The origin, evolution, and function of the myth of the white goddess in the writings of Robert Graves

This is a study of the development of the myth of the White Goddess in the work of Robert Graves, a subject related to the wider field of the place of myth in modern culture. It begins by looking at the conditions which promoted Graves' interest in myth, principally his experience of the Great War. The responses of other writers are examined to provide a context for understanding Graves' transition from Georgianism to myth, as reflected in his early poetry, autobiography and writings on psychology. Before looking at how Graves' myth was formed, the history of the concept of myth is examined, from primitive peoples to civilized religion. Focus is centred upon the dual tendency of myth to reinforce and to undermine authority. Some of the figures behind Graves' interest in myth and anthropology are subject to scrutiny. An account of the relations between myth, literature and psychology permits the survey of Graves' gradual transition from psychological theory to mythographic speculation. The gradual emergence in his poetry of devotion to a Love Goddess can also be traced. Detailed interpretation of The White Goddess, its arguments and procedures, brings to light Graves' theories of the single poetic theme and the primitive matriarchy, both of which can then be evaluated and set in the context of his dedication to non-rational forms of thought. This leads into a close reading of Graves' major mythological poems, followed by reflections upon the myth's application in his critical writings and cultural commentaries. Finally, consideration is given to Graves' later writings, especially his attraction to Orphism and the adoption of mythic personae in his verse. The influence of the Black Goddess of Wisdom over these later works is interpreted and assessed

The new aural actuality: an exploration of music, sound and meaning in the composed feature documentary podcast

This practice-led thesis explores the creative techniques and philosophies used in composing feature documentary podcasts and how listeners engage with the material and make meaning from it. Podcasting as a medium presents a new and so far unexplored way of interfacing with audio documentary and this study works to demonstrate crucial differences from radio practice in terms of intention and expression,how material is made, consideration for its audience, and how its programmes are distributed. Using post-structural theory, specifically Deleuze and Guattari’s ideas on interconnected networks of affective transmission, podcasting’s relationship to radio is explored, as is how listeners make meaning through their interaction with both the heard material and the devices upon which it is accessed. These theories are then applied to the characteristically open remit of the audio documentary to study how speech, music, sound and silence may be understood to generate meaning, emotion and a sense of immersion in the listener. It is suggested that modes of programme access, listening customs, and interpretational symbolism work together to impart information vital to the ability to connote and denote what is being heard, and that in this way the composed feature can be situated very closely to musical practice and engagement. Taking cues from musical and cinematic analytical practice three podcast programmes are closely scrutinised for an understanding of their constituent material, structural shape, and potential affective transmissions, beforeinterviewswith their producers are presented to discuss conceptual intentions and execution. Six programmes are presented as the practice component of the thesis, each made to experiment with and reflect upon different aspects of creative or listening practice, with conclusions drawn concerning their implications and effectiveness

Amrit Singh and the Birmingham Quean: fictions, fakes and forgeries in a vernacular counterculture

For a literary critic preparing a scholarly edition of a text like this within an epistème that disparages the theory underpinning it for being tainted with the gestural idealism of 1968 and the neon-glare of 1980s high postmodernism, the crucial question is how to reconcile the commitment to authenticity ingrained in historicist textual studies (perhaps the critic’s only viable disciplinary inheritance) with the author’s implicit antagonism to any such quietist approach. The encounter inevitably becomes a battle of wills. In the course of the current project, this theoretical struggle escalates exponentially as doubts concerning the authenticity (and indeed the existence) of both writer and manuscript are multiplied. If a thesis can be retrospectively extrapolated from this project, it is the argument that fiction is demonstrably a tractable forum for research in the Arts and Social Sciences: all the more tractable for its anti-authenticity. The critic’s loss is the novelist’s gain. Specifically, in this case, the faithful historian of late twentieth century literatures, languages and cultures can solve the key dilemma of the subject by working under the auspices of Creative Writing. Only in this way can justice be done to the most cogent intellectual trend of the posmodern period (perhaps its defining feature): one that revelled in its own pluralities, ambiguities and contradictions, and resisted all the unifying, teleological models of ‘history’ that had been implicated in the century’s terrible ‘final solutions’. In other words, only fiction can tell the history of a culture that rejects that history. If this means condoning forgery… so be it

