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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
11

Productions of ideology : a comparative and contrasting analysis of representations of Black urban experience in Peter Abrahams's Mine boy ; Alan Paton's Cry, the beloved country and Phyllis Altman's The law of the vultures.

Mowat, Sharon. January 2000 (has links)
The broad aim of this study is to show, through a comparative and contrasting analysis of three thematically related texts - namely Peter Abrahams's Mine Boy; Alan Patan's Cry, the Beloved Country and Phyllis Altman's The Law of the Vultures - the ideologically mediated nature of the relationship between the 'real' history which constituted their context, and the representations of it in the historical realist form. An examination afthe texts' characters and events; political formulations, and formal devices reveals three very different representations of the same object. This diversity is significant in so far as it supports a Marxist conceptualisation of the [historical] realist text as a production of ideology as opposed to a portrayal of reality. The study considers the nature of the relationship between each text and ideology in terms of three aspects of this relationship: the 'objectively determinable' relation between history, ideology and text; the ideology of the text itself, and the mode of a text's insertion into an 'ideological sub-ensemble.' In relation to the modes of a text's insertion into an ideological sub-ensemble, my specific aim is to assess the extent to which each text actually challenges the political dispensation to which it was addressed. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2000.
12

Identity in the early fiction of Alan Paton, 1922-1935 / David Norman Ralph Levey

Levey, David Norman Ralph January 2007 (has links)
The thesis represents an attempt, within the broad field of religion and literature and of identity studies, to read the early unpublished fiction of Alan Paton, dating from approximately 1922 (the end of his student days) to 1935 (when he became Principal of Diepkloof Reformatory). It is pointed out that research into the interrelationship of literature and religion, while well-established in a number of countries, is lagging in South Africa, and it is believed that the present thesis is the first full-length work of its kind, at least as far as South African literature in English is concerned. The writer advances reasons for his explicitly religious and hermeneutic approach to questions of human identity, as found in Paton especially, and focuses these on two particular areas: narrative identity, as propounded in the later work of Paul Ricoeur, and relational identity (to the other human being and to the Other, God), as theorised by Emmanuel Levinas in his later writing. In order to contextualise the study in Africa and in South Africa, brief attention is accorded to writers such as Soyinka, Mbiti and Mbembe and to current debates regarding white identity in South Africa. To lend a sense of historical context, Paton's work is viewed against the backdrop of identity in colonial Natal. The overall approach adopted may be described as broadly, but critically, postmodernist. Paton's earliest, fragmentary novel, 'Ship of Truth' (1922-1923) is read in some detail; his second, and only complete early novel, 'Brother Death' (1930), is commented on in as much detail as its frequently rambling nature warrants. A chapter on shorter fiction discusses his short story 'Little Barbee' (1928?), his short story 'Calvin Doone' (1930), his third novel, 'John Henry Dane' (1934), and a novel or novella, 'Secret for Seven' (1934). From all these readings it emerges that the Paton of his early fiction is markedly different from the Paton generally known: his concepts of human identity, of God and of religion, though earnest, are unformed and frequently ambivalent; his characterisation often stereotyped and wooden; his political views usually prejudiced and his stylistic and other techniques, though adequate in a young writer, highly repetitive. Various suggestions are made for future research: into South African literature from a religious perspective, into other aspects of Paton's works, and so forth. / Thesis (Ph.D. (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.
13

Changing social consciousness in the South African English novel after World War II, with special reference to Peter Abrahams, Alan Paton, Es'kia Mphahlele and Nadine Gordimer

Paasche, Karin Ilona Mary 11 1900 (has links)
The changing social consciousness in South Africa during the twentieth century falls within a political-historical framework of events: amongst others, World Wars I and II; the institution of the Apartheid Laws in 1948; the declaration of a South African Republic in 1960; Nelson Mandela's release in 1992. The literary social consciousness of Abrahams, Paton, Mphahlele and Gordimer spans the time before and after 1948. Their novels reflect the changing reality of a country whose racial and social problems both pre-date and will outlive the apartheid ideology. These and other novelists' changing social consciousness is an indication of the development of attitudes and reactions to issues which have their roots in the human and in the economic spheres, as well as in the political, cultural and religious. Their work interprets the history and the change in the South African social consciousness, and also gives some indication of a possible future vision. / English Studies / M.A. (English)
14

The silence at the interface : culture and narrative in selected twentieth-century Southern African novels in English.

Hooper, Myrtle Jane. January 1992 (has links)
The primary intention of this study is to establish the theoretical significance of silence within the sphere of the twentieth-century Southern African novel in English. Clearly a feature of recent writing, silence is less overtly thematised in earlier work. Since relatively little critical and theoretical attention has been paid to silence as a positive phenomenon, however, modes of reading it are sought within the broader sphere of the social sciences, and specifically its tradition of social constructionism. Care is taken to address the pressures of the local context, identified in terms of the postcolonial paradigm as relating to language and to culture. A deliberate theoretical innovation is the renunciation of the trope of penetration in favour of the notion of an interface between intact language-culture systems, given an understanding of culture as existing between subjects in relations of power. Fictional narrative which addresses cross-culturality is thus read as a process of cultural translation, and the volitional deployment of silence as an act of resistance to its power. The significance of language is registered in the use of speech-act theory, in the insistence on meaning as generated in spatially and temporally situated conversation, and in the exploration of the influence of pronominal relations on identity. Emerging from my investigation is a recognition of the measure offered by silence of the autonomy of character as subject, and a corresponding recognition of the constitutive capacity of the reader to site the power of narration amongst the polyphonic voices within the culture of the text. The postcolonial paradigm indicates the need for a regional rather than a national perspective; thus the interfaces considered in the case studies include, in Plaatje's Mhudi, orality and literacy, tribal membership and non-sectarianism, Tswana and English; in Paton's Too Late the Phalarope the private domain and apartheid as public hegemonic discourse, narration as possession, and the tragic as structuring textual relations; and in Head's Maru the constitution of a postcolonial identity that resists and transcends the discursive hostility of racism, and the dislocation, displacement and alienation of exilic refuge from apartheid. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1992.
15

The dialogue between Christianity and postmodernism in selected postmodern novels.

