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Images of Oceania and Polynesia have traditionally been exoticised and romanticised by Western representations of a "paradise" populated by primitive natives with grass skirts and ukuleles. However, the movement towards political independence in the 1960s and 1970s has seen the emergence of a corpus of indigenous representations that depict and portray the real situation. These indigenous representations speak of subjugation and moreover testify to the debilitating effects colonialism has on cultural identities. The geographical area covered by this thesis is Western Polynesia, specifically the Pacific Island nations of Fiji, Tonga and Western Samoa and is concerned with literary representations. The thesis examines significant developments and trends in the creative writing of indigenous and migrant writers in these three countries of Western Polynesia: Western Samoa, Tonga and Fiji, seeing these literary representations from within as a writing out of multi-faceted aspects of the shifting identities of Pacific peoples in a post-colonial world. The introduction focuses on the historical colonial/post-colonial context of Western Polynesian writing and the socio-political imperatives for change which have had an impact on these writers and the texts they have produced. It also discusses the literary and anthropological representation of these Islanders from the 'outside', from the perspective of a European hegemonic self, forming the 'orientalist' stereotypes against which the initial texts written by the Pacific's colonised 'others' in the early 1970's reacted so strongly. Chapter One sets out the conceptual framework within which these texts will be discussed and analysed, beginning with indigenous and local concepts which indigenous and migrant Pacific Islanders use to connect and accommodate different 'ways of seeing' this representative body of literature, then moving on to other theorists concerned with literary representation and post-coloniality. Chapters Two to Nine explore the writing of these three countries, beginning with the fiction of Albert Wendt, one of the major writers from Western Polynesia who has an established regional and international literary reputation, and then progressing to focus on other selected representative writers of the three countries, including those in the early stages of attempting publication. The thesis concludes by discussing the texts from all three countries and tying them together in the various thematic strands of cultural clash, the widening of borders, the quest for self-definition and national identity in the contemporary Pacific, reiterating major points and examining possible future directions in Western Polynesian writing. The study takes an interdisciplinary approach to the critical analysis of Western Polynesian literature, maintaining the importance of seeing them as important forms of cultural communication in post-colonial contexts, as literary representations from the inside, writing out of a cultural consciousness which values the various 'pasts' of Polynesia as definitive 'maps' which provide the grids and bridges which Pacific Islanders in this part of Oceania can utilise to mediate their experiences and articulate their identities, to fit the widening boundaries of the Pacific into a post-colonial global context.

This study examines the historical influence of literary works adapted to political purpose, with reference to two significant nineteenth-century French books about Russia: a memoir by Astolphe de Custine entitled Lettres de Russie (1843), and a novel by Jules Verne entitled Michel Strogoff (1876), each based on travelogue sources. Taken together, these two works framed the poles of an ongoing debate about Russian identity related to the long-term effects of the thirteenth-century Mongol invasions of Russia. Custine's memoir characterized Russia as a threatening Tartar horde at the gates of European civilization, while Verne portrayed Russia as a legitimate European great power engaged in taming its rebellious Tartar subjects. Uniquely among the corpus of nineteenth-century French texts on Russia, these books demonstrate exceptional influence. Indeed, political adaptations of both have resonated substantially in international relations. During the Cold War, Custine's Lettres de Russie was discovered and republished by American diplomats in a heavily abridged 1951 edition, to serve as a cipher for an imminent Russian threat. In 1880,Verne's Michel Strogoff was adapted for a theatrical production in Paris; for the next twenty years, the play served as a vehicle to express public support for the Franco-Russian Alliance negotiated between 1891 and 1893. Political adaptation of these works ultimately led to their entrenchment in cultural repertoires of America and France, where they persist today at the levels of state and popular culture. The analysis concludes that an insistent myth concerning Tartar identity remains embedded in the international imaginary concerning Russia. The characterization of Russia as legitimate great power or despotic aggressor continues to reflect earlier questions concerning whether it had tamed its Tartar past, or fallen victim to miscegenation.

