No description available.

Thesis (DLitt (English))--University of Stellenbosch, 2008. / This study attempts a re-reading and re-evaluation of the work of black South African short story writers from R.R.R. Dhlomo (circa 1930) to Zoë Wicomb (at the end of the 1980s). The short story, along with the autobiography, was the dominant genre of black writing during this period, and the reasons for this are examined, as well as the ways in which black writers adapt or transform this familiar literary genre. The title – “Writing Black” – alludes to well-known works by Richard Rive (Writing Black) and J.M. Coetzee (White Writing), and foregrounds the issue of race and racialised identities. While one would not want to neglect other factors (class, gender), it is hardly possible to underestimate the impact of racial classification during the apartheid era. However, the difficulty of asserting the unproblematic existence of a homogeneous “black” identity also becomes evident. The approach adopted here reflects the need to recognise both the singularity of particular texts (their “literariness”) as well as their embeddedness in their particular place and time (their “worldliness” or their “circumstantiality”). Literary texts are complex verbal artefacts of an unusual kind, but they cannot be separated from their contexts of production and reception; black writing in this country would be largely incomprehensible if this were not taken into account. Close attention is given to the obvious spatial, temporal and ideological shifts in South African cultural production during this period, and to the two major phases of black writing (the Sophiatown and District Six writers of the 50s, and the Staffrider writers of the 70s and 80s). The work of these writers is not, however, subsumed into a political meta-narrative. In particular, this study resists the tendency to lump the work of black writers into one large, undifferentiated category (“protest writing” or “spectacular” representation). This approach has had the effect of flattening out or homogenising a body of work that is much more varied and interesting than many critical accounts would suggest. Finally, the contribution of three writers of the “interregnum” (Ndebele, Matlou, Wicomb) is explored. What is of particular interest is their break from established conventions of representation: their work reveals a willingness to resist over-simplification, to experiment, and to explore issues of identity and gender. By examining these texts from the vantage point of the post-apartheid present, one is able to arrive at an enhanced understanding of the form that black writing took under apartheid, and the pressures to which it was responding.

Toni Morrison, in Playing in the Dark, observes the pervasive silence that surrounds race in nineteenth-century canonical literature. Observing the ways in which the “Africanist” African-American presence pervades this literature, Morrison has called for an investigation of the ways in which whiteness operates in American canonical literature. This thesis takes up that challenge. In the first section, from Chapters One through Three, I explore how whiteness operates through the representation of the African-American figure in the works of three eminent nineteenth-century American writers, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman, and Mark Twain. The texts studied in this regard are: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Leaves of Grass, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This section is not concerned with whether these texts constitute racist literature but with the ways in which the study of race, particularly whiteness, reveals the contradictions and insecurities that attend (white American) identity. As such, Morrison’s own fiction, written in response to white historical representations of African-Americans also deserves attention. The second section of this thesis focuses on Morrison’s attempt to produce an authentically “black” literature. Here I look at two of Morrison’s least studied but arguably most contentious novels particularly because of what they reveal of Morrison’s complex position on race. In Chapter Four I focus on Tar Baby and argue that this novel reveals Morrison’s somewhat essentialist position on blackness and racial, cultural, and gendered identity, particularly as this pertains to responsibilities she places on the black woman as culture-bearer. In Chapter Five I argue that Paradise, while taking a particularly challenging position on blackness, reveals Morrison’s evolving position on race, particularly her concern with the destructive nature of internalized racism. This thesis concludes that while racial identities have very real material consequences, whiteness and blackness are ideological and social constructs which, because of their constructedness, are fallible and perpetually under revision.

Advisor: Mary E. Wood. xii, 181 leaves : ill. ; 29 cm. Print copy also available for check out and consultation in the University of Oregon's library under the call number: PS374.S714 H37 2004. / The nineteenth-century American sentimental novel has only in the last twenty years received consideration from the academy as a legitimate literary tradition. During that time feminist scholars have argued that sentimental novels performed important cultural work and represent an important literary tradition. This dissertation contributes to the scholarship by placing the sentimental novel within a larger context of intellectual history as a tradition that draws upon theoretical sources and is a source itself for later cultural developments. In examining a variety of sentimental novels, I establish the moral sense philosophy as the theoretical basis of the sentimental novel's pathetic appeals and its theories of sociability and justice. The dissertation also addresses the aesthetic features of the sentimental novel and demonstrates again the tradition's connection to moral sense philosophy but within the context of the American elocution revolution. I look at natural language theory to render more legible the moments of emotional spectacle that are the signature of sentimental aesthetics. The second half of the dissertation demonstrates a connection between the sentimental novel and silent film. Both mediums rely on a common aesthetic storehouse for signifying emotions. The last two chapters of the dissertation compare silent film performance with emotional displays in the sentimental novel and in elocution and acting manuals. I also demonstrate that the films of D. W. Griffith, especially The Birth of a Nation, draw upon on the larger conventions of the sentimental novel.

