The reading of four contemporary novels, namely: Credo by Melvyn Bragg, The Catastrophist by Ronan Bennett, Everything You Need by A.L. Kennedy and American Gods by Neil Gaiman explores the prominent position of mythification and remythification in contemporary literature. The discussion of Bragg's novel examines the significance of Celtic mythology and folklore and to what extent it influenced Christian mythology on the British Isles and vice versa. The presentation of the transition from a cyclical, pagan to a linear, Christian belief system is analysed. My analysis of Bennett's novel supports the observation that political myth as myth transformed contains elements and qualities embodied by sacred myths and investigates the relevance of Johan Degenaar's observation that "[p]ostmodernism emphasises the fact that myth is an ambiguous phenomenon" and practices an attitude of "eternal vigilance" (1995: 47), as is evident in the main protagonist's dispassionate stance. My reading of Kennedy's novel explores the bond that myth creates between the artist and the audience and argues that the writer as myth creator fulfils a restorative function through the mythical and symbolic qualities embedded in literature. Gaiman's novel American Gods focuses on the function of meta/multi-mythology in contemporary literature (especially the fantasy genre) and on what these qualities reveal about a society and its concerns and values. The thesis contemplates how in each case the original myths were substituted, modulated or transfigured to be presented as metamyth or myth transformed. The analysis shows that myth can be used in various ways in literature: as the data or information that is recreated and transformed in the creative process to establish a common matrix of stories, symbols, images and motifs which represents a bond between the author and the reader in terms of the meaning-making process; to facilitate a spiritual enrichment in a demythologized world and for its restorative abilities. The study is confirmed by detailed mythical reference. / English Studies / (D. Litt. et Phil. (English))

This dissertation attempts to show that the phenomenon of loneliness is written into Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient. The Introduction offers a description of the origins of loneliness as a field of study, presents key instances of loneliness in literature, and investigates the nature of loneliness. In the first chapter, the Villa is introduced as a figural and conceptual framework for analysis. The second chapter focuses on the patient’s room and the library, leading to a discussion of personal and existential loneliness, identity and naming. The third chapter investigates social loneliness with reference to the kitchen, garden and hallway, addressing notions of race and othering, home and family. The fourth chapter discusses the body and embodiment, as well as emotion and metaphor. The dissertation argues that the stylistic, thematic and structural features of The English Patient suggest and reflect the complexities and characteristics of loneliness. / English / M. A. (English)

This thesis will explore how writers of nineteenth-century Irish horror fiction, namely short stories and novels, used their works to express the social, cultural, and political events of the period. My thesis will employ a New Historicist approach to discuss the effects of colonialism on the writings, as well as archetypal criticism to analyse the mythic origins of the relevant metaphors. The structuralism of Tzvetan Todorov will be used to discuss the notion of the works' appeal as supernatural or possibly realistic works. The theory of Mikhail Bakhtin is used to discuss the writers' linguistic choices because such theory focuses on how language can lead to conflicts amongst social groups. The introduction is followed by Chapter One, "Ireland as England's Fantasy." This chapter discusses Ireland's literary stereotype as a fantasyland. The chapter also gives an overview of Ireland's history of occupation and then contrasts the bucolic, magical Ireland of fiction and the bleak social conditions of much of nineteenth-century Ireland. Chapter Two, "Mythic Origins", analyses the use of myth in nineteenth-century horror stories. The chapter discusses the merging of Christianity and Celtic myth; I then discuss the early Irish belief in evil spirits in myths that eventually inspired horror literature. Chapter Three, "Church versus Big House, Unionist versus Nationalist," analyses how the conflicts of Church/Irish Catholicism vs. Big House/Anglo-Irish landlordism, proBritish Unionist vs. pro-Irish Nationalist are manifested in the tales. In this chapter, I argue that many Anglo-Irish writers present stern anti-Catholic attitudes, while both Anglo-Irish and Catholic writers use the genre as political propaganda. Yet the authors tend to display Home Rule or anti-Home Rule attitudes rather than religious loyalties in their stories. The final chapter of the thesis, "A Heteroglossia of British and Irish Linguistic and Literary Forms," deals with the use of language and national literary styles in Irish literature of this period. I discuss Bakhtin's notion of heteroglossia and its applications to the Irish novel; such a discussion because nineteenth-century Ireland was linguistically Balkanised, with Irish Gaelic, Hibemo-English, and British English all in use. This chapter is followed by a conclusion. / English / M. Lit. et Phil. (English)

