This study examines the historical influence of literary works adapted to political purpose, with reference to two significant nineteenth-century French books about Russia: a memoir by Astolphe de Custine entitled Lettres de Russie (1843), and a novel by Jules Verne entitled Michel Strogoff (1876), each based on travelogue sources. Taken together, these two works framed the poles of an ongoing debate about Russian identity related to the long-term effects of the thirteenth-century Mongol invasions of Russia. Custine's memoir characterized Russia as a threatening Tartar horde at the gates of European civilization, while Verne portrayed Russia as a legitimate European great power engaged in taming its rebellious Tartar subjects. Uniquely among the corpus of nineteenth-century French texts on Russia, these books demonstrate exceptional influence. Indeed, political adaptations of both have resonated substantially in international relations. During the Cold War, Custine's Lettres de Russie was discovered and republished by American diplomats in a heavily abridged 1951 edition, to serve as a cipher for an imminent Russian threat. In 1880,Verne's Michel Strogoff was adapted for a theatrical production in Paris; for the next twenty years, the play served as a vehicle to express public support for the Franco-Russian Alliance negotiated between 1891 and 1893. Political adaptation of these works ultimately led to their entrenchment in cultural repertoires of America and France, where they persist today at the levels of state and popular culture. The analysis concludes that an insistent myth concerning Tartar identity remains embedded in the international imaginary concerning Russia. The characterization of Russia as legitimate great power or despotic aggressor continues to reflect earlier questions concerning whether it had tamed its Tartar past, or fallen victim to miscegenation. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

The need for a science of the literary text is created when a startling number of critical theories succeed in mystifying rather than in clarifying the work of literature. The literary text disappears and it is replaced by one of its possible interpretations: certain aspects of the text are selected to serve as explanation for the whole. Even in more current critical trends the tendency is to subordinate the literary text to the methodology and to view it as one form of expression in an all-embracing typology of texts. In all of these cases the applied methodological canons are all foreign to the literary work in that they were elaborated to explain objects other than literature. When these canons are utilized to explain literature they are bound to give us only a partial and unsatisfactory rendering of its real complexity. To found a science of the literary text and to depart from the traditional critical approaches it is necessary first of all to define what is a literary text and what is this literariness which distinguishes it from other texts. On these bases a methodology is elaborated which is proper only to the literary text and to no other object. The manner in which we have attempted to approach the problem can be generally divided into two stages: deconstruction and reconstruction. The first stage indicates a process of demystification of the literary text by means of a critique of the basic methodological assumptions of the more dominant and current critical trends. As a result, the second stage points to the attempt to determine the laws which govern the production of the literary work: literary laws which underlie any literary work, an understanding of which is necessary to the explication of literature. This double theoretical undertaking can be more specifically subdivided into four parts: l) Marginalia: a general critical account of the basic critical fallacies of modern literary criticism; 2) Theory: a definition of the literary text and of the laws which condition literary production; 3) Theoretical Practice: the elaboration of a critical methodology developed in terms of literary laws; h) Critical Practice: the practical application of this method to a contemporary novel. In consideration of the complexity and difficulty of the task we are aware of the limitations and of the inadequacies of our own theoretical effort, and we cannot but present our findings as suggestions towards a future and more rigorous scientific elaboration. The paper itself indicates where the major obstacles are to be found and what are the major fallacies to be avoided. The main purpose of this thesis, for writer and reader alike, is then to contribute to a greater degree of critical self-clarification. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

In terms of structure, style, content and intended audience, Genre Analysis 58, this thesis presents a rhetorical analysis of the plenary address as a genre. Four examples of the opening plenary were analyzed because they represent the opening plenary lecture-keynote speech type, the most common presented at conferences: Mina Shaughnessy and the teaching of writing, Keynote address, Literacy after the revolution and The uneasy partnership between grammar and writing instruction.

Bibliography: leaves 97-101. / The aim of this paper is, firstly, to consider a contemporary literary methodology, that of Paul Ricoeur, and secondly, to critique that methodology from the perspective of a sharply contextual approach, in association with a materialist theory of literature, such as that emerging from the South African context. Ricoeur's position is useful as a starting point because of the eclectic make up of his theory. His work includes aspects of the historical critical approach, psychoanalytic theory, structuralism, philosophy and a response to materialist thinking. We are, however, choosing to restrict ourselves to the more recent work of Ricoeur corresponding broadly to the period 1975-1990. In this period Ricoeur's concentration shifts from the hermeneutics of symbol to the hermeneutics of language.