In 1932 Beatrice Warde delivered to the British Society of Typographic Designers what has since become one of the most recognizable statements about the design of books: The Crystal Goblet, or Printing Should Be Invisible. In it, Warde defines good typography as a crystal goblet, because everything about it is calculated to reveal rather than hide the beautiful thing which it was meant to contain. Her address argues that the true art of designers is the creation of transparent interfaces which allow readers to imbibe deeply of the intellect captured within the pages of the book without external distractions.<p> Wardes Crystal Goblet is fundamentally contradictory. Typographers must strive to make themselves and their work invisible so that only the voice of the absent author speaks through the text; but there is no voice, only words on page produced through a great deal of human labour at a specific moment in history. But, Warde did not create her metaphor; she adopted existing imagery from the Western tradition. Nor was she the first typographer to do so. The writings and work of those involved with the creation of books has, since before the invention of the printing press, revolved around attempts to create perfect communicative interfaces books which allow the reader an unobscured view into the mind of the author. The resultant page is that with which we are most familiar: a block of black Roman-style text on a white or off-white page with blank margins.<p> This study tracks the rise and influence of the crystal goblet motif, the dream of perfect readability, in the discourse of those directly involved with the creation of books: scribes, printers, type-cutters and typographers. It postulates transparency, or perfect readability, to be the primary motive underlying the actions of those making books, but does not assume all printers in all times have been motivated by the same forces or to the same extent. Rather, it traces the thread of transparency through many incarnations and examines the social and political factors underlying each permutation and how new elements are introduced into the discourse without completely erasing all traces of the old.<p> Chapter One studies the Italian Renaissance and how the writing style of a small group of humanist scholars comes to dominate the printed book of the sixteenth century. Chapter Two begins with an examination of the perceived decline in typographic practice in the seventeenth century and the subsequent emergence of both writings about typography and of a new style of Roman typeface: the Modern. Chapter Three deals with similar events in the nineteenth-century first there is a perceived decline in and then a revival of printing standards. Chapter Four discusses the reconciliation of machine- production and traditional practices in the early to mid-twentieth century and the unsuccessful challenge to traditional typography posed by the Bauhaus and other Modernist schools of design.

In the 1980s Rainer Werner Fassbinders Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod (1976) and Thomas Bernhard’s Heldenplatz (1988) caused two of the biggest theatre scandals in the history of German-language literature, leading to extensive debates in the media. A comparative examination of the “Fassbinder-Kontroversen” (1976, 1984, 1985) and the “Causa Heldenplatz” (1988) reveals many crucial similarities. Both scandals must be understood within their historical and political context. Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod was highly criticized as an anti-Semitic play, while Heldenplatz was said to slander crassly the Austrian people. Bernhard was also attacked for using Jews in a way which could reinforce latent anti-Semitic sentiments. This thesis questions such premises for their reductive readings of these texts. Bernhard’s Heldenplatz can certainly be perceived as a play that was made to be scandal-provoking. Sigmund Freud’s and William G. Niederland’s theories on trauma, however, can lead to a deeper understanding of the text beyond the obvious level of provocation. Most commentary on the play criticizes it for portraying Jews as psychically diseased. My claim, by contrast, is that their neuroticism or traumatization should not be interpreted as limiting the political validity of their comments, but rather as an essential aspect of their protest against Austria’s repression of its involvement in Nazi crimes. Like Heldenplatz, Fassbinder’s Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod can be seen as a text that refutes the denial that there is no anti-Semitism in post-war German-speaking societies. The difference is that Fassbinder deals with the traumatization of his characters counter-intuitively, namely, by introducing the ironic, distancing effects of camp. In her essay „Notes on ‚Camp‘“, Susan Sontag claims that camp “sees everything in quotation marks”. An analysis of Fassbinder’s play reveals it to be a montage of citations and stereotypes. He thereby deconstructs and denounces stereotypes about Jews.