Wielenga, Corianne. January 2004 (has links)
This paper seeks to explore the dialogue between postmodern thought and Christian theology. The dialogue will be grounded in four postmodern novels: Toni Morrison's Beloved, Ian McEwan's Atonement, Jill Paton Walsh's Knowledge of Angels, and Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. In many Church circles, it has often been said that postmodernism, as it manifests itself in popular culture, is a threat to the Christian faith. However, I will be arguing that the opposite is the case, and that postmodernism has allowed for new ways of thinking about the self that has great resonance with certain theological conceptions of the self. It will be argued that the postmodern subject is one that seeks to make sense of 'the other' without risking the exploitation of the other, and that this lies very close to the theological concept of relationship, based on the idea of covenant. The self as responsible to an other and as a participant in community will be explored, from both the postmodern and theological perspectives. Before exploring issues of the self, this thesis will contextualize the dialogue by exploring postmodern conceptions of space and time. It will examine how ideas around space and time have been imagined throughout human history, thereby contextualizing the emergence of postmodern thinking. It will then show how this emergence of a postmodern space and time in fact creates new possibilities for the Christian faith to reexpress itself in ways that are more relevant to the 21st century. The concluding chapter of this thesis brings to light the longing within our postmodern reality for a place we can call home, a place where we can belong, and find healing. Such a place, such a homecoming, is offered to us in the spaces opened up to us by the dialogue between the Christian faith and postmodernity, and is found within a community of people who are learning that, as, postmodern philosopher Emmanuel Levinas states, "there is something more important than my life, and that is the life of the other" (in Beavers, 1996,16). / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2004.
16

Black consciousness and white liberals in South Africa : paradoxical anti-apartheid politics

Maimela, Mabel Raisibe 12 1900 (has links)
This research challenges the hypothesis that Biko was anti-liberal and anti-white. Biko's clearly defined condemnation of traditional South African white liberals such as Alan Paton is hypothesised as a strategic move in the liberation struggle designed to neutralise the "gradualism" of traditional white liberalism which believe that racism could be ultimately superseded by continually improving education for blacks. Biko neutralised apartheid racism and traditional white liberalism by affirming all aspects of blackness as positive values in themselves, and by locating racism as a white construct with deep roots in European colonialism and pseudoDarwinian beliefs in white superiority. The research shows that Biko was neither anti-liberal nor anti-white. His own attitudes to the universal rights, dignity, freedom and self-determination of all human beings situate him continuously with all major human rights theorists and activists since the Enlightenment. His unique Africanist contribution was to define racist oppression in South Africa as a product of the historical conditioning of blacks to accept their own alleged inferiority. Biko's genius resided in his ability to synthesize his reading of Marxist, Africanist, European and African American into a truly original charter for racial emancipation. Biko' s methodology encouraged blacks to reclaim their rights and pride as a prelude to total emancipation. The following transactions are described in detail: Biko's role in the founding of SASO and Black Consciousness; the paradoxical relations between white liberal theologians, Black Consciousness and Black Theology; the influence on BC of USA Black Power and Black Theology; the role of Black Theologians in South African churches, SACC and WCC; synergic complexities ofNUSAS-SASO relations; relations between BC, ANC and PAC; the early involvement of women in BCM; feminist issues in the liberation struggle; Biko's death in detention; world-wide and South African liberal involvement in the inquest and anti-apartheid organisations. / History / D. Litt. et Phil. (History)
17

Black consciousness and white liberals in South Africa : paradoxical anti-apartheid politics

Maimela, Mabel Raisibe 12 1900 (has links)
This research challenges the hypothesis that Biko was anti-liberal and anti-white. Biko's clearly defined condemnation of traditional South African white liberals such as Alan Paton is hypothesised as a strategic move in the liberation struggle designed to neutralise the "gradualism" of traditional white liberalism which believe that racism could be ultimately superseded by continually improving education for blacks. Biko neutralised apartheid racism and traditional white liberalism by affirming all aspects of blackness as positive values in themselves, and by locating racism as a white construct with deep roots in European colonialism and pseudoDarwinian beliefs in white superiority. The research shows that Biko was neither anti-liberal nor anti-white. His own attitudes to the universal rights, dignity, freedom and self-determination of all human beings situate him continuously with all major human rights theorists and activists since the Enlightenment. His unique Africanist contribution was to define racist oppression in South Africa as a product of the historical conditioning of blacks to accept their own alleged inferiority. Biko's genius resided in his ability to synthesize his reading of Marxist, Africanist, European and African American into a truly original charter for racial emancipation. Biko' s methodology encouraged blacks to reclaim their rights and pride as a prelude to total emancipation. The following transactions are described in detail: Biko's role in the founding of SASO and Black Consciousness; the paradoxical relations between white liberal theologians, Black Consciousness and Black Theology; the influence on BC of USA Black Power and Black Theology; the role of Black Theologians in South African churches, SACC and WCC; synergic complexities ofNUSAS-SASO relations; relations between BC, ANC and PAC; the early involvement of women in BCM; feminist issues in the liberation struggle; Biko's death in detention; world-wide and South African liberal involvement in the inquest and anti-apartheid organisations. / History / D. Litt. et Phil. (History)

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