Chai for change? Stories of Adivasi indigeneities, self-reliance, and activism

"Chai for change?" is a story about stories. More precisely, stories of Adivasi self-reliance, Adivasi indigeneities, and Adivasi activism. At the outset of this study of narratives of Adivasi indigeneity, I posit that the indigenisation of Adivasis fulfils different objectives in the field of Development practice and international “aid” processes. I argue that the Development activists I follow in this story achieve, or attempt to achieve, these objectives through the narrativisation of Adivasi indigeneity. I analyse how a particular group of Adivasi communities try to consolidate the sustainability and permanence of their, and other disadvantaged communities’, economic self- reliance. I also show how the Development activists engaged with these Adivasi communities connect the different actors involved in these self-reliance efforts via narratives of Adivasi indigeneity. I then argue that the activists manage to enlist the large group of different Development actors – and their financial support – necessary for a shift in economic relations, through the harnessing of a particular brand of Adivasi indigeneity in their stories. This conceptualisation of indigeneity corresponds largely with essentialised eco-romanticist imaginaries of “the indigenous”, and therefore “the Adivasi”, based on internationally current, reified notions of indigeneity. Through first identifying the dominant elements of these Adivasi indigeneity narratives, and then analysing the pitfalls inherent in them, I bring to light the inconsistencies between activist-imagined Adivasi indigeneity narratives, and the multiplicity of conflicting identities of Adivasi peoples in India today. "Chai for change?" concludes by investigating, on the one hand, whether the efforts of the Adivasi activists to create a more sustainable economic system, informed by Adivasi values, help sustain a progressive and self-reliant Adivasi movement. On the other hand, I explore whether the activists’ jumping on the indigenist rhetoric bandwagon, is in fact a useful strategy for Adivasis to overcome economic inequalities, (re)enforced and (re)produced by the complex intermeshing of ethnicity and caste in India. Specifically, I examine whether narrative-intensive indigenism is a useful strategy for dealing with Adivasi intersectionality – understood as the intersection of the multiple forms of discrimination Adivasis face. Or, whether indigenism’s anachronistic elements – in particular the activists’ adherence to an ecologically romantic conceptualisation of Adivasi values – possibly render the activists’ rhetorical strategies counterproductive, and thereby create obstacles to sustaining the momentum of their movement. "Chai for change?" is thus a narrative-focussed study of how conflictual notions of Adivasi indigeneity, harnessed for “development” ends by development activists, often become unravelled and entangled in tensions and contradictions, like a snarled-up ball of narrative yarn. I argue that the social activists try to offset this tendency by continually adapting the narrative of their stories, in an attempt to attract ever new and different audiences for their Adivasi economic revolution story

Theatrical Joyce

Tese de doutoramento, Estudos Artísticos (Estudos de Teatro), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras, 2012As a young man, Joyce’s artistic future as a writer of prose fiction was far from decided. Although his earliest attempts at literary composition were through lyrical verse and prose sketches, his major literary ambitions as a student were focused on the theatre; and his dramatic writing and writing on drama had essentially been done before he wrote his first Dubliners’ story. The subsequent appearance of Exiles and the form of the “Circe” episode most obviously show that this early fascination never completely left him. Through his use of dramatic techniques and ‘’hidden’ texts, Joyce reconciled his desire to create drama with the realisation that his most natural medium was narrative prose. As the dramatic came to fully inform his prose fiction, however, Joyce was able to combine and explore the full possibilities of dialogue ranging from the most artificially high-flown rhetoric to the coarsest spoken informalities. A major feature of Joyce’s method was his readiness to adapt and parody the works of earlier authors, including dramatists. Such adaptation provided a channel for his works to flow into forms ungoverned by the demands of producing a realistic, exterior world. “Spectacular” linguistic and narrative “theatrical” effects (OCPW: 25) were generated through characters’ inner lives which, when combined with the incorporated dramatic texts, created ironies and alternative perspectives through juxtaposition and parodic subversion. In Theatrical Joyce, I explore this influence on Joyce’s writing and the protean line of creative tension born out of his attempt to achieve a formal balance, in which boundaries are often blurred through the embedding of drama in narrative.Na sua juventude, o futuro artístico de Joyce enquanto escritor estava longe de estar decidido. Apesar das primeiras tentativas de composição literária serem obras de natureza lírica e textos curtos em prosa, as suas ambições literárias enquanto estudante voltavam-se para o teatro. A escrita dramática e sobre o teatro de Joyce foi maioritariamente feita antes de escrever o primeiro conto de Dubliners. A escrita posterior de Exiles e a forma do episódio “Circe” reflectem um fascínio de juventude nunca esmoreceu completamente. Através da utilização de técnicas dramáticas e de textos ‘escondidos’, Joyce reconciliou o desejo de criar um drama com a consciência de que o seu medium mais natural era a prosa narrativa. Contudo, à medida que o dramático informou completamente a sua ficção em prosa, Joyce conseguiu combinar e explorar as possibilidades de diálogo entre eles, indo da retórica mais artificiosa até às informalidades orais mais rudes. Um elemento fundamental no método de Joyce foi a capacidade de adaptar e parodiar as obras de autores anteriores, incluindo dramaturgos. Esse tipo de adaptação disponibilizava um canal para a obra fluir para formas não governadas pelas exigências de produção de um mundo exterior realista. Efeitos linguísticos “espectaculares” e efeitos narrativos “teatrais” (OCPW: 25) eram gerados através das vidas interiores das personagens que, combinadas com os textos dramáticos incorporados, criaram ironias e perspectivas alternativas através da justaposição e subversão paródica. 7 Em Theatrical Joyce, é explorada esta influência na escrita de Joyce e a tensão criativa que resulta da tentativa de chegar a um equilíbrio formal, em que as fronteiras são muitas vezes dissolvidas através da incorporação do drama na narrativa

