Doctoral Degrees (English, Media and Performance Studies)

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The role of violence in the construction of Black South African masculinities in Zukiswa Wanner’s texts.
(2024) Ndabeni, Nontsikelelo Gabrielis.; Mkhize, Thulani.
Contemporary South Africa has attracted global attention because of the spate of violence perpetrated by men against women and children. Twenty-nine years into democracy, with a constitution that vouches for gender equality, the country still seems to be held captive by the traditional stereotypes which give authority and power to one dominant form of masculinity which has been given legitimacy as the benchmark for measuring successful manhood. This type of masculinity has proven to be unsustainable, given the prevailing shifts in the country’s socio-economic climate. Because of this, failure to attain it usually culminates in violent incidents, and women and children are always victims. Through Wanner’s texts, this work examines different versions of black South African masculinity, how they are constructed, as well as the role of violence in their construction. Since masculinity has proven to be a heterogenous concept, this work seeks to challenge the dominant and violent constructions, and to negotiate alternative forms which embrace gender equality. Not only does this work concern itself with the different types of black South African masculinity and the role of violence in their construction, it also highlights the role of women in their construction, an aspect which is always taken for granted, yet it plays a crucial role in the way in which masculinities are constructed and enacted. This is accomplished by delving deeply into the family unit and examining the conventional gender roles of women, keeping in mind that the South African constitution grants them the freedom to either adhere to these roles or select from a variety of options presented to them. It is suggested that women's contributions to the building of masculinities ought to be acknowledged, since their decisions appear to have a substantial impact on either fostering or impeding the change of masculinities. It is further suggested that boys and young men are socialised into more egalitarian forms of masculinity.
Textual representation of the social construction of womanhood and gendered identity: a case of selected Eswatini women poets.
(2022) Langa, Siphiwe Angelica Angela.; De Meyer, Bernard Albert Marcel Sylvain.
The patriarchal society of Eswatini entrenches numerous unfair practices against women. Cultural elements ensure that women are kept at a perpetual position of disadvantage. The socialisation of females and males at different levels of society, including in families and schools, promotes a social divide between the two sexes. The suffering of women epitomises coloniality; women serve the interest of men in the same way that the colonized served the interests of their masters. Since women’s voices have been systematically muted, they do not speak out against their oppression; women are the subalterns who cannot speak and thus they absorb their suffering in subdued silence. Moreover, they self-categorise with other women who are facing a similar plight. This research, therefore, sought to discover how poetic texts by selected Swati women poets represent the social construction of womanhood and gendered identity as a form of social action that contests the dominant discourses in society. Ten poems, spanning three decades, written by six women poets were selected on the basis of their feminist thematic content, an additional five oral poems were included to interface the discussion of the ten poems. The primary poetic texts were analysed by applying principles of interpretivism and narrative inquiry and by relating to cognitive poetics principles. Theories that guided the analysis of the poems were postcolonial theory, a wide range of feminist philosophies and selfcategorisation. Findings from the study revealed that poetic texts enable women poets to exploit figurative language as a vehicle to expose social ills that society perpetrates against women. Exposing the issues creates an opportunity to address those concerns that are considered taboo since it is ‘unSwati’ for women to speak out against women’s oppression. Findings from studying the poems revealed that: with the exception of a few confident women, generally, womenfolk in Eswatini are treated as domestic slaves; they suffer a myriad of abuses including emotional abuse, conjugal deprivation, physical abuse, sexual abuse and economic deprivation. Also, it was revealed that women’s abuse has negative effects on the youth and the society at large. In spite of these abuses, the texts showed that women in the country have a preferred identity. Furthermore, it was discovered that the key theoretical insights were significant in enabling an understanding of the construction of womanhood and gendered identity in Eswatini. While society has constructed womanhood to be a category of the oppressed, women poets, on the other hand, create a preferred identity of confident and independent women. It is recommended that similar research in future should include poems written by males, since men are implicated in the gendered oppression of women.
The impact of formal grammar instruction on students’ writing ability in an academic literacy course at the North-West University, Mafikeng Campus.
(2020) Moletsane, Joel Ramonewa.; Makhubu-Badenhorst, Rosethal Loli.
