Thesis (DLitt.(Latin)--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1963. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [168]-170).

M.A. (African Languages) / This research is based primarily on the praise poems of the Bafokeng of Phokeng, and their history. Achievements of the tribe as well as their downfall from the previous Chiefs to the present Chief are documented. The study is divided into five chapters. The first chapter looks at the aim of the study, which is preservation of the history of Bafokeng and their praise poems, both heroic and clan poems. The second chapter is a brief outline of the history of the Bafokeng tribe, their heroic as well as their clan poems. The historical backgrounds of these poems are also outlined, as are performances at different occasions. The third chapter focuses on the divining bones, the actual divination and praises of divining bones as performed by witchdoctors of Phokeng upon consultation. The fourth chapter presents the structural features of these poems e.g. language, repetition, rhythm, eulogues etc. The final chapter of this study looks at the experiences during the time of research, as well as discoveries and recommendations.

This thesis aims at defining the argumentative terms and strategies of the rhetoric of praise in printed collected eulogies of women of the first half of the XVIth Century, both in collections of famous women (which celebrate exceptional feminine figures) and apologies of the female sex (which defend womankind through praise). The inquiry starts with the first French printed translation of Boccaccio's De mulieribus claris, entitled De la louenge et vertu des nobles et cleres dames (1493), and ends with the Fort inexpugnable de l'honneur du sexe foeminin (1555) by Francois de Billon, who provides the first historic panorama of the encomiastic tradition. Its specificity lies in the combination of two types of collective eulogy, which up to now have been separately analyzed but which in fact deserve to be taken up in a single interpretative gesture. Our approach, that of rhetoric, is founded in composition manuals and treatises on ancient eloquence, as well as recent theory on argumentation. Unlike other studies which take the rhetorical approach, this thesis deals with a relatively short time span, about fifty years, which allows a reading of the texts in their historical and literary contexts. Through the vantage points of inventio and dispositio, this thesis shows how a discourse praising women collectively was built, at a time when women formed the crux of contradicting discourses and the centre of a topics that crystallized those tensions. Beyond this uncertain discursive situation, this thesis also claims to bring to light a neglected aspect of eulogy: its function as definition of object praised. It offers, therefore, a reflection on epideictic rhetoric from a perspective of the poetics of literary genre. This is seen as a space that is propitious to the exploration of ethical stakes, such as the valorization of individual feminine figures, the fashioning of the author's persona or the introduction of secondary objectives which bear new values.

This research is entitled "The historical representation of the praise-poetry of the two Zulu kings, Dingane and Mpande." In this study the researcher is trying to explore the ways in which history is portrayed in these two above mentioned kings. This is done firstly by looking particularly at their historical outlooks and secondly by looking at their praises. In traditional Zulu society, every Royal king has to possess praises. Therefore the praises basically contain historical events. The analysis of the findings reveals that king praises contain largely of the heroic deeds, body features and characteristics of the kings. Based on this statement it therefore stands to reason that the king praises cannot be considered merely as a complete history of the Zulu kings. The data collection was carried out through interviews and through reading books for each king. It must be noted that the king praises are only performed by a bard/imbongi. The king praises serve as a mirror that detects how the king live and perform the duties of the nation. / Thesis (M.A)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2007.

It occured to me that scholars who undertake to explore praises in Zulu have centred much analysis on praises of human beings and very little on those of domestic animals. Domestic animals are very close environmental company to any Black person in South Africa, especially to those who reside in farming areas. This study demonstrates that the domestic animal merits praise because it constitutes a kind of relative and colleague to a Black person. The first chapter gives a general layout of those to follow. What one has to note in the first chapter is the assessment of the extent to which scholars have made studies towards assessing praises of domestic animals. To be more precise, about six books have been identified containing some gleanings on the praises of domestic animals . This scarcity of documented sources for these praises together with the fact that praises of domestic animals are still mainly part of oral tradition constitute the main reason prompting this study. Chapter Two analyses hopefully in depth the social aspect of praises of domestic animals. We deduce from the numerous facts emerging from the inter-relationship between owner and animal that the main reason for the existence of the praises in question, is to forge links that bind poet and animal together. Aspects discussed in Chapter Two are, among others, the purpose of praising which examines the effect of praises on both the animals themselves and the community at large. The chapter also looks at the various poets in this field, the occasions during which domestic animals are praised, and the kind of audience anticipated when praising these animals. Though almost all the poets in this regard are wholly nonliterate, the praises they compose are nevertheless rich in literary constructions. They decorate the praises with all sorts of poetic expressions. One may even imagine that the praises of domestic animals were composed by modern learned poet who composed them by transcription and had all the skills to adopt the most impressive literary forms. Chapter Four sums up the role of praises of domestic animals on society as well as the literary richness that the praises possess. On the other hand this chapter Four is also to be taken as the summary and distillation of the previous ones. / Thesis (M.A.) - University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1992.

