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Through consideration of Bessie Head's fiction and essays, the paper that follows investigates Head's use of fiction to challenge the hegemony of South African history, a history that fails to represent black South Africans except as "objects of abuse and exploitation" (Head, A Woman Alone 66). The absence of a subject position in history for black South Africans betokens a need for critical reevaluation of the structures and language of that history. History should document and create a people's identity; however, Head contends that South African historical discourse has obliterated the historical identity of black South Africans. The imaginative freedom that fiction allows provides Head with a radical means for reinscribing an alternative historical identity. Through four interrelated sections, then, this paper describes and evaluates the way in which Head's works challenge existing historical discourse by working through literature to establish an alternative set of historical structures. The Botswana land, offers Head, a space for experimentation with writing styles that evade reproducing an account of historical oppression and also for the practical construction of a new world. This construction includes agricultural reform that would give power over the forces of production to the workers of the land and which would in turn provide these workers with both economic and spiritual independence. The novels, however, display an incongruous duality wherein the construction of Head's new world is interfered with by the dominating voice of South African history. Hence, the subject and the problem of the novels becomes a conflict for the authority of history. Head's efforts towards constructing a new world also seek to implement women as a primary labor force in both material and creative production, thereby further challenging a history that has rendered women as sexual commodities. The Collector of Treasures offers a culmination of this conflict. Here, Head offers a strategy of narrative fragmentation interrelated with a dialogic, multi-voiced discourse that dismantles the single-voiced structure of a history determined by the politics of repression. Fiction offers a freedom of structure and thought unavailable to the historian; therefore fiction transgresses the boundaries created by a repressive history and is able to establish an original and self-sustaining historical world.

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This project highlights the role of locally produced children's written literature for ages six to fourteen in postcolonial Nigeria as a catalyst for national transformation in the wake of colonial rule. My objective is to reveal the perceived possibilities and pitfalls contained in Nigerian children's literature (specifically books published between 1960 and 1990), for the promotion of a new national consciousness through the reintegration of traditional values into a contemporary context. To do this, I draw together children's literature written by Chinua Achebe, Cyprian Ekwensi and Mabel Segun in order to illustrate the emphasis Nigerian children's book authors writing within the postcolonial moment placed on the concepts of nation and national identity in the aim to 'refashion' the nation. Following from this, I examine the role of the child reader in relation to the adult authors' intentions and pose the question of what the role of the female is in the authors' imagining of a 'new nation'. The study concludes by reflecting on the persistent under-scrutiny of children's literature in Africa by academics and critics, a preconception that still exists today. I move to suggest further research on the genre not only to stimulate an increased production of children's literature more conscious in content and aware of the needs of its young, (male and female) African readership, but also to incite a change in attitude toward the genre as one that is as deserving of interest as its adult counterpart.

In this paper I discuss the relation between Olive Schreiner's social context and the form of her fictional writing. It is not intended as an interpretation of her work but rather represents a preliminary sketch of the social and political discourses which structured her environment. I suggest that for Olive Schreiner writing is not a means of representing a given reality. Instead writing itself is a constitutive act through which she attempts to articulate a subject which expresses the conflicts and contradictions of its social and political location. In the first section of the paper, I discuss Olive Schreiner's position as a woman in relation to the literary canon. I argue that the social discourses of femininity in the late nineteenth century attempted to exclude women from the realm of cultural and intellectual production. Looking at the work of Herbert Spencer, the influential social philosopher who used scientific principles as the basis for his ideas about social order, I analyse the way in which Olive Schreiner rewrites his theory in order to make a space for women as cultural producers. In the second section I look at the dominant forms of the novel available to Olive Schreiner. The dominant mode of representation for metropolitan writers was the realist novel and women writers such as George Eliot found it an extremely effective way of articulating their experiences. The other significant form of writing for Olive Schreiner was the colonial adventure story, the most popular way, in the nineteenth century, of representing the colonial space. I suggest that Olive Schreiner's rejection of both these forms and her choice of the allegorical mode, can be understood in terms of the specificity of her position as a colonial woman writer. In the third section, I focus more closely on one of Olive Schreiner's texts, The Story of an African Farm in an attempt to illustrate how allegory allows Olive Schreiner to reorder the unstable colonial space. Both realism and the adventure novel, I argue, assume a coherent and unified self. The colonial context, I suggest problematises this sense of self as individualist agent and in the figure of Lyndall I see the limits of the reflective self as a means of interacting with the colonial situation. Bibliography: pages 68-69.

