This dissertation examines the eight dramas which Lord Byron wrote in Italy, to evaluate this motives in writing plays, and to trace his views on various fields. The plays are discussed individually in some detail. The Introductory Chapter indicates the status of the theatre in Byron's time, and distinguished "poetic" dramas from plays written with a view to the stage. Byron's idea of a "mental theatre" is indicated, together with his involvement in the production of dramas as a member of the Drury Lane Management Committee. Chapter Two: Manfred, Byron's first play, written in 1817, is seen as a development from Gothic drama; a closer examination suggests Byron described the world in dualistic terms. The eponymous protagonist defies the claims of the "evil Principle in propria persona." Promethean aspects of the hero are indicated, and auto-biographical elements in the play are considered. Chapter Three: Marino Faliero is seen as a "political" drama, in which the tragic protagonist identifies the State as the oppressor of individual rights. The Doge Faliero's "traditional" code of ethics is opposed by a revolutionist ethic which he adopts in order to crush the State. Byron suggests the Doge is used by both the State and his revolutionary allies as a figurehead; the Doge's character is investigated, and Byron's involvement in political affairs is briefly examined to show any political motive in his writing the play. Chapter Four: Sardanapalus explores the idea of a humane ruler condemned by his subjects as too "soft," and deposed by traditional elements in the army and state religion. Byron's skeptical and "liberal" views are indicated. Chapter Five: The Two Foscari shows the "suppressed passions" operating against a political current. Byron is seen to question assumptions concerning "duty" and patriotism, along lines explored in the two preceding neoclassical plays. Chapter Six: Cain. Byron's most controversial play is seen as an attempt to define man's relationships to God and nature. Byron takes up earlier suggestions in his plays of a dualist view of the universe, and expatiates on his sceptic views. A notion of the mind's self-sufficiency, outlined in Manfred, is further developed. Chapter Seven: Heaven and Earth provides further definition of man's place in an ostensibly hostile universe. Japhet, the "hero" of the drama, is confounded by the apparent indiscriminateness of God's punishment of man in the Flood. The notion of plural worlds, suggested in earlier works, and particularly in Cain is again utilised. Chapter Eight: Werner. In Byron's most "theatrical" work, an inheritance of guilt is reviewed to suggest the notion of a "damned world." Byron's deliberate melodramatic structuring of Werner, and his concern with psychological investigation of notive are examined. Chapter Nine: The Deformed Transformed. Byron's last, unfinished, play provides a recapitulation of themes of the earlier plays and looks forward to the style and concerns of Don Juan. Byron is most "inventive" and unrestrained in this drama that abrogates all the classical unities and appears to work toward an endorsement of the idea of salvation by act of will. The concluding chapter relates Byron's view of the universe that emerges form the dramas considered separately and together. The particular aims of each play, and the stylistic features of each, which defy general statements about an overall ambition, are recapitulated. Byron's reasons for choosing dramatic form are briefly sketched in light of the investigation of individual works. His concern to experiment, and to avoid prescription, is seen as indicating a possible mode of operation for a revival of the English drama in the Romantic era.

