The main purpose of this study is to discuss Yvonne Vera‟s representation of various aspects of women‟s identity in a patriarchal and colonial context as they manifest themselves through the women‟s relationships. I explore ways in which the question of self for some of Vera‟s women seems characterised by marginalisation across racial, cultural, ethnic and generational divides. The short stories and novel studied seem to emphasise that for women, under patriarchy and colonialism in Zimbabwe, seeking an independent and fulfilling identity seems to be interpreted as defying society‟s expectations and dictates. However, even as Vera tells of the various women‟s failure to make breakthroughs, she points at a less gender- inflexible future where both men and women will be valued for their true worth, and not their mere biology, through foregrounding the women‟s stories as they challenge and subvert their societies‟ received norms, traditions and values. / English / M.A. (English)

Summaries in English and Afrikaans / Text in Afrikaans / Die boek Job verwerp vergelding as enigste verklaringsbeginsel van goed en kwaad, maar sluit vergelding en beloning nie heeltemal uit nie: Onmiddellike straf op sonde is onversoenbaar met God se genade, maar indien daar volhard word in kwaad, sal God dit uiteindelik straf net soos Hy uiteindelik die goeie beloon. Die klem op 'n histories-kritiese uitleg van die boek Job, het in die verlede daartoe gelei dat die moontlike literere eenheid van die boek dikwels uit die oog verloor is. Hoewel die boek sander enige twyfel saamgestel is uit verskillende bronne, impliseer dit nie noodwendig dat die auteur nie sy bronne tot 'n sinvolle geheel gei'ntegreer het nie. Die boek Job toon tekens dat dit hoofsaaklik die werk van een auteur was wat sy. bron(ne) net as 'n vertrekpunt gebruik het, maar nogtans 'n heeltemal nuwe werk gekomponeer het met 'n basiese eenheid in struktuur en inhoud. Histories-kritiese eksegete beskou gewoonlik die redevoerings met die drie vriende en die Godsrede as 'n eenheid, maar beskou die raamvertelling en die Elihu-rede as afsonderlike bronne met 'n eie siening van die teodisee-probleem. Die boek Job moet egter as 'n literere-eenheid verstaan word, met 'n enkele geintegreerde standpunt oor die teodisee-probleem. Die raamvertelling kan in sy huidige vorm slegs in samehang met die poetiese deel verstaan word en hied nie 'n afsonderlike siening oor die teodisee-probleem nie. Die Elihu-karakter vervul 'n antler funksie in die boek as Job se drie vriende. Die Elihu-rede vorm 'n hegte eenheid met die res van die boek en hied 'n inleiding tot die Godsrede. Die Godsrede kan gebruik word as 'n samevatting van die Job-auteur se standpunt oor die teodisee-probleem. / The book Job rejects retribution and reward as the only principle for explaining good and evil, but acknowledges it's existence: Immediate punishment for sinning can not be reconciled with the love of God, but repeated wrongdoing will ultimately be punished by God, just as the good will be rewarded. In the past the emphasis on a historical critical explanation of the book Job, possibly caused that the literary entity of the book was overlooked. Even though the book is definitely compounded from different sources, it doesn't necessarily mean that the author did not integrate these sources to a meaningful entity. There are certain aspects in the book that indicate that the book was written by one author who used his source(s) as a basis, from which he created a new narrative. In this new creation, the contents and structure of all parts form a basic entity. Historical critical exegetes usually see the speeches of Job's three friends and the Lords' Speeches as an entity. The framework and the Elihu speeches though, are seen as coming from different sources with it's own view on the problem of theodicy. The book Job must, however, be seen as a litermy entity with one integral viewpoint on the problem of theodicy. Although Elihu plays a different role from that of the three friends of Job, his speeches are tightly interwoven with the rest of this book and he can be seen as the forerunner of the Speeches of the Lord. The Speeches of the Lord can be used as a summary of the author's viewpoint on the problem of theodicy. / Th.D.(Old Testament)