Submitted to the Faculty of Arts in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Department of African Languages at the University of Zululand, South Africa, 2012. / This study explores developing learner‟s language competence through literary and non-literary texts. The topic of the study: “Developing learner‟s language competence through literary and non-literary analysis is introduced. It is maintained that language educators‟ focus is on analyzing literary texts: poetry, novel, drama, folklore/folktale, short story and essay but not on designing their own texts. The learners should be encouraged to produce their own authentic texts. It is also assumed that non-literary texts are not analysed or developed. There is lack of emphasis on language: sentence construction, for when learners produce their own texts they should know how to construct a sentence. It is also maintained that language usage should also be emphasized because texts are assumed to have figures of speech, idiomatic expressions and proverbs. Learners should be encouraged to create their own texts and present them. Therefore the language competence through isiZulu literary and non-literary texts analysis should be developed. This discussion includes ways learners can develop their language competence through literary and non-literary texts analysis and the ways the language educators can teach learners language competence through literary and non-literary texts analysis. The research analyses different types of isiZulu literary texts to show how language competence can be developed through literary texts analysis. The novel, “Insila KaShaka,” poetry, short story, “Intando Kamufi,” essay, “Izifungo,” folktales and the drama, “Kudela Owaziyo” are analysed.

The primary purpose of this thesis is to examine the autobiographical works of three Black South African women -- Mamphela Ramphele, Bessie Head, and Ellen Kuzwayo -- to see if and how they were impacted by the masculine discourse of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM), which was articulated in terms of "the Black man" and his struggle. One of the first points I make and use as a premise throughout the thesis is that the term "man" is neither inclusive nor universal; it, instead, refers specifically to men and cannot refer to both men and women. What could have motivated the use of this masculinist language, particularly in light of the fact that the Nguni and Sotho languages of South Africa do not have a gender differentiation system for the third person pronoun? This question led me to an examination of the English language since English was the language chosen by the activists to conduct the business of the Movement. But, there was yet another factor to consider besides the language. The Black Consciousness Movement took place through the 1960s and into the late 1970s, during the latter part of an era of many other Black nationalist struggles around the world (Negritude, the U.S. Black Power Movements, liberation struggles of many of the other African countries). So, I look specifically at men's writings ' from Negritude and the Black Power Movements and compare them to a sample of writings from male writers in the Black Consciousness Movement, showing that all of these writers articulate employ this masculinist language. The significance of the timing of Black Consciousness (BC) is that it emerged into an international context with a readymade nationalist discourse of the liberation of Black people and the struggle of Black men. That discourse, however, might not have emerged if the usage of the masculine as universal were not already an acceptable practice the English language. Thus, the first chapter is an examination of the masculinity of the English language, primarily through feminist, postructuralist, psychoanalytic, and Marxist theories/theorists. The analysis begins from the premise that masculinity is a system of domination that requires femininity, a small, enclosed space designated for women. Key to the existence of masculinity and femininity is the facade that they are natural7 i.e., inherent to the male and female bodies, respectively. Thus the chapter is largely a deconstruction of that assumption, and the 18th century European assumption of a direct link between hysteria and femininity. I argue that at the base of female hysteria is a much more pervasive and normalised male hysteria, driven by the either/or binary logic of Western philosophy that shows itself in the English language. Indeed, it is masculinity, not femininity, that is irrational, illogical, and mad in its obsession for understanding and control. I move from that assertion into an analysis of how capitalism works to create femininity through Marx's structure of the non-producer, the labourer (to whom Marx consistently refers as he), and the product to examine the relationship between men and women, the masculine and the feminine. After establishing the madness of masculinity and its place in the English language, I move into how this examination of a Western context correlates to the Black Consciousness Movement. I argue that when the male BC activists entered into the English language, they simultaneously entered into its legacy of masculinity, and they adopted that masculinity. Thus their absenting of women was driven by the very same madness of masculinity. In the midst of this oppressive madness called masculinity, how, then did Black women conceive of themselves as agents? Of the three women, only one, Mamphela Ramphele, was an activist in the BCM. She is the onlywoman activist from the BCM who has written her autobiography, or who has written a sizeable body of material on her experience in the Movement. She is also the only of the three who never engages in the masculinist discourse of the Movement. I also look at Ellen Kuzwayo's autobiography, Call Me Woman7 which is dedicated to documenting the contributions of other Black women to the liberation of South Africa, despite which there are curious moments in the text when she slips into masculinist discourse in talking about the BCM and the importance of the Black man's struggle. The third is Bessie Head and her novel, A Question of Power7 which I use as an autobiographical text on the basis of her own admission that it is largely grounded in her own life experiences. Hers is an important text for the framework of madness it provides. I conclude that, true to my previous analyses, she is driven into madness by the hysteria of masculinity.

