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Concepts of folly in English Renaissance literature : with particular reference to Shakespeare and Jonson

Bulman, Helen Lois — Tue, 01 Jan 1991 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: Chapter 1 considers Barclay's 'Ship of Fools' in relation to other folly literature in English, particularly Lydgate's 'Order of Fools', Skelton's 'Bowge of Courte', and 'Cocke Lorrel's Bote'. Motifs, allegories and the woodcuts of the text are discussed and some are included in an Illustrations section. Chapter 2 discusses Erasmian folly looking back to the Neoplatonic writings of Nicholas of Cusa, and to the debt Erasmian exegeses owe to Origen. Erasmus' own philosophical and theological views are examined, particularly as they are found in his 'Enchiridion', and in the influence of Thomas à Kempis' 'Imitation of Christ'. A close textual analysis of the 'Moriae Encomium' is undertaken in this light. Chapter 3 defines the lateral boundaries of folly, where it blends into madness. In the context of Renaissance psychology sixteenth century medical works are analysed, including Boorde's 'Breviary of Healthe', Barrough's 'Method of Physicke' and Elyot's 'Castel of Helth'. Blurring between madness and sin, the negative judgments on the mad as demon-possessed, and the biblical models from which such judgments largely arose give alternative perspectives on madness and its relation to folly. Chapters 4-6 look at three Shakespearean comedies showing the development of a primarily Erasmian view of folly. This moves from overt references in 'Love's Labour's Lost' to natural folly, the folly of love and theological folly, through carnivalesque aspects of folly and madness in 'Twelfth Night', to an embedded notion of folly which influences and affects the darker comedy of 'Measure for Measure'. Chapter 7 considers satires of Hall, Marston and Guilpin, and looks at Jonson's Humour plays in this context. 'Volpone' and 'Epicoene', and 'The Alchemist' and 'Bartholomew Fair' are discussed in pairs, showing the softening of Jonson's attitude to folly, and his increasing representation of Erasmian folly reaching its full expression in 'Bartholomew Fair'.

'New-found methods and . . . compounds strange' : reading the 1640 Poems: Written by Wil. Shake-speare. Gent.

Acker, Faith D. — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: The second edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets, titled Poems: Written by Wil. Shake-Speare, Gent, and published by stationer John Benson in 1640, was a text typical of its time. In an effort to update the old-fashioned sonnet sequence in which its contents had first reached print, the compiler or editor of the Bensonian version rearranged the poems from the earlier quarto text, adding titles and other texts thought to have been written by or about the sonnets’ author. The immediate reception of the 1640 Poems was a quiet one, but the volume’s contents and structure served as the foundation for more than half of the editions of Shakespeare’s sonnets produced in the eighteenth century. In part due to the textual instability created by the presence of two disparate arrangements of the collection, Shakespeare’s sonnets served only as supplements to the preferred Shakespearean canon from 1709 to 1790. When, at the end of the century, the sonnets finally entered the canon in Edmond Malone’s groundbreaking edition of the plays and poems together, Benson’s version was quickly overshadowed by the earlier text, which was preferred as both more authorial and, due to Malone’s careful critical readings, autobiographical. In contrast to the many scholars since Malone who have overlooked or denigrated the Poems of 1640, this thesis studies the second edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets within the framework of the early modern culture that produced it, arguing that Benson’s edition provides valuable evidence about the editorial habits and literary preferences of the individuals and culture for which it was originally intended.

"Making room" for one's own : Virginia Woolf and technology of place

Sriratana, Verita — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This thesis offers an analysis of selected works by Virginia Woolf through the theoretical framework of technology of place. The term “technology”, meaning both a finished product and an ongoing production process, a mode of concealment and unconcealment in Martin Heidegger’s sense, is used as part of this thesis’s argument that place can be understood through constant negotiations of concrete place perceived through the senses, a concept based on the Heideggerian notion of “earth”, and abstract place perceived in the imagination, a concept based on the Heideggerian notion of “world”. The term “technology of place”, coined by Irvin C. Schick in The Erotic Margin: Sexuality and Spatiality in Alteritist Discourse (1999), is appropriated and re-interpreted as part of this thesis’s adoption and adaptation of Woolf’s notion of ideal biographical writing as an amalgamation of “granite” biographical facts and “rainbow” internal life. Woolf’s granite and rainbow dichotomy is used as a foreground to this thesis’s proposed theoretical framework, through which questions of space/place can be examined. My analysis of Flush (1933) demonstrates that place is a technology which can be taken at face value and, at the same time, appropriated to challenge the ideology of its construction. My analysis of Orlando (1928) demonstrates that Woolf’s idea of utopia exemplifies the technological “coming together”, in Heidegger’s term, of concrete social reality and abstract artistic fantasy. My analysis of The Years (1937) demonstrates that sense of place as well as sense of identity is ambivalent and constantly changing like the weather, reflecting place’s Janus-faced function as both concealment and unconcealment. Lastly, my analysis of Woolf’s selected essays and marginalia illustrates that writing can serve as a revolutionary “place-making” technology through which one can mentally “make room” for (re-)imagining the lives of “the obscure”, often placed in oblivion throughout the course of history.

Trauma and representation in women's diaries of the Second World War

Richardson, Margaret Ravenel — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: As a transnational contribution to the study of life-writing and to the understanding of women’s war experiences, ‘Trauma and Representation in Women’s Diaries of the Second World War’ examines women’s war diaries from the point of view of trauma studies. It provides new readings of established texts, such as Frances Partridge’s A Pacifist’s War and Etty Hillesum’s An Interrupted Life, alongside previously unexamined archival diaries and several recently published diaries that have received little critical attention to date. Through close reading, it analyses how traumatic registers, ranging from mild to severe, manifest in both the genesis and subject matter of women’s diaries. The Introduction discusses the post-war cultural imperatives that have worked to repress women’s accounts of the Second World War, particularly those which describe devastation in the domestic sphere. It situates diary writing contextually within the field of autobiographical writing, exploring the characteristics of this contested genre and questioning the possibilities it opens up for the conveyance of traumatic experience. Finally, it provides a brief historiography of trauma studies, focusing on the complicated relationship between trauma and modern warfare and the difficulties traumatic experience poses for testimony. In the ensuing chapters, my analyses demonstrate the various ways war trauma manifests in women’s diaries. Chapter One examines the physiological and psychological costs of repeated exposure to violent situations such as bomb raids and rape through a combination of psychoanalytic and neurobiological discourses on trauma. Chapter Two discusses diaries that were kept at a relative distance from violent conflict, exploring women’s affective responses to the changes in their lives that occurred during wartime through theories of depression and melancholia. Finally, Chapter Three constitutes a final analysis of the relationship between trauma and representation, analysing women’s descriptions of both the physical and societal abjection that proliferated towards the end of the war.