Bakalauro darbo tyrimo objektas – Antano Vienuolio smulkioji proza. Analizuojami tokie kūriniai: „Grįžo“ (1908), „Išdukterė“ (1945), „Astronomas Šmukštaras“ (1950), „Samdinė Alena“ (1953), „Vėžys“. Paskutiniajame skyriuje remiamasi ir kitų kūrinių ištraukomis: „Vėlinių vakarą“ (1937), „Užkeiktieji vienuoliai“ (1943 – 1947), „Kruvinoji keršto uola“ (1906). Šio darbo tiriamoji problema ir akstinas tyrimui yra tai, kad daugiausiai Antano Vienuolio kūryba daugiausiai nagrinėta sovietiniu laikotarpiu. Verta pastebėti, kad sovietinė kritika iškelia svarbių tyrimo aspektų, rimtų įžvalgų ir nagrinėjimo vertų klausimų. Tačiau didelė dalis sovietinės kritikos yra jau pasenusi, nebeatitinka šių dienų aktualijų. Kita priežastis – tai trijų dešimtmečių pakeistas požiūris į aptariamojo autoriaus kūrybą. Antano Vienuolio kūryboje pastebimi nauji rakursai, naujos problemos. Todėl yra poreikis nagrinėti autoriaus kūrybą nauju žvilgsniu, gilinantis į patį tekstą, būnant nevaržomam sovietinių kanonų. Analizuojant ir interpretuojant kūrinius pasitelkiamas aprašomasis metodas. Tyrimo tikslas – ištirti jauno ir seno žmogaus vaizdavimą Antano Vienuolio smulkiojoje prozoje. Uždaviniai: išsiaiškinti, kaip vaizduojama jaunystės ir senatvės priešybė nagrinėtoje autoriaus kūryboje, išskirti jauno ir seno žmogaus vaizdavimo panašumus ir skirtumus ir nusakyti pasakotojo funkcijas bei pasakojimo skirtumus, pagal pasakotojo amžių. Įsigilinant į Antano Vienuolio tekstus rasta naujos tyrimo medžiagos:... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The object of bachelor thesis analysis – Antanas Vienuolis small prose. There are analysys of texts: „Grįžo“ (1908), „Išdukterė“ (1945), „Astronomas Šmukštaras“ (1950), „Samdinė Alena“ (1953), „Vėžys“. Paskutiniajame skyriuje remiamasi ir kitų kūrinių ištraukomis: „Vėlinių vakarą“ (1937), „Užkeiktieji vienuoliai“ (1943 – 1947), „Kruvinoji keršto uola“ (1906). The problem of analysis is that the most Antanas Vienuolis prose were studying on soviet period. Soviet critics noticed important aspects, major insight and worthy of research questions. But most of soviet criticism are allready aged and are not topical. The other reason – there is a new position to authors prose changed by three decades. There are noted new angles, new problematic in Antanas Vienuolis works. It is important to analyse authors prose by new look, to go to the text, being independent from soviet canons. There are used tyrimo methods like analysis, interpretation and descriptive. The aim of bachelor thesis – to explore young and the old man representation in Antanas Vienuolis small prose. Tasks: explore how youth and old age portrayed opposite in author‘s works. Distinguish young and old man differences and similarities, describe the functions of the narrator under his age. The focus on Antanas Vienuolis texts were found in the new study materials: observed the changing role of the author, works of poetry and the semantic relationship, new interpretations of characters pictures. It is noticed that... [to full text]

This study examines trauma, particularly in the thematic contexts of the individual and the community as reflected in her novels Sula, Song of Solomon, and Beloved. By utilizing the specific theoretical modes of new historicism and trauma theory, the veil of double consciousness imposed on African Americans is explicated and exposes various forms of trauma in the individual and the community. The unspoken atrocities experienced as a result of slavery, Jim Crow, and physical and sexual violence in many of Morrison’s novels, suggest the common thread of trauma. The particular traumas depicted in Morrison’s novels Sula, Song of Solomon, and Beloved, damage agency, lead to detachment and paralysis in the individual. The scope of this study is limited to the novels Sula, Song of Solomon, and Beloved as they best illustrate trauma in Morrison’s characters and the damage it causes to agency, leading to detachment and paralysis in the individual. The literary theories of new historicism and psychoanalysis provide cultural and literary context for the novels and allow for a deeper rendering of the characteristics of trauma and provide the context for the term dynamic trauma. of oppression as a mean of dysfunction in the thematic These novels reveal a pathology of trauma disguised as normalcy in the African American community, which leads to disrupted lives, relationships, and communities. Morrison not only depicts these dysfunctional behaviors due to traumatic circumstances but also offers a remedy for the dysfunction—acceptance without acquiescence.

