Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

The purpose of this thesis is to show the extent to which Byron revealed himself as the hero of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and the extent to which that hero was an original creation.

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: “The cry of the children of the needy is bitter and heartrending, and any effort towards stilling it deserves the best support and encouragement of the community… every day it rises in despairing appeal for succour and relief.” So wrote a South African newspaper editor in the early 1900s. This “cry” was answered by the emergence of a fledgling child welfare movement in South Africa, largely under the impetus of private charities mimicking international trends – particularly those of the metropole. The 1913 Children’s Act codified child protection, whilst government policies such as child maintenance grants helped in targeting one of the key challenges of child welfare: (white) poverty. Progressively, state and welfare became ever more entwined, epitomised by the formation of the National Council of Child Welfare in 1924 and the Social Welfare Department of 1937. Whilst the state played a constructive role when the aims of child welfare organisations tallied with its own goals (such as eliminating white poverty) it took on a more malevolent form when child welfare organisations did not toe the party-line, by turning their attention from white children to black children in the late 1930s. The movement towards an apartheid state in 1948 saw the consolidation of de facto racial policies into de juro government legislation. This thesis explores the delicate balance between maintaining state support, whilst upholding the values of independent welfare, “irrespective of race or class, of politics or creed”. Despite asserting such inclusive sentiments, borrowed from international discourses, child welfare in South Africa could not be removed from its local socio-political context. The 1953 Bantu Education Act and the 1960 Children’s Act consolidated racial separation through the unequal allocation of state resources to black and white children. Despite the muted concerns of child welfare activists, apartheid discrimination towards African children increased as the century progressed, intensifying hostility and necessitating the agency of African youth towards the apartheid government culminating in the Soweto Uprising of 16 June 1976 and its aftermath. The key aim of this thesis is to illustrate that, while government involvement in welfare brought many benefits to the South African child welfare movement, it simultaneously created a dependence that would make child welfare organisations vulnerable to racialised party politics and bureaucracy in the twentieth century. This is evidenced in the divergence of child welfare along racial lines with white children receiving care similar to that in the Anglophone west, whilst African children were largely neglected. The unequal allocation of resources according to race served to consolidate white hegemony for generations of South Africans, as the “children of today make the nation of tomorrow”. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: “Die geween van die kinders in nood is hartverskeurend en bitter, en enige pogings om hierdie nood te verlig, verdien om deur die gemeenskap ondersteun en aangemoedig te word … elke dag is daar wanhopige krete tot hulp en verligting.” Só het ʼn Suid-Afrikaanse koerantredakteur in die vroeë twintigste eeu geskryf. Die “geween” is beantwoord deur die ontstaan van ʼn kinderwelsynsbeweging in Suid-Afrika. Hierdie beweging is grootliks ondersteun deur private welsynsbewegings wat internasionale tendense nagevolg het, in besonder dié van die metropool. Die 1913 Kinderwet het kinderbeskerming gedefinieer en regeringsbeleid soos onderhoudstoekennings het terselfdertyd gehelp om een van die grootste probleme in kinderwelsyn, naamlik (wit) armoede aan te spreek. Die staat en kinderwelsyn het toenemend met mekaar verweef geraak wat uiteindelik gelei het tot die stigting van die Nasionale Raad van Kinderwelsyn in 1924 en die Department van Maatskaplike Welsyns in 1937. Die regering het ʼn konstruktiewe rol gespeel wanneer kinderwelsyn organisasies se doelwette met die van die regering (soos om wit armoede uit te wis) gesinkroniseer het. In gevalle waar die organisasies regeringsbelied uigedag het soos in die geval van die verskuiwing van die fokus van hul aktiwiteite in die 1930s na swart kinders het die regering se rol ‘n meer destruktiewe aard ontwikkel. Met die beweging na ʼn apartheid staat in 1948 was daar ʼn vereenselwiging van die de facto rassebeleid met die de jure regeringsbeleid. Hierdie tesis ondersoek die delikate balans tussen die behoud van regeringsondersteuning en die handhawing van die beleid van verkaffing van onafhanklike welsyn, “ongeag ras, klas, politieke oortuigings of geloof.” Ten spyte van die handhawing van hierdie inklusiewe benadering in navolging van internasionale diskoers, kon kinderwelsyn in Suid-Afrika nie sy plaaslike sosio-politieke konteks ontkom nie. Die 1953 Wet op Bantoe-Onderwys tesame met die 1960 Kinderwet het rasseskeiding verskans deur die oneweredige toekenning van regeringshulpbronne aan swart en blanke kinders. Ten spyte van kinderwelsyn-aktiviste se gedempte protes, het diskriminasie teenoor swart kinders deur die loop van die eeu toegeneem. Dit het wrewel jeens die regering verdiep wat weerstand onder die swart jeug aangemoedig het en uiteindelik in die Soweto opstande van 16 Junie 1976 gekulmineer het. Die hoofdoel van hierdie tesis is om te illustreer dat, alhoewel regeringsbetrokkenheid in welsyn vele voordele vir die Suid-Afrikaanse kinderwelsynsbeweging ingehou het, dit terselfdertyd ʼn soort afhanklikheid geskep het wat die kinderwelsynsorganisasies in die twintigste eeu kwesbaar gelaat het vir rasgebaseerde party politiek en burokrasie. Die kwesbaarheid word ten beste geillustreer deur die ontwikkeling van rasgebaseerde kinderwelsyn in terme waarvan wit kinders behandeling soortgelyk aan die van die Engelstalige weste ontvang het, terwyl swart kinders grootliks verwaarloos is. Die ongelyke toekenning van hulpbronne ten opsigte van ras het gelei tot die verstewiging van wit dominansie in Suid-Afrika vir talle generasies, aangesien “die kinders van vandag die nasie van môre is”. / Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2012.

