My dissertation offers a new look at how women authors used popular genres to negotiate their economic, artistic, and sexual autonomy, as well as their national and imperial identities, in the context of the changes brought by modernity. As medical science and popular media attempted to delineate women’s sexual natures, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Winifred Holtby, Kate O’Brien, and Molly Keane created narratives which challenged not only psychoanalytic proscriptions about the need for sexual satisfaction, but traditional ideas about women’s inherent modesty. They absorbed, revised, and occasionally rejected outright the discourses of sexology in order to advocate a more diffuse sensuality; for these writers, adventure, travel, independence, creativity, and love between women provided satisfactions as rich as those ascribed to normative heterosexuality. I identify a history of queer sexuality in both Irish and English contexts, one which does not conform to emergent lesbian identity while still exceeding the limits of heteronormativity. / text

The thesis consists of the novel, Stargate Atlantis: Exogenesis (Whitelaw and Christensen, 2006a) and an accompanying exegesis. The novel is a stand-alone tie-in novel based on the television series Stargate Atlantis (Wright and Glassner), a spin-off series of Stargate SG-1 (Wright and Cooper) derived from the movie Stargate (Devlin and Emmerich, 1994). Set towards the end of the second season, Stargate Atlantis: Exogenesis begins with the discovery of life pods containing the original builders of Atlantis, the Ancients. The mind of one of these Ancients, Ea, escapes the pod and possesses Dr. Carson Beckett. After learning what has transpired in the 10,000 years since her confinement, the traumatised Ea releases an exogenesis machine to destroy Atlantis. Ea dies, leaving Beckett with sufficient of her memories to reveal that a second machine, on the planet Polrusso, could counter the effects of the first device. When the Atlantis team travel to Polrusso, what they discover has staggering implications not only for the future of Atlantis but for all life in the Pegasus Galaxy. The exegesis argues that both science and science fiction narrate the dissolution of ontological structures, resulting in cognitive estrangement. Fallacy writers engage in the same process and use the same themes and tools as science fiction writers to resolve cognitive estrangement: they technologise mythology. Consequently, the distinction between fact and fiction, history and myth, is blurred. The exegesis discusses cognitive estrangement, mythology, the process of technologising mythology and its function as a novum that facilitates the resolution of cognitive estrangement in both fallacy and science fiction narratives. These concepts are then considered in three Stargate tie-in novels, with particular reference to the creative work, Stargate Atlantis: Exogenesis.

Doctor of Philosophy(PhD) / This study investigates the poetic foundation of David Malouf’s poetry and prose published from 1960 to 1982. Its purpose is to extend reading strategies so that the nature of his poetic and its formative influence are more fully appreciated. Its thesis is that Malouf explores and tests with increasing confidence and daring a poetic imagination that he believes must meet the demands of the times. Malouf’s work is placed in relation to Wallace Stevens’ belief that the poetic imagination should “push back against the pressure of reality”, a view discussed by Seamus Heaney in “The Redress of Poetry”. The surprise of the poetic as “unpredicted aesthetic value” (García-Berrio, 1989) is significant to his purposes and techniques, as it creates idea-images and feeling-values (Jung, 1921) that bring together apparently opposite ways of knowing the world. In seeking to represent the meeting of inner and outer perceptions, Malouf’s work shows the influence not only of Stevens but also Rilke and contemporary American poetry of “deep image”. The Australian context of Malouf’s work is considered in relation to Judith Wright’s essay “The Writer and the Crisis” and the poetry of Malouf’s contemporaries. Details of the manuscript development of his first four novels show Malouf’s steps towards a clearer representation of his holistic, post-romantic vision. His correspondence with the poet Judith Rodriguez provides useful insights into his purposes. Theories and research about brain functions, the nature of intelligence and learning provide an important international context in the 1960s and 1970s, given Malouf’s interest in how meaning forms from perception and experience. Jean Piaget’s view of intelligence and David Kolb’s theory of experiential learning (1984) offer frameworks for reading Malouf that have not yet been considered. The thesis offers a model of poetic learning that highlights the interplay of dialectically opposed ways of forming meaning and points to the importance for Malouf of holding diverse states of mind together through the poetic imaginary.

