Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas State University Libraries

This thesis explores the textualizing of the South Atlantic island of St Helena (a British Overseas Territory) through an analysis of the relationship between colonizing practices and the changing representations of the island and its inhabitants in a range of colonial 'texts', including historiography, travel writing, government papers, creative writing, and the fine arts. Part I situates this thesis within a critical engagement with post-colonial theory and colonial discourse analysis primarily, as well as with the recent 'linguistic turn' in anthropology and history. In place of post-colonialism's rather monolithic approach to colonial experiences, I argue for a localised approach to colonisation, which takes greater account of colonial praxis and of the continuous re-negotiation and re-constitution of particular colonial situations. Part II focuses on a number of literary issues by reviewing St Helena's historiography and literature, and by investigating the range of narrative tropes employed (largely by travellers) in the textualizing of St Helena, in particular with respect to recurrent imaginings of the island in terms of an earthly Eden. Part III examines the nature of colonial 'possession' by tracing the island's gradual appropriation by the Portuguese, Dutch and English in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century and the settlement policies pursued by the English East India Company in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Part IV provides an account of the changing perceptions, by visitors and colonial officials alike, of the character of the island's inhabitants (from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century) and assesses the influence that these perceptions have had on the administration of the island and the political status of its inhabitants (in the mid- to late twentieth century). Part V, the conclusion, reviews the principal arguments of my thesis by addressing the political implications of post-colonial theory and of my own research, while also indicating avenues for further research. A localised and detailed exploration of colonial discourse over a period of nearly five hundred years, and a close analysis of a consequently wide range of colonial 'texts', has confirmed that although colonising practices and representations are far from monolithic, in the case of St Helena their continuities are of as much significance as their discontinuities.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Fine Arts, 2017 / The central question I want to ask in this dissertation is: How to paint a highway? It sounds simple, but considering all that highways represent, the answer is anything but straightforward. The motivation for this study came about due to my travels on the N1 between two of my homes - one in Johannesburg, Gauteng, and the other in Rosendal, eastern Free State. [No abstract provided. Information taken from introduction]. / XL2018

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Master of Science. Johannesburg, 2016. / In this, Part 1 of a two-part MSc, the geology of the area between Lukla and Mount Everest is described. An outcome of the MSc is the production of a field guide to this area, presented as Part 2 of this thesis. The collision between India and Asia resulted in the Himalayan orogen, 3000 km in lateral extent, an elevated Tibetan Plateau and a crust of at least 60 km in thickness. The resulting crustal flow from under this region is in the direction of least resistance, eastwards towards the Pacific subduction zones, but there is also southwards flow towards the Indian subcontinent resulting in vertical complexity. This southwards extrusion of mid-crustal rocks through a mechanism termed channel flow explains the presence of Miocene leucogranite between Ordovician limestones comprising the summit of Everest, and granite gneiss underlying the exhumed granite. Rapid rates of denudation assisted the extrusion of crustal slabs between the South Tibetan Detachment (STD) and the Main Central Thrust (MCT). Low-grade metamorphic rocks of the Everest Series are juxtaposed across the STD with the underlying high-grade metamorphic rocks of the Greater Himalayan Sequence (GHS). The GHS rocks in turn, are juxtaposed across the MCT with the underlying low-grade Siwaliks. Everest Series schists record temperatures of between 600 °C and 650 °C, and pressure estimates for these rocks ranging from 2.9 ± 0.6 kbar to 6.2 ± 0.7 kbar, corresponding to burial depths of between 10 km and 20 km. The GHS experienced eclogite facies metamorphism with pressures of > 14 kbar (>45 km depth) before being exhumed to granulite facies conditions of 4-6 kbar and 700-800 °C. High-temperature metamorphism of the GHS has resulted in partial melting and melt segregation and ascent to form the High Himalayan Leucogranites, a number of granitic bodies that have accumulated near the top of the GHS. Intense erosion through the action of glaciers, rivers, landslides and earthquakes (as the 25th April 2015 magnitude 7.8, and 12th May 2015, of magnitude 7.3 earthquakes attest), balance uplift of the Himalaya. / LG2017