ABSTRACT In this thesis, it is argued that the performance of three plays written by Daniel David Moses: Brébeuf's Ghost, The Indian Medicine Shows and Almighty Voice and his Wife function as healing ceremonies. This healing - so necessary after the cultural genocide wrought upon First Nations peoples by the Canadian government's attempts to legislate and educate them out of existence - is brought about through Moses' examination of the dichotic underpinnings of euro-western notions of absence and presence and how this dichotomy leads to conflict between the euro-western concept of disease as a purely physical phenomena and the indigenous view of disease as being the physical manifestation of spiritual imbalance, of not living in accord with the land. The link Heidegger makes between absence and the essence of things - an example of this being his assertion that the essence of a wine jug "does not lie at all in the material of which it consists, but in the void that holds" ("The Thing" 169) - is representative of the viewpoint of the euro-western characters of the play, most of whom base their understanding of the world and the things in it on their perception of voids. For both euro-western and native characters in these plays, physical and psychological disease is linked to the idea of absence. Disease, as a social construct, is argued as a manifestation of the physical and spiritual voids created by a preoccupation with absence. The euro-western relationship to 'things' and commodities to fill the absence of 'self' is. I argue that the performance of the text is a type of ceremony designed to physically manifest the spiritual, akin to such rituals as the Hopi katina ceremony and the Navajo red ant ceremony, whose aims are to restore the wellness of an individual and, thus, the group. It is the performance of absence which is the key to understanding the works' healing value.

In the 1980s Rainer Werner Fassbinders Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod (1976) and Thomas Bernhard’s Heldenplatz (1988) caused two of the biggest theatre scandals in the history of German-language literature, leading to extensive debates in the media. A comparative examination of the “Fassbinder-Kontroversen” (1976, 1984, 1985) and the “Causa Heldenplatz” (1988) reveals many crucial similarities. Both scandals must be understood within their historical and political context. Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod was highly criticized as an anti-Semitic play, while Heldenplatz was said to slander crassly the Austrian people. Bernhard was also attacked for using Jews in a way which could reinforce latent anti-Semitic sentiments. This thesis questions such premises for their reductive readings of these texts. Bernhard’s Heldenplatz can certainly be perceived as a play that was made to be scandal-provoking. Sigmund Freud’s and William G. Niederland’s theories on trauma, however, can lead to a deeper understanding of the text beyond the obvious level of provocation. Most commentary on the play criticizes it for portraying Jews as psychically diseased. My claim, by contrast, is that their neuroticism or traumatization should not be interpreted as limiting the political validity of their comments, but rather as an essential aspect of their protest against Austria’s repression of its involvement in Nazi crimes. Like Heldenplatz, Fassbinder’s Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod can be seen as a text that refutes the denial that there is no anti-Semitism in post-war German-speaking societies. The difference is that Fassbinder deals with the traumatization of his characters counter-intuitively, namely, by introducing the ironic, distancing effects of camp. In her essay „Notes on ‚Camp‘“, Susan Sontag claims that camp “sees everything in quotation marks”. An analysis of Fassbinder’s play reveals it to be a montage of citations and stereotypes. He thereby deconstructs and denounces stereotypes about Jews.

ABSTRACT In this thesis, it is argued that the performance of three plays written by Daniel David Moses: Brébeuf's Ghost, The Indian Medicine Shows and Almighty Voice and his Wife function as healing ceremonies. This healing - so necessary after the cultural genocide wrought upon First Nations peoples by the Canadian government's attempts to legislate and educate them out of existence - is brought about through Moses' examination of the dichotic underpinnings of euro-western notions of absence and presence and how this dichotomy leads to conflict between the euro-western concept of disease as a purely physical phenomena and the indigenous view of disease as being the physical manifestation of spiritual imbalance, of not living in accord with the land. The link Heidegger makes between absence and the essence of things - an example of this being his assertion that the essence of a wine jug "does not lie at all in the material of which it consists, but in the void that holds" ("The Thing" 169) - is representative of the viewpoint of the euro-western characters of the play, most of whom base their understanding of the world and the things in it on their perception of voids. For both euro-western and native characters in these plays, physical and psychological disease is linked to the idea of absence. Disease, as a social construct, is argued as a manifestation of the physical and spiritual voids created by a preoccupation with absence. The euro-western relationship to 'things' and commodities to fill the absence of 'self' is. I argue that the performance of the text is a type of ceremony designed to physically manifest the spiritual, akin to such rituals as the Hopi katina ceremony and the Navajo red ant ceremony, whose aims are to restore the wellness of an individual and, thus, the group. It is the performance of absence which is the key to understanding the works' healing value.