The presentation of women in early English drama

This study is a survey of the presentation of women in English drama from 1300 - 1600, and of the relationship between stage views and contemporary attitudes to women during this period. Its purpose is twofold. It sets out to investigate whether the questioning of current ideas about women which has been well documented in the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries was also a feature of earlier drama. It also examines whether the account put forward by Lawrence Stone, in The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500 - 1800, of the way in which major social changes at the time of the Reformation affected the status of marriage and of women is substantiated by evidence -from contemporary drama. Research for the study has been carried out mainly through reading or more detailed analysis of most of the 300 surviving plays from the period, with reference to relevant secondary sources of literary criticism and social history. The work is presented in four chapters. Chapter 1 considers attitudes to women in the life and drama of the Pre-Reformation period. After an Introduction summarising views of women in mediaeval religious, legal and economic life, it examines the way in which women were presented in the Mystery and Morality plays. Finally, it considers in detail the few but significant interludes produced by dramatists of the Thomas More circle shortly before the Reformation. Chapter 2 examines what I have called the Testing Plays: the wave of didactic plays which promoted the new Protestant ideal of the obedient wife. They demonstrated how young women should be educated for wifehood, and the way in which the virtues of the perfect wife should withstand stringent testing. The chapter begins with a summary of the importance of the education element in the plays. It then examines the earlier type of Testing Play, in which the husband torments his wife in order to test her constancy, before moving to the later plays concerned with the test of chastity, in which a woman or couple is threatened by the desire of a powerful social superior. Chapter 3 examines drama's response to the contemporary debate on the correct reasons for marriage. It starts with a study of the artistic influences of romance and classical comedy which enabled dramatic treatment of the topic, before moving to a detailed study of the way in which the plays reflected and explored the whole spectrum of opinion. Chapter 4 considers the presentation of women in tragedy throughout the period. It examines the limiting influences inherited from classical tragedy and the extent to which they continued to dominate later tragedy. Finally, it looks in detail at three plays which offer an early indication of the genre's potential eventually to produce exciting heroines.The study concludes that discussion and questioning of current attitudes to women has been an important feature of English drama from its earliest origins. The particularly close relationship between society and drama is demonstrated by the exactness with which contemporary drama reflects Lawrence Stone's account of social changes during the period of the study. However, while Shakespeare's predecessors and contemporaries undoubtedly questioned and investigated current views about women, no-one else seems to have transcended them and shown the insight that he did. The reasons for the uniqueness of his vision remain as difficult to identify as ever