Excavating the borders of literary Anglo-Saxonism in nineteenth-century Britain and Australia

D'Arcens, Louise — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: Comparing nineteenth-century British and Australian Anglo-Saxonist literature enables a "decentered" exploration of Anglo-Saxonism's intersections with national, imperial, and colonial discourses, challenging assumption that this discourse was an uncritical vehicle of English nationalism and British manifest destiny. Far from reflecting a stable imperial center, evocations of 'ancient Englishness' in British literature were polyvalent and self-contesting, while in Australian literature they offered a response to colonization and emerging knowledge about the vast age of Indigenous Australian cultures.

While crowding memories came : Edwin Morgan, Old English and nostalgia

Jones, Chris — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Recycling Anglo-Saxon poetry : Richard Wilbur's 'Junk' and a self study

Jones, Chris — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

"It's a question of words, therefore" : becoming-animal in Michel Faber’s Under the Skin

Dillon, Sarah Joanne — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This essay reads Michel Faber’s debut novel Under the Skin (2000) in the context of contemporary philosophical and literary critical debates about the ethical relation between human and nonhuman animals. It argues that Faber’s text engages with, but deconstructs, the traditional division of ‘no language, no subjectivity’ by a heretical act of renaming human beings as ‘vodsels,’ and by an extensive process of figurative transformation. The paper then proceeds to a sustained analysis of the main character in the novel, Isserley, in the light of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s theories of becoming-animal, the anomalous, and becoming-molecular. The paper concludes that the novel engages in the limitrophy – Derrida’s neologism – required to negotiate the abyssal limit between the human and nonhuman animal.

Re-inscribing De Quincey's palimpsest : the significance of the palimpsest in contemporary literary and cultural studies

Dillon, Sarah Joanne — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: In 1845, Thomas De Quincey inaugurated the substantive concept of 'the palimpsest'. Since then, this concept has frequently occurred in creative, critical and theoretical texts across the fields of literature, philosophy and cultural studies. This article brings together some of those diverse texts in order to draw attention to how the palimpsest is reinscribed in and by a range of contemporary critical discourses, including deconstruction, psychoanalysis, postcolonial theory, feminism and queer theory. Moreover, the palimpsest is crucial to these discourses' rethinking of such key contemporary issues as the subject, time, history, culture, gender and sexuality, and the processes of reading and writing themselves. The movement of elucidation here is reciprocal and simultaneous: the palimpsest reifies and aids the understanding of current ideas and concepts; at the same time, those ideas enable a reinscription of the palimpsest that sophisticates our understanding of its complex structure and logic.

Palimpsesting : reading and writing lives in H.D.'s 'Murex: War and Postwar London (circa A. D. 1916-1926)'

Dillon, Sarah Joanne — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Chaotic narrative : complexity, causality, time and autopoiesis in David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten

Dillon, Sarah Joanne — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: David Mitchell is one of Britain’s foremost contemporary writers who is only just becoming the subject of academic attention. Focusing on his first novel, Ghostwritten (1999), this essay argues that the science of complexity provides a language with which to account for the novel’s complex interconnecting structure. The novel is defined as an autopoietic system according to the theories of Maturana and Varela and its engagement with the issues of causality and time explored in relation to the work of Ilya Prigogine. The paper concludes that Ghostwritten is a complex narrative system that responds to the intimate connection between the macroscopic and the microscopic in the contemporary world.

Life after Derrida : anacoluthia and the agrammaticality of following

Dillon, Sarah Joanne — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: Written on Derrida's "'Le Parjure,' Perhaps: Storytelling and Lying," this essay takes the concept of the anacoluthon from Derrida's text (as lie has done from J. Hillis Miller, as he did from Proust) and-commenting on the figure of the woman in this male lineage-further invents the concept of the anacoluthon by demonstrating]low its formal linguistic definition provides a model for the event of reading and writing of thinking-that Derrida so admires in Hillis Miller's work and practices in his own. By employing this same reading practice in its own thinking, this essay does not respond to Derrida's death in mourning, nor in thinking about mourning, but in the memory of thought. Produced out of Derrida's work, the essay remains faithful to him only by simultaneously being faithful and unfaithful, thereby enacting the agrammaticality of following represented in and by the anacoluthon.

'And the Word was made flesh': the problem of the Incarnation in seventeenth-century devotional poetry

Sharpe, Jesse David — Tue, 01 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: In using the doctrine of the Incarnation as a lens to approach the devotional poetry of seventeenth-century Britain, ‘“And the Word was made flesh”: The Problem of the Incarnation in Seventeenth-Century Devotional Poetry’ finds this central doctrine of Christianity to be a destabilising force in the religious controversies of the day. The fact that Roman Catholics, the Church of England, and Puritans all hold to the same belief in the Incarnation means that there is a central point of orthodoxy which allows poets from differing sects of Christianity to write devotional verse that is equally relevant for all churches. This creates a situation in which the more the writer focuses on the incarnate Jesus, the less ecclesiastically distinct their writings become and the more aware the reader is of how difficult it is to categorise poets by the sects of the day. The introduction historicises the doctrine of the Incarnation in Early Modern Europe through presenting statements of belief for the doctrine from reformers such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Huldryk Zwingli in addition to the Roman Catholic decrees of the Council of Trent and the Church of England’s ‘39 Articles’. Additionally, there is a further focus on the Church of England provided through considering the writings of Richard Hooker and Lancelot Andrewes amongst others. In the ensuing chapters, the devotional poetry of John Donne, Aemilia Lanyer, George Herbert, Robert Herrick, and Richard Crashaw is discussed in regards to its use of the Incarnation and incarnational imagery in orthodox though diverse manners. Their use of words to appropriate the Word, and their embrace of the flesh as they approach the divine shows the elastic and problematic nature of a religion founded upon God becoming human and the mystery that the Church allows it to remain.

