These eleven chapters comprise Part One of a novel of thirty-seven chapters, entitled As Runs the Deer. It is a dialectic play on the processes of Time, as well as a play with evolving dialects. Nominally set in the 19th c., in an Appalachian-like terrain, it shows the difficulties James Ian Pierson meets when emerging out of his wilderness to re-enter his former life. Opening his own story by means of his sycamore cane, the 19- yr.-old amnesiac must soon reconcile his past with the invading "Now!" He evades the intrusion of a drunken hunter, is overcome by the wintry elements, brought from his icebed by Welsh woodsman Eustace, befriended by Mercury, ancient herbalist, keeper of the Myths. Frivolous Emily Marie Marchault must also reconcile herself with Ian's uneasy re-entry. Shackled by gilded chains of manners, she sees herself as overprotected by her guardian, Breton, and chips away at his ivory tower.

<p>The main theoretical issue dealt with in this study is the reproduction of capitalism through romantic fiction for women. The analytical framework is built upon the concept of hegemony, the material and ideological reproduction of society through a combination of consent and coercion. This study examines this process as it applies to a specific phenomena: Harlequin Enterprises, Romances, and readers. </p> <p>The analysis is based on archival research on Harlequin Enterprises and interviews with company officials. The Harlequin Romances component of the study is based on the content analysis of a random sample of fifty Harlequins. Data on readers are based on company information, readers' letters to Harlequin Enterprises, and interviews with twenty-four readers.</p> <p>The study concludes that Harlequin Enterprises and Harlequin Romances are part of the hegemonic reproduction of capitalism. They maintain and legitimate sex role structure, corporate.structure, and class structure, crucial aspects of our society. The study also concludes that women's consumption of Harlequins is best understood as being a part of this same process of hegemony. Their reading is shaped by the structure of their lives, by Harlequin Enterprises, and by Harlequin Romances. The study suggests that further theoretical refinement and empirical research is necessary to explore the possibility that there are various types of readers who interpret and respond to romantic fiction in different ways.</p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The history that H. Rider Haggard writes about in his imperial adventure romance fiction is neither collusive nor consensual with the Zulu who are often the focus of his novels. He writes a complex colonial narrative that characterises the Zulu as a proud and mythic, yet ultimately doomed, race. His early twentieth century trilogy, Zikali, is unique in that he uses the three books, Marie, Child of Storm and Finished, to narrate three pivotal events in the nineteenth century history of the Zulu Kingdom. In Zikali, he simultaneously propounds the legitimacy of the colonial endeavour, so effectively that he rewrites history, to ensure the primacy of the Englishman in nineteenth century Southern Africa historiography, whilst aggrandising the Zulu kingdom. This reframing of the colonial narrative—to suit the Western interloper—would be evidence of what is a standard trope within imperial adventure romance fiction, were it not for the fact that Haggard is ambivalent in his imperialism. He is both recorder and creator of imperial history, bewailing the demise of the Zulu Kingdom whilst validating the importance of the role of the colonial white Englishman; he senselessly kills hundreds of natives within his books, yet privileges the Zulu. Referencing one of the primary motivational sources in Haggard's own colonial experience, Theophilus Shepstone, I propose to show Haggard's sublimation of Shepstone's ideas into his own African Arcadian romances, and his creation of a Zulu historiography, which would go on to be lauded by the early South African National Native Congress as being one of the foundations of early twentieth century native socio-political self-fashioning. Haggard's work provides a fragmentary and elusive insight into nineteenth century southern African history and offers an abstruse glimpse into colonial culture rarely found in other imperial adventure romance fiction.