The academic writing of students at institutions of higher education is shown to be ridden with grammatical errors, that often lead to students failing to successfully present their ideas across to lecturers. Some of the reasons for such errors, as per the literature include those of their schooling and economic background, not having the adequate language and academic skills to function at university and the Language of Teaching and Learning (LoLT) which is English being their second or third language. As a result, students writing has a negative impact on their studies, hence a need that they be assisted to improve accuracy in academic writing. The aim of this study, therefore, is to investigate the grammar errors that students make in academic writing with the intention to assist them accordingly. Additionally, the study is aimed at investigating the effects of grammar instruction intervention on the grammatical accuracy of the academic texts produced by students. To achieve these aims, a comprehensive literature review on the analysis of errors made by ESL learners, grammar instruction, and academic writing was conducted. In addition, the study employed the quantitative research methodology utilising error analysis and quasi-experimental designs to collect data. The data was analysed with the assistance of descriptive statistics for the error analysis and inferential statistics for the quasi-experimental design. The findings from the error analysis indicate that students make various errors in the academic texts. The findings from the quasi-experimental design shows that after instruction, there was improvement in the accuracy of the texts that the students produced. From the findings, the study concluded that the Academic Literacy modules offered at the North-West University, Mafikeng Campus can be utilised to assist students in improving accuracy in their writing. Therefore, the study recommends that the Academic Literacy modules be evaluated to determine whether some intervention in the form of grammar instruction can assist students to improve accuracy in their writing. This may involve making the teaching of grammar in the context of writing become the formal component of the modules. Furthermore, the study recommends that lecturers can assist by raising grammar awareness of students during the presentation of the process approach to writing.
Challenging patriarchal normativity: Southern African women writers’ constructions of women’s concerns, needs, changing identities, agency and solidarity.
(2021) Rubaya, Clemence.; Narismulu, Gayatri Priyadarshini.
This thesis explores literary representations of African women challenging the oppressiveness of patriarchal normativity that has and continues to undermine and destroy the quality of women’s lives the world over, by persistently oppressing them and denying them equal rights, freedoms and opportunities. Contesting patriarchal normativity is critical to addressing the discrimination and oppression experienced by women, and understanding how they seek to emancipate themselves, to enjoy their rights to respect, dignity and fulfilling lives, as full members of the society to which they belong. African women have played important roles in surviving and challenging a range of interlocking patriarchal systems. They have tackled the imperatives of transforming the oppressive structures that hinder peace and development in many societies. To address his topic, the researcher adopted an interpretive content analysis of feminist literature from Southern Africa, and reviewed a range of secondary literature to support the study. Lauretta Ngcobo’s And They Didn’t Die and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions are the primary texts selected for study. The research indicates the power and resilience of a range of women in struggles against colonial/apartheid/capitalist patriarchy that have intersected to compound the abuse and tyranny experienced by African women. Dangarembga and Ngcobo’s powerful representations of African women in their novels afford deep insights into the critical roles of African women in ensuring family and community survival, and challenging the assumptions embedded in patriarchal thinking. Drawing on the inspiring leadership of the authors, the study challenges more men to get involved in the feminist struggle against patriarchal normativity and oppressive systems, because all women, children, men, families, communities, societies, our continent, and the world benefit from gender empowerment and justice, and the full integration of women. The thesis also addresses the value and strength of women’s (and men’s) solidarity in challenging these oppressive systems.
A critique of the representation of women and land in postcolonial Zimbabwe fictional literature.
Hungwe, Elda.; Narismulu, Gayatri Priyadarshini.
This research explores the representation of women and land in postcolonial Zimbabwean fictional literature, through examining the extent to which Zimbabwean literary writers deal with the challenges of women’s access to owning and controlling land. Most Zimbabwean women have many generations of agricultural knowledge, skills and labour, as women have long been the primary agriculturalists who grew crops and raised animals. The research indicates that the colonial invasion, seizure and dispossession of land and oppression of African people prompted women and men to fight for liberation. However, even after independence, Zimbabwean women have continued to struggle to gain access to owning and controlling land. These struggles are well represented in creative works, such as Irene Mahamba’s Woman in Struggle, Freedom Nyamubaya’s On The Road Again, Yvonne Vera’s Without A Name and Nehanda, Chenjerai Hove’s Bones, Valerie Tagwira’s The Uncertainty of Hope, Lawrence Hoba’s ‘The Trek And other Stories’, Julius Chingono’s ‘Minister Without Portfolio’, Lawrence Hoba’s ‘Specialisation’, Daniel Mandishona’s ‘A Dirty Game’ and NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names. The research, including the analysis of the primary literary texts, shows that patriarchal social customs, as well as the functions and operations of the state and the police continue to limit and deny women opportunities to access, own and control land. The literary texts also show women using strategies and tactics to challenge the gendered limitations to their access to land. African Feminist theory and approaches are used to analyse women’s challenges and responses including the literary representations of land access and to address these in empowered ways.
