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My project revisits the philosophical and literary problem of seeing irony as an exclusively negative force via the works of Edgar Allan Poe and four moments in Poe’s global twentieth-century afterlife. As argued in the nineteenth century by Hegel and Kierkegaard and in the twentieth by David Foster Wallace, irony can tear down any belief it exposes as bunk, but can never offer an authentic, affirmative alternative to take that belief’s place. I begin, by way of Friedrich Schlegel and Thomas Pynchon, by showing that this infinite negativity primarily revolves around the reader’s own undecidability about authorial intent in both Romantic and Postmodern literature, an undecidability designed to keep the reader’s eye trained on what the author believes and off the reader’s own beliefs. In contrast, Poe’s works are both so masterfully clever and so insufferably amateurish that the centrifugal force of their irony casts off Poe altogether, at which point the reader’s own preexisting beliefs about the matter at hand—whether it be aesthetics, race, or sexuality—take over and shape the reader’s interpretation of the work to the exclusion of all contradictory evidence. I call this centrifugal force powerful nonsense; nonsense because it represents the reader’s encounter with contradictory propositions (in the case of Poe, that he both knew and did not know what he was doing), and powerful because it generates an affirmative ideological commitment from the reader by strengthening a preexisting belief into an article of faith. In the subsequent chapters I document Poe’s influence on Vladimir Nabokov, Toni Morrison, Haruki Murakami, and Angela Carter to argue that each learned a similar lesson from Poe on how to push the reader past the point of comprehensible authorial intent to the place where one must resist the text’s cruel or incomprehensible irony with one’s own beliefs. Nabokov and Morrison are each both more vicious and more humane than we can tolerate; Murakami impossibly has his finger so firmly on the pulse of late capitalism and cares so little about it; Carter, from mid-career on, makes sexuality as much a problem as a non-problem. I show that critics habitually take the bait from these authors, producing ideologically driven readings that never quite square with the text in their attempts to imagine a more caring and equitable world. Throughout, and especially in the conclusion, I sync up these liberal imaginings with the broader, centuries-long liberalism of theories of the novel from Schlegel on, and wonder why and how much we should care about the textual imprecision of such imaginings when they are undertaken for noble ends.

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Includes bibliographical references (leaves 222-229). / The nature of the translation process, that is, what occurs in the translator's mind when attempting to translate thoughts and ideas from one language to another, remains an enigma. The focus of this dissertation falls within the relatively unexplored field of "process-orientated descriptive translation studies (DTS)" as defined by Holmes (1972). This dissertation aims to contribute to a greater understanding of translation by analysing a number of cultural, linguistic and other difficulties encountered by the translator while translating a French text into English.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 116-126). / The focus of this dissertation is the concept of liminality within selected novellas of the German colonial author Hans Grimm (1875-1959). Boundaries and frontiers are an omnipresent key issue within colonial literature. Within the postcolonial German literary studies field, however, liminality has so far been given only very little interest, although it is an essential tool in elaborating our understanding not only of the colonial ideology and the colonial discourse, but also of society in general. The methodology used in this dissertation is derived from a postcolonial paradigm. Within the globalization tendencies of the 21st century the postcolonial discourse is characterized by the fluidity and questioning of boundaries. Postcolonial and post-modern theorists have designated the identity formation with expressions like "hybridity" (Homi K. Bhabha) and "fragmentation" (Stuart Hall). Studies have shown that every human contact influences identity formation. Every exchange, every dialectic interaction between the heterogeneous "other" and "self" leads to new, complex and hybrid identities. Postcolonial and post-modern concepts are a significant tool in understanding the colonial obsession with boundaries. Besides an understanding of the postcolonial discourse, an overview of the particularly complex concept of the German word "die Grenze," the boundary, is vital with regard to literary analysis. This literary study draws attention to gender, race as well as geographical boundaries within Grimm’s writings. In his novellas these boundaries are explored, undermined and underpinned at the same time. Any recognition of the "other," any hybridisation jeopardizes the colonial power, and calls for the constant reinforcement of the boundaries. The novellas reveal that any repressive and totalitarian boundary settings leave no space for any other aspirations, apart from power. That is the dilemma Grimm’s fictional characters have to deal with. The colonial enterprise is not compatible with personal fulfilment and the human condition itself, which is the reason why most of the characters are doomed to failure in the colony.

In 1978, South African conceptual artist Willem Boshoff retyped the Book of Revelation onto a single sheet of paper; reinserting the same page into his typewriter, layering the language upon itself. This project sets out to "read" the product of Boshoff's performance - a rectangle of superimposed text entitled "Verskanste Openbaring" ("Entrenched Revelation"). Entirely illegible, this page is immediately resistant to conventional strategies of reading. However, perhaps the text's provocation might also be an invitation of sorts; in the absence of discernible language, can we read the text's act of resistance? "Verskanste Openbaring" oscillates unpredictably between image and text. Rather, then, than imposing a rigid mode of interpretation, I situate the poem flexibly within the theoretical frameworks of concrete poetry, book history and conceptual writing. I begin at the surface of the page, approaching the the text in aesthetic and material terms. Here, specific attention is paid to considerations of the authorial performance, temporality, sound and typography. Having considered the author's performance of writing, I consider his medium: Afrikaans. Might we "read" a language aesthetically? Finally, focus is shifted from the ink to the book that is hidden within: Revelation. Looking back two thousand years, I explore the socio-political context in which John of Patmos produced this strange and deeply violent prophesy. Guided by the material conditions of Boshoff's piece, this paper seeks to respond to the provocations of both "Verskanste Openbaring" and its source text. Might the plagiarism be productively put into conversation with the original - and vice versa? In producing "Verskanste Openbaring" Boshoff foregrounds the performance of writing. In response, this project takes the shape its own self-conscious interpretive performance; an exploration of the possibilities of reading - via a single illegible page.