abstract / Comparative Literature / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

M.A. (Greek) / The main purpose of this study has been to investigate the work of Greek poets in South Africa's Hellenic Diaspora from 1960 up to date, a period of a more voiummous artistic production due to the noticeable increase in the number of new Hellene immigrants and the innovative cultural atmosphere they brought along. Under this perspective, we examined the forces which led individuals to artistic creation with special focus on the relation between national identity and poetic production. Research has initially been based on poem collections, personal interviews as well as on newspaper articles, magazine publications and schedules of events which constitute our primary resources. In due course, lexicons and encyclopaedias were used to clarify terminology and semantics, as well as p!Cvious studies and relevant bibliography in order to prove, substantiate and enrich our present study. Implementation of quantitative and qualitative approaches with the use of questionnaires, interviews and data analysis rendered our project the following form: In the first chapter, Hellas is examined as the poets' country of origin in order to investigate the possible historic and literary influences carried over by the Greek poets to their new home. A history review of the period between the Second World War and 1974 was conducted examining the Hellenic socio-economic conditions predominant during the said period, which are likely to have led individuals into emigrating, as well as the post-war Hellenic literary development…

And the Word Was Made Flesh: Anthropomorphism in the poetry of WH Auden examines the reasons for the neglect of Auden’s prolific deployment of anthropomorphism by examining the poetry’s critical reception with a view to understanding what larger purpose, what ‘strategy of discourse’ (Ricoeur 2003, The Rule of Metaphor: 5-9), Auden may have had in mind when he revived a trope traditionally regarded as retrograde. Anxious not to be mistaken for a Modern, yet unable to find a social rhetoric to suit his purposes, Auden elected upon a new style of poetry which questioned the very foundations of language by placing anthropomorphism, the ascription of agency and sentience to voiceless entities, at its centre. The study explores anthropomorphism from historical and theoretical perspectives in an attempt to explain the reasons for its demise, at least, within the academy. This study emphasises the importance Auden placed on the everyday activity of reading, the principal focus for the poet’s ‘cultural theory’ (Boly 1991 and 2004: 138). Auden, 'eager to create a tradition of its own' (Emig 2000: 1), abjuring propaganda, hoped to educate the reader to resist the different ideologies which were vying for ascendency during the 1930s. This study will demonstrate that anthropomorphism, with its capacity to suggest alternative words to ‘re-describe reality’ (Ricoeur 2003: 5), played a pivotal role in Auden’s project for cultural renewal. This study demonstrates that the lasting benefit of Auden’s use of anthropomorphism is to have recognised with prescience what critics now recognise as a 'revolutionary and potently counter-cultural tactic of cultural appropriation' (Paxson 1994: 173), a trope that 'engenders within its semiotic structure a hidden critique of Western culture' (Paxson: 50). Evidence from recent linguistic theory is marshalled in support of the trope’s rehabilitation. This study examines a selection of Auden’s four hundred published poems, and it also offers a provisional taxonomy to initiate the complex process of classifying instances of personification and its co-ordinate tropes in poetry. / English Studies / M.A. (English)

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This thesis offers a detailed examination of the representation of topos, or homeland, in the poetry of George Seferis from an interdisciplinary perspective. It argues that Seferis’ poetry is a response to loss, and in particular the loss of a homeland in Asia Minor. The argument is divided into two parts. The first, entitled “Crisis and Response,” deals with Seferis’ personal biography and the subject of loss, while the second, “Allegories of Topos,” treats three distinct themes that illustrate and allegorize Seferis’ poetics of topos: dystopia, historical poetics, and the poet’s interpretation of Homer. A concluding chapter examines Seferis’ Cyprus poems and the similarities between Cyprus and Asia Minor. Ultimately, this study sheds new light on one of twentieth century Greece’s most iconic modernist poets by presenting a new, place-based reading that illuminates the relationship between nationalism and personal topography.<p> / Doctorat en Langues et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The aim of this thesis is to arrive at a characterisation of twentieth century poetry and science by means of a detailed study of the work of four poets who engaged extensively with science and whose writing lives spanned the greater part of the period. The study of science in the work of the four chosen poets, Hugh MacDiarmid (1892 – 1978), Judith Wright (1915 – 2000), Edwin Morgan (1920 – 2010), and Miroslav Holub (1923 – 1998), is preceded by a literature survey and an initial theoretical chapter. This initial part of the thesis outlines the interdisciplinary history of the academic subject of poetry and science, addressing, amongst other things, the challenges presented by the episodes known as the ‘two cultures' and the ‘science wars'. Seeking to offer a perspective on poetry and science more aligned to scientific materialism than is typical in the interdiscipline, a systemic challenge to Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) is put forward in the first chapter. Additionally, the founding work of poetry and science, I. A. Richards's Science and Poetry (1926), is assessed both in the context in which it was written, and from a contemporary viewpoint; and, as one way to understand science in poetry, a theory of the creative misreading of science is developed, loosely based on Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence (1973). The detailed study of science in poetry commences in Chapter II with Hugh MacDiarmid's late work in English, dating from his period on the Shetland Island of Whalsay (1933 – 1941). The thesis in this chapter is that this work can be seen as a radical integration of poetry and science; this concept is considered in a variety of ways including through a computational model, originally suggested by Robert Crawford. The Australian poet Judith Wright, the subject of Chapter III, is less well known to poetry and science, but a detailed engagement with physics can be identified, including her use of four-dimensional imagery, which has considerable support from background evidence. Biology in her poetry is also studied in the light of recent work by John Holmes. In Chapter IV, science in the poetry of Edwin Morgan is discussed in terms of its origin and development, from the perspective of the mythologised science in his science fiction poetry, and from the ‘hard' technological perspective of his computer poems. Morgan's work is cast in relief by readings which are against the grain of some but not all of his published comments. The thesis rounds on its theme of materialism with the fifth and final chapter which studies the work of Miroslav Holub, a poet and practising scientist in communist-era Prague. Holub's work, it is argued, represents a rare and important literary expression of scientific materialism. The focus on materialism in the thesis is not mechanistic, nor exclusive of the domain of the imagination; instead it frames the contrast between the original science and the transformed poetic version. The thesis is drawn together in a short conclusion.