Compact Anthology of World Literature II: Volumes 4, 5, and 6

The Compact Anthology of World Literature, Parts 4, 5, and 6 is designed as an e-book to be accessible on a variety of devices: smart phone, tablet, e-reader, laptop, or desktop computer. Students have reported ease of accessibility and readability on all these devices. To access the ePub text on a laptop, desktop, or tablet, you will need to download a program through which you can read the text. We recommend Readium, an application available through Google. If you plan to read the text on an Android device, you will need to download an application called Lithium from the App Store. On an iPhone, the text will open in iBooks. Affordable Learning Georgia has also converted the .epub files to PDF. Because .epub does not easily convert to other formats, the left margin of the .pdf is very narrow. ALG recommends using the .epub version. Although the text is designed to look like an actual book, the Table of Contents is composed of hyperlinks that will take you to each introductory section and then to each text. The three parts of the text are organized into the following units: Part 4—The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Unit I: The Age of Reason Unit II: The Near East and Asia Part 5—The Long Nineteenth Century Unit I Romanticism Unit II Realism Part 6—The Twentieth Century and Contemporary Literature Unit I Modernism Unit II Postcolonial Literature Unit III Contemporary Literature Texts from a variety of genres and cultures are included in each unit. Additionally, each selection or collection includes a brief introduction about the author and text(s), and each includes 3 – 5 discussion questions. Texts in the public domain--those published or translated before 1923--are replicated here. Texts published or translated after 1923 are not yet available in the public domain. In those cases, we have provided a link to a stable site that includes the text. Thus, in Part 6, most of the texts are accessible in the form of links to outside sites. In every case, we have attempted to connect to the most stable links available. The following texts have been prepared with the assistance of the University of North Georgia Press in its role as Affordable Learning Georgia\u27s Partner Press. Affordable Learning Georgia partners with the University of North Georgia Press to assist grantees with copyright clearance, peer review, production and design, and other tasks required to produce quality Open Educational Resources (OER). The University Press is a peer-reviewed, academic press. Its mission is to produce scholarly work that contributes to the fields of innovative teaching, textbooks, and Open Educational Resources. Affordable Learning Georgia Textbook Transformation Grant funds may be used for services provided by the Press. To determine how the University Press can assist ALG grantees or anyone interested in developing OER with ALG, the University Press will provide advance free consultations. Please contact the Press at 706-864-1556 or [email protected]. “Textbook Transformation Grants” from Affordable Learning Georgia Accessible files with optical character recognition (OCR) and auto-tagging provided by the Center for Inclusive Design and Innovation.https://oer.galileo.usg.edu/english-textbooks/1018/thumbnail.jp

Twenty Years in Tea: The Letters of Iris Macfarlane from Assam Tea Gardens 1946-1965

A very detailed account of life on several Assamese tea gardens from 1946-1965. It is written by the authoress Iris Macfarlane, the wife of Donald Macfarlane a Tea Manager. Much of the letter consists of letters to her son Alan and notebook entrances. Fully illustrated with colour and black and white photographs

The news media and democracy in Ghana (1992-2000)

The study critically examines the role played by the news media in a modern African democracy. The issues of democracy and the theories that drive them are mostly either Euro-centric or Anglo-American. The perspective offered by this thesis showed that Africa has a unique system which calls for a hybridised approach to the study of media and democracy. The functioning of a state-owned media, insulated from governmental control by the 1992 Ghana Constitution alongside privately-owned media is a phenomenon worth the undertaking. What the study has done was an engagement with normative theories of media and democracy to determine whether or not the news media and more particularly, the newspaper media contribute to democratic development of Ghana. In this context, a comparative analytical study of the Daily Graphic and the Ghanaian Chronicle, state and private entities respectively, underpinned the enquiry into the possible influences on elections, checks on democratic accountability and promotion of multiparty politics. Crucially, Ghana's return to the path of multiparty constitutional democracy since 1992, has potentially equipped the news media with muscles to engage the statemanagers inways that may significantly reduce the incidence of power abuse. With some degree of democratic consolidation, the focus of the news media, and even political activists, has significantly shifted towards the ensuring of democratic accountability and responsibility, and administrative transparency. Undoubtedly, the newspaper media as the `Fourth Estate' has a constitutional mandate in Ghana, for ensuring that political power-wielders operate within the standards required for `good governance'. An insight into how the exploits of the newspaper press acts as a catalyst for debate, deliberation and argumentation leading to opinion formation, in the political and democratic sphere in Ghana has been undertaken. This arguably has had an influence more widely in the continent of Africa. Within the framework of unearthing the dynamics of the newspaper press role in the democratic process for the period 1992.2000, a combination of methods were employed to analyse the research data. Importantly, the findings arising from the investigation, informed by the methodological strategy of triangulation, has assisted in addressing most of the research questions using the critical comparative framework. The effectiveness of the Ghanaian media in the democratic process is circumscribed by deep partisanships that wash over the political landscape. However, the bifurcation in the newspaper press offered by private/state ownership and control has arguably been a major contribution to the development of democracy as it allows for pluralism and diversity. This therefore defies the Western-held view that state-owned newspapers are an anathema to democratic development and progress. A major finding emerging from this study has been the combination of two different models of news media ownership contributing to the building of democracy in an African country. The emergence of findings in relation to the role of the state/private dichotomy in newspapers all promoting multiparty democracy in Ghana in particular constituted modest contributions to this field of study and may open the door into wider channels of enquiry into the news media and democracy paradox

Bowdoin Orient v.131, no.1-24 (1999-2000)

https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/bowdoinorient-2000s/1000/thumbnail.jp