This is a study of the poetry of Don Maclennan in four chapters. Chapter One explores the poetry's deep involvement with the immediate world, and with the being that encounters it. Chapter Two examines the corpus's mistrust of abstract thought, and its suggestions for alternative ways of intepreting (or at least approaching an interpretation of) our existential situation. Chapter Three deals with Maclennan's writing on the subject of death, while the final chapter looks at the response of the poetry to the fact of death: put simply, this is to learn to love the situation we are in, and to record our thoughts for future generations, thus reaching beyond death to share with others the necessarily unique experience of our one and only life.

In this collection of free verse lyric poems I have drawn inspiration from childhood memories, as well as from the natural world and encounters with the people around me. Each poem focuses on a small moment, presenting an emotive portrait of a memory or an experience. These small moments lead, cumulatively, to deeper insights into myself and the world around me. The collection is divided into four seasons, in part because the work is strongly influenced by the natural world, but also because the progression of the seasons mirrors something of the personal journey reflected in the poems.

From the preface: Herrick was a prolific poet, and a remarkably consistent one. Hesperides encompasses a lifelong collection of poems on themes as diverse as serious reflections on life's brevity and the playful examination of the minutely imagined world of the fairies, yet his vision of life remains coherent. My purpose in this study is to try to see ·Herrick's secular work in its unity and as a whole, without claiming to consider every aspect of his secular poetry. (I have not attempted, for example, to consider his classical sources.) As my interest lies mainly in his values and vision, my emphasis is on theme and tone, and the way they indicate his conception of life. For this reason, I only occasionally consider Herrick's poetic techniques, such as his versification and language, and there are no detailed analyses of individual poems which examine them from every angle. In addition, I am almost entirely concerned here with Hesperides , the secular poetry, and not with Herrick's religious verse, which is collected under the title of His Noble Numbers. (Although Herrick calls his book Hesperides: or The Works both Humane and Divine, the arrangement within is clearly a division into Hesperides, the secular poetry, and His Noble Numbers, the religious verse.)

This thesis presents for the first time a critical reading edition of all known poems by N. H. Brettell. It makes no claim to being definitive, nor does it attempt to establish a final text. It represents merely the best thinking of the editor. Brettell printed and circulated his poetry primarily in hand-made illustrated volumes in a process reminiscent of the scribal publication of the seventeenth century. Only 137 of his 206 extant poems were commercially published during his lifetime. In this study all known printed versions of Brettell's poetry whether in privately printed or commercially published form were examined. All variant readings were recorded and are shown. Wherever possible the relationships between texts are also noted. The poems in this edition are ordered in each case according to the version in the latest datable privately produced collection. The commentary and critical introduction were compiled with the general reader in mind. No previous familiarity with southern African fauna and flora is assumed: animals, birds and insects are described and their scientific names supplied. Expressions current in ordinary British or South African English and present in non-specialist dictionaries are not glossed, but archaic and dialectal forms felt to require explication are briefly explained. So too are less familiar South African dialectal expressions which have been assimilated into the South African English lexicon. Intertextual, Christian and mythological references, both African and Western, are annotated in an attempt to make such references accessible to readers who may not share Brettell's cultural background. The intention is to close the changing distance between the text and the audience. An essay discussing the merits, potential and limitations of electronic scholarly editing is included as part of the textual introduction. A CD-Rom containing Brettell's watercolour illustrations in his privately produced collections and audio-clips of him reading his poetry accompanies this thesis.