This investigation attempts to uncover a unity of both meaning and technique as reflected in eight of Katherine Anne Porter's best known and most characteristic stories-- "Old Mortality," "Noon Wine," "Pale Horse, Pale Rider," "Flowering Judas," "A Day's Work," "The Cracked Looking-Glass," "He," and "Holiday." An analysis of each story reveals that the core of Katherine Anne Porter's work is a "delicate balancing of rival considerations" specifically and deliberately designed to reveal to the reader the complexity and ambiguity of any situation or human relationship. The ambiguity within her stories is therefore deliberate. The final chapter, "The Open End and the Acceptance of Paradox," asserts that Katherine Anne Porter's technique is determined not by her classical conception of literary form, but by her philosophy of life.

The thesis highlights the literary-critical work of Jan Lopatka in the context of his personal library. It is a literary-historical and critical description of his work by characterizing and defining thematic blocks, which Lopatka systematically pursued in his personal library. It centers on a comparison of the significance of his work and pinpoints defined blocks in Lopatka's library fund and their significance in his literary criticism. Based on a complete inventory of his personal library (prepared by the author of this thesis) and its knowledge, research characterizes his work mainly from this perspective. Attention will also be paid to manuscripts, typescripts and notes in his books.

This thesis reads the fiction and poetry of Spokane/Coeur d’Alene writer Sherman Alexie as predominantly urban Indian literature. The primary experience of the growing majority of American Indians in the twenty-first century consists in the various threats and opportunities presented by urban living, yet contemporary criticism of literature by (and about) American Indians continues to focus on the representations of life for those tribally enrolled American Indians living on reservations, under the jurisdiction of tribal governments. This thesis provides critical responses to Alexie’s contemporary literary representations of those Indians living apart from tribal lands and the communities and traditions contained therein. I argue that Alexie’s multifaceted representations of Indians in the city establish intelligible urban voices that speak across tribal boundaries to those urban Indians variously engaged in creating diverse Indian communities, initiating new urban traditions, and adapting to the anonymities and visibilities that characterise city living. The thesis takes a broadly linear chronological structure, beginning with Alexie’s first published collection of short stories and concluding with his most recent works. Each chapter isolates for examination a distinct aspect of Alexie’s urban Indian literature, so demonstrating a potential new critical methodology for reading urban Indian literatures. I open with a short piece explaining my position as a white, British scholar of the heavily politicised field of American Indian literary studies, before the introductory chapter positions Alexie in the wider body of Indian literatures and establishes the historical grounds for the aims and claims of my research. Chapter one is primarily concerned with the short story ‘Distances’, from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), and the Ghost Dance religion of the late nineteenth century, reading Alexie’s representations of this phenomenon as explorations of the historical and political tensions that divide those Indians living on tribal lands and those living in cities. Chapter two discusses the difficulties of maintaining a tribal identity when negotiating this divide towards the city, analysing the politics of indigenous artistic expression and reception in Alexie’s first novel, Reservation Blues (1995). Alexie’s second novel, Indian Killer (1996), signals the relocation of his literary aesthetics to the city streets, and chapter three detects and unravels the anti-essentialist impulse in Alexie’s (mis)use of the distinctly urban mystery thriller genre. Grief, death and ritual are explored in chapter four, which focusses on selected stories from Ten Little Indians (2003), and explains Alexie’s characters’ need for new, urban traditions with reference to an ethics of grieving. Chapter five connects the politics of time travel to the representation of trauma in Flight (2007), and addresses Alexie’s representations of violence in Ten Little Indians and The Toughest Indian in the World (2000), proposing that it is the structural violences of daily life, rather than the murder and beatings found throughout his work, that leave lasting impressions on urban Indian subjectivities. My conclusion brings together my approaches to Alexie’s urban Indian literature, and suggests further areas for research.