Beyond the biopic an exploration into the nature of biography through the medium of film.
(2017) van Eeden Harrison, Janet.; Arnott, Jill Margaret.
This research deals with the process of writing a biographical screenplay which sheds light and insight into the life of Mary Wollstonecraft, the eighteenth-century writer of ground-breaking works such as A Vindication on the Rights of Woman (1792). Although the facts around Wollstonecraft’s life are relatively well-known, especially in Britain, I wanted to write the screenplay to explore how her struggle to be taken seriously as a woman is still relevant today. For this reason I chose to create the modern, parallel narrative of Khetiwe’s story to illustrate the struggle for emancipation, which still continues in some parts of the world. Primarily, I aimed to create a structure which illustrates the defining characteristics of the protagonists, and ensures that the form of the screenplay enhances the hermeneutics of the narrative. This practice-based research begins with an examination of the most popular writing techniques which could be employed as obvious structural solutions. I begin with an exploration of the biographical genre itself, to discover how genre usually dictates structure. I then examine traditional storytelling structures, namely the hero’s journey. Next, I explore ways of making these traditional structures move beyond the privileged masculine point of view. I subsequently explore the hero’s journey’s apparent opposite, the heroine’s journey. Then, I document how I stumble across the use of the mise en abyme through writing and producing one of my short films. This leads to an examination of the exact nature of this particular literary device. I examine two biographical feature films, La Vie en Rose and Saving Mr Banks, to show how they make use of the mise en abyme, and show how successful these applications are. Finally, I track the process of writing A Hyena in Petticoats, making note of the structures I have employed. In conclusion, I collate a template to illustrate my structural choices with the use of the mise en abyme as a hyper-structure, on top of a baseline structure. I suggest that the template proffers a new way of approaching biographical feature-film writing, and offers opportunities for biographical feature scripts, as well as possibilities for narrative-feature scripts.
Sad relicks and apt admonishments: Wordsworth's depiction of the poor in his work dating from the 1790s to 1807.
(1994) Beard, Margaret Mary.; Beadle, Donald.
The aim of this thesis is to show, by means of a chronological study of poverty as treated in the poetry dating from the early 1790's to 1807, that Wordsworth's treatment of this topic was both highly politicized and unusually probing. To look at his treatment of poverty is also to gain some understanding of his changing political and social views over these years. He began writing about poverty and the poor in a period in which picturesque and/or sentimental ways of viewing poverty alternated with moralisitically judgmental ways. His approach and attitudes are soon seen to be different. After a period of fervent protest at the very existence of poverty, he proceeds to probe the more hidden costs, to the indigent, of poverty, an approach which is less overtly polemical. This study seeks to demonstrate that this stage is no less committed, and, indeed, comprises an insightful analysis of the social and psychological damage consequent on poverty, damage now widely recognised as one of the major costs of poverty both to the individual and to the state. Furthermore, Wordsworth becomes concerned with the alienation both from the self and from the other consequent on poverty. It is this that he recognises as a major, yet rarely acknowledged, component of poverty. He recognises too, his increasing inability to understand the impoverished other. Conscious of the divide that separates the privileged from the indigent, he can only wonder at, and acknowedge, the powers of endurance of which some seem capable. From such examples he, in his precarious vocation of poet, can learn much. Such admiration of the reolution and independence apparent in some of the indigent leads him to espouse values and judgments which tend to differentiate clearly between the deserving and the undeserving poor. Although such attitudes become increasingly prevalent in Wordsworth after 1807, the work of the preceding years remains a rare, forceful and multi-dimensional cry of protest against poverty.
"Sister outsiders" : the representation of identity and difference in selected writings by South African Indian women.
(2000) Govinden, Devarakshanam Betty.; Jacobs, Johan Uys.