Peut-on encore aujourd’hui s’engager dans un travail de recherche qui se donne pour objet la littérature du voyage en Italie ? Scruté par des exégètes passionnés qui en revisitent inlassablement les dynamiques touffues, mis en lumière dans ses élans et ses césures, le Grand Tour semble désormais s’offrir au chercheur comme un terrain d’investigation singulièrement orphelin de zones d’ombres.Or l’attention fervente dédiée à la péninsule est loin d’être uniforme, pas plus que ne l’a été son arpentage. Elle tend à se focaliser sur les pulsations significatives de certains épicentres sensibles, rejetant du même coup dans une périphérie quelquefois imprécise certains excursus mineurs affranchis des itinéraires codifiés appelés à drainer le flux des élites européennes.La présente étude se donne pour objet l’une de ces « marges » du voyage : l’île de Sardaigne, terre de confins ancrée au cœur de l’espace méditerranéen, encore inconnue alors que s’achève ailleurs le recensement du monde. À la fois jalon cardinal sur les principales routes méditerranéennes et Ultima Thulé condamnée à une longue relégation, le territoire insulaire affiche durablement la virginité d’antipodes indécis avant de devenir l’ultime étape d’un « Petit Tour » retardataire sous l’impulsion d’un bataillon clairsemé de découvreurs alternatifs.Afin de retracer l’aventure du voyage en Sardaigne, il convient d’explorer dans un premier temps le jeu de représentations complexe dont se nourrit l’image de l’île, marquée par une énigmatique ambivalence. Il s’agit ensuite de comprendre les mécanismes qui président à un lent dévoilement : longtemps cantonnée au statut d’étape fortuite, la Sardaigne va également devenir promesse d’explorations pionnières. Après avoir dressé le profil des acteurs du voyage, enquêté sur les motivations qui les animent, on les suivra dans leur itinérance, de la découverte de l’espace à la bouleversante confrontation avec une altérité aussi dérangeante que fascinante. On s’attache ainsi à mettre en lumière la richesse des visions inspirées par le microcosme insulaire, creuset de mythologies contrastées et berceau d‘imaginaires, ainsi que la vigueur des stratégies déployées par les voyageurs pour légitimer leur entreprise au regard de la référence écrasante constituée par la tradition du Grand Tour. Délaissé par ces écrivains qui vont ailleurs s’accaparer le récit de voyage, le périple sarde se confirme sans doute comme un excursus mineur. Toutefois le corpus qui en retrace les expériences singulières ne pouvait se soustraire aux dynamiques appelées à déterminer les enjeux et les ambitions de la littérature viatique au cours du XIXe siècle. Le cheminement de l’écriture fait donc l’objet d’une réflexion spécifique visant à capturer au fil des pages l’aspiration timide à une littérarité possible.Le corpus exploré, encore largement inédit, couvre un « grand siècle » (1792-1909) et se focalise sur les voyageurs de l’aire francophone, sans s’interdire les apports précieux que constituent les témoignages d’autres visiteurs européens et certains textes choisis (édités ou issus de fonds d’archives) empruntés à une chronologie élargie. / Italy occupies a very peculiar place in the history of travel. Considered a cradle of the Western world, the country was seen by travelers as the essential destination of the European Tour, where members of the classically trained elite, exposed to the finest achievements of art and architecture, yearned to reclaim the legacy of ancient civilizations.By the end of the 18th century, the Italian Grand Tour had stretched as far as Calabria and Sicily, inspiring countless travel accounts. But most travelers deliberately forgot to embark on the ultimate journey : remote, supposedly wild and dangerous, the little-explored island of Sardinia remained an enigma.This study explores the relatively small corpus of texts dedicated to Sardinia, focusing on French travel writing (although a wider range of sources is used in the study) and covering what may be called a “long nineteenth century” (from 1792 to 1909).