Writing and re-writing the Middle East

Levey, Gregory — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This thesis is comprised of a critical component and a creative component. The creative component consists of a portfolio of creative writing drawn from a fictionalized memoir, and the critical component consists of three interconnected chapters analyzing the creative component. The creative component, titled The Accidental Peacemaker, has been written alongside my recently published (and related) book, How to Make Peace in the Middle East in Six Months or Less Without Leaving Your Apartment. It is a satirical, first-person fictionalized memoir about how the Middle East conflict manifests in North America, told from the point of view of a North American Jewish narrator. The critical component contextualizes the creative component by situating it within the disparate genres of creative writing that inform it, and by exploring its descent from them. Together, the three critical chapters argue that the creative component stands at the intersection of life writing, North American Jewish Writing, and humourous political writing. The first critical chapter, on life writing, examines the overlaps between fiction and memoir, and argues, in part, that from a creative writer’s point of view, a sharp distinction is challenging to pinpoint. The second critical chapter, on North American Jewish writing, explores some efforts that have been made to determine what characteristics identify “Jewish writing,” and which identifying marks are germane to this particular piece of creative work. The third critical chapter, on humourous political writing, argues that humour and politics are particularly intertwined in North American writing and media today, and that by using humour and first-person life writing, an author can probe into sensitive political terrain without as much risk of needlessly offending as they might have if they used other approaches.

'[T]he language of self' : strategies of subjectivity in the novels of Don DeLillo

Pass, Phillip — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: ‘[T]he language of self’: Strategies of Subjectivity in the Novels of Don DeLillo’ explores the manner in which both self and society are constructed in the writer’s longer fiction. Divided into two sections, the first, entitled Dasein, examines the way in which the language of self forms a Mobius strip comprised of two opposing yet omnipresent urges: that of connection and isolation. Coining the term enunciation, the thesis describes the manner in which each character’s subjectivity is an historically contingent attempt at negotiating this tension between isolation and connection, self and other. The second section of the thesis, entitled 'das Man', then proceeds to explore the impact of this language of self within a wider social context, examining the manner in which it interacts with other linguistic and quasi-linguistic binaries – such as language, image, capital, waste, power and terror – likewise characterised as adopting the form of a Mobius strip. Through such a methodology, the second section of the thesis is thus able to explore the interaction and shared genesis of public and private conceptions of subjectivity, illustrating how it is this same tension between connection and isolation which governs the form that social interactions and institutions adopt in the novels of Don DeLillo.

The transfiguring event : phenomenological readings of Ian McEwan's late fiction

Andrews, Christina Chandler — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This thesis performs a phenomenological reading of Ian McEwan’s later novels, using the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty in particular. Chapter One examines fundamental concepts in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology—perception, embodiment, inter-subjectivity, and ambiguity in Enduring Love. It also uses Levinas’ idea of ‘the other’ to tease apart the complexities of the novel’s love triangle. Chapter Two examines Merleau-Ponty’s ideas on history and memory and their relation to the self in Black Dogs. The phenomenological understanding of these terms allows us to re-evaluate the novel’s status as ‘memoir’. Chapter Three presents Merleau-Ponty’s ideas on perception and embodiment to explicate the phenomenon of misperception in Atonement. The reading focuses on the ambiguous, problematic nature of perception and the important role the body plays in establishing the ‘truth’ of a traumatic event. Chapter Four investigates being-towards-death in Amsterdam, using both Heidegger’s writings and Merleau-Ponty’s concept of ‘co-existence’. The chapter also highlights Amsterdam’s portrayal of authenticity and the effects of non-representation on the reader. Chapter Five examines On Chesil Beach’s depiction of sexuality and language alongside Merleau-Ponty’s writings on sexual being, the body, and expression. It illustrates that the Merleau-Pontian understanding of bodily and linguistic gesture provides insight into why McEwan’s text focuses on both sexuality and language and how the failure of one often leads to a failure of both. It focuses on the various ‘misreadings’ in On Chesil Beach. Chapter Six examines Saturday and its depiction of being-with-others after 9/11. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology articulates the intertwined relationship of subjective and social realities portrayed in the novel. Saturday exemplifies Merleau-Ponty’s argument that literature can show the true potential of phenomenological philosophy. By undertaking a phenomenological-literary study that emphasises the unveiling potential of McEwan’s novels, this thesis illustrates one way that literature, like philosophy, ‘consists in relearning to look at the world’ (Phenomenology of Perception 2002, xxiii).

T.S. Eliot among the Metaphysicals

Gray, Will — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: Eliot’s admiration for the poetry of the seventeenth century is well known. However, the several documents that explore the subject (thinly scattered across decades) fail to constitute a full account. Drawing on manuscript and print sources, and tracing particularly Eliot’s prose poetics, this thesis redresses the scholarly need for a nuanced account of Eliot’s role among the Metaphysical poets. The relationship ran in both directions, most famously in Eliot’s championing of the poets and his urging that they find a new readership. His part in the revival of Metaphysical poetry, though, has been greatly exaggerated and the record is here faithfully adjusted. He was not in any way responsible for that revival, though he is its most important product, as is shown by a careful reconstruction of turn-of-the-century transcontinental publishing and reception. Eliot’s criticism tells its own, largely unexplored story about the Metaphysicals and their influence on his critical and poetic sensibility. Most scholars, for instance, know that Eliot loved Donne, but few know the origin of that interest, let alone its brief nature or the personal reasons that drove him to appreciate the poet’s audacity. Most also know the Modernist dicta of Tradition, objective correlative and the dissociation of sensibility, but not the fact that each owes something to Eliot’s thinking about Donne. Engaging with Harvard class notes, under-consulted textbooks and a close study of Eliot’s articles from the 1910s, two separate chapters investigate his education and early prose, along with their delicate dance between impersonality and confessional criticism. 1921-1926 marks a crucial stage in Eliot’s writing, both for his poetry and his criticism. The Metaphysicals provide the clearest barometer of that change as well as the space where he approached conversion. This thesis is the first to trace the poets throughout Eliot’s criticism, one of the first to engage with his Metaphysical-themed Clark Lectures, and the first to move far past Eliot’s conversion, interpreting George Herbert as typical of his late mindset. In 1961 Eliot claimed no one had been as influenced by the Metaphysical poets as he had been. What this thesis offers is not only a more nuanced portrait of that influence but also a glimpse into the educational, critical and reading cultures of the early 1900s.

