Department of English
Recent Deposits
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A Poetics of Water: Cross-Cultural Ecopoetics in a Crisis World
This thesis yokes together ecocriticism, avant-garde poetry, and comparative literature to offer a new approach to studying literary responses to environmental crisis on a global scale. It develops this approach by examining ... -
Tom Hungerford: A Story of the Early Days of the Otago Goldfields
Tom Hungerford (1872) was inspired by the Otago gold rush of 1861, but is practically unknown as it was published only as a serial in the Tuapeka Times. The author, William Baldwin, a larger-than-life figure who was a run ... -
The Merry Marauders
The Merry Marauders (1913) recounts the humorous misadventures of an accident-prone theatre company, bringing to life the itinerant theatrical world and its struggles with the temperance movement and frontier environment. ... -
Sie or du? Developing Sociopragmatic Capacity in German through Concept-Based Pragmatics Instruction
The present study set out to investigate the extent of the development of sociopragmatic capacity at two different instructional levels of New Zealand university learners, as evident in learners’ understanding of German ... -
Screening the Stage: Film Adaptations of Shakespeare that Originate on Stage 1995-2015
This thesis re-examines the relationship between stage and screen in film adaptations of Shakespeare. The dynamic field of Shakespeare on screen has paid relatively little critical attention to the specific antecedent stage ... -
Sein language : a hermeneutic of New Zealand poetic reality
What 'New Zealand' means, in the poetry bearing the name, has been an issue for our literature for much of the past century. In the 1970s, with the advent in New Zealand of new theoretical perspectives commonly derived ... -
Seallagain: Gaelic Grammar at a Glance
A native Gaelic speaker born in the Isle of Lewis and a graduate of Edinburgh University, Scotland, Catrìona NicÌomhair Parsons has been involved in the teaching of Gaelic language and song in North America for decades. ... -
You and I: One Direction, Fans and the Co-Construction of Identity
This thesis maps the processes of fan and celebrity identity co-construction in the boy band One Direction. Building on Lauren Berlant’s conception of intimacy as the desire for shared narratives, and Judith Butler’s ... -
Motivation, Learner Attrition, and the L2 Motivational Self System: A New Zealand Study of Heritage and Non-Heritage University Language Learners
It has been said that, if sufficiently motivated, anyone can learn a second language (Corder, 1967). But it is also true that no one succeeds in learning a second language (L2) if they stop. This study investigated motivation ... -
Investigating and Enhancing Willingness to Communicate and Motivational Self-System of Yemeni Rural EFL Learners
A major problem in second language (L2) learning and teaching is learners’ low willingness to communicate (WTC). WTC refers to the extent to which an individual is ready to initiate communication with others. Some L2 ... -
Relativization in Korean: Formal Restrictions and Functional Solutions
This study is about how Korean deals with restrictions in relative clause (RC) formation by using constructions that are functionally similar to an RC. Korean is regarded as a language that uses the pronoun-retention ... -
The Songs of Fionn mac Cumhaill: An Historical and Musicological Analysis of Indo-European Musical Poetics in Ireland, Scotland and Nova Scotia
The purpose of this study was to investigate through archival and musicological analysis the audio recordings of Fenian lays made in the middle of the last century. These recordings were made from informants who learned ... -
The Hear and Now: Sound and Technology in the Avant-Garde Poetics of Gertrude Stein, John Cage, and Caroline Bergvall
This thesis examines avant-garde poetry's engagement with sound and sound technology over the last eighty years. Focusing on the work of Gertrude Stein, John Cage, and Caroline Bergvall, I investigate the ways in which ... -
From subject to device, history as myth in action : the evolution of event from mythic processes as revealed in Waterfront Dispute fiction
This analysis of selected New Zealand works defends the evolving function of history as fiction-material. It is intended to establish that purpose and treatment alter, as time further separates the writing and the event. ... -
Esprit de corps[e]: Joyce, Ulysses, and the Body
Throughout his writing James Joyce fashions a sweeping display of corporeal realities shaped by contemporary social, economic, and political conditions. In examining bodies framed by such tropes as impoverishment, addiction ... -
John Evelyn (1620-1706) An Inventory of Works, Special Collections, University of Otago
John Evelyn was born in Wotton, Surrey in October 1620. He lived in tumultuous times – the execution of Charles I, the ascension of Oliver Cromwell and the Interregnum, and the Restoration of King Charles II, of whose ... -
Of Beauty and Its Other: Janet Frame's Ethical Aesthetics
In this thesis, I argue that Janet Frame's experimental aesthetics are the manifestation of an ethical impulse that runs throughout her oeuvre. In making such an argument, I contribute to the recent scholarship that places ... -
The Monstrous Mother and the 'natural man': Mythic Figures and Recurring Metaphors in the Plays of James K. Baxter
Previous critical commentary has considered the plays of James K. Baxter to be predominantly a re-working of his social criticism in a different medium. In this study, I argue that a reassessment of Baxter’s plays using a ... -
T. S. Eliot, 'Four quartets' and the mediaeval mind
The subject of this study is the tradition which gives meaning to T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets. Eliot insisted that the significance of a literary work is determined by its relationship with the works which have preceded it. ... -
“Never mistake a civic pageant for King Lear” – Child Actors’ Skill in Elizabethan Civic Entertainments
This thesis argues that child actors played an important role in the political theatre of Queen Elizabeth I’s civic entertainments because of their function as inherently innocent symbols of the future. Functioning in this ...