C. S. Lewis’s novel, Till We Have Faces, has been misunderstood by both scholars and readers alike. This paper seeks to read the text through the lens of Lewis’s own literary criticism. It begins by presenting Lewis’s fundamental dilemma of the mind, the rift between the rational and the imaginative faculties. Lewis posits myth as a “partial solution” to this problem. This paper traces Lewis’s ideas from his early position on myth as “beautiful lies” to the more nuanced, later position where myth is connected with terms like “truth,” “reality,” “fact” and “history.” Using the text of “On Stories,” and the chapter “On Myth” from Lewis’s book An Experiment in Criticism, this paper argues that Lewis, because of the basic elusiveness of mythic experience, steps into the use of story or narrative as a provisional solution for the dilemma of the mind. This is then applied to Till We Have Faces, arguing that the story is not a myth or an allegory, but a realistic novel with a hidden mythic reality, a Lewisian narrative that fulfills his requirements of Story. A close reading of Till We Have Faces connects the text with Lewis’s realism of content and realism of presentation. This reading then places the text within the problem of rationality set against imaginative reception. Till We Have Faces is a test case for Lewis’s extensive ideas about Divine Myth, its hiddenness behind and within narrative, and its power to heal a divided mind. The narrative of Till We Have Faces, for the main character Orual, as well as for the receptive reader, comes to embody the transformative power of extra-literary myth within the containment of word-dense, tensed story.

In 1932 Beatrice Warde delivered to the British Society of Typographic Designers what has since become one of the most recognizable statements about the design of books: The Crystal Goblet, or Printing Should Be Invisible. In it, Warde defines good typography as a crystal goblet, because everything about it is calculated to reveal rather than hide the beautiful thing which it was meant to contain. Her address argues that the true art of designers is the creation of transparent interfaces which allow readers to imbibe deeply of the intellect captured within the pages of the book without external distractions.<p> Wardes Crystal Goblet is fundamentally contradictory. Typographers must strive to make themselves and their work invisible so that only the voice of the absent author speaks through the text; but there is no voice, only words on page produced through a great deal of human labour at a specific moment in history. But, Warde did not create her metaphor; she adopted existing imagery from the Western tradition. Nor was she the first typographer to do so. The writings and work of those involved with the creation of books has, since before the invention of the printing press, revolved around attempts to create perfect communicative interfaces books which allow the reader an unobscured view into the mind of the author. The resultant page is that with which we are most familiar: a block of black Roman-style text on a white or off-white page with blank margins.<p> This study tracks the rise and influence of the crystal goblet motif, the dream of perfect readability, in the discourse of those directly involved with the creation of books: scribes, printers, type-cutters and typographers. It postulates transparency, or perfect readability, to be the primary motive underlying the actions of those making books, but does not assume all printers in all times have been motivated by the same forces or to the same extent. Rather, it traces the thread of transparency through many incarnations and examines the social and political factors underlying each permutation and how new elements are introduced into the discourse without completely erasing all traces of the old.<p> Chapter One studies the Italian Renaissance and how the writing style of a small group of humanist scholars comes to dominate the printed book of the sixteenth century. Chapter Two begins with an examination of the perceived decline in typographic practice in the seventeenth century and the subsequent emergence of both writings about typography and of a new style of Roman typeface: the Modern. Chapter Three deals with similar events in the nineteenth-century first there is a perceived decline in and then a revival of printing standards. Chapter Four discusses the reconciliation of machine- production and traditional practices in the early to mid-twentieth century and the unsuccessful challenge to traditional typography posed by the Bauhaus and other Modernist schools of design.