This thesis proposes an account of the effects achieved by the poetic use of rhetorical tropes and schemes in the light of recent developments in pragmatic theory. More specifically it discusses and attempts to develop the relevance theory account of poetic effects. Much recent debate in literary studies has centred on the question as to whether literary communication is best explained in terms of text-internal linguistic properties or socio-cultural phenomena. This thesis considers such views in the light of the theories of language and communication they assume. It then proposes an alternative theoretical account of literary communication grounded in cognitive pragmatic theory. It argues that the relevance theory account of poetic effects may make a significant contribution to such an account. A brief outline of relevance theory is followed by a more detailed analysis of metaphor and a brief consideration of epizeuxis and various verse effects, insofar as they contribute to poetic style. it is natural for pragmatic theory to concentrate on the communication of assumptions, propositional forms with a logical structure over which inferences can be performed. Although the account of poetic effects and poetic thoughts developed here will be partially characterised in such terms, an attempt will also be made to account for the communication of affective and other non-propositional effects. Any theory of stylistic effects in general, and poetic style in particular, must, it will be argued, include such an account. This will necessitate a broader philosophical discussion of issues having a bearing on the question of what it is that is communicated non-propositionally. More particularly it will require some discussion of emotion, phenomenal experience and aesthetic experience. This discussion will lead to a characterisation of poetic thought or poetic representation. The thesis aims, then, to make a contribution to literary studies by characterising a new theoretical notion of literariness in terms of mental representations and mental processes. It also aims to make a contribution to pragmatic theory, specifically to the pragmatics of poetic style and rhetoric within a relevance theory framework.

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Siu Kwok Hing, Clement. / Subtitle on added t.p.: The literature garden. / "Architecture Department, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Master of Architecture Programme 2009-2010, design report." / "May 2010." / Includes bibliographical references (p. 74-75). / Chiefly in English, some text in Chinese. / Prolog --- p.8 / Definition --- p.10 / Architectural precedent / Chapter - --- Suzhou Chinese Garden --- p.14 / Chapter - --- Architectural Promenade --- p.24 / Chapter - --- Narrative of light --- p.28 / Non-architectural precedent / Chapter - --- Narrative of literature --- p.30 / Chapter - --- Narrative of movie --- p.34 / Area Analysis --- p.36 / Site Analysis --- p.40 / Design Strategy --- p.48 / Biblography --- p.74