No abstract available.
R.K. Narayan's Malgudi novels : a critical study of theme and character.
(1995) Naidoo, Rajasverrie.; Reddy, Y. G.
This thesis analyses critically theme and character in the fourteen novels of R.K. Narayan, written between 1935 and 1990, and it assesses their importance in Narayan's Indian world view. It evaluates Narayan's depiction of Indian middle class society in the comic-ironic mode. His skills as a narrator who experiments with various narrative techniques are examined. The thesis traces the development of Narayan's fictional town, Malgudi, and illustrates how it reflects changes on the Indian sub-continent and how they impact on the Malgudi character. The themes of parental love, the conflict between orthodoxy and modernity, academic disillusionment, harmony in family relationships and Hindu astrology are examined in Swami and Friends (1935) and The Bachelor of Arts (1946). Narayan's portrayal of orthodox and modern concepts of marriage is appraised in The Dark Room (1938), The English Teacher (1946) and The Painter of Signs (1976). This thesis examines the deterioration of marital harmony and Savitri' s portrayal as the typical Hindu housewife cast in the Pativrata tradition in The Dark Room. In The English Teacher this thesis evaluates Krishnan and Susila's idyllic marriage and the couple's psychic communication when Susila dies. Raman and Daisy's proposed Gandharva marriaqe is reviewed in The Painter of Signs. This study assesses Narayan's treatment of the themes of religious faith, Hinduism and Gandhian ideology in Waiting for the Mahatma (1955), The Guide (1958) and The Vendor of Sweets (1967). Raju' s transformation from a jailbird to a swami is evaluated in The Guide. The dedication of Gandhists such as Bharati and Sriram in Waiting for the Mahatma, is reviewed. In A Tiger for Malgudi, Narayan's innovative talking tiger, Raja, is examined as well as his treatment of the concepts of reincarnation and the transmigration of souls. The deleterious effects of materialism are highlighted in The Financial Expert in which Margayya is obsessed with accruing large sums of money. Srini vas and Sampath' s desire to achieve fame and fortune is explored in the filming of the Burning of Kama in Mr Sampath. This thesis ends with an exploration of the conflict between orthodoxy and modern lifestyles, and the cyclical nature of life in The World of Nagaraj (1990).
A critical study of Olive Schreiner's fiction in a historical and biographical context.
(1985) Wilhelm, Cherry Ann.; Voss, Tony.
Olive Schreiner's fiction is best understood in the context of her colonial situation : she experienced central Victorian spiritual dilemmas and social constrictions, but refracted through a rural colonial culture. A complex position of power and powerlessness, superiority and inferiority, individual assertiveness and self- abnegation, is the crux of her fictional world. Her formative years were spent within a culturally deprived rural environment in a dependent position as servant/governess, yet her reading gave her access to leading Victorian intellectuals who were trying to create a new synthesis out of the conflict between Darwin's revolutionary theory and faith in a God-given and unquestionable order, between science and faith, between a new spirit of 'realistic' enquiry and Christian dogma. The problem for the colonial novelist is similar to that of the provincial novelist : the writer seeking intellectual stimulus and cultural enrichment at the metropolitan centre often has to forego a sense of community, and a youthful emotional bond with a nourishing, indigenous landscape, frequently the original source of a sense of spiritual harmony and an underlying order in the universe itself. The colonial novelist thus expresses a tragic breach between individual and community, and a sense of irreconcilable needs. This process is best exemplified in the careers of women, because the difficulty in finding a suitable partner, and a fulfilling marriage, exemplifies the radical problem of reconciling nature and nurture, instinct and social convention. Solitariness, and death, can become the conditions of integrity. Nevertheless, Schreiner's analysis of social problems becomes more detailed and incisive as she develops, and social reform offers a way out of a doomed conflict. Schreiner's childhood reading of the Bible and her evangelical inheritance were crucial to her life and fiction. In both a spirit of charity and self-sacrifice was central, and contended with a popular Victorian view of Darwinism which saw nature as a struggle for survival, a competition between the 'fittest' in which power would be decisive. Schreiner's visionary optimism about moral and social progress was checked by a sense of natural cruelty, historical repetition and decadence, and the early influence of the doctrine of 'original sin'. Schreiner saw her fiction as having a social mission, but the mission could only be accomplished by a novelist true to her individual vision, and expressing her 'self' by aesthetic means. A novel should grow 'organically' from the artist's individual vision, and thus be analogous to a living and unfolding natural world, developing according to its awn inherent laws. Schreiner understood Art and Nature as complementary orders. Her theory of art is thorough and internally consistent : writing should be simple, sensuous, and passionate, and should reconcile social function and artistic design. The power and directness of colonial art reunited her with the Victorian metropolitan centre, though she