Poetry, like every other form of art, reflects the values of the artist himself as well as the values of the age in which he lives. "I would say that the poet may write about anything provided that the thing matters to him to start with, for then it will bring with it into the poem the intellectual or moral significance which it has for him in life". (Louis MacNeice). This thesis sets out to uncover some of the things which, in the long pageant of English poetry, have "mattered" to poets to such an extent that they have felt compelled to voice their protest against any violation of such things perceived by them in life around them. The basic study has been a search for the different kinds of values and codes of conduct, in social, political and moral spheres, which have been unacceptable to some of the major poets in English, and to examine particularly the manner and the tone of voice in which each one has expressed his disapproval. "Poetry was the mental rattle that awakened the attention of intellect in the infancy of civil society." (T.L.Peacock). English poets who have protested against whatever they regarded as worthy of protest have continued up to the maturity of civil society to be rattles (some soft and mellow, others loud and harsh), to awaken both the intellect and the conscience of their readers.

This dissertation proposes that George Herbertʾs poetry may profitably be understood as a sacramental means by which the divine is made present in temporal existence. In order to support this claim, the relation between sacramental symbolism and literary symbolism, particularly Herbertʾs, is examined from a number of perspectives. The symbolic meanings suggested by Herbertʾs title (The Temple), and their relation to sacramentalism are considered in the opening chapter. This includes a consideration of some of the background to the analogical thinking prevalent in both the seventeenth-century and Herbert. It is followed in the second chapter by an examination of some of the modern theories about how literary symbolism may relate to sacramental symbolism, a discussion which is followed by a consideration of this dissertation's argument in relation to modern scholarship. The chapter ends with a reading of ʺThe Flowerʺ. The third chapter discusses the poet's attempt to imitate the divine by ʺcopyingʺ both Scripture and Nature, and this includes a consideration of the allegorical and hieroglyphic modes of thought prevalent in the poems. The concern with imitation encourages an examination of the poet's frequent invitation for God actually to assume the poet's role, and this is the subject of the fourth chapter. The argument suggests that the poet's attempt to ʺsacrificeʺ his own writing may be seen in his concern with corporate imagery and corporate (impersonal) structures. The five ʺAfflictionʺ poems are examined as examples of the first, while structures such as synecdoche and metonymy are examined as examples of the second. The final chapter considers aspects of narrative time in the poems, particularly the sense often evoked of the eternal being imminent in the present. This involves a consideration of both liturgical imagery, and what may be called liturgical structures as they can be seen to operate in the poems. Particular examples of the latter are the relation between the liturgical anamnesis and the poems, as well as certain narrative structures that may be called ʺachronisticʺ.

In this thesis I present a collection of semi-narrative poems about a rural Africa that is a place of folk-lore and tradition, but also a place of otherworldly, almost grotesque, incident. My characters are, similarly, range in type, from buskers, to guards, school-children, paupers and tycoons. Through the work a place that is both familiar and unknown, common-place and mysterious, emerge.

The concept of a distinctively South African poetry in English has been, and still is, derided as a "pipe dream" as part of the fallacy which stems from the desire for a "national" literature. In 1955, for instance, C.J. Harvey (in an article containing much common sense as well as sound literary judgment) denounced the self-conscious hunting for "Local Colour" which engrosses so many South African writers. Harvey claimed: "Our civilization is not "South African", except in trivial details, it is Western European, and more specifically as far as poetry written in English is concerned, English ... ". There is a serious error of emphasis here. It would be more accurate to say that our ancestors brought Western European civilization to this continent. To imagine that this civilisation has not undergone and is not still constantly suffering a subtle but far-reaching metamorphosis in Africa would be to fly in the face of reality. White South Africans do not only carry the same identity-card but they can be distinguished from Frenchmen, Englishmen or Irishmen by more than "trivial details". This thesis is an examination of some af the earliest English written in southern Africa, particularly of the verse produced by our poetasters and near-poets. It attempts, during the course of this examination, to call attention to a few of the more significant changes which have arisen as the result of the importation of Western civilsation to an African frontier. Further I hope to show some at the varying ways in which these differences affected the white pioneer and how this has been reflected in our verse since pioneering times. In this sense the Frontier may be thought of as the background against which South African English writers developed certain characteristic traits. Intro., p. 1-2.

