Doctoral Degrees (English, Media and Performance Studies)
Recent Submissions
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The impact of formal grammar instruction on students’ writing ability in an academic literacy course at the North-West University, Mafikeng Campus.
(2020)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 ... -
Challenging patriarchal normativity: Southern African women writers’ constructions of women’s concerns, needs, changing identities, agency and solidarity.
(2021)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 ... -
A critique of the representation of women and land in postcolonial Zimbabwe fictional literature.
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 ... -
Beyond the biopic an exploration into the nature of biography through the medium of film.
(2017)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 ... -
Sad relicks and apt admonishments: Wordsworth's depiction of the poor in his work dating from the 1790s to 1807.
(1994)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 ... -
"Sister outsiders" : the representation of identity and difference in selected writings by South African Indian women.
(2000)No abstract available. -
R.K. Narayan's Malgudi novels : a critical study of theme and character.
(1995)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 ... -
A critical study of Olive Schreiner's fiction in a historical and biographical context.
(1985)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 ... -
Stranger in your midst : a study of South African women's poetry in English.
(1993)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 ... -
Nadine Gordimer after apartheid : a reading strategy for the 1990s.
(1997)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 ... -
A new species of writing : a study of the novels of Samuel Richardson.
(1978)No abstract available. -
The space between : contemporary opera and the novel : a study in metaphrasis.
(1994)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 ... -
The English language television single play in South Africa : a threatened genre, 1976-1991.
(1993)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 ... -
Some aspects of the dynamic process of creativity with special reference to the choreographer and director in the theatre.
(1979)No abstract available. -
The immanent voice: an aspect of unreliable homodiegetic narration.
(1988)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 ... -
Locating the popular-democratic in South African resistance literature in English, 1970-1990.
(1998)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 ... -
Humour as "cultural reconciliation" in South African situation comedy : an ethnographic study of multicultural female viewers.
(1998)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 ... -
Theatre for young audiences and the Commedia dell'arte : the living tradition of the Commedia dell'arte in theatre for young audiences, with specific reference to selected original texts and performances.
(1992)The thesis affirms the relevance of "Theatre for Young Audiences" as a valid and distinctive genre; a performance genre that should entertain, educate and provide meaning in terms of its creative interaction with personal, ... -
Performance polemics in a plural society : South African theatre in transition.
(1988)"It was clearly the Government (by a great section of the electorate) that brought politics into the theatre, and we, the producers, the actors, the theatre-goers must pay the price for it." Alan Paton. This thesis ...