Though Byron is known for his provocative denials of the importance of Shakespeare, his public derogations of the early modern playwright are in fact a pose that hides the respect he had for the playwright’s powerful poetic vision, a regard which is recorded most comprehensively in the Shakespearean references of Don Juan. Byron imitated Shakespeare by repeating and adapting the older poet’s observations on the imitative nature of desire and the structure of emulous ambition as a source of violence. His appropriations make his work part of the modern shift away from earlier European societies, wherein ritual means of mitigating desire’s potentially inimical impact on human communities were supplemented with an increased reliance on market mechanisms to defer the effects of emulation and resentment. Finding himself among the first modern celebrities, Byron deploys Shakespeare’s representations of desire to trace the processes that produced the arc of his own fame and notoriety. Drawing on his deep knowledge of Shakespeare, Byron’s poetic vision—in its observations on the contagious nature of desire—exhibits elements of Shakespeare’s own vivid depictions of imitation as a key conduit for his characters’ cupidity, ambitions, and violence. Exploring how he plays with and integrates these representations into his letters, journals, poetry, and plays, my dissertation investigates Byron’s intuitions on the nature of human desire by focusing on his engagement with one of literature’s greatest observers of human behaviour, Shakespeare.

The purpose of this study is to suggest the influence of certain characters in eighteen works by English Renaissance authors upon the Byronic Hero, that composite figure which emerges from Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, the Oriental Tales, the dramas, and some of the shorter poems.

The doctoral thesis compares the style of the “Romance of Horn”, “King Horn”, and “Horn Childe and Maiden Rimnild”. Each of them is a different version of the same story; the first is an Insular French romance, the second and third are Middle English romances. The stylistic analysis is both quantitative and qualitative, and it is developed employing the lemmatized edition of each witness of each version. The work begins with an introduction to the concept of style. The first chapter focuses on a review of the literature regarding each version, considering specifically the witnesses and textual criticism, metre and genre, language, date, and style. For the Insular French version, a specific review of the literature about the author is offered. The second chapter introduces stylometry and stylistic analysis with a brief literature review. Then, the protocols for the edition and lemmatization of each witness are described. Finally, the methods adopted for the stylistic analysis are explained. The third chapter develops the study of descriptions, anaphors, and formulas in each version. The collected data and their interpretations are considered altogether through the lens of a group of theoretical concepts: connotation, attribution, horizon of expectations and discursive tradition. Via these concepts, a trajectory of stylistic mutations is traced, and a link between style and socio-cultural context is displayed. The conclusions sum up all the information and inferences, suggesting further possibilities for new research. / La tesi sviluppa lo studio comparativo dello stile come osservato nel “Roman de Horn”, in “King Horn” e in “Horn Childe and Maiden Rimnild”, tre versioni della medesima vicenda, la prima in anglonormanno, le altre due in inglese medio. Nella tesi l’indagine stilistica è svolta in maniera qualitativa e quantitativa, lavorando sulle edizioni lemmatizzate secondo codifica TEI dei singoli testimoni di ciascuna versione. Dopo un’introduzione sul concetto di stile, il primo capitolo è dedicato a un’introduzione ai testi e ai testimoni delle tre versioni. Dopo un cappello introduttivo sui rapporti genetici tra le versioni, di ciascuna di esse si opera un'escussione della bibliografia esistente intorno a testimoni ed eventuale stemmatica, metro e genere, lingua, datazione, stile dell’opera; per la versione anglonormanna si aggiunge uno specifico approfondimento sull’autore. Nel secondo capitolo, si inquadrano stilistica e stilometria nel panorama accademico attuale, quindi si espongono i protocolli di edizione e lemmatizzazione adottata, infine i metodi di analisi adottati e le ragioni per cui circoscrivere l’indagine ai fenomeni di descrizione, anafora e formula. Nel terzo capitolo si procede ad analizzare in ogni versione le descrizioni e poi anafore e formule. Per le descrizioni, dopo aver offerto un quadro specifico per versione, si opera una sintesi sulla base dei concetti di connotazione e attribuzione, chiarendo una possibile traiettoria del mutamento stilistico. Parallelamente, dopo un’analisi di anafore e formule in ciascuna versione si offre una visione d’insieme alla luce dei concetti di orizzonte d’attesa e tradizione discorsiva, ponendo così in relazione stile e contesto socioculturale dell’Inghilterra medievale. Nelle conclusioni, si riassumono gli approdi dell’analisi, valutando metodi e risultati e proponendo possibili aperture a lavori futuri.