This study explores the triple imbrications of race, power and gender in the selected novels of Bessie Head. A critical analysis of Maru (1971) and A Question of' Power (1974) is undertaken with a view to identifying the subordinating and the marginalising tropes that result in silencing of female subjectivities in Head's protagonists. Linked to a critical reading of the novels, this study examines the role of cultural and psychological forces in maintaining patriarchal hegemony, which is based upon hierarchy and domination of women rather than equality. Furthennore, this dissertation suggests that Head's depiction of narrow ethnic and racial bigotry serves a broader etiological purpose of accounting for "the state of thingsff within the South African context. Thus this study oscillates between the abstract constructs and the concrete social experiences within which Bessie Head's literary imagination subsists. In this study, particular attention is paid, in addition to critiques of individual texts, to some of Head's biographical elements with a view on the one hand, to highlighting the moments, events and issues which are reflected as " contexts of her-story" and on the other, to amplifying how Head's formative experiences contribute to her critique of the exploitative racially structured narratives. By using Foucault's theories within the social constructionist model, this dissertation aims to demonstrate the insidious intersections between racism and sexism and how these constructs are implicated in the conception and construction of power. Specifically, this study argues that due to their arbitrary applications, racial and sexual difference be viewed as dynamic and contested, rather than fixed. A synthesis is reached which accords literarure a role within the framework of socio-cultural practice in general. / English Studies / M.A. (English)

xi, 236 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / Writers in the Caribbean, like writers throughout the postcolonial world, return to colonial texts to rewrite the myths that justified and maintained colonial control. Exemplary of a widespread, regional phenomenon that begins at mid-century, writers such as Aimé Césaire and George Lamming take up certain texts such as Shakespeare's The Tempest and recast them in their own image. Postcolonial literary theory reads this act of rewriting the canon as a political one that speaks back to power and often advocates for political and cultural independence. Towards the end of the twentieth century and at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Caribbean women writers begin a new wave of rewriting that continues in this tradition, but with certain differences, not least of which is a focused attention to gender and sexuality and to the literary legacies of romance. In the dissertation I consider a number of novels from throughout the region that rewrite the romance, including Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), Maryse Condé's La migration des coeurs (1995), Mayra Santos-Febres's Nuestra señora de la noche (2006), and Dionne Brand's In Another Place, Not Here (1996). Romance, perhaps more than any other literary form, exerts an allegorical force that exceeds the story of individual characters. The symbolic weight of romance imagines the possibilities of a social order--a social order dependent on the sexual behavior of its citizens. By rewriting the romance, Caribbean women reconsider the sexual politics that have linked women with metaphorical constructions of the nation while at the same time detailing the extent to which transnational forces, including colonization, impact the representation of love and desire in literary texts. Although ultimately these novels refuse the generic requirements of the traditional resolution for romance (the so-called happy ending), they nonetheless gesture towards a reordering of community and a revised notion of kinship that recognizes the weight of both gendered and sexual identities in the Caribbean. / Committee in charge: Karen McPherson, Chairperson, Romance Languages; David Vazquez, Member, English; Tania Triana, Member, Romance Languages; Judith Raiskin, Outside Member, Womens and Gender Studies

x, 195 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / This dissertation explores two subgenres of popular romance fiction that emerge in the 1990s: "corporate" and "paranormal" romance. While the formulaic conventions of popular romance have typically centralized the gendered tension between hero and heroine, this project reveals that "corporate" and "paranormal" romances negotiate a new primary conflict, the tension between work and home in the era of global capitalism. Transformations in political economy also occur at the level of personal and emotional life, which constitute the central problem that contemporary romances attempt to resolve. Drawing from sociological studies of globalization and intimacy, feminist criticism, and queer theory, I argue that these subgenres mark the transition from what David Harvey calls Fordist capitalism to flexible or global capitalism as the primary social condition negotiated in the popular romance. My analysis demonstrates that corporate and paranormal romance novels reflect changing ideals about intimacy in a globalized world that is increasingly influenced, socially and culturally, by the values and philosophies that dominate the marketplace. Each of these subgenres offers a distinct formal resolution to the cultural and social effects of a flexible capitalist economy. The "corporate" romances of Jayne Ann Krentz, Nora Roberts, Elizabeth Lowell, and Katherine Stone feature heroines who constantly navigate the dual and intersecting arenas of work and home in an effort to locate a balance that leads to success and happiness in both realms. In contrast, the "paranormal" romances of Laurell K. Hamilton, Charlaine Harris, Kelley Armstrong, and Carrie Vaughn dissolve the tension between home and work, or the private and the public, by affirming the heroine's open and endless pursuit of pleasure, adventure, and self-fulfillment. Such new forms of romantic fantasy at once reveal the tension in globalization and the domination of corporate and masculinist values that the novels hope to overcome. / Committee in charge: David Leiwei Li, Chair; Mary Elene Wood; Cynthia H. Tolentino; Jiannbin L. Shiao