Chapter One begins by outlining the space magic occupies in Western culture, clarifying what I mean by the term "magic". I examine aspects of indigenous American sacred traditions which have influenced and which prefigure magic realism. I review the development of the aesthetic in its Latin American context, touching on the Chronicles, the role of nationalism and erotic rhetoric, the influence of European modernism and the role of the intellectual in Latin American society. Chapter Two examines the development of a realist aesthetic in Europe since the Enlightenment. This review of its manifestations and counter-traditions in European culture is founded upon a discussion of aspects of the philosophy of Kant. I focus on the influence of Surrealism which is particularly illuminating of Latin American magic realism. The impacts of anthropology and psychoanalysis on Latin American writers are also reviewed. Chapter Two includes a review of formulations of magic realism influential in the field of English studies and concludes with a working definition which is used as a basis for the discussions of the three novels analysed in this study. Chapter Three is a study of the development of Alejo Carpentier's version of magic realism culminating in the writing of The Kingdom of this World in 1949. Through using both European and indigenous American techniques and perspectives he hoped to create a literature which could represent the complex realities of Latin American life and establish a mythology for the founding of a unified Latin American identity.

The judgement 'that person is musical' is commonplace in our daily lives. The present writer has grown up in an intellectual environment coloured to a marked extent by interest in music and the related arts. To him it had always been a very natural phenomenon that a person should be regarded as musical or 'not-musical', and it seems justifiable to state that has attitude was but typical of his fellow-men. There appears to have prevailed for some time the idea that musicality represented some 'innate permeating spirit' which distinguished the possessor of the 'musical spark' from his brethren of more common clay. This implied that certain human beings had some general musical capacity or 'turn of mind' which was not possessed by others. Is there any justification for such an assumption? It was a question such as this which first stimulated the writer's interest towards a scientific investigation of the problem of musicality. This interest was refreshed almost continuously by a consideration of a number of further questions inevitably bound up with the consequences of the initial problem: Of the musical individuals themselves, was it true to say that their musicality was evidenced homogeneously either in degree or in quality throughout different musical operations? Was, for example, the music student who was keenest at discrimination of pitch also best at the memorizing of his music? Could anything definite be stipulated, either on a priori grounds or on the basis of experience, about the relationship existing between one's musicality and one's general intelligence? And what of the so-called allied arts; did literary ability, for instance, likewise involve a special quality, and was this ichor the same as was to explain musicality? It was as an attempt to provide a scientifically-investigated answer to such and similar questions that this analysis was originally undertaken. At the time of writing the field of the problem was entirely virgin soil; and though the writer would like to feel that this world does take an appreciable step towards clearing the obstructing growths of ignorance on the subject, yet he is obliged to point out the severely limited nature of the scope ot this thesis, owing partly to the brevity of time at his disposal and partly to the amount of wasted labour attendant upon all "pioneer" endeavour.

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts in fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree Of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of African Languages at the University of Zululand, 2016 / In this thesis, the research focused on representation of women images in the selected isiZulu literary texts. From the late 1940’s up to 1994 South Africans struggled under the apartheid regime. During this period of time Black women were doubly oppressed by their patriarchal and traditional cultures as well as by the apartheid system of government. With the change of government in 1994, a new era in the history of South Africa was ushered in. The underlying foundations of the new constitution were democratic values of gender equality, non- racial, non sexist society. It is against this backdrop that the thesis focused on exploring the effects and or impact of perceptions about women within a changing and transforming society in Africa in general and South Africa specifically. The isiZulu texts selected that were analysed are works of transitional period partly because they were published during the time of political and social transformation. Whilst other texts that were analysed were published during the post-independence period. The rational behind this was to give a broader spectrum that reflects the reality; as well as to establish whether the socio- political transformation has had an impact on how male authors represent women in isiZulu literary texts. Literary feminist philosophy was employed to highlight whether their depiction is real or idealized. The study concluded that gender inequality was still prevalent in the depiction of women images in selected isiZulu literary texts authored by males. There was no transformation that had been made by male authors in their portrayal of women characters to reflect the current political and social order