Introduction Subject matter. The content of the following pages is the result of a research project originally concerned solely with Dutch translations of Shakespeare’s plays; but even in its preliminary stages – the collecting of copies and data – it became evident that the field was far too wide to be done justice in one single short-term study. Between the middle of the seventeenth century and the present day more than fifty Dutch authors have busied themselves with the translation or adaptation of Shakespeare’s plays. It might have been feasible to subject the work of one of these to detailed scrutiny, or to devote a less thorough, but still fairly comprehensive analysis to half a dozen of them. But such a study would have taken shape in a vacuum: since, to date, little academic research on this topic has been undertaken by Dutch scholars and, to my knowledge, none whatsoever in the English-speaking world, there would be no way of relating the findings on any one translator or any one limited set of translators to the merits of their many colleagues, to the cultural environment in which his or her work was conceived, and to the historical perspective of these efforts. Hence, the project developed, firstly, towards the establishment of such a historical and cultural perspective and, secondly, towards viewing the problem of translating Shakespeare into Dutch in general terms, and in a framework that would accommodate, in a cursory way, at least all those translators whose work has been – and in many cases still is – accessible to the Dutch public of this century, either in published versions or in performance on the stage. The historical and cultural perspective. The first thirteen chapters, therefore, contain only a limited amount of material on translations. A few pages of Chapter I are devoted to an isolated seventeenth-century version of The Taming of the Shrew; Chapters III and IV are concerned, respectively, with a set of eighteenth-century prose translations and with the classicist French and German derivates of some Shakespearean plays that were translated into Dutch and performed in the Netherlands, in some cases, until less than a century ago; Chapters VII and VIII deal briefly with a dozen nineteenth-century translators whose work, but for that of one of them (L. A. J. Burgersdijk), is of historical interest only. Finally, Chapter XI introduces the efforts of twentieth-century translators, which come under closer scrutiny in the second part of the study. Had this work been submitted to a university in the Netherlands, a brief reference to texts by scholars such as Dr. R. Pennink, Prof. Dr. B. Hunningher and Prof. Dr. H. H. J. de Leeuwe would have rendered the writing of Chapters II and V, as well as some sections of Chapters VI, IX and XII superfluous. These chapters and sections deal with the earliest reactions to Shakespeare by the world of Dutch letters – between the early eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries - , with the Dutch theatre of the past two centuries and with those who were concerned with, and involved in it as writers, critics and directors. However, this material is only accessible to Dutch readers, and must be assumed to be totally unfamiliar to their English counterparts and, for that reason, had to be summarised and incorporated in this study, even though my limited research period in the Netherlands – a little short of twelve months – left no scope for independent work on my part in these specialized fields. The same applies to the content of Chapter I: the movements of strolling players from England in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, and their effect on the dramaturgy and theatre history of The Netherlands and Germany.

The primary aim of this thesis Me he korokoro kōmako [‘With the throat of a bellbird’] is to demonstrate the existence of a distinctive Māori aesthetic in Māori literature written in English. Its introductory section, of three chapters, investigates the ways in which mainstream critical discourse in various ways appropriates Māori literature to its own Western-derived models of meaning and values, and proposes instead a definition of a Māori aesthetic grounded in the principle of whakapapa, whose whole cultural components for Māori literature include distinctive textual functions for myth, orality, acts of naming, other aspects of language, and symbolism. The concept of whakapapa also provides the organizing principle and methodology of the central chapters of the thesis, which are divided into two Parts – each of six chapters. These are framed by a Prologue and Epilogue, whose subject is the profound cultural symbolism of the waka in the work of a founding figure for Māori writing in English, Jacqueline Sturm, and in Star Waka, by a major later writer in English, Robert Sullivan. Part One devotes three chapters each to the adult fiction of one female writer, Patricia Grace (Potiki and Baby No-Eyes), and one male writer, Witi Ihimaera (The Matriarch). Part Two, following the principle of whakapapa, devotes six chapters to Māori literature for children. Its primary text is the major anthology of such writing – Te Ara O Te Hau: The Path of the Wind, Volume 4 of Te Ao Mārama, edited by Witi Ihimaera, with Haare Williams, Irihapeti Ramsden and D.S. Long. It grounds its reading of the volume’s many texts (literary and visual, in Māori and in English) in the many distinctive cultural behaviours and meanings attached to the figure of Māui. Each of the authors and texts has been chosen in order to study and exemplify a particular aspect of the Māori aesthetic defined in the Introduction, through close readings which draw strongly on the work of major Māori social historians, authors of iwi histories and genealogies, and interpreters of cultural meanings attaching to the natural worlds, and recent work on literary stylistics by Geoffrey Leech and others. It also draws on conversations with numerous Māori informants, including some of the authors discussed. The readings are designed to reveal the rich, culturally contextualised knowledges which Māori readers bring to the texts, and which their authors share and invoke through their deployment of the values and practices of whakapapa. While such representations and explorations of self offer new interpretive possibilities for Pākehā readers, they are also part of a global movement in which indigenous peoples engage in the politics of decolonisation from a position of strength, the stance of self-knowledge. E kore e hekeheke he kākano rangatira Our ancestors will never die for they live on in each of us. / Whole document restricted, but available by request, use the feedback form to request access.

