This thesis examines the first collections of modern Persian literature written by Iranian female authors in the context of a process of gender modernization during the Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi’s reign (1941-1979). This thesis argues that women’s literature written during the period of transition from tradition to modernity is clearly influenced by the state’s gender policy and illustrates the changing position of women’s status in private and public life. Indeed, an examination of the collections of short stories and poems that were produced in this period demonstrates that female authors were concerned with the unveiling policy, arranged marriage and polygamy, women’s education, women’s social participation, women’s domestic obligations, women’s political awakening, and female sexuality. Furthermore, central themes covered by female authors changed significantly based on the transformations of gender politics the society experienced from the 1940s and 1950s to the 1960s and 1970s.

Literally hundreds of novels were written by white Rhodesians during the U.D.I. era of the 1960s and 1970s. Since Independence, however, not much more than a handful of literary texts have been produced by whites in Zimbabwe. This dissertation, therefore, involves an interrogation of both white discourse and the (reduced) space for white discourse in postcolonial Zimbabwean society. In addition to the displaced moral space, and the removal of the economic and political power base, there has been an appropriation of control over the material means of production of any discourse and white discourse, which has become accustomed to its position of superiority due to its dominance and dominating tendencies, has struggled to come to terms with its new, non-hegemonic 'space'. In an attempt to come to some understanding of the literary silence and marginalisation of white discourse in post-independence Zimbabwe there has to be some understanding of the voice that was formed during the British South Africa Company's administration and which reached a crescendo of authoritarian self-assertion at the declaration of unilateral independence. Vital to this discussion (in Part I) is an uncovering of the myths that were intrinsic to white discourse in the way that they were created as justification for settlement and to propagandise the aggressive defence of that space that was forged in an alien landscape. These myths have not been easily cast aside and, hence, have made it so difficult for white discourse to adapt to post-colonial society. Most Rhodesian novels were extremely partisan and promulgated these myths. Part II, discusses ex post facto novels about the war (from the white perspective) to investigate whether white discourse is recognising the lies that make up so much of its belief system. This investigation of this particular perspective of the war, then, will help to define at what stage white Zimbabweans are at in the development of a national culture. Part III takes this discussion of acculturation and national unity further. Furthermore, through the discussion of a number of novels in this chapter, it is argued that white discourse is struggling to come to terms with its non-hegemonic position and is continuing to attempt to assert its control. The 'space' available to the early settlers' discourse for appropriation, however, has been removed and, in the reduced space available to white discourse, one continued area of possible control is that of conservation.

This study pursues the quest and struggle for total liberation in post-independence Shona poetry. The study also relies on views of key respondents obtained through interviews and questionnaires. Couched and guided by Afrocentricity and Africana womanism, the study elucidates the politico-economic and socio-cultural factors that militate against Africa’s total liberation in general as well as women’s liberation, respectively. Simultaneously, critical judgments are passed on the extent to which poets immerse their art in African existential philosophy. The study is energized by the idea that pursuing the quest for authentic liberation provides a lens through which one can understand threats to Africa’s true liberation. It observes that poets and key informants largely attribute ersartz independence to internal problems. The researcher holds that it is problematic to hold a domesticated vision of the African condition to the extent that poets and other literary workers need to widen their canvas beyond fighting internal oppression and internationalise the struggle. The researcher argues that it is myopic and self-defeating to protest against Africa itself without giving adequate attention to the incapacitating hegemonic world system. Therefore, the poetry is lacking on its critique on domination. The centerpiece of the thesis is that in order to be purposeful and functional, poets need to grapple with both endogenous and exogenous factors that obstruct the march towards genuine liberation. The study also observes that in some instances poets produce cheap literature which is marked by a narrow and moralistic approach and this is attributable to the fact that poets lack a scientific vision in understanding reality. Concerning women’s authentic liberation, the commonly identified obstacles to women’s freedom are the male counterpart, self-depreciation, lack of education and culture. The study observes that women poets in Ngatisimuke (1994) and key respondents seem to approach gender relations from a feminist perspective and hence fail to situate women’s condition in the context of the history and culture that shape African gender relations. Women poets in Ngatisimuke fall short of internationalising their struggle in concert with the male counterpart such that their poetry degenerates into sponsored and misguided activism. / African Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)