Text in Afrikaans / Hoewel die retorika bykans 26 eeue oud is, word die relevansie daarvan vir ons eie tyd toenemend besef - as 'n sleutel tot die wyse waarop mense dinkargumenteer en oorreed. Hierdie studie ondersoek retoriese (oorredende) strategiee in Afrikaanse historiese romantekste, binne 'n historiese konteks en teen die agtergrond van eietydse historiografiese insigte. Die aspekte van die kommunikasiesituasie wat saamhang met die retorika, word verbind met die vernuwende denke daaroor binne die hedendaagse literatuurteorie en historiografie. Die konteks van die outeur en roman word telkens bestudeer, gevolg deur 'n retoriese analise. Aristoteles se idees oor die retorika kry hierby voorrang, vanwee sy nadruk op die inventio of vinding, maar die retorika word eerder geassosieer met 'n dinamiese metode as met rigiede kategorisering. Aandag word veral bestee aan retoriese strategies in S.J. du Toit se Di koningin fan Skeba (1898) en Andre P. Brink se Houd-den-bek (1982), maar ook aan resente historiese romans wat hedendaagse historiografiese en retoriese opvattinge en konvensies ontgin en problematiseer. Beide S.J. du Toit, wat kennelik 'n goeie kennis van die antieke retorika gehad het en Andre P. Brink, met sy romanonderwerp wat aansluit by die geregtelike rede, betree die retoriese terrain op sodanige wyse dat hul romans tipiese produkte van hul eie tyd genoem kan word. Beide die geskiedskrywing en die historiese roman is gemedieerde weergawes, gekenmerk deur 'n subjektiewe seleksie (inventio) van gegewens en die kombinasie daarvan binne eie verbale strukture (dispositio). Dit kan in verband gebring word met nie-tegniese oorredingsmiddele, waar die sender sy informasie van buite kry. Hy gebruik dan sogenaamde empiries-verifieerbare feite as retoriese strategie ten einde 'n waarheids- en I of werklikheidsillusie te skep wat bydra tot die roman se oorredingsskrag. Die keuse vir die skryf van 'n historiese roman, impliseer reeds ook 'n keuse vir die bakens van die geskiedskrywing, maar 'n skeppende skrywer is, anders as 'n historikus, eties vry om nie-tegniese bewysmiddele te transformeer tot tegniese bewysmiddele, in aanpassing by 'n nuutgeskepte argumentatio en 'n eie causa. Na aanleiding van die tekste kom die ontvanger op sy beurt tot 'n eie seleksie en skep sy eie kousale en argumentatiewe strukture / While rhetoric has been part of the history of mankind for nearly 26 centuries, it is increasingly regarded as extremely relevant for our time - as a key to the way in which people think, argue and persuade. This study investigates rhetorical (persuasive) strategies in Afrikaans historical novels. The novels and their authors are first situated in their historical contexts and against the background of contemporary historiographical inquiry, and then analyzed by means of rhetorical concepts. Aspects of communication, which coincide with rhetorical categories, are combined with recent developments in the field of literary theory and historiography. Aristotle's views on persuasion and rhetoric are used as point of departure, but rhetoric is regarded as a dynamic method rather than a rigid categorization. Attention is given to rhetorical strategies in the novel Di konlngin fan Skeba [The queen of Sheba] by S.J. du Toit (1898) and Andre P. Brink's Houd-denbek [translated into English by the author as A chain of voices], but also to recent Afrikaans historical novels which exploit contemporary historiographical and rhetorical conventions. In S.J. du Toit's novel (which illustrates his knowledge of ancient rhetoric) as well as Andre P. Brink's (where the topic can be linked to litigation) rhetorical strategies are employed in such a manner that their texts can be regarded as products of their historical contexts. Both historiography and historical novels are mediated representations, characterized by a subjective selection (inventio) of data and its combination in verbal structures (dispositio). This can be related to 'extrinsic' or 'inartificial' proofs, which are not contrived by the author. The author exploits the so-called empirically verifiable facts as rhetorical strategies to create an illusion of truth or verisimilitude, which greatly contributes to the persuasiveness of the novel. The decision to write a historical novel implies a choice to keep to the historical 'facts', but the writer, in contrast to the historiographer, is ethically free to transform the inartificial proofs into artificial proofs, in combination with his own invented argumentatio and causa. Prompted by these texts the reader, in his turn, makes his own selection and creates his own causal and argumentative structures / Afrikaans and Theory of Literature / D. Litt. et Phil. (Afrikaans)