experienced Victorian social issues in a particular, intensified form in South Africa. Nevertheless, her reponse to South African landscapes, her sense of its 'will to live' at the same time stimulated her own power of creativity, which would counter the stultifying effects of rural isolation and the social restraints on, and exploitation of uneducated women. Schreiner's spirit of militancy and a reliance on the individual conscience stemmed from her evangelical forebears, though she translated their religious non-conformism into social protest in the South African context. Her family was part of the missionary wing of Imperialism and at the same time part of the current of liberalism and enlightenment which clashed with a conservative slave-owning society in South Africa. Her own fiction expresses the plight of the 'slave' in a sequence of metaphorical transformations. The figures of the child, the young women, the servant, the convict, the slave, the prostitute, the black man and the black women interrelate and modify a simple portrait of victimization. Her fiction also draws on the homiletic tradition of evangelical literature,which used deathbed scenes as the carriers of a moral message. Schreiner's writing displays a characteristically Victorian range of non-fiction and fiction, pamphlets, letters, diaries satires, dream-visions, autobiographical fragments, and ambitious full-Iength novels. Her writing displays the Victorian concern with autobiographical and confessional literature as well as direct political and social intervention in a corrupt society. She shaped her life more and more consciously into a variety of narrative forms, from erotic fantasies and escapist to more outwardly-directed satirical and reformist fiction. Her early experience of homelessness economic and social dependence on strangers, as well as sexual vulnerability to men, was crucial in her formative experience. But here, too, she overcame a tendency toward masochism and narcissistic self-reflection to portray a women whose survival and growth expressed the strong side of Schreiner's vigorous and mature feminism. Schreiner's fictions, from the fragment "Diamond Fields" and the youthful Undine, to the early 'masterpiece' The Story of an African Farm, to the political satire Trooper Peter Halket and the encyclopedic though unfinished From Man to Man, display great narrative fertility, and an ability to modify and develop her own characteristic themes, images, and characters. An early multiplication of female victims gave way to the rich oppositions and multiple different-sex protagonists of African Farm, and the concentration yet divergence of the double-female protagonist situation of From Man to Man. All of her fictions move along a spectrum from protest to vision, realism to dream/allegory, and she inverts - and adapts the proportions in accordance with the aims of each particular work. Her fiction shows variety, creative richness, yet a growing economy of means and artistic control of genre. Her development as a novelist was away from a narcissitic focus on the self as victim towards a commitment to suffering forms of life outside the self. She also displayed a growing commitment to the social analysis of human suffering, and to South Africa as the crucible in which she had been formed, as a landscape which offered her an image of harmony to set against social malfunction, and as the strongest source of her own creativity.
Stranger in your midst : a study of South African women's poetry in English.
(1993) Lockett, Cecily Joan.
This thesis represents the first extended study of South African poetry in English from a gender perspective. It is conceived in two parts: firstly, a deconstructive analysis of the dominant tradition of South African English poetry in order to reveal its masculine or androcentric base; and secondly, the reconstruction of an alternative gynocentric tradition that gives primacy to women and the feminine in poetry. The first section consists of an examination of the ways in which the feminine has been. excluded from the poetic tradition in historical terms by means of social and economic constraints on women. The study begins with a brief reference to the beginnings of cultural gender discrimination in British poetry, from which South African English poetry derives, and then moves to a more extended consideration of the ways in which this discrimination has manifested itself in the South African context in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This is followed by an analysis of the "poetics of exclusion", the ways in which the tradition genders itself as masculine by defining its central speaking position or subjectivity as male and masculine, and so excludes women and the feminine. The second section commences with the reconstruction or recovery of a gynocentric tradition of women's poetry in English in South Africa by means of a gynocritical "map" or survey, followed by a discussion of the nature of the feminine discourse or "poetics" required to provide the critical context for this poetry. The preliminary "map" is given greater detail by in-depth discussion of the women poets considered to be major contributors to the gynocentric tradition: Mary Morison Webster, Elisabeth Eybers, Tania van Zyl, Adele Naude, Ruth Miller, Ingrid Jonker and Eva Bezwoda. The study ends with an examination of the work of contemporary women poets in South Africa, especially the black women poets of the 1970s and '80s, and the poets - both black women and white women - who wrote from exile in the 1980s.