In locating the idea of nostalgia in early modern English drama, ‘A Rhetoric of Nostalgia on the English Stage, 1587-1605’ recovers an influential and under-examined political discourse in Elizabethan drama. Recognizing how deeply Renaissance culture was invested in conceptualizing the past as past and in privileging the cultural practices and processes of memory, this thesis asserts nostalgia’s embeddedness within that culture and its consequently powerful rhetorical role on the English Renaissance stage. The introduction situates Elizabethan nostalgia alongside nostalgia’s postmodern conceptualizations. It identifies how my definition of early modern nostalgia both depends on and diverges from contemporary arguments about nostalgia, as it questions nostalgia’s perceived conservatism and asserts its radicalizing potential. I define a rhetoric of nostalgia with regard to classical and Renaissance ideas of rhetoric and locate it within a body of sixteenth-century political discourses. In the ensuing chapters, my analyses of Shakespeare’s drama formulate case studies reached, in each instance, through an exploration of the plays’ socio-political context. Chapter Two’s analysis of The First Part of the Contention contextualizes Shakespeare’s development of a rhetoric of nostalgia and investigates connections between rhetorical form and nostalgia. I demonstrate the cultural currency of the play’s nostalgic proverbial discourse through a discussion of Protestant writers interested in mocking the idea of a preferable Catholic past. Chapter Three argues that Richard II’s nostalgic discourse of lost hospitality functions as a political rhetoric evocative of the socio-economic problems of the mid-1590s and of the changing landscape of English tradition instigated by the Reformation. In Chapter Four, Julius Caesar and Ben Jonson’s Sejanus constitute a final analysis of the relationship between a rhetoric of nostalgia and politics by examining the rise of Tacitism. The plays’ nostalgic language stimulates an awareness to the myriad ways in which rhetoric questions politics in both dramas.

Thesis (MA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2002. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The aim of this study is to investigate Henk: van Woerden's Een mond vol glas (1998) (A Mouthful of glass (2000) translated by Dan Jacobson) as a contribution to the creation of a multi-voiced South African history. Een mond vol glas clearly contributes to such a project, because it recognises the histories of the Dutch immigrants, die Cape Muslims and especially the Cape "Coloured" community through the figure of Demitrios Tsafendas, better known as the murderer of Hendrik Verwoerd. The key concepts in this study are cultural diversity and a processing of the trauma caused by apartheid. Postcolonial theory will be used to explain cultural diversity as the result of transference and to contextualize the growing interest in the transnational histories of migrants in literature. Een mond vol glas cannot easily be described according to one specific genre or classification. This study will make use of the description "literature produced in a context of cultural diversity" to show the problematic nature of two classifications of Een mond vol glas that is currently being used. Processing the trauma caused by apartheid in literature, comes down to a resistance to the isolating force of trauma. This study uses the trauma theory of Judith Herman which states that the healing process or the processing of traumatic experiences can only take place in the sharing of people's stories in the connectedness with others. In South Africa this process begins to take place in a society where cultural multi-voicedness has become possible. In the end I will conclude that Een mond vol glas proves to be a reconstruction of history that is multi-voiced, making this part of South African history accessible for a larger audience. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die doelstelling met hierdie studie is om ondersoek in te stel na Henk van Woerden se Een mond vol glas en hoe dit bydra tot die skepping van 'n kultureel meerstemmige Suid- Afrikaanse geskiedenis. Een mond vol glas lewer duidelik hierdie bydrae omdat die werk ook erkenning gee aan die geskiedenisse van die Nederlandse immigrante, die Kaapse Moslems en die Kaapse bruin mense in die besonder deur die figuur Demitrios Tsafendas, beter bekend as die moordenaar van Verwoerd. Die sleutelbegrippe in hierdie studie is kulturele meervoudigheid en verwerking van die trauma veroorsaak deur apartheid. Postkoloniale teorie word gebruik om kulturele meervoudigheid te verduidelik as die resultaat van verplasing sowel as om die toenemende fokus op die transnasionale geskiedenisse van migrante in die letterkunde te kontekstualiseer. Een mond vol glas kan nie volgens een erkende genre of klassifikasie beskryf word nie. Hierdie studie hanteer die omskrywing "letterkunde geproduseer in 'n konteks van kulturele meervoudigheid" waarbinne twee reeds erkende klassifikasies van Een mond vol glas geproblematiseer sal word. Die verwerking van die traumatiese gevolge van apartheid in die letterkunde kom neer op die teenwerking van die isolerende uitwerking daarvan. Hierdie studie gebruik die traumateorie van Judith Herman dat verwerking en herstel slegs kan begin deur die vertel van traumatiese verhale in die verbondenheid met ander. In Suid-Afrika het hierdie verwerking en herstel begin plaasvind in 'n samelewing waar kulturele meerstemmigheid moontlik geword het. Ek sal uiteindelik tot die slotsom kom dat Een mond vol glas 'n herkonstruksie van die geskiedenis bied wat kultureel meerstemmig is en ook toelaat dat die hierdie deel van die Suid-Afrikaanse geskiedenis vir 'n groter publiek toeganklik word.

This dissertation examines the evolution of the early English travel narrative as it relates to the development and application of mercantilist economic practices, theories of aesthetic representation, and discourses of gender and narrative authority. I attempt to redress an imbalance in critical work on pre-colonialism and colonialism, which has tended to focus either on the Renaissance, as exemplified by the works of critics such as Stephen Greenblatt and John Gillies, or on the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as in the work of scholars such as Srinivas Aravamudan and Edward Said. This critical gap has left early travel narratives by Sir Francis Moore, Jonathan Harris, Penelope Aubin, and others largely neglected. These early writers, I argue, adapted the conventions of the travel narrative while relying on the authority of contemporary commercial practices. The early English travelers modified contemporary conventions of aesthetic representation by formulating their descriptions of non-European cultures in terms of the economic and political conventions and rivalries of the early eighteenth century. Early English travel literature, I demonstrate, functioned as a politically motivated medium that served both as a marker of authenticity, justifying the colonial and imperial ventures that would flourish in the nineteenth century, and as a forum for experimentation with English notions of gender and narrative authority.

