This dissertation proposes that George Herbertʾs poetry may profitably be understood as a sacramental means by which the divine is made present in temporal existence. In order to support this claim, the relation between sacramental symbolism and literary symbolism, particularly Herbertʾs, is examined from a number of perspectives. The symbolic meanings suggested by Herbertʾs title (The Temple), and their relation to sacramentalism are considered in the opening chapter. This includes a consideration of some of the background to the analogical thinking prevalent in both the seventeenth-century and Herbert. It is followed in the second chapter by an examination of some of the modern theories about how literary symbolism may relate to sacramental symbolism, a discussion which is followed by a consideration of this dissertation's argument in relation to modern scholarship. The chapter ends with a reading of ʺThe Flowerʺ. The third chapter discusses the poet's attempt to imitate the divine by ʺcopyingʺ both Scripture and Nature, and this includes a consideration of the allegorical and hieroglyphic modes of thought prevalent in the poems. The concern with imitation encourages an examination of the poet's frequent invitation for God actually to assume the poet's role, and this is the subject of the fourth chapter. The argument suggests that the poet's attempt to ʺsacrificeʺ his own writing may be seen in his concern with corporate imagery and corporate (impersonal) structures. The five ʺAfflictionʺ poems are examined as examples of the first, while structures such as synecdoche and metonymy are examined as examples of the second. The final chapter considers aspects of narrative time in the poems, particularly the sense often evoked of the eternal being imminent in the present. This involves a consideration of both liturgical imagery, and what may be called liturgical structures as they can be seen to operate in the poems. Particular examples of the latter are the relation between the liturgical anamnesis and the poems, as well as certain narrative structures that may be called ʺachronisticʺ.

Hans Lodeizen is reeds in 1950 oorlede en alhoewel sy bundel Het lnnerlijk behang reeds meer herdrukke beleef het as enige bundel van bekender Vyftigers soos Remco Campert en Hans Andreus, het daar tot dusver sIegs twee krltiese studies en verder korter artikels oor sy digkuns verskyn. Heelwat kritici wys ook op die romantiese trekke in sy digkuns, maar soos bevestig deur De Rover, is daar nog nie aandag gegee aan wat hierdie "romantiek" dan werklik behels nie. As 'n mens die gedigte van Hans Lodeizen en die kritiese werke daaroor lees, word dit gou duidelik dat daar oënskynlik sterk romantiese trekke in sy digkuns aanwesig is, maar dat dit tog nie suiwer romantiek is nle. Soos Rodenko dit uitdruk: "hij is geen romanticus-uit-één-stuk, maar een gebroken romanticus." Deur twee kritici, nl. Stuiveling en Cartens word hy onderskeidelik egter as ekspressionis en surrealis bestempel. Wanneer ons verder in aanmerking neem dat Lodeizen algemeen aanvaar word as die voorloper, of as lid van die Vyftigers wat skerp van die Romantiek verskil, ontstaan die vraag of dit geregverdig is om Lodeizen as 'n "gebroke" of wat-dan-ook-al romantikus te beskou. Die doel van hierdie tesis is dan om na te gean in hoeverre daar weI sprake van romantiese nalewing in sy digkuns is en of dit net nawerking is. In aansluiting by Ziolkowski sal ons van nalewing praat wanneer 'n sekere gegewe, wat ons op grond van die ontleding van die Romantiek in die eerste hoofstuk as "romanties" ervaar, uit die gees van 'n moderne werk spruit. As nawerking beskou ons dan daardie gevalle waar dit duidelik is, dat ons met 'n teksgedeelte oneie aan die gees van die res van die teks te make het, wat nie op die selfde tydsvlak bestaan nie as die teks waarin dit ingebed is. Aangesien nalewing georiënteer is op die ideologiese inhoud van 'n algemene geesteshouding soos dit in die literêre denke tot uitdrukking kom, moet daar eers vasgestel word of daar wel so 'n gedagtekompleks by verskillende Romantiese digters aan te toon is, want slegs enkele, losstaande elemente vorm nog geensins 'n geesteshoudlng of styl nie. Dit is dan die doel van die volgende hoofstuk, terwyl die daaropvolgende hoofstukke sal probeer vasstel of die hoofkenmerke van die tipologiese romantiek wel in die werk van Hans Lodeizen aanwesig is.

