Date of Award
January 2016
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
English
First Advisor
Rebecca Weaver-Hightower
Abstract
This dissertation reads novels from South Africa and Ireland by noted writers like Nadine Gordimer and William Trevor, in order to examine how the peripheral and underanalyzed literary daughter has been increasingly used as a symbol of the developing postcolonial state. This reading focuses especially on the daughter-father dyad and how through this relationship the daughter reconfigures herself as what Kwame Anthony Appiah has elsewhere called "a partial cosmopolitan" - that is, a individual connected to both the local environment and to the larger global culture. This dual connection that I trace is established in a range of ways throughout the different novels and, yet, through those differences the daughter and the family drama comes to symbolize the postcolonial state's struggle to redefine itself as moving past the post of post-colonialism.
Recommended Citation
Jensen, Jody Lee, "Paying But Half Heed To My Father And His World: Daughters And Fathers In Postcolonial Texts Of South Africa And Ireland" (2016). Theses and Dissertations. 1905.
https://commons.und.edu/theses/1905