Magister Artium - MA / Molla's Music is a novella about Maureen (Molla), a white Afrikaans woman born in 1935 in Cape Town, who faced poverty and abandonment before apartheid and who, during apartheid, faced the choice between an unwanted pregnancy with a married man, and a carreer in music funded by the father who had betrayed her. Maureen is introduced in three sections with very different voices in each. In the first section she is depicted in the context of being cared for by a single mother with severe post natal depression. The short chapters and long sentences reflect the naïvity of the subject, whose unfiltered observations allow the reader to bear witness to the traumas that dictate her character later in life. She was so ashamed of her poverty, her father's abandonment, and her pregnancy, that she hid all memories of her past from her children and grandchildren and almost managed to die with all her secrets in tact. The second section becomes more sophisticated with longer chapters. The reader is guided through the fifties by a young adult whose adolescent memories inform the events that unfold over a mere two days. Finally, the last section consists of only one chapter, but it reviews an entire life. It is written in the first person, revealing the identity of the narrator. Maureen taught herself piano before school. Her father played the violin and her dedication to music seems to be a mechanism for connecting to him and what his absence from her life represents. It is an absense that eludes consolidation until her death. Molla proved to be such a gifted child that she skipped two years of school and took on music as an extra subject until matric, but financial strain and the shackles of patriarchy limited her options and only after years of working, does she apply to the UCT college of music. She inherits a piano from her landlords, who are evicted during the implementation of the Group Areas Act of 1957. In the years after that, playing piano becomes her private liberation practised in plain sight, on the only heirloom that persists from her past. When she dies, her granddaughter has a heritage that beckons to be resolved and remembered. She does not play the piano she inherited from her grandmother, but starts to investigate its past. In the course of Molla's Music, I explore themes of Afrikaner identity, and question modes of being for white Afrikaans women in South Africa today. By offering an intimate depiction of an individual's search for meaning, while negotiating the forces of Apartheid and patriarchy, especially as a confluence of forces, I hope to gain clarity with regard to my own questions about identity.

Orientador: Maira Angélica Pandolfi / Banca: Karin Volobuef / Banca: Antonio Roberto Esteves / Resumo: Esta pesquisa analisou a leitura do mito do vampiro no romance O vampiro que descobriu o Brasil (1999), do escritor carioca Ivan Jaf, a partir do qual o autor apresenta, pela ótica de um imortal, uma revisão crítica de quinhentos anos da História do Brasil. A perspectiva de análise deste estudo levou em consideração o caráter híbrido da obra assentada em uma dimensão dupla em que o tecido histórico e o tecido mítico se conjugam para armar um discurso literário, alegórico, crítico, intertextual e paródico que relê, ao mesmo tempo, a história factual do Brasil e sua relação com Portugal no período de quase cinco séculos (1500 a 1999), e o próprio mito do vampiro aclimatado ao solo brasileiro da trama. Como elementos imprescindíveis à compreensão do tecido híbrido da narrativa, foram abordadas nessa pesquisa algumas questões como: fronteiras do discurso histórico e mítico ficcional, procedimentos de hibridização de gêneros e personagens mítico-literárias, releitura da história cultural brasileira e da construção da identidade nacional, tradição e rupturas. Assim, o estudo realizado teve como enfoque principal a compreensão da releitura do mito clássico do vampiro por Ivan Jaf em uma nova roupagem capaz de transformá-lo em um mito à brasileira, por meio do qual o autor realizou um percurso narrativo que discutiu questões identitárias, culturais e sociais pertinentes ao homem brasileiro, além de ter dialogado e agregado novos elementos à tradição literária vampiresca / Abstract: This research analyzed the reading about the vampire's myth in the novel O vampiro que descobriu o Brasil (1999), written by the Brazilian writer Ivan Jaff, in which the author presents, through a viewpoint of an immortal, a critical revision during the five hundred years of Brazilian History. The perspective of analyze in this study took into consideration the hybrid features of the novel, that are based on a double dimension, in which the historic and the mythic elements get together in order to form a literary discourse, with allegory, critics, intertextuality and parody that show, at the same time, the Brazilian history and its connection to Portugal for about five centuries (from 1500 to 1999), and the own vampire's myth integrated with the Brazilian setting. Thus, in order to understand the hybrid aspects of the narrative, this dissertation discussed some issues connected to following ideas: borders of the historic discourse and fictional myth; procedures of genre hybridization and mythic-literary characters; re-reading of the cultural Brazilian history, and the formation of the national identity; tradition and ruptures. Hence, this study had as its main focus the comprehension of the re-reading about the classical vampire's myth developed by Ivan Jaf, related to a new concept that would be able to turn it in a Brazilian myth. Therefore, the writer established a narrative procedure that discussed identity, cultural and social issues concerned to the Brazilian man; moreover, it was added new elements to the literary tradition about vampires / Mestre