Nadine Gordimer after apartheid : a reading strategy for the 1990s.
(1997) Dimitriu, Ileana.; Lenta, Margaret Mary.
The aim of this study is to suggest, by selective example, a method of interpreting Gordimer's fiction from a 'post-Apartheid' perspective. My hypothesis is that Gordimer's own comments in her key lecture of 1982, "Living in the Interregnum", reflect not only her practice in the years of struggle politics, but suggest a yearning for a time beyond struggle, when the civil imaginary might again become a major subject. She claims that she has continually felt a tension in her practice as writer between her responsibility to 'national' testimony, her "necessary gesture" to the history of which she was indelibly a part, and her responsibility to the integrity of the individual experience, her "essential gesture" to novelistic truth. In arguing for a modification of what has almost become the standard political evaluation of Gordimer, my study returns the emphasis to a revindicated humanism, a critical approach that, by implication, questions the continuing appropriateness of anti-humanist ideology critique at a time in South Africa that requires reconstitutions of people's lives. The shift in reading for which I argue, in consequence, validates the 'individual' above the 'typical', the 'meditative' above the ideologically-detennined 'statement', 'showing' above 'telling'. I do not wish to deny the value of a previous decade's readings of the novels as conditioned by their specific historical context. The philosophical concept of social psychology and the stylistic accent on neo-thematism employed in this thesis are not meant to separate the personal conviction from the public demand. Rather, I intend to return attention to a contemplative field of human process and choice that, I shall suggest, has remained a constant feature of Gordimer's achievement. My return to the text does not attempt to establish textual autonomy; the act of interpretation acknowledges that meaning changes in different conditions of critical reception. My study is not a comprehensive survey of Gordimer' s oeuvre. It focuses on certain works as illustrative of the overall argument. After an Introduction of general principles, Chapter One focuses on two novels from politically ' overdetermined' times to show that even in the 'years of emergency', Gordimer's commitment to personal lives and destinies had significantly informed her national narratives. Chapter Two turns to two novels from less 'determined' times as further evidence of Gordimer' s abiding interest in the inner landscapes behind social terrains. Having proposed a critical return to the 'ordinary' concerns of the 'civil imaginary', the study concludes by suggesting that the times in the 1990s are ready for a new look at the most intensely lyrical aspects of Gordimer' s art: her short stories. The specific examples culminate, at the end of each chapter, in brief observations as to how the reading strategy might apply to other works in Gordimer's achievement, as well as to an 'interior' as opposed to an 'exterior' accent in South African fiction as a whole.
A new species of writing : a study of the novels of Samuel Richardson.
(1978) Lenta, Margaret Mary.; Edgecombe, Terence.
No abstract available.
The space between : contemporary opera and the novel : a study in metaphrasis.
(1994) Halliwell, Michael John.; Jacobs, Johan Uys.; Smith, David.
The process of metaphrasis denotes the translation of a work of art from one medium into another. Opera is fundamentally an adaptive art form and contemporary opera has increasingly turned to the novel as the sophistication and range of the resources of modem music theatre have expanded. This dissertation will examine the contemporary operatic adaptation of five works of fiction. The method employed is a comparison of fictional and operatic discourse and an analysis of the translation of fictional narrative into operatic narrative. Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights poses particular narrative problems for operatic adaption while Herman Melville's Billy Budd is characterised by its intrusive narrator and a pervasive ambiguity. Joseph Conrad's novel, Under Western Eyes, exemplifies many of the narratological complexities of modernism, whereas Patrick White's Voss, a seminal postcolonial text, offers the operatic adaptor opportunities for the transcendence of language through music. The final chapter of this study will examine Henry James's tale, liThe Aspern Papers II , which incorporates many of James's reflections on literature and the literary life. The postmodernist operatic adaptation transmutes this self-reflexive fictional work into an opera profoundly concerned with the ontology of opera itself. This study will test the thesis that opera's affinity lies with the novel rather than with drama: that the fundamental narrative mode of opera is diegetic rather than mimetic. The main theoretic thrust proposes that the orchestra in opera performs a similar function to the narrator in fiction. As fictional characters exist only through the medium of their 'text' therefore, it will be argued, operatic characters exist only as part of their 'musical' text. Fictional narrative, while frequently conveying the impression of mimesis is essentially diegetic; operatic characters appear to possess a similar autonomy to their counterparts in drama, but can be seen as analogous to those in fiction and as a function of the diegesis of operatic narrative. Operatic characters are 'created' by the orchestral-narrator and have their being only as part of this narrative act.