Summaries in Afrikaans and English / Apartheid het die oorgrote meerderheid Suid-Afrikaners se lewens onherroeplik beinvloed. Dit is daarom te verstane dat dit in die Suid-Afrikaanse literatuur, insluitende die Engelse Suid-Afiikaanse jeugliteratuur, neerslag gevind het. Ten einde die studie in konteks te plaas, word in die eerste drie hoofstukke 'n historiese oorsig van die apartheidsera, Engelse Suid-Afrikaanse volwasse literatuur, en Engelse Suid-Afrikaanse kinderen jeugliteratuur, gegee. Die hoofgedeelte van die studie word vervolgens bespreek, en is in die volgende drie hoofstukke verdeel: • Die uitbeelding van sosio-ekonomiese toestande gedurende die apartheidsera, soos byvoorbeeld van afsonderlike woongebiede en aparte openbare geriewe. • Die uitbeelding van die onderwystoestande, veral van die Bantoe-onderwysbeleid. • Die uitbeelding van die veiligheidsmagte (polisie en weermag), insluitende die beeld van hierdie magte in die bree gemeenskap. Ten slotte word verskillende ooreenkomste wat na vore gekom bet in die bestudeerde Engelse Suid-Afrikaanse jeugromans waarin apartheid uitgebeeld word, bespreek. Daar word ook gekyk na die waarde van hierdie jeugromans. / Apartheid had a irrevocably influence on the lives of the majority of people in South Africa. Therefore it is understandable that it would be portrayed in South African literature, including the English South African youth literature. To put the subject in context, the first three chapters ofthe thesis deal with a historical overview of the apartheidera; South African English adult literature; and South African English children's literature. The main part of the thesis has been divided as follows: • The portrayal of socio-economic conditions, e.g. separate residential areas and public amenities. • The portrayal of the education situation, especially the Black Education policy. • The portrayal of the security forces (police and army), including the images of these forces in the broader community. To conclude the thesis, similarities in the youth novels portraying apartheid are discussed. The value of these youth novels is also looked into. / Information Science / M. Inf.

Text in Afrikaans / Hierdie studie is 'n herskepping van die wereld van die Afrikaanse roman van 1934-1939. Al die romans is bekom en gelees. Die beskikbaarheid van hierdie romans word aangedui. 'n Sketsmatige beeld van elke roman word gegee, waarin die aard daarvan aangetoon word ten opsigte van die volgende aspekte: milieu, tema en konflik (moreel, religieus, maatskaplik, polities). Die lotgevalle van hierdie romans is nagegaan aan die hand van tydgenootlike resepsiegeskiedenis, sowel as die van die literatuurgeskiedskrywing tot op hede. Hieruit het dit geblyk dat sekere romans aanvanklik hoog aangeslaan is, maar nie in die kanon opgeneem is nie. Moontlike redes hiervoor word ondersoek. Na my oordeel verdien Die loutering van Petrus deur Ella Fischer en Die jare daarna deur Aletta Steyn 'n herbesoek. Albei romans is boeiend en interessant, die karakters "lewe" en dit wat hul beleef en ervaar, spreek steeds tot die leser van die negentigerjare / This study is a recreation of the world of the Afrikaans novel of 1934-1939. All the novels were obtained and read. The availability of these novels is indicated. A schematic account of each novel is given, in which the nature of each is explicated in respect of the following aspects: milieu, theme and conflict (moral, religious, social and political). The fate of these novels was researched in the context of their contemporary reception history and that of literary historiography to date. From the study it appears that certain novels were initially highly acclaimed, but were not included in the canon. Possible reasons for this are investigated. It is my opinion that Die loutering van Petrus by Ella Fischer and Die }are daarna by Aletta Steyn need to be re-evaluated. Both novels are absorbing and interesting, the characters are lifelike and their life experiences are still relevant to the reader of the nineties / Afrikaans and Theory of Literature / M.A. (Afrikaans)

The thesis of this study is that indigenous Tsonga literature forms a valid and authoritative commentary on missionary Christianity. In this study, the value of literary works by selected Tsonga writers is explored in three basic directions: (a) as a commentary on missionary Christianity, (b) as a source of and challenge to missiology, and (c) as a source of a Black missiology of 1 i berat ion. The momentous intervention of Swiss missionaries amongst the Vatsonga, through the activities of the Swiss Mission in South Africa (SMSA) must be granted. Similarly, its abiding influence formerly in the Tsonga Presbyterian Church (TPC), now the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in South Africa (EPCSA), the Vatsonga in general and Tsonga literature in particular must be recognized. But our missiological task is to problematise and explore both missionary instrumentality and local responses variously and creatively. The first chapter introduces the thesis, central issues of historiography and ideology as well as an introductory history of the SMSA. In the second chapter, the commentary of Tsonga writers through the media of historical and biographical works on missionary Christianity is sketched. Selected Tsonga novels become the object of inquiry in the third chapter. The novels come very close to a direct evaluation of missionary Christianity. They contain commentary on a wide variety of issues in mission. The fourth chapter concentrates on two Tsonga plays and a number of Tsonga poems. In the one play, missionary Christianity is likened to garments that are too sho· ~' whilst in the other, missionary Christianity is contemptuously ignored and excluded - recognition granted only to the religion and gods of the Vatsonga. The fifth and final chapter contains the essential commentary of indigenous Tsonga literature on missionary Christianity as well as the implications for both global and local missiology. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D. Th. (Missiology)