This study explores the crisis of representation in black South African protest and ‘post’-apartheid literature. Conversant with the debates on the crisis of representation in black South African protest literature from the 1960s to the late 1980s, the dissertation proposes a re-reading of the ‘crisis’ by locating it in the black writer’s struggle for an aesthetic with which to express the existential crisis of blackness. I contend that not only protest but also contemporary or ‘post’-protest black South African literature exhibits a split or fractured mode of writing which is characterised by the displacement/unheimlichheid produced by colonialism and apartheid, as well as by the contentious nature of that which this literature endeavours to capture – the fraught identity of blackness. In my exploration of the split or double narratives of Mongane Serote’s To Every Birth Its Blood, K. Sello Duiker’s Thirteen Cents, and Kopano Matlwa’s Coconut, I examine the representation of blackness through the themes of violence, trauma, powerlessness, failure, and unhomeliness/unbelongingness – all of which suggest the lack of a solid foundation upon which to construct a stable black identity. This instability, I ultimately argue, suggests a move beyond an Afrocentric perspective on identity and traditional tropes of blackness towards a more processual, fluid, and permeable post-black politics.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The complicated state wherein ex-slaves found themselves, as depicted in the narratives of Bibb, Jacobs, and others, problematizes the dualistic relationship between North and South that the genre’s structural components work to enforce, forging an odyssey that, although sometimes still spiritual in nature, does not offer the type of resolutions that might easily persuade fellow slaves to abandon their masters and seek a similarly ambiguous identity in the so-called “free” land of the North. For blacks and especially fugitive slaves, such restrictive legal provisions provided an “uncertain status” where, writes William Andrews, “the definition of freedom for black people remained open.” In those slave narratives that dare to depict the limits of liberty in the North, this “open” status is particularly reflected in the texts’ discursive terrain itself, which portends a series of candid observations and brutal details that actively work to deconstruct any sort of mythological pattern associated with the slave narrative genre, thereby offering a more expansive view of the experience for most fugitive slaves. The Life of William Grimes, a particularly frank and brutal diary of a man’s trials within and without slavery, is one such slave narrative, depicting a journey that, while more consistent with the general experience of ex-slaves in the antebellum U.S., often works outside the parameters of traditional, straight-forward slave narratives like Douglass’s. “I often was obliged to go off the road,” Grimes admits at one point in his autobiography, and although his remark refers to the cautious path he must tread as a fugitive slave, it might just as well describe the thematic and structural characteristics of his open-ended autobiography. Reputedly the first fugitive slave narrative, the publication of Grimes’s Life in 1825 initiated the beginning of a genre whose path had not yet been forged, which likely contributed to its fluid nature. At the time of his narrative’s publication, Grimes’s self-expressed testimony of injustice under slavery was about five years ahead of its time; it wouldn’t be until the 1830s that the U.S. antislavery movement would begin to consciously seek out ex-slaves to testify to their experience in bondage. Once this literary door was open, however, antislavery sentiment became for many early African American authors “a ready forum” for self-expression. Whereas in twenty years’ time Douglass would take full advantage of this opportunity by drawing inspiration from a number of already established narratives, Grimes as an author found himself singularly “off the road” and essentially alone in new literary territory, uncannily reflecting his sense of alienation and helplessness in the North after escaping from slavery aboard a cargo ship in 1815.

