The subject of this thesis is Humaini Poetry in S. Arabia - a style of prosody which evolved from the pre-Islamic rudimentary tasmit, and after a long struggle reached its destined goal of symmetrically-placed rhymes running throughout the whole poem. Specifically, the term humaini is applicable to the muwashshah style, that is, to any poem structurally divided into abyat (strophes) or fusul (sections), bound together by a master-rhyme which closes every bait, or fasl. The term, however, is sometimes used in an extended sense, and came to embrace the form rhyming ab ab ab, etc. The chief attraction of humaini lies in its formal excellence; and in nothing is this more apparent than in the use of rhyme. Elaborate systems of rhyme schemes have been used, and tazfir (which is the breaking of a line into three or four, and possibly more, short rhyming verse-sections) is sometimes practised. Of all the rhyme patterns that were manipulated by the S. Arabians, only two were widely appropriated. The first rhymes aaaa bbba, etc.; and the second, abababab cdcdcdab, etc. - both of which were transposed into the regular alternation bait-tawshih-taqfil. Taken together, these three forms compose the corpus of humaini. Humaini is essentially a style of poetry designed for singing. It is distinctively lyrical in character, and delights one's aesthetic sensibility mainly by its music - by skilfully devised rhyme arrangements, by well-chosen, though contracted, selection of diction, by metrical formulas of great variety, and by the spontaneous (or intentionally reserved) use of lahn. The lahn in humaini is mainly restricted to the omission of vowel-case-signs and using a sukun instead, and/or to the savouring of the poem with colloquial words and expressions. This kind of lahn is so characteristic of humaini that it came to he known as "tariqat muwashshah ahl al-Yaman" and "tariqat al-humaini al-Yamani.".

This study examines the critical prose written by William Butler Yeats in the period 1896-1903, and identifies the evolution within it of a mode of literary history. I concentrate on Ideas of Good and Evil, and on the selected edition Poems of Spenser. The introduction examines notions of golden ages and of original fracture, and the insertion of these tropes into a variety of literary histories. I consider some of the aims and problems of literary history as a genre, and the peculiar solutions offered by Yeats's approaches. I give particular attention to Yeats's alternation between two views of poetry: as evading time, and as forming the significant history of nations. The first chapter examines those essays in Ideas of Good and Evil written earliest. I consider the essays on Blake first, because Blake was the most significant influence on the writing of Yeats's idiosyncratic literary histories. I proceed to the essays on Shelley, on a new age of imaginative community, and on magic. The second chapter demonstrates how Yeats's ideals and ideas became modified in more practical considerations of audience, poetic rhythm and theatrical convention, and I identify the new kinds of literary history in the essays on Morris and Shakespeare, which are concerned with fracture, limitation and the loss of unmediated access to timeless imaginative resources. The third chapter briefly examines Yeats's very early imitations of Edmund Spenser, and then considers the uses of literary history in Yeats's edition of Spenser. The final chapter identifies Yeats's later returns to Spenser, and shows how the earlier modes of literary history governed subsequent adaptations. My conclusion summarises the advantages and limitations of Yeatsian literary history, and place my study into the context of Yeats's whole career, comparing these literary histories with A Vision

The aim of this thesis is, by means of a close examination of the evidence presented by the texts, to analyse the ways in which Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid treat the god Bacchus and, by so doing, to discover why Bacchus becomes for them a patron of poetry. Chapter I, the introduction, deals briefly with the literary background and sets the limits of the study. Chapters II, III and IV analyse the appearances of the god in the poetry of Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid respectively: the Tibullan Bacchus is primarily a patron of viticulture and is associated with poetry and Amor because of this basic role; Propertius is more concerned with the god's relationship with Ariadne and the Maenads and develops a complex exemplum for his affair with Cynthia using these as major characters; Ovid makes frequent use of ideas concerning Bacchus developed by the other two poets but adds nothing really new to the concept of the god as patron of poetry. Chapter V, the conclusion, summarizes the findings of these three chapters and on the basis of this information, first, makes a general statement about the use of myth in each of the three poets and, second, answers the original question: Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid are personally involved in their poetry, not only as poets but also as lovers; thus Bacchus, because of his relationship with Ariadne and the Maenads, because of his powerful and avenging nature and because of his ability (through wine) to free them from the pain of an unhappy love affair, is their special patron. An appendix dealing with Bacchic iconography in Latin love-elegy is added. / Arts, Faculty of / Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies, Department of / Graduate

