As the Holocaust passes out of living memory, this thesis re-evaluates the potential of commemorative landscapes to engender meaningful and textualised encounters with a past which, all too often, seems distant and untouchable. As the concentration camps and mass graves that shape our experiential access to this past are integrated into tourist itineraries, associated discourse is increasingly delimited by a pervasive sense of memorial fatigue which is itself compounded by the notion that the experiences of the Holocaust are beyond representation; that they deny, evade or transcend communication and comprehension. Harnessing recent developments across memory studies, cultural geography and ecocritical literary theory, this thesis contends that memory is always in production and never produced; always a journey and never a destination. In refusing the notion of an ineffable past, I turn to the texts and topographies that structure contemporary encounters with the Holocaust and consider their potential to create an ethically grounded and reflexive past-present engagement. Topographies of Suffering explores three case studies: the Buchenwald Concentration Camp Memorial, Weimar, Germany; the mass grave at Babi Yar, Kiev, Ukraine; and the razed village of Lidice, Czech Republic. These landscapes are revealed as evolving palimpsests; multi-layered, multi-dimensional and texturised spaces always subject to ongoing processes of mediation and remediation. I examine memory’s locatedness in landscape alongside the ways it may travel according to diverse literary and spatial de-territorializations. The thesis overall brings three disparate sites together as places in which the past can be encounterable, immersive and affective. In doing so, it looks to a future in which the others of the past can be faced, and in which the alibi of ineffability can be consigned to history

This thesis is comprised of three parts: a critical dissertation, a creative work of fiction and a bridge piece that connects the two. The critical work is an examination of the Devil as a satirist in Faustian bargains. Through the usage of the Devil as a literary figure, his character has become a more secular being: a trickster rather than evil incarnate—a facilitator of sin rather than its originator. In the tragicomedy of pacts with the Devil, he acts as a mirror, reflecting mankind’s foibles and vanity, while elevating the reader in the process. The thesis considers the language, tone, purpose and conceits of several versions of the story. While the focus is primarily on American Literature, the influence of English, Scottish, French and German folklore and fiction are recognized as an essential component of the theme’s evolution. In the bridge piece, the pact with the Devil is literalized in a modern context; a corporate business of reaping souls is theorized in which techniques of persuasion are streamlined into an effective formula. Whether immersive or expository in approach, the portrayal of the supernatural depends on the literary principles of science fiction and fantasy in order to manipulate the reader and allow irrational concepts to obey rational laws. Such theories are cited to support how the Devil functions as a believable character. The novel, Could Be Much Worse, relates the story of an egocentric boss and his dependable employee, a scout who disguises himself as a taxi driver and seeks candidates who may succumb to temptation. Passengers’ monologues of desperation and pathos are interspersed throughout the protagonist’s day-to-day narrative. At times, the work is experimental, utilizing irregular storytelling techniques, alternative forms and conceits. Light-hearted, but nonetheless poignant, the story serves as a cautionary tale, illustrating the tedium of a bureaucratic job in a transmundane existence.