Narrative structure and philosophical debates in Tristram Shandy and Jacques le fataliste

Whiskin, Margaux Elizabeth — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: The aim of the present thesis is to analyse how the narrative affects the various philosophical debates in Tristram Shandy and Jacques le fataliste. Contrary to what one expects from a philosophical novel, Sterne and Diderot do not impose upon the reader an authorial and authoritative discourse. Dominant discourses are constantly challenged and contradicted. The philosophical debates in both novels remain open and are left without a conclusion. The author’s voice is but one amongst many others, and it is the narrative which maintains the dialogue between them by preventing one particular voice from invalidating the others. My argument hinges on Bakhtinian dialogism, which can be defined as the presence of interacting voices and views. In Tristram Shandy and Jacques le fataliste, dialogism occurs through the narrative structure allowing for the confrontation of the contradictory discourses in the philosophical debates, and enabling them to engage in dialogue, instead of establishing the authorial voice as the sole valid discourse in the text. Through those contradictions, the philosophical content takes on a different form, that of a refusal of systematic discourse. No dogmatic view is forced upon the reader. Sterne and Diderot do not offer a solution to the various philosophical questions debated in their novels. However, they do offer a philosophical method whereby the confrontation of contradictory ideas creates a dynamic for the pursuit of truth.

'Paper gypsies' : representations of the gypsy figure in British literature, c. 1780-1870

Drayton, Alexandra L. — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: Representations of the Gypsies and their lifestyle were widespread in British culture in the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This thesis analyzes the varying literary and artistic responses to the Gypsy figure in the period circa 1780-1870. Addressing not only well-known works by William Wordsworth, Jane Austen, Walter Scott, John Clare, Robert Browning, Matthew Arnold and George Eliot, but also lesser-known or neglected works by Gilbert White, Hannah More, George Crabbe and Samuel Rogers, unpublished archival material from Princess Victoria’s journals, and a range of articles from the periodical press, this thesis examines how the figure of the Gypsy was used to explore differing conceptions of the landscape, identity and freedom, as well as the authoritative discourses of law, religion and science. The influence of William Cowper’s Gypsy episode in Book One of The Task is shown to be profound, and its effect on ensuing literary representations of the Gypsy is an example of my interpretation of Wim Willem’s term ‘paper Gypsies’: the idea that literary Gypsies are often textual (re)constructions of other writers’ work, creating a shared literary, cultural and artistic heritage. A focus on the picturesque and the Gypsies’ role within that genre is a strong theme throughout this thesis. The ambiguity of picturesque Gypsy representations challenges the authority of the leisured viewer, provoking complex responses that either seek to contain the Gypsy’s disruptive potential or demonstrate the figure’s refusal to be controlled. An examination of texts alongside contemporary paintings and sketches of Gypsies by Princess Victoria, George Morland, Thomas Gainsborough, J. M. W. Turner, John Constable and John Everett Millais, elucidates the significance of the Gypsies as ambiguous ciphers in both literature and art.

Creolization and the collective unconscious : Locating the originality of art in Wilson Harris' Jonestown, The Mask of the Beggar and The Ghost of Memory

Burns, Lorna Margaret — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Becoming Bertha : Virtual difference and repetition in postcolonial 'writing back', a Deleuzian reading of Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea

Burns, Lorna Margaret — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: Critical responses to Wide Sargasso Sea have seized upon Rhys's novel as an exemplary model of writing back. Looking beyond the actual repetitions which recall Brontë’s text, I explore Rhys's novel as an expression of virtual difference and becomings that exemplify Deleuze's three syntheses of time. Elaborating the processes of becoming that Deleuze's third synthesis depicts, Antoinette's fate emerges not as a violence against an original identity. Rather, what the reader witnesses is a series of becomings or masks, some of which are validated, some of which are not, and it is in the rejection of certain masks, forcing Antoinette to become-Bertha, that the greatest violence lies.

Seamus Heaney and the adequacy of poetry : a study of his prose poetics

Dennison, John — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: Seamus Heaney’s prose poetics return repeatedly to the adequacy of poetry, its ameliorative, restorative response to the inimical reality of life in the public domain. Drawing on manuscript as well as print sources, this thesis charts the development of this central theme, demonstrating the extent to which it threads throughout the whole of Heaney’s thought, from his earliest conceptual formation to his late cultural poetics. Heaney’s preoccupation with this idea largely originates in his undergraduate studies where he encounters Leavis and Arnold’s accounts of poetry’s adequacy: its ameliorative cultural and spiritual function. He also inherits, from Romantic and modernist influences, two differing accounts of poetry’s relationship to reality. That conflicted inheritance engenders a crisis within Heaney’s own early theorisation of poetry’s adequacy to the violence of public life. An important period of clarification ensues, out of which emerge the dualisms of his later thought, and his emphasis on poetry’s capacity to encompass, and yet remain separate from, ‘history’. Accompanied by habitual appropriation of Christian doctrine and language, these conceptual structures increasingly assume a redemptive pattern. By the mid-1990s, Heaney’s humanist commitment to a ‘totally adequate’ poetry has assumed a thoroughly Arnoldian character. The logical strain of his conceptual constructions—particularly the emphasis on poetry’s autonomy from history—becomes acutely apparent, revealing just how appropriate the ambivalent ideal ‘adequacy’ is. The subsequent expansion of Heaney’s poetics into a general affirmation of the arts illuminates the fiduciary character of his trust in poetry while exposing the limits of that trust: Heaney’s belief in poetry’s adequacy constitutes a humanist substitute for—indeed, an ‘afterimage’ of—Christian belief. This, finally, is the deep significance of the idea of adequacy to Heaney’s thought: it allows us to identify precisely the Arnoldian origin, the late humanist character, and the limits of his troubled trust in poetry.

The theatrical portrait in eighteenth century London

West, Shearer — Wed, 01 Jan 1986 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: A theatrical portrait is an image of an actor or actors in character. This genre was widespread in eighteenth century London and was practised by a large number of painters and engravers of all levels of ability. The sources of the genre lay in a number of diverse styles of art, including the court portraits of Lely and Kneller and the fetes galantes of Watteau and Mercier. Three types of media for theatrical portraits were particularly prevalent in London, between c.1745 and 1800 : painting, print and book illustration. All three offered some form of publicity to the actor, and allowed patrons and buyers to recollect a memorable - performance of a play. Several factors governed the artist's choice of actor, character and play. Popular or unusual productions of plays were nearly always accompanied by some form of actor portrait, although there are eighteenth century portraits which do not appear to reflect any particular performance at all. Details of costume in these works usually reflected fashions of the contemporary stage, although some artists occasionally invented costumes to suit their own ends. Gesture and expression of the actors in theatrical portraits also tended to follow stage convention, and some definite parallels between gestures of actors in theatrical portraits and contemporary descriptions of those actors can be made. Theatrical portraiture on the eighteenth century model continued into the nineteenth century, but its form changed with the changing styles of acting. However the art continued to be largely commercial and ephemeral, and in its very ephemerality lies its importance as a part of the social history of the eighteenth century.