In this thesis I argue that recently recorded izibongo must be read as literary texts that articulate responses to the multiple forces of constraint and possibility at the urban-rural interface. I argue that when scholars transcribe and translate performance texts they release them into new contexts of reception, and that the mediation processes involved in this recontextualisation become an important part of the way in which the texts make meaning for their new 'audiences'. As such, it is imperative that analysis of print-mediated izibongo should take into account both the performance text and context as well as the intervention of literate intermediaries in the creation of a print text. I argue for maintaining a dialectic between performance textuality, which shapes the text as it is recited to a participating audience, and the textuality of transcription. We have thus to keep in mind at least two sets of receivers - those present at, and part of, the construction of the praise poem in performance, and the literate receiver, reading from a new moment and, often, a different social and cultural space. I argue that the scholar in English Studies has an important contribution to make to the recording and the study of izibongo as literary and performance texts. S/he must devise ways in which processes of translation and transcription can more adequately and creatively insist on performance textuality. The English Studies scholar must also read and write about izibongo as texts that have complex meanings and that speak to their changing contexts of reception. Such analysis necessitates attention to individual texts and requires of the critic a willingness to revise her/his learned ways of reading. There is a need in oral literary studies to challenge print-influenced academic discourses in order to make these theories more receptive to the actual ways in which many people make sense of their lives through creative expression. In this thesis I consider the ways in which contemporary postcolonial and poststructural theory might more adequately listen to what postcolonial people say about themselves and others. In this, I argue for an academic approach that privileges cultural interdiscursivity, interdisciplinary co-operation, and an attitude of respect for the different ways in which forms like izibongo construct meaning. This thesis thus has a dual focus: it examines how recently recorded praise poems address the problem of reconstructing identity at the urban-rural interface, while considering the ways in which they speak to the uncertain identity of the scholar who tries to read them. Drawn from a variety of sources, the poems comprise both official and popular praises to suggest not only the variety of the form, but also the ways in which individual and group identities speak to each other across texts. Given the importance of self-expression at the heart of the form of izibongo, I argue that scholars in English Studies must resist the possibility, both in transcription and in criticism, of eliding the individual subjects involved in mediating identity and textuality. I also suggest that English Studies has a duty to write the oral back into institutionally defined literary histories by considering how our writing and ways of reading can better accommodate oral textuality. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2001.

No description available.

Not available / text

No description available.

The poetry written by combat veterans and other witnesses to the Vietnam War is a testament to what they saw and felt in Southeast Asia. Through their poetry they build 'monuments' to their traumatic experience, piecing together memories in order to heal themselves and teach future generations about the horrors of Vietnam. These poems function in much the same way as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., both poem and Memorial requiring the effort of the 'reader' in order to propagate the legacy of the Vietnam War. By bearing witness to the Vietnam experience, the poem and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial facilitate questions; questions through which the reader and the visitor are able to construct their own imaginary monuments to the Vietnam War.

This thesis explores Pindar's relationship to his audiences. Part One demonstrates how his victory odes take into account an audience present at their premiere performance and also secondary audiences throughout space and time. It argues that getting the most out of the epinicians involves simultaneously assuming the perspectives of both their initial and subsequent audiences. Part Two describes how Pindar uses his audiences' knowledge of other lyric to situate his work both within an immanent poetic history and within a contemporary poetic culture. It sets out Pindar's vision of the literary world past and present and suggests how this framework shapes an audience's experience of his work. Part Three explains how Pindar's victory odes made lucid sense as linear unities to fifth-century Greeks imbued in the traditions of choral lyric. An annotated text shows how each sentence in the epinician corpus forms part of a coherent chain of rational discourse.

This study explores Thomas Gray’s concepts of literary history, tradition, and the past. It proffers critical examinations of Gray’s literary and historical thoughts, illustrating the extent of the complexity of the mid‐century cultural and intellectual climate in which Gray and his contemporaries were writing. It shows the aesthetic, cultural, and political dimensions of canonicity in the course of examining the ideological motivation behind Gray’s literary history. Though much of Gray’s poetry is private and written for a narrow literary circle, his literary history seems engaged with issues of public concerns. Gray’s literary history must not be understood as a mere objective scholarly study, but as an ideological narrative invented to promote specific national and cultural agendas. Though Gray’s plan for his History of English Poetry was inspired directly by Pope’s scheme of writing a history of English poetry, Gray’s historiography represents a challenge to Pope’s most fundamental “neo‐classical” premises of canonicity in that it aligns English literary poetry back to the literary tradition of ancient Britain and resituates the English literary canon in an entirely different theoretical framework. Gray reworked Pope’s historical scheme to suits the need of the political and intellectual agendas of his own time: the national need for a distinctive cultural identity, which was promoted by and led to the emergence of a more national and less partisan atmosphere. Gray’s comprehensive project of literary history charts the birth and development of what he views as an English “high‐cultural” tradition, whose origins he attributes to the classical and Celtic antiquity. In Gray’s view, this tradition reaches its peak with the rise of Elizabethan literary culture; a culture which was later challenged by the “French” model which dominated British literary culture from the Restoration to Gray’s time. Gray’s literary history is to be examined in this study in relation to the concept of canonformation. Gray’s historiographical study of literary culture of ancient Britain, his historicization of Chaucerian and medieval texts, his celebration of Elizabethan literary culture, and his polemical attack on “neo‐classical” literary ideals intend to relocate the process of canon‐formation within a “pure” source of national literary heritage, something which provides cultural momentum for the emergence of a historiography and an aesthetics promoting Gray’s idea of the continuity of tradition. As is the case in his poetry, the concept of cultural continuity is also central to Gray’s literary history, and permeates through his periodization, historicism, criticism, and his concept of the transformation of tradition.