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Cette étude répond à l’intitulé suivant : La fiction romanesque de la postmodernité et ses labyrinthes. L’exemple des textes d’Alain Robbe-Grillet (France, 1922-2008), de Juan José Saer (Argentine, 1937-2005) et de Boubacar Boris Diop (Sénégal, 1947-). Elle se propose de cerner, sous l’autorité méthodologique de la poétique textuelle, les diverses modalités par lesquelles le motif du labyrinthe s’impose comme substrat privilégié de la poétique du récit chez trois écrivains appartenant à des aires linguistiques et culturelles différentes. Le choix et l’examen des textes de ces trois écrivains reposent sur la volonté de montrer le déploiement de ce motif dans l’organisation interne de la fiction romanesque postmoderne. En effet, intégré dans la dynamique interne de l’oeuvre de manière très diversifiée, le motif du labyrinthe surgit dans toutes les problématiques qui traversent l’écriture romanesque postmoderne. Par commodité méthodologique et rigueur scientifique, cette étude se déploie suivant trois axes complémentaires. Tandis que le premier qui s’intitule « Le labyrinthe comme invariant obsessionnel de la fiction romanesque de la postmodernité » s’attache à faire ressortir les diverses facettes sous lesquelles ce motif se déploie dans la dynamique textuelle du récit fictionnel postmoderne ; le deuxième qui a pour titre « Le labyrinthe comme modalité constitutive de la narrativité du récit : la fiction romanesque de la postmodernité à l’épreuve de la discontinuité », s’attèle quant à lui, à examiner en quoi ce motif participe d’un projet d’écriture qui revendique la discontinuité comme principe narratif ; enfin, le troisième qui a pour intitulé « Le labyrinthe comme modalité caractéristique de l’interdiscursivité et de l’intergénéricité de la dynamique textuelle : la fiction romanesque de la postmodernité à l’épreuve de la polyphonie », entreprend pour sa part de démontrer en quoi ce motif est constitutif de la polyphonie qui gouverne la dynamique textuelle du récit fictionnel postmoderne. / This study answers the following title: Romantic fiction of postmodernity and its mazes. The example of the texts of Alain Robbe-Grillet (France, 1922-2008), of Juan José Saer (Argentina, 1937-2005) and of Boubacar Boris Diop (Senegal, 1947-). It intends to identify, under authority methodological of poetic text the various modalities by which the pattern of the labyrinth becomes established as privileged substrate of the poetic narrative in three writers belonging to different linguistic and cultural areas. The choice and examination of the texts of these three writers rest on the will to show the deployment of this pattern in the internal organization of the postmodern romantic fiction. Indeed, integrated in the internal dynamic of writing in a very diversified way, the pattern of the maze appears in all the problems which cross the romantic writing. For methodological convenience and scientific rigour, this study deploys according to three complementary axes. While the first is entitled "The labyrinth as obsessive invariant of the romantic fiction of postmodernity" sets out to bring out the different aspects in which this pattern unfolds in dynamic textual postmodern fictional narrative, the second which is entitled "The labyrinth as constitutive modality of the narrativity of the story : romantic fiction of postmodernity to the test of discontinuity", gets down to examine how this pattern is part of a writing project that claims the discontinuity principle as narrative, and the third which is entitled "The labyrinth as a characteristic modality of interdiscursivity and intergenericity textual dynamic : romantic fiction of postmodernity to the test of polyphony" undertakes to show how this pattern is constitutive of polyphony which governs the dynamic of textual postmodern fictional narrative.

This is the first full-length study of the writing of the South African Joy Packer (1905-1977), whose 17 works of autobiography and romantic fiction were primarily popular. Packer’s writing, which appeared mainly between 1945 and 1977, blends popular narrative with contemporary social and political discourses. Her first main works, three volumes of memoirspublished between 1945 and 1953, cover her experience of a wide area of the world before,during and after the Second World War: South Africa, Britain, the Mediterranean and theBalkans, and China. In the early 1950s she also toured extensive areas of colonial "DarkestAfrica." When Packer retired to the Cape with her British husband, Admiral Sir Herbert Packer,after an absence of more than 25 years, she adopted fiction as an alternative literary mode. Hersubsequent production, ten popular romantic novels and a further three volumes of memoirs, isnotable for the density of its sociopolitical commentary on contemporary South Africa. This thesis takes as its starting-point the dilemma, formulated by the South African critic Dorothy Driver, of the white woman writing within a colonial environment which compels herto adopt contradictory, ambivalent and oblique discursive stances and strategies. The pragmaticintention of this thesis is, then, to (re)read Packer for her treatment of that problematic in thecontext of South Africa. The approach adopted centres on the reciprocity within Packer’s writing between itsgeneric conventions and its discursive environment, broadly defined here as pre-1950 imperial Britain and, in the main, colonial and apartheid South Africa. Within a critical-biographical frame, attention is paid first to formal aspects of the popular memoir and the popular romanticnovel. Their discursive function vis-à-vis their apartheid environment is then examined withina series of comparative studies. The burden of the analysis rests, in part, on the identity of Packer’s fiction as politicised romans à thèse and, in part, on her personal identification withpolitical liberalism in South Africa, most notably the Cape liberalism of her youth and thevarious manifestations of liberalism under apartheid. By focusing on differing motifs—Packer’sprofessed adherence to political liberalism, her treatment of race within the idealising constructions of popular romance, the metonymy of the fictional family and the patriarchal state,and her portrayal of women held hostage by the racial and masculine other—the study discussesthe extent to which the contradictions predicted by Driver’s analysis exist within the apparentlyseamless fabric of Packer’s narratives. The investigation concludes by recentring its focus on the narrativised identity of the white woman in a colonial environment, at the same time seeking confirmation of the several reasons for Packer’s writing to have gained only contemporary rather than lasting approval. / digitalisering@umu

English Studies / M.A. (English)

English Studies / M.A. (English)