The technique of the major novels of Joseph Conrad.
(1978) Zaal, J.
No abstract available.
The English language television single play in South Africa : a threatened genre, 1976-1991.
(1993) Herrington, Neville John.
The thesis takes the form of an investigation into the various causes leading to the demise of the English language television single play in South Africa. It does not position the genre within any particular theoretical framework, but argues within the context of a liberal/critical discourse that the single play owes its development and significance to the contribution of its many writers, as well as to the creative input of the various producers, directors, from within and outside the SABC. Furthermore, it evaluates the genre within the bureaucracy of the SABC and the input of the various drama managers, among others, whose decisions have affected the position of the single play. The single play is seen as a development of drama having evolved from the stage play, though moving progressively towards the production values of film. Research will show that in the South African context, the creative practitioners of the single play and technology have intersected with style, reflecting the dominant form of naturalism, mainly evidenced during the early period when many single plays were produced in the studios of Auckland Park. Within a wider sociopolitical context, the single play has been evaluated as a negotiation among writers, censorship, technology, naturalism and bureaucracy. The investigation will show that the major cause for its demise was the SABC's increasing commercialisation of TV -1, with the result that programmes on this channel were evaluated in terms of their ability to deliver large audiences to the advertisers. This placed the single play in competition for transmission space with the more popular drama series and serials. Furthermore, the business principle of cost-effectiveness applied to the single play made it more expensive to produce than series and serials. The author's own practical involvement in the production of video and television programmes, including drama, together with primary source information gleaned from some forty interviews with practitioners and those whose decisions impacted on the genre, have been added to the body of the research.
Some aspects of the dynamic process of creativity with special reference to the choreographer and director in the theatre.
(1979) Hagemann, Frederick.
No abstract available.
The immanent voice: an aspect of unreliable homodiegetic narration.
(1988) De Reuck, Jennifer Anne.
Unreliable homodiegetic narration presents a unique mode of narrative transmission which demands the encoding within the text of 'translational indices', that is, signifiers of several kinds which justify the reader/receiver in over-riding the sincere first person avowals of the apparent mediator of the discourse. The argument establishes the presence of an epistemologically primary 'immanent' narrative situation within an ostensibly unitary narrative situation. Such a stereoscopic perspective upon the presented world of the literary 'work provides the reader/receiver with a warrant for a rejection of the epistemological validity of the homodiegetic narrator's discourse. Moreover, the thesis advances a typology of such translational indices as they occur in the dense ontology of the literary work of art. The narratological theory of unreliable homodiegetic narration developed in the first half of the dissertation is applied in the second half to selected exemplars of such narrative transmissions, demonstrating thereby the theoretical fecundity of the model for the discipline of narratology.
Locating the popular-democratic in South African resistance literature in English, 1970-1990.
(1998) Narismulu, Gayatri Priyadarshini.; Van Wyk, A. J.