An investigation of the effects of phonics teaching on children's progress in reading and spelling

Watson, Joyce E. — Thu, 01 Jan 1998 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: Progressive child-centred education has led to the ascendancy of look and say methods for children learning to read, perpetuating the use of a guessing strategy and promoting a dependency culture. Explicit synthetic phonics with direct teaching of the alphabetic principle has been replaced by gradual analytic phonics or no phonics, leaving children to discover spelling patterns for themselves. This investigation was directed towards identifying the relationship between different teaching methods and children's progress in word reading, spelling and reading comprehension. Initially, such progress was monitored from 1993-1995 in 12 Primary classes. Analyses of the data collected indicated that (a) accelerated letter-sound knowledge and the ability to blend letter sounds had a significant effect on children's progress in reading, spelling and comprehension and (b) the degree to which blending had been explicitly taught had a significant positive effect on the proportion of spelling errors produced which encode orthographic information. The effects of accelerating letter-sound knowledge and sounding and blending were then examined experimentally in Primary 1 children using two experimental groups and one control group. It was found that explicit synthetic phonics, which demonstrates how letters blend together to form words, (a) accelerated reading, spelling and phonemic awareness more rapidly than just learning the letter sounds at an accelerated pace and (b) produced a higher proportion of mature orthographic spelling errors than in the other conditions. It was found that the strategies children use for decoding and encoding mirror the teaching methods they have experienced. Gradual analytiC phonics teaching encourages phonetic cue reading, children only processing some of the letters and sounds in words. Explicit synthetic phonics teaching encourages early cipher reading, children processing all of the letters and sounds in words. This method teaches children how to use their knowledge of the alphabetic code to decode unknown words, thus establishing an orthographic memory for such words.

Fantasising the self: a study of Alasdair Gray's 'Lanark', '1982 Janine', 'Something Leather' and 'Poor Things'

Ibáñez, Eva Martínez — Fri, 01 Jan 1999 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This thesis explores the use of fantasy in Alasdair Gray's major fictions: Lanark (1981), 1982 Janine (1984), Something Leather (1990) and Poor Things (1992). The main purpose is to study the way Alasdair Gray borrows elements from different forms of fantasy - magical realism, pornography, the Gothic and science fiction - in order to explore and resolve the internal conflicts of his characters. In the introduction current definitions of fantasy are surveyed. Also explored is the concept of magical realism, as one of the objectives of the thesis is to demonstrate that some of Gray's work, particularly Lanark, presents some of the characteristics of this branch of Postmodernism. The first chapter concerns Lanark. The juxtaposition of fantasy and realism is explored in order to show the fragmentation of the self represented by the figure of Thaw/Lanark. Also paradoxes and contradictions at the heart of this work are investigated from the point of view of form and content. Of particular importance is the conflict between the individual and society. In the chapter dealing with 1982 Janine, the concept of deidealisation is introduced to show how Jock deals with the figures in his past, Scotland and himself Jock's personal conflicts and damaged psyche are explored through his pornographic fantasies. In chapter III Something Leather is compared to works by Sade, particularly their use of sadomasochistic and homosexual fantasies as a form of social subversion. Chapter IV discusses Poor Things from the point of view of how characteristics typical of the Gothic novel are parodied to explore gender issues such as the construction of female identity by a male Other. Parallelisms between this novel and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children and John Fowles' A Maggot are also explored. In the conclusion the main concerns and obsessions of Gray's fiction are explored through a discussion of his shorter fiction.

Sir Richard Burton: a study of his literary works relating to the Arab world and Islam

Maʾat, Yassin Salhani — Sun, 01 Jan 1978 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This thesis is concerned with a critical analysis from a Moslem's point of view of Sir Richard Burton's works relating to the Arab World and Islam. The research will attempt to establish the merits and shortcomings of Burton's works in the light of the proposed research. It will, however, at the same time attempt to establish from internal evidence the extent and nature of Burton's knowledge of both Arabic and Islam. The thesis is divided into seven chapters, each of which deals with one or more of Burton's works. Chapter one deals with Burton's pilgrimage to Mecca and El-Medinah. Chapter two deals with the collection of proverbs "Proverbia Communia Syriaca." Chapter three covers Burton's Kasidah and discusses his interest in Sufism and spiritualism. Chapter four concentrates on his translation of The Arabian Nights paying particular attention to the annotations and "Terminal Essay." Chapter five deals with The Perfumed Garden and tries to make a comparison between Burton's translation and its Arabic original in order to estimate to what extent could Burton's Garden be taken as a representative of the original. Chapter six deals with Burton's three essays The Jew, The Gypsy and El-Islam. This chapter concentrates on Burton's religious loyalty and also points out the true reasons behind writing these essays. Chapter seven touches upon almost all his other works and translations. It attempts to establish and prove the fact that the study of the grabs and Islam and the interest in them was a life-long obsession with Burton rather than a temporary occupation. The conclusion attempts to put together the findings of all the other chapters. However, it will concentrate on pointing out where did really Burton's religious and racial loyalties lie as well as give a brief and concluding comment of the nature and extent of his knowledge of both the Arabic language and Islam. The eight appendixes that follow the research include technical data ranging from Burton's background reading to the listing of topics he studied or referred to in the Moslem religion.

The Whalley Coucher Book and the dialectal phonology of Lancashire and Cheshire 1175-1350

King, Christopher D. — Tue, 01 Jan 1991 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: An investigation by G. P. Cubbin into the local placename sources of Lancashire of a time when the vernacular had a low status isolated the Whalley Coucher Book as the one that most seemed to deserve further scrutiny. That book therefore forms the basis of the present study. The Coucher Boook is a mediaeval work of monastic provenance and is a compilation of deeds received by Whalley Abbey over the period. The interest of the source lies in its representation of many place-names by writers who may be supposed to have been familiar with them. Whalley's placename corpus affords scope for examination of variation that is of dialectal significance. A searching analysis is undertaken of the evidence that the Whalley Coucher Book offers. Questions of dating, of location of place-names, of the elements that compose them, and of the status of the text have to be examined with a view to elucidating the significance for phonology of this evidence. Such examination is carried out at length, and it is hoped that these aspects of the present work may be found to have application in linguistic and historical inquiry both for the actual results relative to the Whalley Coucher Book and for the methodological demonstration. A considerable amount of dialectal phonological information from the source is presented in this thesis. It is critically examined and collated and the attempt is made to derive actual usage in the territory and period concerned. On the whole the conclusion is that most of the evidence does reflect the dialect and that it produces a believable distribution of forms. Some of the dialectal information thus acquired appears as new. More commonly, however, this study confirms the existing picture or makes it somewhat more precise. The evidence does not escape the uneven coverage that is to be expected in place-name evidence for dialect. Although the amount of the evidence of the Whalley Coucher Book and its general consistency are comparatively good, the finding of this work is that they are not enough to establish the original suggestion that the Coucher Book might deserve reliance without reference to, and even in total defiance of, other local sources. The present study concludes that the best evidence consists of a select group of sources amongst which Whalley may be taken as pre-eminent.

