Browsing by Subject "English language"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    A comparative analysis of the written English used in 1969 and 1970 by English I students who participated in the English language tutional scheme at the University of Cape Town
    (1972) Fielding, Michael Lonsdale; Lennox-Short, A
    This examination of students' writing, based on essays written by selected groups of students who participated in the English Language Tutorial Scheme in l969 and 1970, is aimed at establishing what the stylistic, lexical, grammatical and syntactical difficulties of students are. In this way, the approach of tutors may be confirmed or adapted, so that the general weaknesses of students can be concentrated on and the satisfactory aspects of their written composition can be ignored. In this way valuable time need not be wasted on unnecessary teaching.
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    I Know Him Not, and Never Will: Moby Dick, The Human and the Whale
    (2021) Harris, Katherine; Twidle, Hedley
    In this thesis, I argue that Herman Melville's Moby Dick depicts the ocean and whales in a way that develops aesthetic theory into a proto-environmentalist message. Melville draws on theories of the mathematical and dynamic sublime as outlined by Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant, while also employing Goethe's Theory of Colours in his depictions of the ocean setting. Goethe posits that opposing phenomena require one another to signify and to function, and Melville dramatises this idea throughout a complex and often self-contradictory novel. Moby Dick depicts whale hunting in a paradoxical, unstable way which both defends the practice and highlights its cruel nature. In considering this, I trace how depictions and cultural representations of whales have changed over time, shifting from the whale as icon of the monstrously non-human to the whale as touchstone for environmental humanism. Melville, despite the image of Moby Dick as a monster, also portrays whales in a way which humanises them and allows the reader to empathise with them, so allowing for a counter discourse against whaling to emerge. The industrial consumption of marine animals is highlighted in Moby Dick, as Melville notes the various ways in which whales and similar creatures are used for food and other products. Unscrupulous methods of acquiring resources are paid particular attention in the chapter, ‘Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish,' which I use as a guide to the contradictory ideologies at the heart of the text. I argue that the aesthetic theory embedded in the novel enables a nascent environmentalist consciousness, and I place such moments in dialogue with more recent accounts of whales and work from the field of the oceanic humanities.
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    Marvellous Secondary Worlds: A comparative study of C.S. Lewis's Narnia, J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, and Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea
    (1986) Wood, Felicity; Cartwright, John
    In this thesis, the nature and function of Marvellous Secondary worlds are examined by means of a comparative study of three Marvellous Secondary worlds: C. S. Lewis's Narnia, J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, and Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea. We consider the way in which Marvellous Secondary worlds may be used in order to explore certain aspects of reality highly effectively through themes and images characteristic of Marvellous fantasy. In the Introduction, the wide range of Secondary worlds in modern fantasy and the specific functions that Secondary worlds may fulfil is commented on. These analyses are then linked to a discussion of some of the central characteristics of Marvellous Secondary worlds.
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