Critical comment on Old English elegiac poetry is discussed from the following three standpoints: definition of the genre 'elegy'; interpretations of representative elegiac poems; stylistic analysis. The theories of critics are evaluated, with the aim of establishing the features of elegiac poetry in Old English and assessing the adequacy of critical coverage of them to date. Not many critics have attempted to define the Old English, elegy as a genre, and their definitions tend to be either too vague or too restrictive, needing to be qualified in a number of ways. However, it appears that the elegy in Old English is an abstract kind of poetry. It presents a state of mind rather than a specific person or event. In addition, there are certain recurrent features by which the genre can be defined. The elegy presents the viewpoint of an individual, usually in monologue form. It often contains structural elements which are conventionale. The typical themes of elegy are separation from a loved one, exile, banishment, the contrast between present desolation and past or absent happiness. These themes are associated with conventional descriptions, the recurrent features of which extend to quite small particulars of wording and imagery. Interpretations of the following elegiac poems are discussed: The Seafarer, The Wanderer, The Ruin, The Wife's Lament, The Husband's Message, Wulf and Eadwacer. Critical theories regarding these poems show, by and large, a change from considering them primitive and pagan (sometimes with Christian interpolations) to stressing their sophistication, unity, and essential Christianity. It is, on the whole, a change for the better, but the sophistication and the Christian element now tend to be overemphasised, especially by those critics who interpret the poems as allegories. Present interpretations show two main trends: a tendency to relate the poems to Latin influence, often patristic, and a movement towards closer investigation of the poems by internal evidence alone, without regard to sources and analogues. Stylistic studies have mostly considered Old English poetry as a whole, rather than any particular branch of it, but although the elegies employ the same formal devices as the rest of the poetry, they tend to handle them in a freer and more personal way. Also, the tendency of Old English poetry to use external description with a symbolic purpose is particularly shown in the elegies, which make an extensive use of natural description as a vehicle of mood. There has been a change in stylstic analysis similar to that in interpretation. Instead of regarding Old English poetry as unsophisticated, as earlier scholars tended to do, modern critics stress its subtlety and skilful integration, both structurally and syntactically. This change of attitude has affected criticism of the elegies, although the focus has not usually been specifically on them. The stylistic investigations which have shed most light on the elegy as a type have been the formulaic analyses. Apart from the formulaic studies, there has been little direct stylistic examination of elegiac poetry, and it is here that most remains to be done, as regards both formal devices and the looser patterns of imagery and description. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This study focuses on the praeceptor amoris, or teacher of love, as that persona appears in English poetry between 1500 and 1660. Some attention is given to the background, especially Ovid and his Art of Love. A study of the medieval praeceptor indicates that ideas of love took three main courses: a bawdy strain most evident in Goliardic verse and later in the libertine poetry of Donne and the Cavaliers; a short-lived strain of mutual affection important in England principally with Spenser; and the love known as courtly love, which is traced to England through Dante and Petrarch and which is the subject of most English love poetry. In England, the praeceptor is examined according to three functions he performs: defining love, propounding a philosophy about it, and giving advice. Through examining the praeceptor, poets are seen to define love according to the division between body and soul, with the tendency to return to older definitions in force since the troubadours. The poets as a group never agree what love is. Philosophies given by the praeceptor follow the same division and are physically or spiritually oriented. The rise and fall of Platonism in English poetry is examined through the praeceptor amoris who teaches it, as is the rise of libertinism. Shakespeare and Donne are seen to have attempted a reconciliation of the physical and spiritual. Advice, the major function of the praeceptor, is widely variegated. It includes moral suasion, advice on how to court, how to start an affair, how to maintain one, how to end one, and how to cure oneself of love. Advice also includes warnings. The study concludes that English poets stayed with older ideas of love but added new dimensions to the praeceptor amoris, such as adding definition and philosophical discussion to what Ovid had done. They also added to the use of persona as speaker, particularly with Donne's dramatic monologues.