Text in English with abstracts and keywords in English, Afrikaans and Zulu / Beyond the African boundaries, the black body is marked with an othered identity that often leaves its bearer open to discrimination. Being black is considered a transgression because, presumably, it constitutes deviance from a particular skin pigmentation, spatial norm and cultural practice. This dissertation examines the depiction of people of colour, particularly blacks, as transgressive bodies and invaders of space. From a postcolonial perspective, it investigates the racial implications of blackness by reason of migration. This study draws on a critical analysis of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013) and Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime (2016) to investigate the intersection of identity, race and spatial zones as thematic concerns in both texts. I contend that despite the fact that race is a social construct, it continually has an impact on the individual living of blacks in the space they inhabit or where they exist. They are burdened by the negativities generated by their colour, consequently perceiving themselves as deviants from the norm. Unlike Adichie’s other novels, the theme of migration is more profound in Americanah to reflect the intense consequences of race for African migrants in the western world. Therefore, I seek to establish that the stereotyping of Africans owing to their racial and cultural differences forces them to alter their identity in order to be recognised and accepted. In the same regard, the study projects Trevor Noah’s holistic representation of displacement both within self and community. More insightful is the writer’s engagement of body politics as a propeller for socio-economic issues. These issues explored in both texts ultimately present a (re)imagining of people of colour within the othered zones. / Buite die Afrikagrense word die swart liggaam gemerk met 'n gemarginaliseerde (“anderste”) identiteit wat die draer dikwels ooplaat vir diskriminasie. Swartwees word as 'n oortreding beskou, want dit is vermoedelik 'n afwyking van 'n bepaalde velpigmentasie, ruimtelike norm en kulturele praktyk. Hierdie verhandeling ondersoek die uitbeelding van mense van kleur, veral swart mense, as oortredende liggame en indringers van die ruimte. Vanuit 'n postkoloniale perspektief ondersoek dit die rasse-implikasies van swartheid as gevolg van migrasie. Hierdie studie neem as uitgangspunt die kritiese analise van Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie se Americanah (2013) en Trevor Noah se Born a Crime (2016) om die interseksie van identiteit, ras en ruimtelike sones as tematiek in albei tekste te ondersoek. Ek beweer dat, ondanks die feit dat ras 'n sosiale konstruk is, dit voortdurend 'n impak het op die individuele leefwyse van swart mense in die ruimte waarin hulle woon of waar hulle bestaan. Gevolglik word hulle belemmer deur negatiewe aspekte wat deur hul kleur gegenereer word, en hulself gevolglik as afwykers van die norm beskou. Anders as haar ander romans, is Adichie se migrasieprobleme meer diepgaande in Americanah om die intense gevolge van rassekwessies vir Afrika-migrante in die Westerse wêreld te weerspieël. Daarom wil ek vasstel dat die stereotipering van Afrikane weens hul rasse- en kulturele verskille hulle dwing om hul identiteit te verander om erken en aanvaar te word. In dieselfde verband projekteer die studie Trevor Noah se holistiese voorstelling van verplasing binne die self en die gemeenskap. Meer insiggewend is die skrywer se betrokkenheid by liggaamspolitiek as 'n voorstuwer vir sosio-ekonomiese kwessies. Hierdie kwessies, wat in albei tekste ondersoek word, bied uiteindelik 'n (her)verbeelding van mense van kleur binne die “ander” sones. / Nangaphandle kwemingcele ye-Afrika, imizimba yabantu abamnyama imakwe ngobuzazisi babanye, lokhu okuvama ukushiya lowo walowo mzimba omnyama esesimweni sokubandlululwa. Ukuba mnyama kuthathwa njengento eyisono neyeqe umngcele omukelekile ngoba, kuvanyiswe ukuthathwa njengokwehlukile kwibala elithile lesikhumba, indawo evamile kanye nezinkambiso zamasiko. Le dissertation ihlola ukuthathwa kwabantu abanebala, ikakhulukazi elimnyama, njengemizimba ewukweqa okuhle nokwamukelekile kanye neyabahlasela indawo. Ukusuka kwimibono yenkathi engemuva kobukoloni, iphenya ngemiphumela yombono webala elimnyama ngenxa yokuya kwamanye amazwe. Ucwaningo luthathela kuhlaziyo olunzulu lwemibhalo kaChinamanda Ngozi Adichie ye-Americanah (2013) kanye ne-Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime (2016) ukuphenya ngokuxhumana kobuzazisi, ukubuka izinto ngeso lebala kanye nezindawo njengezinto eziyizihloko zemibhalo. Ngibeka elokuthi noma udaba lwebala kuyinto eyenziwe ngabantu, kodwa inomphumela kumuntu ophila njengomuntu omnyama, ohlala endaweni ahlala kuyo noma lapho akhona. Ngenxa yalokho-ke, bathwele umthwalo omubi ngenxa yebala labo, ngalokho bazibona njengabahlukile kokujwayelekile nokufanele. Ngokwehluka namanye amanoveli, ukukhathazeka ngokuya kwamanye amazwe kubonakala kakhulu kwi-Americanah ukubheka kanzulu ngemiphumela ejulile yokubuka izinto ngokwebala kubantu ababuya eAfrika abaya kumazwe asentshonalanga. Ngakho ke, ngifuna ukuqaphela indlela abantu abangama-Afrika ababonwa ngayo ngendlela ethile embi nemi ndawonye (stereotyping) ngenxa yomehluko wabo ngokubona izinto ngokwebala kanye nomehluko ngokwezamasiko, ukushintsha ubuzazi babo ukuze bamukelwe nokumukeleka. Ngale ndlela, ucwaningo lubhekisa kwindlela ephelele kaTrevor Noah, yokuzibona eqhelilee nokwehluka ngobuyena ngaphakathi kuye kanye nasemphakathini. Ngokubona izinto ngeso elijulile ngokubheka ezepolitiki kombhali njengesisunduzi kwizinto ezibhekene nabantu kanye nezomnotho. Lezi zinto zicwaninga ngokombhalo kanye nokubeka kabusha ngombono nendlela entsha abantu bebala, emkhakheni wabanye. / Afrikaans and Theory of Literature / M.A. (Theory of Literature)