This thesis is an investigation of writing by New Zealand children in the Children's Pages of five New Zealand newspapers: the New Zealand Herald, Christchurch Press and Otago Daily Times in the 1930s and 1980s, the Dominion in the 1930s; and the Wellington Evening Post in the 1980s. Its purpose is to show how children reflected their world, interacted with editors, and interpreted the adult world in published writing, and to examine continuities and changes between the 1930s and 1980s. It seeks evidence of gender variations in writing. and explores the circumstances in which the social role of writing was established by young writers. It considers the ways in which children (especially girls) consciously and unconsciously used public writing to create a public place for themselves. It compares major themes chosen by children, their topic and genre preferences in writing, and the gender and age differences evident in these preferences. The thesis is organised into three Parts, with an Introduction discussing the scholarly background to the issues it explores, and its methodology. Part One contains two chapters examining the format and tone of each Children's Page. And the role and influence of their Editors. Part Two (also of two chapters) investigates the origins and motivations of the young contributors, with a special focus on the Otago Daily Times as a community newspaper. Part Three. of four chapters, explores the children's writing itself, in separate chapters on younger and older children, and a chapter on the most popular genre, poetry. The conclusion suggests further areas of research, and points to the implications of the findings of the thesis for social history in New Zealand and for classroom practice. The thesis contains a Bibliography and an Appendix with a selection of writings by Janet Frame and her family to the Otago Daily Times Children's Page in the 1930s. / Note: Whole document restricted at the request of the author, but available by individual request, use the feedback form to request access.

Whole document restricted, see Access Instructions file below for details of how to access the print copy. / Torrent of Portyngale is a late medieval romance, preserved in a single manuscript, MS Chetham’s 8009. It is a complex mix of romance themes: adventure, loss and restoration, family and social status, piety and hypocrisy, woven around the love between Torrent, the orphaned son of a Portuguese earl, and Desonell, heir to the throne of Portugal. Cohesion to so wide a range of thematic material comes from the author’s careful elucidation of the religious and moral significance of the text’s events. While popular literature with a didactic purpose is not uncommon in medieval literature and elsewhere in romance (cf. Sir Amadace), modern criticism has failed to fully appreciate the purposeful combination of the two in Torrent of Portyngale. Torrent is perhaps the most critically neglected member of the Middle English verse romances. This is, in part, due to the state of the text, which suffers from extensive scribal corruption. The first modern edition, by James Halliwell (1842), was also careless and did little to create a good impression. The poem’s most recent editor, Eric Adam (1887), appreciated the shortcomings of Halliwell’s work and sought to restore Torrent. He incorporated evidence from fragmentary early prints of the text and drew on the fruits of nineteenth–century romance scholarship. Despite his good editorial intentions, however, it is now clear that he also made errors and editorial decisions that have coloured the way in which Torrent has been viewed since. The substantial body of twentieth and twenty–first century scholarship on Middle English romance and medieval studies in general has diminished the value of Adam’s edition to the point where it may be regarded as obsolete and a new edition long overdue. This fresh edition of Torrent has been prepared from microfilm of the manuscript. It re–examines the text’s phonology, morphology, syntax, dialect and vocabulary, to indentify and evaluate overlooked clues to help answer such fundamental questions as its date (scholars have dated it from the mid– fourteenth century to the first half of the fifteenth century) and provenance (it has been mapped from East Anglia to South Lancashire). Both the unflattering reputation that Torrent of Portyngale has gathered in modern times and the long–held notion that it is lacking in originality are challenged by the thorough re–examination of the state of the text, its scribes and their practices and evaluating them against prior and current romance scholarship. This new analysis provides a window through which Torrent can be viewed and valued as a product of its time, allowing it to be judged more accurately against its contemporaries and offering many new insights into a text that was clearly once popular.

This thesis will examine David Mitchell’s use of postmodern narrative structures and strategies in Cloud Atlas and how these relate to his overtly political concerns regarding relations of power between individuals and between factions. This will involve a discussion of debates surrounding the political efficacy of postmodern narrative forms. I will consider Mitchell’s prolific use of intertextual and intratextual allusion and his mimicry of a wide range of narrative modes and genres. These techniques, along with the complex structural iterations in the novel and the ‘recurrence’ of characters between its parts, appear to reinforce a thematic concern with the interconnectedness — indeed, the repetition — of human activity, through time and a fatalistic conception of being that draws on two central Nietzschean notions, eternal recurrence and the will to power. The vision of humanity and human relations of power that is expressed within Cloud Atlas is open to extended analysis in Foucauldian terms. Against this apparently nihilistic backdrop, Mitchell appears to promote a notion of (albeit limited) individual agency and the capacity for creative narration and reinterpretation of the past as a means to devise new ‘truths’ and explore new ‘meanings’ for the present and the future. I will explore the ways in which Mitchell’s metafictional self-reflexivity (and that of his protagonists), offers a vision of hope and political agency that counters the apparent (Nietzschean) fatalism of the novel.