When Alexis de Tocqueville observed the spread of modern democracy across France, England, and the United States, he saw that democracy would give rise to a new state of letters, and that this new state of letters would influence how democratic citizens and statesmen would understand the new political world. As he reflected on this new intellectual sphere, Tocqueville became concerned that democracy would foster changes in language and thought that would stifle concepts and ideas essential to the preservation of intellectual and political liberty. In an effort to direct, refine, and reshape political thought in democracy, Tocqueville undertook a critique of the democratic state of letters, assessing intellectual life and contributing his own ideas and concepts to help citizens and statesmen think more coherently about democratic politics. Here, I analyze Tocqueville's critique and offer an account of his effort to reshape democratic political thought. I show that through his analyses of the role of intellectuals in democratic regimes, the influence of modern science on democratic public life, the intellectual habits that democracy fosters, and the power of literary works for shaping democratic self-understanding, Tocqueville succeeds in reshaping democratic language and thought in a manner that contributes to the preservation of intellectual and political liberty within the modern democratic world.

Este trabalho propõe uma leitura dos aspectos estruturais de narração, construção de personagens e enredo a partir de uma perspectiva que os considera como dados essenciais para aquilo que Rancière (2004) chamou de política da literatura. Os textos escolhidos, A hora e a vez de Augusto Matraga, de Sagarana, e Buriti, de Corpo de baile, foram considerados dentro de uma tradição brasileira da fala sobre um outro cultural, presente desde os românticos até os modernos. Tentou-se compreender como as inovações estruturais principalmente a reformulação do discurso indireto livre podem ser lidas como mais ou menos democráticas, a partir de uma reflexão sobre a partilha do sensível (Rancière, 2005) e a letra muda (Rancière, 2004). / This dissertation proposes a study of the structural aspects of narration, character and plot through a perspective that considers them as essential for what Rancière (2004) called politics of literature. The texts chosen, A hora e a vez de Augusto Matraga, from Sagarana and Buriti, from Corpo de baile, were read within a Brazilian literary tradition of speaking about a cultural other, present from romantic to modern writings. The research tried to understand how structural innovations specially the rebuilding of the free indirect speech (discurso indireto livre) may be read as more or less democratic considering the concepts of partition of the sensible (RANCIÈRE, 2005) and the mute letter (RANCIÈRE, 2004).

Este trabalho propõe uma leitura dos aspectos estruturais de narração, construção de personagens e enredo a partir de uma perspectiva que os considera como dados essenciais para aquilo que Rancière (2004) chamou de política da literatura. Os textos escolhidos, A hora e a vez de Augusto Matraga, de Sagarana, e Buriti, de Corpo de baile, foram considerados dentro de uma tradição brasileira da fala sobre um outro cultural, presente desde os românticos até os modernos. Tentou-se compreender como as inovações estruturais principalmente a reformulação do discurso indireto livre podem ser lidas como mais ou menos democráticas, a partir de uma reflexão sobre a partilha do sensível (Rancière, 2005) e a letra muda (Rancière, 2004). / This dissertation proposes a study of the structural aspects of narration, character and plot through a perspective that considers them as essential for what Rancière (2004) called politics of literature. The texts chosen, A hora e a vez de Augusto Matraga, from Sagarana and Buriti, from Corpo de baile, were read within a Brazilian literary tradition of speaking about a cultural other, present from romantic to modern writings. The research tried to understand how structural innovations specially the rebuilding of the free indirect speech (discurso indireto livre) may be read as more or less democratic considering the concepts of partition of the sensible (RANCIÈRE, 2005) and the mute letter (RANCIÈRE, 2004).

Thesis (M.A. (English Studies)) --University of Limpopo, 2018 / The purpose of this study was to examine South Africa’s Post-Apartheid contemporary drama. Three dramas were used in order to examine three primary themes namely morality, corruption and class - the selected plays were John Kani’s Nothing but the Truth, Zakes Mda’s Our Lady of Benoni and Mike van Graan’s Some Mother’s Sons. The ideology carried out in this study was that there is a possible reinvention of Apartheid issues in Post-Apartheid South African drama, exchanging themes of protest and race for morality and corruption, while reflecting real events in the works of playwrights. Also, the study aimed at finding out whether there are connections between class issues and morality as presented in the selected plays. The study found that there is indeed a reinvention of Apartheid issues in Post-Apartheid South Africa, and that there are connections between class issues and morality, including corruption. Lastly, the study concluded that the current South Africa requires a serious intervention regarding moral regeneration as reflected in the selected plays.