A kind of poetry that tries to understand contemporary social and philosophical issues as much as behaviors by rewriting in a poetic language the video artwork of some of the main representatives of modernism and postmodernism. Such poetry is deprived of confessional hues, any personal reference has to be ascribed to a mirroring effect by which the single person empathically absorbs and projects what is conveyed, be it stemming directly from the historical time of the artwork's making and inherited, or alive at the time of its actual viewing. By following a restructuring process started at the beginning of the twentieth century, the writing analyzes possible ways to outline developments or to underline breaking points. Poetry is seen as an active medium within the formation of societies characterized as it is by its highly introspective power, not restricted to the individual but open to all beings perceived as members of one entity.

While most critics agree that Anton Chekhov is a funny writer and much critical commentary about his comedic techniques identifies how Chekhov is humorous, none examines why readers find him so. Using the tools of cognitive science, this paper explores the cognitive processes behind humor and narrative, as well as Chekhov’s exploitation of them for comical effect in his early short stories – namely the very concise and blatantly humorous “Kids,” “Grisha,” “Vanka,” and “At Home” – and uncovers, in these early writings, the origins of his celebrated and oft-imitated authorial legacy.

En s’intéressant aux écrits entourant l’histoire houleuse de la mouvance écoféministe, cette thèse dresse le portrait des différentes manifestations littéraires de l’écoféminisme contemporain en soutenant l’idée selon laquelle la critique littéraire constitue le cœur de cette mouvance, plutôt qu’une simple manifestation de celle-ci. La première partie de notre travail reprend l’histoire complexe de l’écoféminisme et de la critique littéraire écoféministe, depuis les années 1970 jusqu’à nos jours, en opérant une remise en contexte historique. Ceci permet d’aborder le problème de l’essentialisme souvent associé à l’écoféminisme en faisant apparaître la stérilité de ce débat au regard des évolutions que la mouvance peut apporter, d’une part, et, d’autre part, d’insister sur les racines (éco)féministes de l’écocritique. Notre seconde partie établit les grandes lignes d’une praxis écoféministe transversale, avant de se concentrer plus particulièrement sur la façon dont l’écocritique féministe articule le rapport au lieu, à la corporéité et le rapport au langage. Enfin, la troisième partie de la thèse porte sur l’objet d’étude de l’écocritique féministe : la littérature. Nous y proposons nos propres analyses écocritiques féministes d’une sélection de textes contemporains. La troisième partie offre ainsi une application concrète de la praxis écoféministe transversale à laquelle la seconde partie s’intéresse, afin d’illustrer notre point clef : la théorie sert à guider et informer la lecture, bien entendu, mais la littérature et la critique littéraire ont également alimenté et enrichi la pratique critique et l’activisme. / By focusing on the writings which have accompanied the ecofeminist movement’s heated history, this thesis offers an overview of the literary manifestations of contemporary ecofeminism and argues that literary criticism is in fact at the heart of the ecofeminist movement instead of being a mere manifestation of it. The first part of our work retraces the complex history of ecofeminism and feminist ecocriticism, from its beginnings in the 1970s to the present day, which puts it back into its historical context. This allows a closer look at the essentialist problem which is often associated with ecofeminism, this debate’s sterility appears by itself when one takes into account the changes that this movement can help establish from the one hand, and from the other, this allows us to concentrate on the (eco)feminists roots of ecocriticism. Our second part offers a broad outlining of a transversal ecofeminist praxis by unearthing ecocriticism’s feminist roots and by focusing on the way feminist ecocriticism deals with the sense of place, corporeality and its relationship towards language; three main themes of feminism and environmentalism of the past forty years. Finally, the third part of the thesis emphasizes the object of feminist ecocritical studies: literature. We offer our own feminist ecocritical analysis of a selection of contemporary texts. This allows for a practical use of the transversal ecofeminist praxis which our second part sheds light on and illustrates our main argument: theory is, indeed, useful to guide and inform a critical reading, but literature can also guide and inform critical practice and activism.