As a conjunctural construct located between politics, society and art, the popular-democratic construes the resistance literature of the 1970s and 1980s as being expressive of an entire social movement to end oppression and transform society. Through the construct of the popular-democratic voices that have been marginalised, fragmented, dislocated, excluded or otherwise silenced can be seen in relation to each other and to the sources of oppression. The introductory chapter addresses the characteristics of the popular-democratic, and the caveats and challenges that attend it. The remaining nine chapters are divided into three sections of three chapters each. The first section examines repression of different types: structural repression, coercive repression/state violence and cultural repression. An important index of the structural oppression of apartheid is the home, which a range of resistance writers addressed in depth when they dealt with city life and the townships, forced removals, homeless people, rural struggles, migrants and hostels, commuting, the "homelands" and exile. The coercive apparatus of the state, the security forces, were used against dissidents in the neighbouring states and within the country. The literature addresses the effects of the cross border raids, assassinations, abductions and bombings. The literature that deals with internal repression examines the effects of the mass detentions, restrictions, listings and bannings as well as the impact of the states of emergency, P.W. Botha's "total strategy", and the actions of the death squads. An examination of the conservative liberal constructions of resistance literature helps to clarify why resistance literature remains inadequately conceptualised ("Soweto poets", "protest literature") although there has been a vibrant and challenging corpus. The way in which the audience of resistance literature is constructed is identified as a key problem. The responses of various resistance writers, in poems, interviews, letters and articles, to conservative liberal prescriptions are contextualised. The middle section of the argument focuses on the organisations that developed to challenge oppression. Through an examination of the literature that was influenced by the activism and the cultural and philosophical production of Black Consciousness, it is apparent that the movement was continuous with the rest of the struggle for liberation. The satirical poems that challenged both the state and the conservative liberals offer powerful displays of verbal wit. The struggles of workers are addressed through texts that deal with their plight and call for worker organisations. The trade union COSA TV paid close attention to the development of worker culture, which proved to be critical when the state cracked down on the resistance organisations. The production values and effects of very different plays about strikes, The Long March and Township Fever receive particular attention. The rise of the United Democratic Front (UDF) is anticipated in literature that celebrates the potential of ordinary South Africans to achieve political significance through unity. Constructed out of substantial ideological pluralism, the UDF arose as an act of political imagination and organisational strategy. The ideological convergence between the UDF and COSATU on the question of bidding for state power constituted a turning-point in a nation built on the intolerance of difference. The last section focuses more closely on the productive responses of the culture of resistance to specific aspects of repression, such as the censorship of the media and the arts, the killings of activists, the struggles around education and the keeping of historical records (which enable an interrogation and reconstruction of discursive and interpretive authority).
Humour as "cultural reconciliation" in South African situation comedy : an ethnographic study of multicultural female viewers.
(1998) Roome, Dorothy M.; Teer-Tomaselli, Ruth Elizabeth.
South African women of different ethnicity and background, having lived under apartheid, are now challenged by the freedoms expressed in the Bill of Rights and the new Constitution. This study, identifying the connections between gender, race, class and social relations, incorporates an ethnographic methodology and a cultural studies perspective in the reception analysis of thirteen multicultural focus groups. In the analysis of their response to two locally produced situation comedies, Suburban Bliss and Going Up III, the effort to determine existing cultural barriers is made, examining laughter as a benchmark for the comprehension by women from different backgrounds. The theoretical framework for the research evaluates the extent to which the writers, producers and directors created a text which connects with the multicultural women viewers' reality. Changes affecting the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) in terms of broadcasting policy, are traced, and a brief history of the organization since the inception of broadcasting in South Africa is incorporated. Language policy had ret1ected the overt political ideology of Afrikaner nationalism, consequently the political changes resulting from the 1994 democratic election led to major transformations in language and style of programming to incorporate local content for multicultural audiences. This caused economic hardship for the SABC, as advertising revenue was drastically curtailed. Textual analysis of both Suburban Bliss and Going Up III employed a mix of structural, semiotics, and ideological analysis. Through interviews with the production team it became apparent that SB was based on American sitcom genre, while GU III is a hybrid combination, conceived to meet the perceived needs of the local multilingual multicultural audience. The extent to which the programmes mediate the producer/audience relationship, contributing to the hegemonic process is investigated, as the interpretation of the text can be different in the decoding from that originally intended by the producer or encoder when creating the programme. The situation comedies by depicting in a humorous vein the realities of affirmative action, adult access to pornography, the aspirations of the new black elite, feminine participation in the democratic process, and the rejection of authoritarian censorship from the state or the home indicates the ideological position of the production teams. The responses of the focus groups were examined in terms of their own identity as well as where an historic individuality expands into the collective communities of nations, gender, classes, generations, race and ethnic groups. Identity was perceived as connected but distinct and separate, as any event can affect both individuals and society. The thesis explores the proposition that humour as 'cultural reconcilation' can be effective if people are prepared to alter negative patterns of thinking and social practices.

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