Although many might consider Jane Austen to be outdated and clichéd, her work retains an undying appeal. During the last decade the English-speaking world has experienced an Austen renaissance as it has been treated to a number of film and television adaptations of her work, including Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility. Film critics such as Bill De Lapp (1996) and Sherry Dean (1996) have commented on the phenomenal response these productions received and have been amazed by Austen’s ability to compete with current movie scripts. The reasons for viewers and readers enjoying and identifying with Austen’s fiction are numerous. Readers of varying persuasions have different agendas and hence different views and interpretations of Austen. This thesis follows a gynocritical approach and applies a feminist point of view when reading and discussing Austen. Austen’s novels - Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and Persuasion – are re-read and reevaluated from a feminist perspective in order to call attention to Austen’s awareness of women’s second-class position in her society. Women’s experiences in Austen’s time are compared to women’s experiences in society today in order to illustrate, in some way, the tremendous progress the feminist movement has made. In addition, by examining what Austen reveals about the material reality of women in her time, it is possible to explore the legacy that modern women have inherited. Literary critics such as André Brink (1998), Claudia Johnson (1988), and Gilbert and Gubar (1979) believe Austen to create feminist awareness in her novels. There are critics, however, who do not view Austen as necessarily feminist in her writing. Nancy Armstrong writes in Desire and Domestic Fiction (1987) that Austen’s objective is not a critique of the Abstract iv old order but rather a redefinition of wealth and status. In Culture and Imperialism (1993) Edward Said implicates Austen in the rationale for imperial expansion, while Barbara Seeber argues in “The Schooling of Marianne Dashwood” (1999) that Austen’s texts should be understood as dialogic. Others, such as Patricia Beer (1974), believe Austen’s fiction primarily to be about marriage since all her novels end with matrimony. My own reading of Austen takes into consideration her social milieu and patriarchal inheritance. It argues that Austen writes within the framework of patriarchy (for example by marrying off her heroines) possibly because she is aware that in order to survive as a woman (writer) in a male-favouring world and in a publishing world dominated by men, her critique needs to be covert. If read from a feminist perspective, Austen’s fiction draws our attention to issues such as women’s (lack of) education, the effects of not being given access to knowledge, marriage as a patriarchal institution of entrapment, and women’s identity. Her fiction reveals the effects of educating women for a life of domesticity, and illustrates that such an education is biased, leaving women powerless and without any means of self-protection in a male-dominated world. Although contemporary women in the Western world mostly enjoy equal education opportunities to men, they suffer the consequences of a legacy which denied them access to a proper education. Feminist writers such as Flis Henwood (2000) show that contemporary women believe certain areas of expertise belong to men exclusively. Others such as Linda Nochlin (1994) reveal that because women did not have access to higher education for so many years, they failed to produce great women artists like Chaucer or Cézanne. Austen’s fiction also exposes the economic and social system (of which education constitutes a major part) for enforcing marriage and for enfeebling women. In addition, it illustrates some of the realities and pitfalls of marriage. While Austen only subtly refers to Abstract v women’s disempowerment within marriage, contemporary feminist scholars such as Germaine Greer (1999) and Arnot, Araújo, Deliyanni, and Ivinson (2000) explicitly warn women that marriage is a patriarchal institution of entrapment and that it often leaves women feeling unfulfilled. The issue of marriage as a patriarchal institution has been thought important and has been addressed by feminists because it contributes to women’s powerlessness. Feminist scholars today find it imperative to expose all forms of power in order to eradicate women’s subordination. bell hooks comments in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (2000) on the importance of revealing unfair power relations in order to eliminate oppression of any kind. Austen does not necessarily express the wish to eradicate forms of power or oppression in her novels. Yet, if we read her work from a feminist point of view, we are made aware of the social construction of power. From her fiction we can infer that male power is enshrined in the very structure of society, and this makes us aware of women’s lack of power in her time. Austen’s novels, however, are not merely novels of powerlessness but of empowerment. By creating rounded women characters and by giving them the power to judge, to refuse and to write, Austen challenges the stereotyped view of woman as either overpowering monster or weak and fragile angel. In addition, her novels seem to question women’s inherited identity and to suggest that qualities such as emotionality and mothering are not natural aspects of being a woman. Because she suggests ways in which women might empower themselves, albeit within patriarchal parameters, one could argue that she contributes, in a small way, to the transformation of existing power relations and to the eradication of women’s servile position in society.

Magister Artium - MA / In these novels suspense plays an important role, but elements that are usually found in literary works are also prominent in these narratives, for instance the fleshing out of characters' psyche and working with philosophical or current issues. In rhetorical terms these novels can be said to be suspense novels that make use of literary devices and themes. Novels by Deon Meyer fit into this category. In the Netherlands translations of his works are to be found among 'literaire thrillers' in bookshops. Therefore one of Meyer's novels was chosen for analysis. In this study the ways in which suspense is created in a narrative text is investigated. Proteus, a literary thriller, was chosen for its handling of characters and events in the transition in South Africa from an apartheid state to a democratic dispensation. This poses an intricate challenge for the writer. The reseach problem posed is this: How is literary suspense created in a narrative text? The creation of suspense in a narrative text has to do with literary communication. For this reason Roman Jakobson's well-known model for literary communication is at the basis of this research. Rene Appel's criteria for the creation of suspense in narrative texts, as it is explained in his work Spanning in verhalen: Over het schrijven van spannende boeken (2007), is also part of this study at its theoretical base. Various relevant sources have been included in this regard. In this formalistic study various elements pertaining to suspense in the narrative are part of the research in terms of isolating the ways in which suspense is produced in a narrative text in general and specifically in the case of Proteus. Also in this regard the novel's literarity is discussed. / South Africa