This thesis raises and explores questions concerning the popularity of the Homeric poems in ancient Greece. It asks why the Iliad and Odyssey held such continuing appeal among the Greeks of the Archaic and Classical age. Cultural products such as poetry cannot be separated from the sociopolitical conditions in which and for which they were originally composed and received. Working on the basis that the extent of Homer’s appeal was inspired and sustained by the peculiar and determining historical circumstances, I set out to explore the relation of the social, political and ethical conditions and values of Archaic and Classical Greece to those portrayed in the Homeric poems. The Greeks, at the time during which Homer was composing his poems, had begun to establish a new form of social organisation: the polis. By examining historical, literary and philosophical texts from the Archaic and Classical age, I explore the manner in which Greek society attempted to reorganise and reconstitute itself in a different way, developing original modes of social and political activity which the new needs and goals of their new social reality demanded. I then turn to examine Homer’s treatment of and response to this social context, and explore the various ways in which Homer was able to reinterpret and reinvent the inherited stories of adventure and warfare in order to compose poetry that not only looks back to the highly centralised and bureaucratic society of the Mycenaean world, but also looks forward, insistently so, to the urban reality of the present. I argue that Homer’s conflation of a remembered mythical age with the contemporary conditions and values of Archaic and Classical Greece aroused in his audiences a new perception and understanding of human existence in the altered sociopolitical conditions of the polis and, in so doing, ultimately contributed to the development of new ideas on the manner in which the Greeks could best live together in their new social world.

This interdisciplinary study locates Xhosa written poetry (1948-1990) within the framework of the socio-politico-economic scenario in South Africa. It sets out to examine the impact of the above stated factors on literature, by supporting the hypothesis that Xhosa written poetry of the Apartheid epoch is a terrain of the struggle for hegemony between the dominant ideology and the alternative ideologies.

