The 'colony' in Olive Schreiner‟s fiction and non-fiction is a place or space, I shall argue, that is both dynamic and complex. The comings and goings, the stories, of the 'characters' in the space are not reducible to the division of indigene/settler. This dissertation takes as its starting point a still prevalent view that Schreiner's literary achievement displays a typical 'colonial blindness' in matters of dispossession and resistance: that the colonial person has little connection to his/her material surrounds. In reaction to what I regard as a binary language of response, my focus is on what I refer to as 'margins' in Schreiner's writings: that is, to apparently tangential incidents which add complexity to the conception of colony and, by extension, to that of the colonial novel. My argument is that in her treatment of a colony of diverse, conflicting stories, which are told in both fictional and non-fictional forms, Schreiner challenged the dichotomous language of colonialism (in its sharp delineations between indigene and settler) and imbued her times (1880s-1920s) with visionary potential: a potential that continues to have import where the reductive categories of indigene and settler retain purchase even in postcolonial times. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2011.

This dissertation–half of the MA in English Studies by coursework and dissertation–examines selected works of the playwright, poet and novelist, Kendrew Lascelles, who spent his youth and young adulthood in South Africa, and who since the mid-1960s has resided in the United States. The study – the first extended evaluation of Lascelles's work – focuses on those of his plays that feature an African dimension and on his 'post apocalyptic' novel, Tamara Hunney. The argument is that Africa, as a real and symbolic location, persists alongside the US influence in Lascelles's work, whether explicitly, as in his play about living in apartheid South Africa, or by suggestive parallel in his recognition of intercultural potential: for example, his contrast in Tamara Hunney of Los Angeles urban realism and native American ('Red Indian') spiritual redemption; that masculinist worlds (e.g. colonial or apartheid Africa; the US 'wild west', whether past or present) are tempered (educated) through gender sensitivity, or a feminine principle; and that an apparent paradox might but be a paradox in a writer who subscribes to foundational (romantic-conservative) values rather than to the trendy-liberal expositions of a media-saturated American society. The moral vision is captured not only thematically, but is embodied in 'form' as meaning: in surprising shifts of generic convention and style. The study suggests that Kendrew Lascelles's literary work is deserving of serious consideration. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2011.

This dissertation attempts to compare and contrast the functions of cultural memory and myth in both Heaney and Krog's work. By doing so, I look at what it means for both writers to work within a culture or tradition, and how they both mediate their religious or racial identity within a fractured and divided society. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2007.

This dissertation comprises a literary investigation of the way in which Toni Morrison is able to transcend stereotypes associated with African American masculinity within a selection of her works namely, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby and Paradise. I apply Carl Jung’s transcendent concept of the paradoxical Self as a lens through which to analyse Morrison’s different representations, illustrating how this concept affects the formation of identity and an understanding of masculinity. I also make use of Frantz Fanon, who suggests that Jung’s concept of the Self is a way in which black men are able to understand their experience of the world, in that such an experience is paradoxical in nature. It is this paradoxical experience of the world that I argue Morrison highlights in her male characters. In examining Morrison’s representations of masculinity, I also illustrate the intersection of race and gender and how this intersection affects identity creation, given the unique position that African American men occupy within American society. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2012.

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 abstract available. / Thesis (M.A)-University of Durban-Westville, 2004.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2000.