This thesis re-engages the work of the distinguished literary critic, Geoffrey H. Hartman as a means of interpreting postmodern literature. Contemporary literary criticism has acknowledged the value of Hartman’s work in thinking about contemporary culture but, until now, there have not been any attempts to apply his interpretative methods to the reading of postmodern fiction. By identifying some of Hartman’s main concerns and drawing on his revisions of his theory, this thesis offers a case study of a selection of postmodern texts, which are characteristic of the challenges that postmodern literature presents. The postmodern literary text becomes challenging for literary interpretation through its extreme experimentation and by textually transgressing traditional forms of narration. The postmodern text’s incorporation of images, its attention and use of assonance, and its itinerate, indiscriminate assemblage of diverse creative expressions complicates the interpretive task. I aim to show how Hartman’s critical contribution can inform the reading of the postmodern text but also, how the consideration of the postmodern highlights the significance of Hartman’s theoretical work. I begin by developing the complexities that the consideration of postmodern literature and Hartman’s critique present and relate the authors and texts that become the focus of this investigation in the chapters that follow. Chapter 2 considers the relationship of the postmodern text to its use of illustrations and images and explores what this relationship manifests for the nature of the postmodern. Chapter 3 draws on Hartman’s understanding of literary interpretation as the listening for different meanings of the word, with particular attention to the typographical manifestations of the dissemination of meaning in the creation of the postmodern novel. Chapter 4 examines the implications of the postmodern rejection of iii modernist concerns, in literary interpretation and postmodern theory and the effects of the postmodern condition on the development of identity and historical consciousness. Chapter 5 focuses more closely on the problems of narrative orientation and direction that develop through typographical experimentation and relates these concerns to the challenge of following Hartman’s intellectual progressions in his critical contributions. The final chapter of this thesis explores the nature and role of the contemporary critical essay in the postmodern condition and the future of literature.

This thesis analyses answers to prayer in Chaucer’s works. It contextualises this analysis through attention to late-medieval devotion, arguing that Chaucer uses petitionary prayer both to explore important themes, such as the injustice of suffering innocence, and to challenge elements of contemporary religious practice. Chapter One explores petitionary prayer in theory, teaching, and lay practice, proving that late-medieval understandings of prayer’s effectiveness are varied, contradictory, and at times problematic. Two of Chaucer’s dream visions, 'The Book of the Duchess' and 'The House of Fame', feature in the second chapter, which demonstrates that answers to prayer in these texts fulfil a dual function, operating both as literary device and as the means through which Chaucer examines themes of profound importance which recur throughout his works. Chapter Three addresses conflicting prayers in two romances, arguing that Chaucer uses answered prayer in 'The Knight’s Tale' to obliquely critique the weaponisation of prayer in contemporary Christian society, inviting a focus on human responsibility for conflict, and that this emphasis on agency is continued through relegating the role of prayer in 'The Franklin’s Tale'. Chapter Four analyses the divergent discourses surrounding prayer in the hagiographic tales, concluding that the extent to which the narratorial voice faithfully represents the answers to the hagiographic subject’s prayers depends on the didactic purpose expressed. The final chapter examines the unanswered and unanswerable prayers of 'Troilus and Criseyde', arguing that Chaucer offers the poem’s Trinitarian conclusion and a poetic recreation of the Boethian conception of time in response to the problems posed by these prayers. This thesis demonstrates that, rather than operating as a mere device for advancing plots, petitionary prayer provides Chaucer with a powerful tool with which to pursue several philosophical and theological issues at the heart of his writing.