Bien que le best-seller existe au Quebec depuis des annees, il n'a suscite qu'un faible interet parml les critiques litteraires. Il y a l'exception notable de l'equipe du CRELIO (Centre de Recherche en Lltterature Quebecolse) de de l'Universite Laval, dont font partle Denis Saint-Jacques, Claude Hartin et d'autres, qui, depuis 1982, a fait du best-seller son domaine de recherche. Ces chercheurs ont limite leur champ de recherche aux best-sellers les plus populaires entre 1970 et 1982. Puisque les recherches faites par le CRELIO ne couvrent que les best-sellers parus pendant les annees soixante-dlx, j'al voulu examiner le best-seller quebecois des annees quatre-vingt, en particuller, Le Matou (1981), Les Filles de Caleb (1985 et 1986) et Les Tisserands du pouyoir (1988) qui ont tous connu untel succes qu'ils peuvent etre consideres comme ~best-sellers quebecois des annees quatre-vlngt. De quel type de succes s'agit-il? S'agit-il d'un succes comme par exemple celui du MATOU d'Yves Beauchemin, d'un succes programme grace aux relations publiques, mettant en valeur l'usage extensif de la presse et des medias, beneficiant de l'accuell chaleureux requ en France avant d'etre lance au Quebec, ou celui des FILLES DE CALEB d'Arlette Cousture, d'un succes inattendu, qui depasse toute strategie de marketing, OU celui des TISSERANDS DU PQUVOIR de Claude Fournier, d'un succes qui est peut-etre base sur !'adaptation du livre a l'ecran (film et serie televisee), le scenario ayant precede le livre? / Thesis / Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Preventable Conditions is a collection of literary short stories intended to explore themes of familial communication, complementary dysfunctions, and the degree to which we all try to hide from or correct our own mistakes. The first five stories in the collection are related, while the last three stand alone. Each of the stories before “Fair Grounds” is told from the perspective of a different member of the Powell family, a fictional clan from Marietta, Georgia. The Powell family stories largely adhere to the basic conventions of realism, while the three remaining pieces venture closer to the absurd.

Thesis (Ph.D.)—Boston University / Mary Ellen Chase, a contemporary author of many parts, has followed the double career, not uncommon in twentieth-century Anerica, of writing and of teaching college English, contributing the vigor of her New England heritage in a complementary fashion to both professions. She has written short stories, and novels, biographies and autobiographies, volumes of essays and Biblical commentary, textbooks and a miscellany of introductions, reviews, articles, and pamphlets. Although she retired from the Smith College faculty in 1955, she continues to write books and many lesser pieces. Since the body of her published work is now a substantial one, it has seemed a good time to survey her general accomplishnent to date, in the individual use of many ideas and traditions, both historical and literary. The name of Mary Ellen Chase has appeared in footnotes, appendices, and lists. She has sometimes been mentioned or even briefly discussed as a New England regionalist. Almost all of her books have been reviewed, some of them often and quite generously, but there has been no general survey or study of the whole body of her writing. Thus there has been very little established opinion to guide this study. The problem has been to bring together such ideas about Miss Chase's writing as have been separately expressed, mainly in reviews, and to find in her writing its motivating themes, recurrent interests, and developing characteristics of style. A complete bibliography of her books and contributions to major periodicals has been attempted. Miss Chase's New England heritage has been the pivot on which many of her interests have turned. Unfailingly her concern for her own traditions and others as well has been motivated by her delight in them and by the search for any understanding which can contribute to a "good life" in the present. She makes it clear that the past, even at its high points, should inform the present, but never afford a mere retreat from it. The New England past forms a large part of her New England consciousness, which includes a strong sense of place and of the things and people to be found in the rural and coastal areas of Maine. Her contributions serve mainly to brighten old knowledge into new. Often the sense of place in her writing outweighs the impact of the past. Some of her best style describes the relationships between her characters and their natural environment. Sonetimes she shows the symbolic power of one single object from the natural environment. In her interest in England and in the Bible, Miss Chase is focusing on secondary aspects of the cultural heritage of New England. In her studies of the Bible, past and place are again important, as is the love of language, which has permeated all her writing with increasing effectiveness. Characteristic of Miss Chase's books about the Bible is her infectious enthusiasm for the ancient Hebrew people and for their literature. The impact of literary traditions on rer work has occasionally been noted, and sone close examination has been made of her imagery, the aspect of her style most generally useful to her. Its use has often allowed her to make distinct the multiple pasts producing together the total sense of the past which she never wishes to separate from the present.