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.

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.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2013. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis focuses on the long-established interrelation between spatial and social mobility in the American context, the result of the westward movement across the frontier that was seen as being attended by the promise of improving one’s social standing – the essence of the American Dream. The focal texts are F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and Thomas Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again (1940), journey narratives that all present geographical relocation as necessary for social progression. In discussing the novels’ depictions of the itinerant characters’ attempts at attaining the American Dream, my study draws on Peter Brooks’s theory of narrative dynamic, a theory which contends that the plotting operation is a dynamic one that propels the narrative forward toward resolution, eliciting meanings through temporal progression. This thesis seeks to analyse the relation between mobility and narrative by applying Brooks’s theory, which is primarily consolidated by means of nineteenth-century texts, to the modernist moment. It considers these journey narratives in view of new technological developments and economic conditions, underpinned by the process of globalisation, that impact upon mobility. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis konsentreer op die onderlinge verband tussen ruimtelike en sosiale mobiliteit in die Amerikaanse konteks, synde die gevolg van die weswaartse beweging oor grense en grondgebiede heen wat oënskynlik aangevuur was deur die belofte van ’n beter sosiale stand – die kern van die Amerikaanse Droom. Die soeklig val in die besonder op F. Scott Fitzgerald se The Great Gatsby (1925), John Steinbeck se The Grapes of Wrath (1939) en Thomas Wolfe se You Can’t Go Home Again (1940), welke drie reisverhale almal geografiese hervestiging as ’n vereiste vir sosiale vooruitgang voorhou. In die bespreking van hoe dié romans die rondreisende karakters se strewe na die Amerikaanse Droom uitbeeld, put my studie uit Peter Brooks se teorie van narratiewe dinamiek, wat aanvoer dat die intrigefunksie dinamies is en die verhaal voortstu na ontknoping, terwyl dit deur middel van temporele progressie betekenis ontsluit. Hierdie tesis ontleed die verhouding tussen mobiliteit en die narratief deur Brooks se teorie, wat hy hoofsaaklik deur interpretasie van 19de-eeuse tekste gevorm het, op die modernistiese tydsgewrig toe te pas. Dit besin dus oor hierdie reisverhale teen die agtergrond van nuwe, globalisasie-gegronde tegnologiese ontwikkelings en ekonomiese omstandighede wat mobiliteit beïnvloed.

This thesis examines the representation of glass in French and Belgian poetry associated with the Symbolist and Decadent movements. It incorporates a number of authors, particularly focussing on Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Laforgue, Rodenbach, and Maeterlinck, but also encompassing more minor writers where appropriate, as well as some writers on the periphery of Symbolism and Decadence. The thesis investigates how the growing use of glass in architecture, technology, and visual art influenced late-nineteenth-century poets, providing these writers with a means by which to understand their social context as well as a multi-faceted metaphor through which to interrogate their own poetic mechanisms. Glass, in its various manifestations - windows, lenses, hothouses, aquariums, Exhibition halls, Art Nouveau glasswork, and stained glass - prompts meditation on such questions as: the interaction between subject and object; the relationship between fiction and reality; the infinite; poetic form; nature and artifice; and aesthetic identity. Ultimately, I combat the traditional understanding of this poetry as being solely concerned with the pure realm of dreams, the soul, and the 'Idée'. Instead, I insist on the material world as a starting point for this poetry, demonstrating that it is not immune to environmental factors, but rather that it uses its environment as a route towards the elusive 'Idée'. Glass is key to this process because its very ambiguity makes it a suitable embodiment of the tension between the material and the unknown, invisible, or ideal.

This thesis explores how the reader is invited to read the books of Martial’s Epigrams, arguing that the epigrammatist has arranged the poems in his libelli in a specific order that rewards a sequential reading of the text from start to finish. Instead of viewing Martial as an anthologist who collated a series of occasional poems for their later publication, the thesis demonstrates that the poet showed awareness of his epigrams’ position within a larger ‘contexture’, and that he primes the reader throughout the Epigrams to envisage the books as thematically unified wholes. By viewing the Epigrams as a text to be read from beginning to end, rather than a text to be excerpted and anthologised, one can read each epigram in the wider context of its book, and better appreciate that book’s structural unity. Chapter one introduces the issues at stake in how one reads a book of epigrams, and provides the thesis’ methodological approach. Special attention is paid to the phenomenology of reading as a hermeneutic act, drawing together approaches to the Epigrams from classical scholarship as well as from reception and comic book theories to detail the method of ‘cumulative reading’ employed in the thesis. The second chapter then examines how Martial characterises the lector studiosus in his text, and how this depicted reader acts as a model for the actual reader to follow in their own sequential reading of the Epigrams. Chapter three focuses on Epigrams 7, demonstrating that the opening poems of the book establish the emperor Domitian as a thematic centrepiece around whom the rest of the book’s themes cluster. The fourth chapter also examines book 7, demonstrating how two different uses of watery motifs develop their individual thematic unity across the book, while also linking themselves back to the book’s opening imperial cycle to craft an overarching structural unity for the libellus. Chapter five then gives an overview of the larger structure of the Epigrams, arguing that the paratextual prose prefaces in books 1, 2, 8, 9, and 12 reinforce the individuality of the books they precede as well as establishing their own place within the wider corpus. Overall, this thesis puts the epigrammatic libellus back into the context of late first century AD book culture, emphasising that Martial paid attention not only to his epigrams’ position within their own books, but also their place within the wider corpus.