The present study focuses on the analysis of the changes of Franz Kafka's reception in the Czech context before World War II, i. e. on the analysis of Czech translations and critical reflections in Czech language of his works. The study is divided into two symmetrical (in time) parts: the first one focuses on Kafka's reception in his lifetime (1909-1922), the second one on the reception after his death (1924-1939). In the first part, translations of Kafka's office publications are analyzed in the context of their origin, Kafka's part (as an author) in the formation of the original texts as a source for their translation and set in the context of his belletristic works; in the prosopographically oriented analysis the aim is further focused on the reception of Kafka's belletristic texts in his lifetime and on different strategies of translation by authors who translated his texts into Czech during his lifetime (Milena Jesenská, Milena Illová, Jaroslav Dohnal), Kafka's responses and how they are reflected in his work. The analysis in the second part is structured mainly according to the tendencies of reception whose focus shifts gradually from expressionist to surrealistic interpretations; the analysis of gradual changes of Kafka's image in the Czech press which reflects the changing reception of his...

This thesis considers literary and critical reverberations of environment and place in order to reframe conceptions of what nature might mean for contemporary poetry. It attends to the timeframe of 1990 – present, assessing how developments in socio-political context and critical thought correspond or conflict with poetic responses. The interdisciplinary reach of the thesis brings together literary geography and ecocriticism, both of which established their roots during this period, putting conventional understandings of place and environment under pressure. The approach encourages a geographical attention to socio-cultural concerns whilst maintaining critical awareness of recent ecocritical focus on materiality, emphasising the potentially productive friction between cultural representation and physical reality. The thesis responds to earlier Romantic paradigms, granting marginalised contemporary poetry a stronger critical agency whilst still accepting the transformations and metamorphoses of literary convention. Taking a thematic approach, each chapter engages with key binaries found in environmental and geographical thinking to reveal how contemporary poetics unsettle and challenge such dualisms. The study looks at the work of twelve writers: Thomas A. Clark, John Burnside, Alec Finlay, Roy Fisher, Philip Gross, Barry MacSweeney, Robert Minhinnick, Alice Oswald, Frances Presley, Jo Shapcott and Zoë Skoulding. As a result, it compares and contrasts the poets’ engagements with the key threads in the thesis, suggesting that contemporary poetry of place and environment is united through its recognition of the paradox or gap between the material world and linguistic representation. Ultimately, the thesis concludes that contemporary poetry of environment and place is deliberately unstable, as it metamorphoses forms, modes and legacies, encouraging an understanding of such work as simultaneously responsive to and yet distinct from conventional paradigms of nature poetry.

The beginning section of this thesis named Current Trends in the French Children's Literature is focused on a terminology concerning key theoretical terms in children's literature. Further content is focused on the history of children's literature, including a brief overview of the period and examples of the key works. There is a list of Major international and French literary prizes given to authors of children's books. The complex relationship between author and reader was also examined. The next part of the thesis is primarily focused on a literary analysis of three French novels for teenagers published at the beginning of the 21st century: Toby Alone by Timothée de Fombelle, La vie, en gros by Mikaël Ollivier and Oscar and the Lady in Pink by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt. Emphasis is put not only on basic characteristics of contemporary children's literature but also on the singularity of these literary works. The problems of literary translation from French into a quite other language are covered in the final part of the thesis. The translator has to move a literary text into the target language and carry the distinctive character of a work, its idioms and tone. KEYWORDS children's literature, the reader, reading, the reception of the literary work, literary prizes in France, international literary...

The diploma thesis deals with the introduction and subsequent implementation of eleven activities focusing on The Education of Little Tree by Forrest Carter. The three-day literary- educational project had been carried out with pupils attending a primary school. The thesis is divided into two parts - theoretical and practical. The theoretical part is concerned with the meaning of literary education aspect of the educational field Czech Language and Literature and discusses the timeless validity of Komensky's educational principles to which education professionals still refer to today. Furthermore, it focuses on the level of integration of literary education into Czech educational programmes, description of the expected outcomes and educational content as well as the key competencies related to this educational field. It describes the meaning and different ways in which a literary work can be interpreted. Finally, it demonstrates the importance of the creativity development in literary education. The main focus of this thesis lies on the practical part which introduces the literary-educational project. The aim of the project is to present the book to pupils through various engaging activities in order for them to understand the intended meaning of the story. Each activity description includes the...