In the thirties and forties politics and public themes bore in upon writers influencing what they wrote about, the forms they chose and their conception of their function in society. It is a period in which writers sought to make literature serve the larger political end and often artistic merit is a function of the success the writer had in accommodating in his work the demands of outside pressures. It is always difficult to detach a period of history from the longer continuum but there is, nevertheless, a case to be made for viewing the years from about 1930 to around 1950 as a relatively homogeneous unit in New Zealand's literary history, distinct in important respects from what came before and from what followed. The new generation of writers in England in the thirties, particularly Auden and the group around him influenced young New Zealand writers both technically and in the attitudes they adopted to the relationship between the artist and society. The prevailing left-wing ethos emphasised the political and public responsibilities of the writer. Retreat into private, esoteric, literary modes was seen as an abdication of these responsibilities. The major themes of this period in New Zealand writing were social realism and nationalism; the literary products of the pressures exerted by political and economic forces. For the young writers the political awareness and sense of social commitment generated by the depression, together with the crusade to inhabit the land imaginatively, provided a sense of literary direction. These writers and their contemporaries accepted responsibility in both these areas seeing themselves as crusaders for social justice and creators of the imaginative understanding necessary to achieve a sense of belonging to this country. Such an understanding would be reached not through seeing it as offspring of England, nor as a picturesque, innocent new society; but by exploring it honestly and creating the terms and vocabulary for describing it. This study documents the careers of John Mulgan, Frank Sargeson, R.A.K. Mason, A.R.D. Fairburn and Allen Curnow in the period, roughly, 1930 to 1950, and looks at the ways each responded to the public demands they perceived were placed upon them. In their different ways these writers went about the business of changing New Zealand society, broadening its understanding of itself, creating an atmosphere conducive to artistic and literary development. Despite the fact that the degree of success in accommodating these demands varies considerably from writer to writer, the literary output of the period as a whole generated the confidence and energy that were a prerequisite to the development of an indigenous literature. During this period there developed an acceptance, albeit highly critical, of New Zealand and a feeling that the tradition which had been established in the thirties and forties could be extended by succeeding generations of artists and writers.

This thesis examines contemporary interpretations of a selection of important texts written by New Zealand women between 1910 and 1940, and also a film and film script written more recently (which are considered as re-readings of a novel by Mander). The thesis argues that, though reading or meaning-making is always an activity of construction there will, at any given moment, always be reasons for preferring one way of reading over another-a reading most appropriate to a situation or circumstances. This study is motivated by a desire to understand how literary criticism has changed in recent years, particularly under the influence of feminism, and how a reader today can make a choice among competing methods of interpretation. Comparisons are drawn between various possible readings of the texts in order to classify methods of reading, particularly nationalist and feminist reading strategies. The over-all tendency of the argument is to propose a more self-critical and self-conscious approach to reading, and to develop a materialist and historical approach which I see as particularly important to the New Zealand context in the 1990s. / Thesis is now published as a book. Paul M. (1999) Her Side of the Story: readings of Mander, Mansfield and Hyde. Dunedin: Otago University Press. http://www.otago.ac.nz/press/ for more information.