M.A. (English) / Victorian studies is a field much-studied and, during the century that has passed since the end of Queen Victoria‘s reign, literary criticism on the subject has been extensive. In the main, however, criticism has tended to focus on the protagonists of Victorian novels, whether to argue that their journeys are immoral, or represent a warning against immorality, or to examine their behaviour and so arrive at conclusions regarding identity. Through a close reading of Oscar Wilde‘s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), Robert Louis Stevenson‘s The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), and Bram Stoker‘s Dracula (1897), and by focussing on the reactions and responses of Victorian society (as the texts represent it) to the novel‘s transgressive characters rather than on those characters themselves (as has been the trend) this dissertation moves away from readings of duality and moral judgment and towards a greater understanding of the intricacies of late-Victorian society itself. In addition, and through this process, this dissertation interrogates the bifurcated and contradictory nature of the Victorian moral structure and destabilizes the binary oppositions of character judgment that were so fundamental in its creation. Furthermore, through a discussion of the historical context of the text‘s chosen for this study, this dissertation challenges the formulation and authenticity of Victorian morality by considering the manner in which power informed the behaviour and decisions of middle-class Victorians at the turn of the century. To this end, I will consider how the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche, especially those pertaining to power and morality, are invaluable in problematizing the binary system of categorization that so dominated the late-Victorian cultural space. Finally, I argue that the texts I have elected to study represent a climate of unrest and dissatisfaction with the Victorian moral climate at the fin de siècle (or turn of the century) and that they are instrumental in our understanding of that moral climate and the subsequent changes to it.

This thesis will explore the segregation of detective fiction from the general fiction market between 1920 and 1940.

MA (English) / Department of English / In this study, I explore the depiction of homelessness in K. Sello Duiker’s Thirteen Cents (2000) and Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to Our Hillbrow (2001). Against the background of post-colonial and transcultural theories, I explore the effects of homelessness on select characters depicted in the two novels, particularly how homelessness and its effects impact on the characters’ identity and human dignity, as some of the themes which the two authors deal with. I achieve this through a close analysis of themes, characterisation and style as well as a demonstration of how the metaphor of the plight of the homeless is drawn from the experiences of the homeless characters portrayed in the novels. I establish, through this study, that the two novels depict characters on whose identity and human dignity, colonialism had an adverse impact. I argue that the corroded dignity and identity of the select homeless characters can be restored through the application of the tenets of transcultural theory. I consistently identify the central morals of the two novels under study as highlighting the need for society to address the plight central to the two novels’ major themes of homelessness, poverty, identity and human dignity against the backdrop of postcoloniality and transculturalism.

This study takes a structuralist approach to the development of the novel, arguing that eighteenth-century writers build progressive narrative by rendering abstract, then conflating, literary theories of gendered time that originate in the Renaissance with seventeenth-century scientific theories of motion. I argue that writers from the Renaissance through the eighteenth century generate and regulate progress-as-product in their narratives through gendered constructions of time that corresponded to the generation and regulation of economic, political, and social progress brought about by developing capitalism.

This thesis investigates the prevalence of religious themes in the work of several prominent contemporary women writers—Margaret Atwood, Michèle Roberts, Alice Walker and A.L. Kennedy. Relying on Luce Irigaray’s recent theorisations of the religious and its relationship to feminine subjectivity, this research considers the subversive potential of engaging with religious discourse through literature, and contributes to burgeoning criticism of feminist revisionary writing. The novels analysed in this thesis show, often in violent detail, that the way the religious dimension has been conceptualised and articulated enforces negative views of female sexuality, justifies violence against the body, alienates women from autonomous creative expression and paralyses the development of a subjectivity in the feminine. Rather than looking at women’s religious revision primarily as a means of asserting female authority, as previous studies have done, I argue that these writers, in addition to critiquing patriarchal religion, articulate ways of being and knowing that subvert the binary logic that dominates Western religious discourse. Chapter I contextualises this research in Luce Irigaray’s theories and outlines existing work on feminist revisionist literature. The remaining chapters offer close readings of key novels in light of these theories: Chapter II examines Atwood’s interrogation of oppositional logic in religious discourse through her novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Chapter III explores two novels by Roberts that expose the violence inherent in religious discourse and deconstruct the subjection of the (female) body to the (masculine) Word. Chapters IV and V analyse the fiction of Kennedy and Walker respectively, revealing how their novels confront the religious denigration of feminine sexuality and refigure the connection between eroticism and divinity. Evident in each of these fictional accounts is a forceful critique of religious discourse, as well as an attempt to more closely reconcile foundational religious oppositions between divinity and humanity, flesh and spirit, and body and Word.

Revision and abridgement of the author's Thesis (doctoral)--Paris IV-Sorbonne, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [723]-864) and indexes.

Revision and abridgement of the author's Thesis (doctoral)--Paris IV-Sorbonne, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [723]-864) and indexes.