The first aim of teaching English literature has always been for the student to gain enjoyment from, and acquire skill in, reading. Further goals point to the affective development of pupils involving such qualities as critical thinking and expressing views, empathetic understanding of other people, moral awareness and increased self-knowledge and self-understanding. These are indeed laudable aims, but examiners have always had difficulties in examining them adequately to satisfy the critics. Teachers often doubt that they achieve such lofty aims. These very aims have the sceptics sneering at the discipline because such qualities cannot be measured and the pupil's worth for the workplace cannot be satisfactorily assessed. This has resulted in the merit of the study of literature being questioned and usually found wanting. Therefore, on the one hand, this research looks for a method of studying literature which will ensure that the study will be neccesary and desirable today and into the foreseeable future. On the other hand, the socio-political changes in South Africa, particularly since 1992, have offered a possible area of research to complement the first. During the past few years, South Africans have been forced to recognise the fact that a multitude of different races and people live and work together more closely in this country and yet they know nothing, or very little, of one another. Thus this research also investigates the addition of a cultural component to literature study to help young people gain empathetic understanding of different cultures and of their own cultures as well, to be able to live together in harmony. With this approach, pupils may conceivably be educated through literature, to become well-adjusted, critical, effective adults so that they may play their role as citizens and shapers of their increasingly complex, multi-cultural society. Because of the context of literature study, in which this personal growth takes place, the aims identified above may be measured and assessed to suit both the sceptics and the devotees of literature study.

This thesis examines the close and complex relationship between dress, feminism, and British New Woman novels. It provides in-depth analysis of six New Woman novels and draws comparisons with numerous other works. The case study texts are Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm (1883) and From Man to Man: Or Perhaps Only ... (1926, posthumously), Sarah Grand's Ideala: A Study from Life (1881) and The Heavenly Twins (1893), and Grant Allen's The Woman Who Did (1895) and The Type-Writer Girl (1897). I explore why dress was so important to such novels, and examine the diverse, individual, developing, and shared ways in which authors engaged with dress as a feminist strategy and feminist concern. Areas considered include From Man to Man's use of functional clothes and dress production to celebrate female labour, Grand's interest in both dress reform and dressing to impress, Allen's shift in focus from the white-clad free lover to the sensibly-dressed working woman, and authors' use of deceptively clean clothes to address male immorality and disease. The thesis looks beyond as well as within New Woman narratives, demonstrating that writers, and publishers, were broadly concerned with dress in its various literal and more metaphorical manifestations. Focuses include self-styling, authorial cross-dressing, and bindings. Dress does not, however, always seamlessly support these texts' feminisms, I argue. For example, Grand elevated cross-class feminism, but she belittled middle-class women's taste, side-lined poor women's most pressing sartorial concerns, and dressed to impress. I also stress that dress, being so closely bound up with New Woman novels' feminisms and their ambiguities, is a revealing lens through which to read such texts, and one often capable of prompting re-readings. Attention to Allen's rejection of sartorial realism in parts of The Woman Who Did problematises the dominant conception of this novel as straightforwardly pro-free union, for instance. The thesis, as well as gesturing towards dress's centrality to the production and interpretation of literary feminisms and anti-feminisms broadly, emphasises the importance of dress to New Woman literature and its analysts, and uses dress to provide fresh readings of various novels and genre-wide issues.

Thesis Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Magister Educationis in the Faculty of Education and Social Sciences at the CAPE PENINSULA UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY 2007 / When C2005 was introduced in South Africa, teacher training had to be restructured, to be in accordance with Outcomes Based Education. In 2002, C2005 was replaced by the Revised National Curriculum Statement as a refinement of C2005. From 2005, the Curriculum is called National Curriculum Statement (NCS). A close study of the NCS revealed the fact that the Learning Area Arts and Culture provides opportunities for rich and varied learning experiences to take place. The concern of this study is how teachers are dealing with this educational potential, especially in the Visual Arts. Pending the outcome of the research, the possibility of aligning the training of student teachers could be considered, to ascertain that the full potential of the learning area Arts and Culture is accomplished. The outcome of the study could also initiate future research into the possibility of supplementary training for the educators already in practise.

Primary aim of this diploma is characteristic of changes in official works of Czech literature in the period of "Normalization". The first chapter focuses on a general description of the social situation of the 1970s and 1980s from the economic, political and cultural point of view. In the second chapter we summarized the specific features of socialist realism as an artistic method and the basic censure requirements on the literature of commitment. The basic source of characteristic of the literary process are primarily critical articles and theoretical monographies about socialist realism of 70s and 80s. In the third chapter we analyzed the selected works applying requirements of engaged critic in the representation of the normalization context or directly a social situation of the 70s and 80s. The main aim of this thesis is narrative analysis of selected texts, not the general quality evaluation of officially published works.

United States breastfeeding rates are below Healthy People 2020 national goals, with African American women at the lowest rates. According to the theory of planned behavior, intention is a strong determinant of actual behavior. The purpose of this review is to uncover how researchers can best measure attributes that influence the intention to breast feed in the African American college aged population of nulliparous women. Tools to measure breastfeeding knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, cultural and social norms will be identified. Searches of health databases and Google Scholar located peer-reviewed journals using keywords such as Black, African American, instrument, female and student. The literature was searched and this review found that there are no published sources that specifically study the Black female college student population. However, numerous tools that have been used in research with other modern, Western university students groups may also be used with this population. Factors determined to be important to intention included exposure, knowledge, individual attitudes toward breastfeeding, with a focus on psychosocial embarrassment and social norms. The findingssupport researchers by suggesting future interventions, and development of tools that can be used to measure effectiveness.