Shadows and chivalry: pain, suffering, evil and goodness in the works of George MacDonald and C.S. Lewis

McInnis, Jeff — Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This thesis argues that George MacDonald's literary influence upon C. S. Lewis-concerning the themes of pain, suffering, evil and goodness-was transforming and long-lasting. It is argued in the opening chapter that MacDonald's work had a great deal to do with the change in young Lewis's imagination, helping to convert him from a romantic doubter to a romantic believer in God and his goodness. A review of both writers' first works suggests that such influence may have begun earlier in Lewis's career than has been noticed. The second chapter examines how both authors contended with the problems that pain and suffering present, and how both understood and presented the nature of faith. Differences in their treatment of these subjects are noted, but it is argued that these views and depictions share fundamental elements, and that MacDonald's direct influence can be demonstrated in particular cases. The view that MacDonald was primarily a champion of feelings is challenged, as is the idea that either man's later writing displays a loss of faith in God and his goodness. The third chapter, in specifically refuting the assertion that MacDonald's view of evil was inclusive in the Jungian or dualistic sense, shows how both authors' work maintains an unmistakable distinction between evil fortune and moral evil. The next two chapters examine fundamental similarities in their treatment of evil and goodness. Special care is taken in these two chapters to trace MacDonald's direct influence, especially regarding the differences they believed existed between hell's Pride and what they believed God to be. The fifth chapter reviews their ideas and depictions of heaven in summing up the study's argument concerning the overall influence of MacDonald's writing upon Lewis's imagination-in particular the change in Lewis's understanding of the relations between Spirits, Nature, and God.

Introversion and extroversion in certain late Victorian writers

Stepputat, Jorgen — Tue, 01 Jan 1985 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This thesis deals with three writers, George Gissing, Edmund Gosse and Robert Louis Stevenson. I use the words "introversion" and "extroversion" partly in a geographical sense. George Gissing, for example, in spite of Continental influences remained a very English (in some ways almost insular) novelist, and in that sense an introvert. Edmund Gosse, on the other hand, was a very cosmopolitan critic although his style was typically English. Robert Louis Stevenson provides a third angle. Having been born in Edinburgh he was forced into exile for most of his life, and obviously this had a great effect on his writings. Of the three writers most weight is given to Edmund Gosse. In my analysis of George Gissing I concentrate on some of his best known novels, The Unclassed, The Nether World, New Grub Street and Born in Exile. The Emancipated and By the Ionian Sea deal specifically with Italy. There are four chapters on Edmund Gosse. The first concentrates on the early part of his long career when his main interest was Scandinavian literature. The next two chapters give an account of his impressions of and writings on America and France. In the fourth chapter on Edmund Gosse I concentrate on the part of his career when he had become an established authority on his own country's literature. Robert Louis Stevenson, too, is dealt with in four chapters. First I write briefly about his Scottish works, all inspired by his childhood and youth. Next I deal with his two favourite countries, France and the United States, both associated with his Wife, Fanny. The last chapter follows Stevenson to the South Seas where he spent the last few years of his life and wrote some of his best books. The three writers are compared from time to time. Robert Louis Stevenson and Edmund Gosse knew each other well; George Gissing is the odd man out. But his reaction to foreign influences differs from that of the other two and this makes a comparison very interesting.

Negative constructions in selected Middle English verse texts

Iyeiri, Yoko — Fri, 01 Jan 1993 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: The objective of the present study is to investigate the historical development of negative constructions in ME verse and to provide a descriptive account of it. The central issues analyzed in this thesis are: (1) the usage of the negative adverbs 'ne', 'not' and some other negative elements such as 'never', 'no', etc.; (2) the occurrence of negative contraction as illustrated by 'nam' (< ne am) and 'nolde' (< ne wolde); and (3) the development and the decline of multiple negation. The thesis has both a chronological and a geographical perspective, since it examines changes in usage which took place during the ME period and various dialectal types. The thesis also includes a discussion of pleonastic negation and the omission of negative elements (termed 'unexpressed negation'). For the purpose of these analyses, twenty manuscripts of eighteen verse texts ranging chronologically from early ME to later ME are selected from various geographical areas of England. The texts investigated are: (1) Poema Morale, (2) The Owl and the Nightingale, (3) King Horn, (4) Havelok, (5) The South English Legendary, (6) English Metrical Homilies, (7) The Middle English Genesis and Exodus, (8) The Poems of William of Shoreham, (8) Cursor Mundi, (10) Sir Ferumbras, (11) Confessio Amantis, (12) Handlyng Synne, (13) Kyng Alisaunder, (14) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, (15) The Affiterative Morte Arthure, (16) Alexander and Dindimus, (17) The Destruction of Troy, and (18) The Stanzaic Morte Arthur. Due to the paucity of suitable material for linguistic analysis at the beginning of the ME period, Poema Morale is investigated in three selected manuscripts (MS Lambeth, MS Trinity, and MS Digby), all of which are localized in different areas of England.

An edition of 'Contemplations of the dread and love of God'

Connolly, Margaret — Tue, 01 Jan 1991 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This thesis presents an edition of Contemplations of the Dread and Love of God, a late Middle English devotional prose text for which no critical edition is currently available. I have transcribed and collated the text from all sixteen extant manuscripts and the 1506 printed edition. An investigation of the errors and variants according to the classical method of textual criticism has yielded little in the way of conclusive results, and it has therefore not proved possible to construct a stemma of manuscripts from the corpus of evidence as it now exists. My edition therefore uses one manuscript (Maidstone MS Museum 6) as a base; I emend the text of Maidstone where necessary, and cite variants from all the other witnesses to show all differences of substance. A full critical apparatus is provided, comprising: the text with variants, textual notes and glossary. The introduction includes a full description of all the manuscripts and the two early printed editions, an outline of the methods of textual criticism applied and their results, and an explanation of the choice of base manuscript; information about the language of the Maidstone manuscript and the date of the text are also provided, as is an outline of my editorial principles. The thesis also contains two appendices. The first of these deals briefly with the twenty-two instances where individual chapters of Contemplations appear in other manuscript compilations; the second discusses the English and Latin prayers which follow the full text in some manuscripts.