This thesis explores the topic of literature-into-film adaptation by investigating the use of New Zealand fiction by film-makers in this country. It attempts this task primarily by examining eight case-studies of the adaptation process: five features designed for cinema release (Sleeping Dogs, A State of Siege, Sons for the Return Home, The Scarecrow and Other Halves), one feature-length television drama (the God Boy), and two thirty-minute television dramas (The Woman at the Store and Big Brother, Little Sister, from the series Winners and Losers). All eight had their first screenings in the ten-year period 1975-1985. For each of the case-studies, the following aspects are investigated: the original work of fiction, a practical history of the adaptation process (including interviews with people involved), and a study of changes made during the scripting and shooting stages. The films are analysed in detail, with a focus on visual and auditory style, in particular how these handle the themes, characterisation and style of the original works. Comparisons are made of the structures of the novels and the films. For each film, an especially close reading is offered of sample scenes (frequently the opening and closing scenes). The thesis is illustrated with still photographs – in effect, quotations from key moments – and these provide a focus to aspects of the discussion. Where individual adaptation problems existed in particular case-studies (for example, the challenge of the first-person narration of The God Boy), these are examined in detail. The interaction of both novels and films with the society around them is given emphasis, and the films are placed in their cultural and economic context - and in the context of general film history. For each film, the complex reception they gained from different groups (for example, reviewers, ethnic groups, gender groups, the authors of the original works) is discussed. All the aspects outlined above demonstrate the complexity of the responses made by New Zealand film-makers to the pressure and challenges of adaptation. They indicate the different answers they gave to the questions raised by the adaptation process in a new national cinema, and reveal their individual achievements. / Whole document restricted, but available by request, use the feedback form to request access.

This dissertation examines the eight dramas which Lord Byron wrote in Italy, to evaluate this motives in writing plays, and to trace his views on various fields. The plays are discussed individually in some detail. The Introductory Chapter indicates the status of the theatre in Byron's time, and distinguished "poetic" dramas from plays written with a view to the stage. Byron's idea of a "mental theatre" is indicated, together with his involvement in the production of dramas as a member of the Drury Lane Management Committee. Chapter Two: Manfred, Byron's first play, written in 1817, is seen as a development from Gothic drama; a closer examination suggests Byron described the world in dualistic terms. The eponymous protagonist defies the claims of the "evil Principle in propria persona." Promethean aspects of the hero are indicated, and auto-biographical elements in the play are considered. Chapter Three: Marino Faliero is seen as a "political" drama, in which the tragic protagonist identifies the State as the oppressor of individual rights. The Doge Faliero's "traditional" code of ethics is opposed by a revolutionist ethic which he adopts in order to crush the State. Byron suggests the Doge is used by both the State and his revolutionary allies as a figurehead; the Doge's character is investigated, and Byron's involvement in political affairs is briefly examined to show any political motive in his writing the play. Chapter Four: Sardanapalus explores the idea of a humane ruler condemned by his subjects as too "soft," and deposed by traditional elements in the army and state religion. Byron's skeptical and "liberal" views are indicated. Chapter Five: The Two Foscari shows the "suppressed passions" operating against a political current. Byron is seen to question assumptions concerning "duty" and patriotism, along lines explored in the two preceding neoclassical plays. Chapter Six: Cain. Byron's most controversial play is seen as an attempt to define man's relationships to God and nature. Byron takes up earlier suggestions in his plays of a dualist view of the universe, and expatiates on his sceptic views. A notion of the mind's self-sufficiency, outlined in Manfred, is further developed. Chapter Seven: Heaven and Earth provides further definition of man's place in an ostensibly hostile universe. Japhet, the "hero" of the drama, is confounded by the apparent indiscriminateness of God's punishment of man in the Flood. The notion of plural worlds, suggested in earlier works, and particularly in Cain is again utilised. Chapter Eight: Werner. In Byron's most "theatrical" work, an inheritance of guilt is reviewed to suggest the notion of a "damned world." Byron's deliberate melodramatic structuring of Werner, and his concern with psychological investigation of notive are examined. Chapter Nine: The Deformed Transformed. Byron's last, unfinished, play provides a recapitulation of themes of the earlier plays and looks forward to the style and concerns of Don Juan. Byron is most "inventive" and unrestrained in this drama that abrogates all the classical unities and appears to work toward an endorsement of the idea of salvation by act of will. The concluding chapter relates Byron's view of the universe that emerges form the dramas considered separately and together. The particular aims of each play, and the stylistic features of each, which defy general statements about an overall ambition, are recapitulated. Byron's reasons for choosing dramatic form are briefly sketched in light of the investigation of individual works. His concern to experiment, and to avoid prescription, is seen as indicating a possible mode of operation for a revival of the English drama in the Romantic era.