In this dissertation, I argue that there is a pressing need in post-apartheid KwaZulu-Natal to re-assess the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century histories of the region from the perspectives of people whose ancestry was dispossessed and/or displaced in the wars that took place in that period, particularly those that elevated Shaka to dominance. I suggest that because of their retrospective manipulation by the vested interests of power politics, historical processes over the past two centuries, and in the last century in particular, have invested the figure of King Shaka and 'Zulu' ethnic identities with unitary meanings that have made them close to inescapable for most people who are considered 'Zulu'. I argue that there is, therefore, a need to recuperate the histories of the clans which were defeated by the Zulu and welded into the Zulu 'nation'. Following British-Jamaican novelist Caryl Phillips' strategy, I begin to conduct this recuperation through a process of subverting history by writing back into historical records people and events that have been written and spoken out of them. I argue that literary texts, izibongo ('personal' praises) and izithakazelo (clan praises) in this case, offer a useful starting point in recovering the suppressed or marginalised histories of some of the once-significant clans in the region. In the three chapters of this dissertation, I examine the izibongo of three late eighteenth-/early nineteenth-century amakhosi (kings) in the present KwaZulu-Natal region, Shaka kaSenzangakhona of the Zulu clan, Phungashe kaNgwane of the Buthelezi and Zwide kaLanga of the Ndwandwe. In the first chapter, I read Shaka's izibongo as an instance of empire-building discourse in which I trace the belittling representations granted Phungashe and Zwide. In the second and third chapters, I set Phungashe's and Zwide's izibongo, respectively, as well as the histories carried in and alluded to by these texts, and the clans' izithakazelo, alongside Shaka's and examine the extent to which the two amakhosi's izibongo talk back to Shaka's imperialism. I also follow the later histories of the two amakhosi's clans to determine which individuals became prominent in the Zulu kingdom under Shaka and after, as well as point to the revisions of the past that are being conducted in the present by people of the two clans. The versions of the izibongo I study and the hypotheses of history I present are drawn from sources that include the James Stuart Archive, A.T. Bryant, and oral historical accounts from several people I interviewed. Given the present imperatives in South Africa of bringing justice to the various peoples who were dispossessed under colonial and apartheid domination, I argue that recuperating the histories of the clans that were conquered by the Zulu under Shaka's leadership problematises questions of justice in KwaZulu-Natal: if it is legitimate to claim reparation for colonialism and apartheid, then the Zulu kingdom should be viewed under the same spotlight because of the similar suffering it visited on many inhabitants of the region. In that way, we can transcend divisive colonial, apartheid and Zulu nationalist histories that continue to have strong, often negative, effects on the crossing of identity boundaries constructed under those systems of domination. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2004.

In this thesis I argue that recently recorded izibongo must be read as literary texts that articulate responses to the multiple forces of constraint and possibility at the urban-rural interface. I argue that when scholars transcribe and translate performance texts they release them into new contexts of reception, and that the mediation processes involved in this recontextualisation become an important part of the way in which the texts make meaning for their new 'audiences'. As such, it is imperative that analysis of print-mediated izibongo should take into account both the performance text and context as well as the intervention of literate intermediaries in the creation of a print text. I argue for maintaining a dialectic between performance textuality, which shapes the text as it is recited to a participating audience, and the textuality of transcription. We have thus to keep in mind at least two sets of receivers - those present at, and part of, the construction of the praise poem in performance, and the literate receiver, reading from a new moment and, often, a different social and cultural space. I argue that the scholar in English Studies has an important contribution to make to the recording and the study of izibongo as literary and performance texts. S/he must devise ways in which processes of translation and transcription can more adequately and creatively insist on performance textuality. The English Studies scholar must also read and write about izibongo as texts that have complex meanings and that speak to their changing contexts of reception. Such analysis necessitates attention to individual texts and requires of the critic a willingness to revise her/his learned ways of reading. There is a need in oral literary studies to challenge print-influenced academic discourses in order to make these theories more receptive to the actual ways in which many people make sense of their lives through creative expression. In this thesis I consider the ways in which contemporary postcolonial and poststructural theory might more adequately listen to what postcolonial people say about themselves and others. In this, I argue for an academic approach that privileges cultural interdiscursivity, interdisciplinary co-operation, and an attitude of respect for the different ways in which forms like izibongo construct meaning. This thesis thus has a dual focus: it examines how recently recorded praise poems address the problem of reconstructing identity at the urban-rural interface, while considering the ways in which they speak to the uncertain identity of the scholar who tries to read them. Drawn from a variety of sources, the poems comprise both official and popular praises to suggest not only the variety of the form, but also the ways in which individual and group identities speak to each other across texts. Given the importance of self-expression at the heart of the form of izibongo, I argue that scholars in English Studies must resist the possibility, both in transcription and in criticism, of eliding the individual subjects involved in mediating identity and textuality. I also suggest that English Studies has a duty to write the oral back into institutionally defined literary histories by considering how our writing and ways of reading can better accommodate oral textuality. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2001.

Abstract not available. / Thesis (M.A.) - University of Natal, Durban, 2000.

Abh.--Zürich. / Vita. Bibliography: p. 5.