No description available.

This dissertation describes my recovery of the life and writing of a relatively unknown late nineteenth-century Canadian woman writer. In the fall of 1888, Lily Lewis, a young journalist from Montreal, embarked upon a journey around the world in the company of another young woman, Sara Jeannette Duncan. Duncan has since been increasingly recognized for both her journalism and her fiction and Lewis has been almost entirely forgotten. I have recovered some of Lewis's work subsequent to the tour with Duncan, identified some earlier work not previously attributed to her, and become acquainted with a surviving relative, and in my dissertation I examine Lily Lewis [Rood]'s life and texts from the theoretical perspective of life writing. I find Marlene Kadar's theory of "life writing as critical practice" as she explains it in her introductory chapter to Essays on Life Writing: From Genre to Critical Practice especially enabling for this project. The process of recovering early writers, Kadar insists, must includean exploration of precisely how they became lost, and must not exclude the contexts of the reader and critic. To explicate fully my own critical contexts, I summarize theories of life writing by several Canadian scholars, including Kadar. I include, as well, outlines of some pertinent work on travel writing, and a brief overview of the new historicist critical 'milieu ' in which my study situates itself. In an attempt to understand the "forgetting" (Kadar 10) that has almost effaced Lily Lewis from Canadian literary history, I examine circumstances today, in Lewis's time, and in the time between that have contributed to her erasure. In an attempt to reclaim for Lily Lewis a place among Canadian women writers of her time, I read and analyse her work contextually and intertextually in conjunction with writing by several of her contemporaries, notably Duncan, and, to a lesser extent, the Canadian journalist, travel writier, and novelist, Alice Jones. I focus upon evidence that supports my contention that a contributor to the Toronto paper The Week, previously known only as "L. L.," was Lily Lewis. I look at Lily Lewis Rood's complex involvement in cultural and literary stereotypes, and I discuss her participation in discourses about the New Woman in both Canadian and international contexts. I hope with this work to contribute to our knowledge of Canada's literary past and also, by encouraging a careful examination of our current critical values and practices, to contribute to Canadian literary scholarship and to the theorizing of life writing.

No description available.

No description available.

George Heriot's, Travels Through The Canadas, Containing a Description of the Picturesque Scenery on some of the Rivers and Lakes; with an account of the Productions, Commerce, and Inhabitants of those Provinces to which is Subjoined a Comparative View of the Manners and Customs of Several of the Indian Nations of North and South America, was first published in London in 1805. Presenting the Canadas in a documentary and picturesque mode, Heriot's Travels since its publication has been valued as an important source of data and information. It has thus participated in and formed part of the received notions concerning Canada and its peoples in the 19th century. My thesis explores how Heriot's Travels constructs and represents Upper and Lower Canada and the diverse inhabitants of these regions. I argue that the text and its illustrations far from providing an objective description, in fact give form to contemporaneous perceptions and values and to aesthetic criteria that had colonialist implications. In particular the thesis examines how the visual material within the publication functions to reinforce or contradict the text's agenda. My contention is that Heriot's aims are much broader than those to which he admitted. For his readers the representation of Canada was tied to prospects of vast expansionist possibilities for British capital, technology, commodities and systems of knowledge. The unacknowledged aims of the book, as elaborated in my thesis were: to confirm the superiority of British rule in comparison to the earlier French administration in Canada; to define the British by a comparison to others, thus marking out existing inhabitants, specifically the French Canadians and First Nations peoples, as simple, indolent and inferior; to tame and commodity Canada through the use of the picturesque, thus ordering and civilizing the landscape for a British audience and would-be immigrants; and, finally, to reinforce Britain's economic claims in British North America. As in other travel writing of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Heriot employs in his representation of Canada the discursive languages of science, taxonomy, technology and ethnology. The picturesque descriptions in text and image work in conjunction with these and serve to demonstrate the role of art and aesthetics in maintaining an established order, and in asserting its classificatory regimes and exclusions. iii