Thomas Hardy and the meaning of freedom

Badawi, Muhamad — Tue, 01 Jan 1985 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This is a study of the meaning of freedom in Thomas Hardy's fiction. The first section of the thesis is concerned with the influences in Hardy's thought and view of man and man's position in the universe. Attention will be given mainly to three sources of influence on Hardy's thought. Darwinian theories of evolution and the secular movement of the nineteenth century and the change they brought about in man's view of himself and his state in the world can be seen clearly in Hardy's personal writings as well as his fiction. His childhood contact with Dorset folk beliefs and superstitions can also be perceived to have a great influence not only on his art but on his thought and outlook as well. In the second section an investigation in detail of the meaning of freedom in four of Hardy's novels will be carried out. In the novels, man will be seen as essentially free and not an automaton or a plaything of necessity or nature or fate, for example. However, we shall see that man's freedom of action as well as of choice is severely limited but not annihilated by a number of factors working from within and from without man's character. In this, nature both as phenomena and as system plays a great part. Society with its standards, norms, laws and implied understandings is another contributing factor in constraining man's freedom. Man also has his freedom limited by chance happenings and coincidences that he cannot control. "Character is fate", quotes Hardy from Novalis, and everywhere in the novels we see characters' destinies linked tightly with their personal traits, unconscious urges and peculiarities of character either passed to them by heredity or formed by early life conditioning or both. Nevertheless, man is responsible in Hardy's view because he has that essential sense of freedom; and hence that tragic flavour that tinges Hardy's fiction which would have been impossible with machine-like people as characters.

Gerald Manley Hopkins and the music of poetry

Gutman, Laura A. — Fri, 01 Jan 1988 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This study attempts to correlate two facts about Gerard Manley Hopkins: that he was an avid musician, who theorised about and composed music; and that his poetry is characterised by its highly complex, evocative sounds and by its relation of form to meaning, sound to sense. This study is an attempt to prove that Hopkins is a "musical" poet in a specific and literal sense--that his musical knowledge and interests influenced his poetry in specific and discernible ways, making his work "musical" in a sense that other poetry of his age is not (or to an extent that other poetry is not), and resulting in much of what we consider to be characteristic in his verse. The study is divided into two parts, the first (I-III) analysing the role music plays in his theoretical writings, the second (IV-VI) tracing these musical influences through to the musical and poetic art itself. In Part One, Chapter I presents Hopkins the musician, the biographical details and philosophical background behind his musical interest; Chapter II relates this to Hopkins as priest and theologian, demonstrating music's role as central to his Scotus-based position; Chapter III then shows this musical philosophy in more detail in his theories of language and art, resulting in an ideal art of song epitomised by the art of Hopkins' favourite composer, Henry Purcell. Part Two then looks at Hopkins' art itself, shown as following this Purcellian musical ideal: Chapter IV differentiates the requirements of songs from those of poetry, and demonstrates the particular aims and techniques of Hopkins' own songs; Chapter V reveals principles of musical or song-structure behind Hopkins' concepts of sprung rhythm and other characteristic poetic devices; finally, Chapter VI analyses the poems to discover their radically musical nature. The study concludes with a brief question on the nature of "the music of poetry" generally.

Marlowe and the Greeks

Rhodes, Neil — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: Marlowe's combination of lyric violence with a spirit of irony and scepticism has always seemed somewhat paradoxical, but we may find an explanation for it in his debt to Greek. Greek language learning developed in England from the early 1500s onwards and was particularly strong at Cambridge under Sir John Cheke in the 1540s, when many of the teachers of the future generation of Elizabethan writers were trained. In the case of Marlowe, what Joseph Hall was to label ‘pure iambics’ can be seen to have Greek origins, and the plays in which these are first deployed (the two parts of Tamburlaine) almost certainly take Xenophon's Cyrpopaiedia as one of their models. But the ironic Marlowe is also evident in Tamburlaine, and the model here is not Xenophon but Lucian, whom Gabriel Harvey records as being a vogue author with Cambridge students in 1580, the year that Marlowe matriculated. Lucian also impacts on Doctor Faustus, and this becomes more evident if we read the famous line on Helen of Troy from the Dialogues of the Dead in the context of another passage from ‘The Judgement of the Goddesses’ from Dialogues of the Gods.

'The divine voice within us' : the reflective tradition in the novels of Jane Austen and George Eliot

Pimentel, A. Rose — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This thesis argues that a ‘tradition of moral analysis’ between Jane Austen and George Eliot — a common ground which has been identified by critics from F.R. Leavis to Gillian Beer, but never fully explored — can be illuminated by turning to what this thesis calls ‘the reflective tradition’. In the eighteenth century, ideas about reflection provided a new and influential way of thinking about the human mind; about how we come to know ourselves and the world around us through the mind. The belief in the individual to act as his/her own guide through the cultivation of a reflective mind and attentiveness to a reflective voice emerges across a wide range of discourses. This thesis begins with an examination of reflection in the philosophy, children’s literature, novels, poetry, educational tracts and sermons that would have been known to Austen. It then defines Austen’s development of reflective dynamics by looking at her six major novels; finally, it analyzes Middlemarch to define Eliot’s proximity to this aspect of Austen’s art. The thesis documents Eliot’s reading of Austen through the criticism of G. H. Lewes to support a reading of Eliot’s assimilation of an Austenian attention to mental processes in her novels. Reflection is at the heart of moral life and growth for both novelists. This thesis corrects a tendency in Austen’s reception to focus on the mimetic aspect of her art, thereby overlooking the introspective sense of reflection. It offers new insights into Austen’s and Eliot’s work, and it contributes to an understanding of the development of the realist novel and the ethical dimension in the role of the novel reader.

