Detecting dominant discourses in selected fiction!

[pete9012S]

Detecting dominant discourses in selected detective fiction by Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie......


Fancy some light reading over the weekend?-How about this........

Document Type Doctoral Thesis
Author Coetzee, Liesel
URN etd-05172011-105057
Document Title Detecting dominant discourses in selected detective fiction by Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie
Degree DLitt
Department English
Supervisor
Advisor Name Title
Dr A L Smith Supervisor


Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie were the most successful British women writers of their time. Christie and Blyton were contemporaries, living and writing in the United Kingdom during the first half of the twentieth century. This study takes into consideration these similarities in its examination of the depiction of dominant discourses in relation to emergent, alternative and oppositional discourses in their writing. This thesis suggests that while Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie offer alternatives to the dominant patriarchal discourses of the British Empire in the first half of the twentieth century, they show allegiance, too, to the dominant discourses of their time. Specific consideration is given to the portrayal of discourses concerned with gender, feminism, classism, British colonialism, racism, and xenophobia in their writing.

The work of Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie was extremely popular in their time and still is today. Their important contribution to popular literature in England in the early twentieth century justifies a study of a selection of their work in relation to detective fiction and children’s literature as well as to studies of social history that include the investigation of how dominant discourse is both endorsed and challenged.


Still interested?......download the whole pdf book from the 'files' section at the bottom of this web page..

http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/ ... 11-105057/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Moonraker]

Fascinating reading, Pete. Thanks for finding it.

[Enikyoga]

Pete, a million thanks for availing us this thesis. I had lost track of it. However, I recently came across it. It was published roughly a year after the publication of my book, The Famous Five: A Personal Anecdotage. I intend to blog about the similarities (as well as differences) I find very deafening between my book and this thesis.
Stephen Isabirye

[pete9012S]

Pete, a million thanks for availing us this thesis...It was published roughly a year after the publication of my book, The Famous Five: A Personal Anecdotage. I intend to blog about the similarities (as well as differences) I find very deafening between my book and this thesis.

Does the thesis quote/refer/acknowledge your anecdotage in any way?

Pete

[Enikyoga]

Does the thesis quote/refer/acknowledge your anecdotage in any way?

I am afraid no.
Stephen I.

[Lenoir]

That’s interesting. I still have to download some of the chapters though, as I wasn’t able to get all of them.

I found another article by the same author, from 2003. This one is called “Beyond the horizon” and explores the reasons for Blyton’s popularity. It covers a lot of ground and also examines how her training in Froebel methods of education could have influenced her writing. I'm not used to reading this sort of thing but it's worth persevering with it I think. It's well written and analytical.
The bibliography is impressive.

Beyond the horizon

[Anita Bensoussane]

Thanks, it looks like a good read.

[Eddie Muir]

Very interesting. Thanks for the link, Lenoir.

[Enikyoga]

That’s interesting. I still have to download some of the chapters though, as I wasn’t able to get all of them.

I found another article by the same author, from 2003. This one is called “Beyond the horizon” and explores the reasons for Blyton’s popularity. It covers a lot of ground and also examines how her training in Froebel methods of education could have influenced her writing. I'm not used to reading this sort of thing but it's worth persevering with it I think. It's well written and analytical.
The bibliography is impressive.

Beyond the horizon

Lenoir, a million thanks for providing us another officially unpublished monograph, Beyond The Horizon by Liesel Coetzee, in addition to Detecting Dominant Discourses by the same author. Let me hope that one day she turns them into published books, thus creating more monographs that have been written on and about Enid Blyton. Certainly, I have learnt more about Enid Blyton through the perusal of her two treatises. I too discussed the influence of Froebel on Enid Blyton in my book, The Famous Five: A Personal Anecdotage. This is what I said,

"Enid Blyton through her Froebel teacher training techniques had understood the importance of oral instruction to her kindergarten kids. Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel had invented the kindergarten (whose meaning was a combination of Germanic words for children and garden) school in 1840 whose aim was primarily to cater to children under the age of seven with an emphasis on oral expressions such as play, singing, dancing, and gardening. Froebel configured the relationship between nature and the persistent exercise of language, especially as this was pertinent for infants in their developmental process since at this stage in their development, neonates were considered to be tabula rasa, which meant their incapability of having fully developed their cognitive skills at this stage in their development.

Enid Blyton's Froebel-style-teacher training yielded dividends very early on in her teaching/writing career where she had founded her own nursery school at Southernhay, which caught the attention of parents in the neighborhood who began sending their children to her one-room class due to her renowned charisma and charm with them. Her oral Froebel-style methods of instruction were to influence the articles, poems, and books she was to write for the rest of her life."

Stephen I.

[pete9012S]

Thanks for the link Lenoir-read it and enjoyed it-good enough to be a book/booklet in my humble opinion.

[Enikyoga]

I found another article by the same author, from 2003. This one is called “Beyond the horizon” and explores the reasons for Blyton’s popularity. It covers a lot of ground and also examines how her training in Froebel methods of education could have influenced her writing... Beyond the horizon

One startling mistake I noticed in this otherwise great thesis on Enid Blyton was the erroneous assumption that Enid Blyton only made two trips outside of Britain. Actually there were three. The first one being a trip to France in collaboration with her French teacher in 1913. The other two being the Medi-Atlantic trip in 1930 and the last one being a trip to the USA in 1948.
Stephen I.