In this thesis I will look at the interlinked issues of power, race and sex in Lewis Nkosi's Mating Birds (1986) and The Black Psychiatrist (1994) using the psychiatrist figure to provide the focus on these intersections of power, race and sex. It becomes clear after even a cursory reading of these texts that it is these very issues that inform both texts, one a novel and the other a play. it is important to note as well that these texts were selected because they have at their center inter-racial sexual relations set against the backdrop of apartheid in South Africa. Mating Birds is the story of Ndi Sibiya, ex-student of the University of Natal, left to a life of aimless wandering after being expelled for participating in student boycotts, now imprisoned and sentenced to death for the rape of a white woman, Veronica Slater. What is interesting about this text is the doubt set in the reader's mind about Ndi's guilt or innocence, by Ndi himself. The Black Psychiatrist deals with a black psychiatrist Dr Kerry, practising in Harley Street, London, who is visited by a white female patient, originally from South Africa. What is interesting about the play is the fact that the doctor seems to take on the role of patient and the patient that of the doctor. What is ironic however is that in her attempts to analyse the doctor, she is faced with the realities of her own life. With both texts dealing clearly with inter-racial relations, it is thus necessary to take into account the historical context in which these texts are set. Mating Birds was published in 1986 but set during the 1950's and 1960's while The Black Psychiatrist was published in 1994. Both texts were written and published before South Africa's first democratic elections and set during the time of apartheid. Selected theorists that will be looked at in relation to the two texts will be Freud (1949), Memmi (1965), Fanon (1967), Said (1978) and Young (1995). Freud is a useful starting point as it is his theory of the Oedipus Complex that forms the basis of psychoanalysis in which the role of the psychiatrist in curing patients of neurosis is very important. Freud's essays on the Oedipus Complex, "A Child is Being Beaten" and "Fetishism" though not written with the black man in mind are useful in analysing the effects of colonisation on the colonised and the way the colonised sees the world. This is something Fanon discusses in detail in his book Black Skin White Masks (1967), where he describes the feelings of inadequacy and dependence experienced by people of colour in a white colonial world. Robert Young's Colonial Desire (1995) will be a key text for this thesis as it allows insight into definitions and theories of race, power and sex in a colonial and oppressive context. Said's Orientalism (1978) will help provide insight into colonial discourse and its effects. Though written specifically with the Orient in mind it is a text that can be used to understand all subjugated people. His opinions on the notion of othering will be of particular importance: the idea that the colonised will always be the Other, object and not subject. Memmi's The Colonizer and the Colonized helps provide useful insight into colonialism, creating portraits of the coloniser and the colonised, allowing one access into the minds of both. The theorists selected provide definitions and theories about power, race and sex, issues which form the basis of Mating Birds and The Black Psychiatrist and which can best be understood by looking at the psychiatrists Dr Dufre and Dr Kerry. Issues of power, race and sex are essential in any discussion of colonialism and colonised people. The basis of colonisation was one of power, in the case of South Africa power of the white man over black people. Of particular importance to the white man in his reign of power were the extreme oppression of black people and an absolute prohibition of any sexual contact between black and white. It is these issues then that underline the work of Lewis Nkosi and that form the basis of his texts Mating Birds and The Black Psychiatrist. Chapter Two provides the historical context of Nkosi's work as well as a short biography. Of particular importance in this chapter will be a discussion of why Nkosi writes the way he does; why the emphasis on power, race and sex in his work. This requires one to look at the political situation under which he lived and worked for a time before leaving the country having signed away his right to return. Nkosi' s work outlines clearly the effects of apartheid and oppression. Discussed in this chapter as well are his comments on African literature, particularly South African 'protest' fiction. This will be linked to his work and the reasons for him writing the way he does. Chapter Three provides an in-depth analysis of Mating Birds looking specifically at power, race and sex using the role of the psychiatrist as a focus. A useful beginning will be an outline of the plot of the play followed by a discussion of Freud's Oedipus Complex and how it can be used to interpret the black man's view of the world according to Fanon. Deleuze and Guattari's theories will be useful as well in understanding the coloniser as the Father figure, the patriarch. This can be linked to the control that the coloniser has over things like language, communication, place, and the prohibition of inter-sexual relations - looked at in relation to the text. Freud's essay on "Fetishism" will help provide insight into the black man's desire for the white woman while at the same time using her as a substitute for the freedom and power that he so covets. The issue of Othering is important as well - what do black and white men represent to each other? Fanon's views on the African rapist will be referred to as will be Said's object-other theory. Chapter Four presents a brief plot outline of the play The Black Psychiatrist followed by a detailed analysis of the psychiatrist figure Dr Kerry, a successful, black South African having flown his home to practise in London's famous Harley Street. Issues of power are evident immediately as Kerry's authority in his office is undermined by the white woman who should be his patient but prefers to do the questioning. Freud's theories on Repression, which are based on the Oedipus Complex are important here but what needs to be discussed is which character is really guilty of this repression? It is in this chapter as well that a contrast between Dr Dufre and Dr Kerry will be made. Dufre, by coming to South Africa becomes a white man operating in a black man's world, representing the coloniser while Dr Kerry living and working in London is a black man in a white man's world, representing the colonised. Linked to Freud's Oedipus Complex is the issue of incest, which becomes evident only at the end of the play and can also be linked to his theories on Repression. Fanon's views on relationships between black and white make for useful discussions pertaining to the text. Chapter Five presents a short conclusion looking briefly at whether the thesis has achieved what it set out to do: that is, provide a discussion of the issues of power, race and sex in Lewis Nkosi's Mating Birds and The Black Psychiatrist. It will include a discussion of whether Nkosi has found a new way of writing about apartheid. Chapter Five includes as well a discussion of Nkosi's use of psychoanalysis in his writing and presents a short account of his article "The Wandering Subject: Exile as Fetish". / Thesis (M.A)-University of Durban-Westville, 2005.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Durban-Westville, 2004.

The dissertation focuses on 1. M. Coetzee's novels The Life and Times of Michael K., Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life and Disgrace, analysing the central protagonists' engagement with the landscape in general and specifically focussing on the farm as a site on which identities are interrogated. By way of introduction the two central themes, landscape and identity are highlighted with respect to Coetzee's theoretical work, specifically White Writing and Doubling the Point. Introductory discussion on the 'farm novel' and 'autobiography' is also given in the first chapter. In the second chapter, Boyhood is examined as an influential text in the rereading of Coetzee's allegorical work Michael K. The intention is to elucidate the power relations which underlie the earlier novel by means of a comparative analysis of the mother-child, father-child culture-child and author-text relationships found in Boyhood. Consideration of Coetzee's critical analysis of Olive Schreiner's Story of an African Farm is given towards establishing links between Coetzee's fiction and the farm novel genre. The third chapter focuses on Disgrace as 'another take' on the farm novel. The position of the white male 'self' in post-apartheid South Africa is interrogated through an analysis of the protagonist David Lurie's fictional' return to the farm.' 'Subject'/ 'other' relations are also discussed with a view to understanding identity formation. In the final chapter, conclusions are drawn regarding the relationship between Coetzee's fiction and the farm novel genre. Finally, the failure of lineal consciousness and the' self becoming redundant are considered. / Thesis (M.A.) - University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg , 2002.