Traditional historical writing focuses on the cause and effect of human action, assuming that it is the historian's responsibility to recount the ebbs and flows of human progress. In the process of laying hold of the past as a narrative of human action, historical writing has developed the tendency to marginalise nature and undermine its power to influence the historical narrative. My investigation explores the fantastic in historical fantasy as a means of resisting historical writing's anthropocentrism. Historical fantasy uses fantastical elements to create counterfactual and alternative historical realities that have the potential to resist and undermine history's anthropocentric norm. My thesis examines four contemporary young adult historical fantasy trilogies that reimagine key turning points in history such as industrialisation, the American frontier, European imperialism, and World War I. They share the theme of retrieving and subverting anthropocentric discourses in the history of human development and thereby creating space for nature's presence and agency. My study finds that the fantastic is an effective means of subverting historical writing's anthropocentrism. But it also uncovers ambiguities and contradictions in historical fantasy's ecological revisionism, pointing to the idea that despite the fantastic's capacity for subversion, historical representations of nature cannot be separated from considerations of human identity and survival.

A disgraced officer and an enlisted man forge an unlikely friendship through the desperate river battles waged along the Mississippi between Union forces and outnumbered Confederate defenders. Following their surrender, the two friends along with the other defeated Rebels are incarcerated in Northern prisoner of war camps where new challenges await them. Only one will survive. Based upon ten years of historical research, Long Road Home explores the trials and travails of George Spears and his friend, Eli Forrest. / https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu_books/1004/thumbnail.jpg

A fictional retelling of the story of the woman warrior Mulan, set in China's Northern Wei Dynasty (386-536 CE), with focus on themes of personal identity, Sinicization, and cultural merging.

Georg Lukács The Historical Novel continues to have a wide influence in Walter Scott criticism. However, Lukács theoretical insights into the role of genre in Scotts work remains underappreciated. This thesis takes for its departure Lukács summary that "the profound grasp of the historical factor in human life demands a dramatic concentration of the epic framework" (41). Lukács description of these two forms, dramatic and epic, is then applied in a reading of Scotts The Heart of Midlothian. Lukács terms offer a way of describing how Scotts fiction works, as the interplay of dramatic and epic motifs provide the aesthetic mediation for Midlothians social and political concerns. The chief problem raised through this reading is the role of genre in establishing a sense of historical necessity. In The Heart of Midlothian, the role of genre is made concrete in the novels gradual transition. Opening with dramatic social unrest, the novel shifts attention to the epic journey of Jeanie Deans and how her intervention re-establishes domestic and political harmony within the world of the novel. The interplay of dramatic and epic forms establishes a sense of internal necessity, as each major character organically finds his or her role in the overall course of progress. The thesis turns in its final chapter and conclusion to a resistance in Midlothian to the "dramatic concentration of the epic framework." Thus instead of solely applying Lukács categories to a Scott, the conclusion of the thesis turns Scott against Lukács. Midlothians conclusion evinces the resistance of Scott the storyteller to Scott the novelist of historical necessity, as the storyteller re-opens a sense of unforeseen possibility at the novels conclusion. The thesis concludes with a meditation on the ethical implications of Scotts competing narrative practices, that is, the dissonance between the historical novelist and the storyteller.

Georg Lukács The Historical Novel continues to have a wide influence in Walter Scott criticism. However, Lukács theoretical insights into the role of genre in Scotts work remains underappreciated. This thesis takes for its departure Lukács summary that "the profound grasp of the historical factor in human life demands a dramatic concentration of the epic framework" (41). Lukács description of these two forms, dramatic and epic, is then applied in a reading of Scotts The Heart of Midlothian. Lukács terms offer a way of describing how Scotts fiction works, as the interplay of dramatic and epic motifs provide the aesthetic mediation for Midlothians social and political concerns. The chief problem raised through this reading is the role of genre in establishing a sense of historical necessity. In The Heart of Midlothian, the role of genre is made concrete in the novels gradual transition. Opening with dramatic social unrest, the novel shifts attention to the epic journey of Jeanie Deans and how her intervention re-establishes domestic and political harmony within the world of the novel. The interplay of dramatic and epic forms establishes a sense of internal necessity, as each major character organically finds his or her role in the overall course of progress. The thesis turns in its final chapter and conclusion to a resistance in Midlothian to the "dramatic concentration of the epic framework." Thus instead of solely applying Lukács categories to a Scott, the conclusion of the thesis turns Scott against Lukács. Midlothians conclusion evinces the resistance of Scott the storyteller to Scott the novelist of historical necessity, as the storyteller re-opens a sense of unforeseen possibility at the novels conclusion. The thesis concludes with a meditation on the ethical implications of Scotts competing narrative practices, that is, the dissonance between the historical novelist and the storyteller.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 135-141). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--Florida State University, 2002. / Advisor: Dr. Maxine L. Montgomery, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of English. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Oct. 2, 2003). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 135-141). Also available on the Internet.