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English Language and Literature

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Undergraduate Honors Theses

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Power

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Power Struggles: Sovereignty And The Nonhuman In South Africa, Taelin Wilford Jun 2020

Power Struggles: Sovereignty And The Nonhuman In South Africa, Taelin Wilford

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis uses the theoretical backbone of Jacques Derrida’s The Beast and the Sovereign to look at the theme of the nonhuman in connection with sovereignty in three novels representing three major time periods in South Africa. Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness uses the nonhuman in the form of the supernatural to reveal the limits of sovereignty in Colonial South Africa. J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace makes use of the nonhuman in the form of animals to talk about the transient nature of sovereignty in post-Apartheid South Africa. Lauren Beukes’ Zoo City is set in an alternate future South Africa and …


Magic And Femininity As Power In Medieval Literature, Anna Mcgill May 2015

Magic And Femininity As Power In Medieval Literature, Anna Mcgill

Undergraduate Honors Theses

It is undeniable that literature reflects much about the society that produces it. The give-and-take relationship between a society and its literature is especially interesting when medieval texts are considered. Because most medieval plots and characters are variants of existing stories, the ways that the portrayals change has the potential to reveal much about the differences between medieval societies separated by distance and time. Changes to the treatment of these recurring characters and their stories can reveal how the attitudes of medieval society changed over time. Perceptions of magic and attitudes toward its female practitioners, both real and fictional, changed …