Critical comment on Old English elegiac poetry is discussed from the following three standpoints: definition of the genre 'elegy'; interpretations of representative elegiac poems; stylistic analysis. The theories of critics are evaluated, with the aim of establishing the features of elegiac poetry in Old English and assessing the adequacy of critical coverage of them to date. Not many critics have attempted to define the Old English, elegy as a genre, and their definitions tend to be either too vague or too restrictive, needing to be qualified in a number of ways. However, it appears that the elegy in Old English is an abstract kind of poetry. It presents a state of mind rather than a specific person or event. In addition, there are certain recurrent features by which the genre can be defined. The elegy presents the viewpoint of an individual, usually in monologue form. It often contains structural elements which are conventionale. The typical themes of elegy are separation from a loved one, exile, banishment, the contrast between present desolation and past or absent happiness. These themes are associated with conventional descriptions, the recurrent features of which extend to quite small particulars of wording and imagery. Interpretations of the following elegiac poems are discussed: The Seafarer, The Wanderer, The Ruin, The Wife's Lament, The Husband's Message, Wulf and Eadwacer. Critical theories regarding these poems show, by and large, a change from considering them primitive and pagan (sometimes with Christian interpolations) to stressing their sophistication, unity, and essential Christianity. It is, on the whole, a change for the better, but the sophistication and the Christian element now tend to be overemphasised, especially by those critics who interpret the poems as allegories. Present interpretations show two main trends: a tendency to relate the poems to Latin influence, often patristic, and a movement towards closer investigation of the poems by internal evidence alone, without regard to sources and analogues. Stylistic studies have mostly considered Old English poetry as a whole, rather than any particular branch of it, but although the elegies employ the same formal devices as the rest of the poetry, they tend to handle them in a freer and more personal way. Also, the tendency of Old English poetry to use external description with a symbolic purpose is particularly shown in the elegies, which make an extensive use of natural description as a vehicle of mood. There has been a change in stylstic analysis similar to that in interpretation. Instead of regarding Old English poetry as unsophisticated, as earlier scholars tended to do, modern critics stress its subtlety and skilful integration, both structurally and syntactically. This change of attitude has affected criticism of the elegies, although the focus has not usually been specifically on them. The stylistic investigations which have shed most light on the elegy as a type have been the formulaic analyses. Apart from the formulaic studies, there has been little direct stylistic examination of elegiac poetry, and it is here that most remains to be done, as regards both formal devices and the looser patterns of imagery and description. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This study explores how four medieval poems—the Junius manuscript’s Genesis B and Christ and Satan and Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and The Parliament of Fowls—engage with medieval conjugal rights through their depictions of agentive female protagonists. Although many laws at this time sought to suppress the rights of women, especially those of wives’, both pre- and post-conquest poets illustrate women who act as subjects, exercising legal rights. Medieval canon and common law supported a certain amount of female agency in marriage but was not consistent in its understanding of what that was. By considering the shifts in law from Anglo-Saxon and fourteenth century England in relation to wives’ rights and female consent, my project asserts that the authors of Genesis B and Christ and Satan and the late-medieval poet Chaucer position their heroines to defend legislation that supports female agency in matters of marriage. The Anglo-Saxon authors do so by conceiving of Eve’s role in the Fall and harrowing of hell as similar to the legal role of a forespeca. Through Eve’s mimesis of Satan’s rhetoric, she is able to reveal an alternate way of conceiving of the law as merciful instead of legalistic. Chaucer also engages with a woman’s position in society under the law through his representation of Criseyde’s role in her courtship with Troilus in his epic romance, Troilus and Criseyde. Chaucer disrupts his audiences’ expectations by placing Criseyde as the more agentive party in her courtship with Troilus and shows that women might hope to the most authority in marriage by withholding their consent. In his last dream vision, The Parliament of Fowls, Chaucer engages again with the importance of female consent in marriage but takes his interrogation of conjugal rights a step further by imagining an alternate legal system through Nature, a female authority who gives equal consideration to all classes and genders.

Bibliography: p. 362-393. / In this thesis, the discussion of South African English poetry is undertaken in terms of critical questions to which the body of work, to date, has not been subjected. In the nineteen-seventies and -eighties, several anthologies of South African English poetry were published which, despite their differing foci, attested to the strength, innovation, and international stature of the work. Their editors made claims which emphasised both the importance of Sowetan poetry and the emancipation of white poetry, particularly in the last three decades, from the legacy of a stultifying colonial past. This thesis sets out to examine the validity of these critical evaluations. The impetus for such an examination is threefold. Firstly, in comparison with a world literature, South African English poetry has had little impact on the kinds of aesthetic questions which have led to the radical work of international figures like Milosz, Walcott, Neruda. Secondly, South African English poetry tends to be bifurcated by critical analysis, both locally and internationally, into the work of black poets and the work of white poets. Despite the realities of social history which have indeed dichotomised the human experience of South Africa in racial terms, this dichotomy does not seem the most fertile assumption from which to approach the achievement of a nation's poetry. Thirdly, as a poet himself, the writer of this thesis embarked upon the scholarly analysis of a poetic ancestry to which his own work looked ,in vain for location. The re-examination of the roots and value of South African English poetry begins in the thesis with the dilemmas posed by a legacy of romanticism in its displaced relation to a British colony. From this point the discussion argues that this legacy is visible in the unsatisfactory work of liberal poets in the nineteen-seventies and eighties, and argues that such choices cannot be nourishing to a South African cultural originality. Turning to the work most forcefully emphasised as culturally original - i.e. the work of the Soweto poets in the nineteen-seventies and after - the thesis explores this poetry's claims to stylistic and conceptual innovation. The poetry of the late eighties is then examined in relation to its desire to support, and even to drive, anti-apartheid philosophy and practice. The conclusions of the final chapter, presaged throughout the entire argument, suggest that earlier critical estimations of South African English poetry ignore crucial aspects of what has usually been meant by a fully achieved poetic tradition and that such neglect amounts to the betrayal of the very meaning of the term "poem".

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