated upon in the fictional texts analyzed in the various chapters.

Includes bibliographical references. / This thesis is an investigation of the concepts of androgyny used in the work, both theory and fiction, of Virginia Woolf, Angela Carter, Jeanette Winterson and Jacqueline Harpman. Androgyny is an idea which is thousands of years old, and an overview of its presence in religion, mythology and psychology is included as background to its representation in the work of these writers. The basic concept of androgyny in this context, is one in which the psychological aspects of 'masculine' and 'feminine', as generally understood by Western society, are synthesised into a harmonious and balanced whole within each individual. Within a feminist epistemology, it offers an opportunity to escape the power structures and value systems of patriarchy, and to attain individual fulfilment in both writing and identity. Virginia Woolf introduces the idea of androgyny into feminist literary theory in A Room of One's Own and into feminist ontology through the androgynous protagonist of Orlando, although the binary distinction between theory and fiction is deliberately blurred. Angela Carter continues the examination of androgyny with regard to women and writing in The Sadeian Woman and 'Notes from the Front Line', and explores androgyny fictionally in The Passion of New Eve. Jeanette Winterson returns to Woolf's ideas and develops them in Art Objects and creates the ultimate androgynous character in Written on the Body. Jacqueline Harpman revisits and recreates Woolf's fiction from a contemporary perspective in Orlando. Differences are identified in the style and approach of these writers, resulting from their respective historical contexts, starting points, and intentions. However, the commonalities are examined in greater detail, including analogous ideas and tropes, as well as references to and interrelations with each other. The connection between Woolf's work and that of Winterson and Harpman is identified as particularly strong. Through the examination of their work, the four writers are found to have similar feminist beliefs and concerns: there is a common interest in the emancipation of women from the constraints of patriarchy, implemented through a deconstruction of gender essentialism and artificial gendering processes. Furthermore, a utopian concern is identified, in all four writers, with the creation of a new space which exists beyond the confines of patriarchy in which the woman writer is able to create freely, and the woman subject is able to develop freely. Although the writers are dealt with chronologically, the cyclical aspect of their work is emphasised, as well as their cyclical relationship to one another, through their common androgynous vision. The continuing presence of the androgynous ideal is taken as indicative of its strength. The conclusion is drawn that, although the concept of androgyny tends to be highly idealised in the work of these writers, it is a viable option to the transformation of both society and the individual. These writers are creating the awareness of the artificial nature of gender, which is required for the transformation to begin.

Bibliography: pages 135-141. / In this thesis, I approach autobiography in Another Life by exploring the linguistic means Derek Walcott uses to set up subjectivity in the text. In particular, I respond to Emile Benveniste's question: "what does I refer to" by examining the role of the first person pronoun in Another Life. In chapter one, I introduce the problem of "being in the text", attend to comments Walcott has made about the self, review criticism of the poem, raise issues which concern critics of autobiography, outline Benveniste's theory of subjectivity and Philippe Lejeune's observations on the use of the third person in autobiography. A thematic summary of the poem follows in the second chapter. The pronominal structure underlying Walcott's autobiography and the "biography" of a West Indian intelligence is traced in chapter three where I relate Walcott's dual perspective to Benveniste's definitions of discourse and historical narration. In the final chapter, close readings of selected textual extracts demonstrate the complexity of language phenomenalizing the pronoun I in different sequences of the poem. The readings support Benveniste's claim that the I "refers to the act of individual discourse in which it is pronounced" and the post-structuralist notion that the "self" is a linguistic construct. I conclude that Walcott's I assimilates both romantic and post-structuralist properties.

Bibliography: leaves 69-73. / This thesis argues for, citing the example of four novels published at or near to the millennium, the establishment of antirely new genre. But implicit in this is an investigstion into what is meant by term 'genre'. Further the nature of these novels makes central the way in which these novels should be grouped over the grouping itself.