Exceptional intercourse : sex, time and space in contemporary novels by male British and American writers

Davies, Ben — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This thesis provides a theory of exceptional sex through close readings of contemporary novels by male British and American writers. I take as my overriding methodological approach Giorgio Agamben’s theory of the state of exception, which is a juridico-political state in which the law has been suspended and the difference between rule and transgression is indistinguishable. Within this state, the spatiotemporal markers inside and outside also become indeterminable, making it impossible to tell whether one is inside or outside time and space. Using this framework, I work through narratives of sexual interaction – On Chesil Beach, Gertrude and Claudius, Sabbath’s Theater, and The Act of Love – to conceptualise categories of sexual exceptionality. My study is not a survey, and the texts have been chosen as they focus on different sexual behaviours, thereby opening up a variety of sexual exceptionalities. I concentrate on male writers and narratives of heterosexual sex as most work on sex, time and space is comprised of feminist readings of literature by women and queer work on gay, lesbian or trans writers and narratives. However, in the Coda I expand my argument by turning to Emma Donoghue’s Room, which, as the protagonist has been trapped for the first five years of his life, provides a tabula rasa’s perspective of exceptionality. Through my analysis of exceptionality, I provide spatiotemporal readings of the hymen, incest, adultery, sexual listening and the arranged affair. I also conceptualise textual exceptionalities – the incestuous prequel, auricular reading and the positionality of the narrator, the reader and literary characters. Exceptional sex challenges the assumption in recent queer theory that to be out of time is ‘queer’ and to be in time is ‘straight’. Furthermore, exceptionality complicates the concepts of perversion and transgression as the norm and its transgression become indistinct in the state of exception. In contrast, exceptionality offers a new, more determinate way to analyse narratives of sex.

Revolution by degrees : Philip Sidney and Gradatio

Davis, Alexander Lee — Sun, 01 May 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Women and independence in the nineteenth century novel : a study of Austen, Trollope and James

Barker, Anne Darling — Mon, 01 Jul 1985 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: 'Women and independence in the nineteenth century novel : a study of Austen, Trollope and James', begins with the concept of independence and works through the three most common usages of the word. The first, financial independence (not needing to earn one's livelihood) appears to be a necessary prerequisite for the second and third forms of independence, although it is by no means an unequivocal good in any of the novels. The second, intellectual independence (not depending on others for one's opinion or conduct; unwilling to be under obligation to others), is a matter of asserting independence while employing terms which society recognizes. The third, of being independent, is exemplified by an inward struggle for a knowledge of self. In order to trace the development of the idea of self during the nineteenth century, I have chosen a group of novels which seem to be representative of the beginning, the middle, and the end of the period. Particular attention is given to the characterizations of Emma Woodhouse, Glencora Palliser, Isabel Archer, Milly Theale and Maggie Verver. Whereas in Jane Austen's novels the self has a definite shape which the heroine must discover, and in Anthony Trollope's novels the self (reflecting the idea of socially-determined man) must learn to accommodate social and political changes, in Henry James's novels the self determined by external manifestations (hollow man) is posed against the exercise of the free spirit or soul. Jane Austen's novels look backward, as she reacts against late eighteenth century romanticism, and forward, with the development of the heroine who exemplifies intellectual independence. Anthony Trollope's women characters are creatures of social and political adaptation; although they do not derive their reason for being from men, they must accommodate themselves to men's wishes. And Henry James looks backward, wistfully, at Austen's solid, comforting, innocent self and forward, despairingly, to the dark, unknowable self of the twentieth century.

"No word for it" : Postcolonial Anglo-Saxon in John Haynes' Letter to Patience

Jones, Chris — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This article examines a number of allusions to Old English, especially to the poem The Wanderer, in John Haynes’s award winning poem Letter to Patience (2006). A broad historical contextualisation of the use of Anglo-Saxon in modern poetry is offered first, against which Haynes’s specific poetic Anglo-Saxonism is then analysed in detail. Consideration is given to the sources – editions and translations – that Haynes used, and a sustained close reading of sections of his poem is offered in the light of this source study. The representation of English as an instrument of imperialism is discussed and juxtaposed with the use and status of early English to offer a long historical view of the politics of the vernacular. It is argued that Haynes’s poem, set partly in Nigeria, represents a new departure in the use it finds for Old English poetry, in effect constituting a kind of ‘postcolonial Anglo-Saxonism’.

The wyvern's tale : a thought experiment in Bakhtinian dual chronotope occupation

Newell, Marilee — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: The non-fiction introduction to The Wyvern’s Tale: A Thought Experiment in Bakhtinian Dual Chronotope Occupation documents the evolution of the novel, The Wyvern’s Tale, from the ideas that inspired it to its current incarnation as a full-length novel intended for an adult audience. It comprises an explanation of the novel’s main concept, Bakhtinian dual chronotope occupation, as well as an idea-focused account of the creative-writing process. Detailed in the introduction’s theoretical premise is the relationship between Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories of chronotope and the carnivalesque and the ideal of the divided union in Chalcedonian Christology. This relationship revolves around the state of existing in two time-spaces at once. The novel, The Wyvern’s Tale, explores this dual existence imaginatively using the setting of parallel worlds – the every-day world and a fictional world called Wyvern – as well as a protagonist, who functions in the fictional world as a Christ-figure. Particular thematic emphasis is placed on differing perceptions of truth and reality, and on the transformative power of costumes. The novel’s outcome, dependent on the reader’s decision as to whether dual chronotope occupation is possible or impossible, is respectively either hopeful or tragic. It attempts to reflect the outcome of the life and death of Christ depending on whether his co-existence as God and man was real or imagined.

Some lost bliss : tracing the dark night of the soul in Jack Kerouac's 'Visions of Gerard', 'The dharma bums', 'Desolation angels', and 'Big Sur' : and an excerpt from the novel 'Mayor of Hollywood'

Brophy, Mary-Beth — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: The research and creative portions of this thesis develop from the various responses individuals experience in the wake of a loss. The research into the evolution of faith in author Jack Kerouac's 'Duluoz Legend' and the central storyline of the novel 'Mayor of Hollywood' spring from the same well: the crossroads between death and faith. The research piece concerns itself with Kerouac's exploration of the spiritual interior in the wake of the death of his protagonist's older brother, developing a personal faith that blends Buddhism and Catholicism unfettered by formal religious practice, mirroring instead an older path of Catholic mysticism. Mayor of Hollywood explores the opposite side of the religious coin: the protagonist, Lucy Cassidy, has little compelling interest in her own spiritual existence but must address the practicalities of her partner's formal practice of Catholicism, including dietary restrictions, regular worship, moral strictures, and the religious formalization of the guilt process. At the same time, Lucy and Mark must resolve several deaths that have occurred, substituting the secular path of crime detection for the more spiritual quest to reunite with God. Linked by the shared topic of death, the two halves of the thesis address faith as a whole, exploring the interior and exterior spiritual life.

Part 1, The balance of where we are : a theory of poetic composition in relation to cognitive poetics ; Part 2, The secret uncles : poems

Manalo, Paolo Marko — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: Part 1 of the thesis, ‘The Balance of Where We Are: A Theory of Composition in Relation to Cognitive Poetics’, considers a compositional theory of poetry, with particular attention to the creative process, the poetic line, and trope. Drawing on from the disciplines of creative writing and cognitive poetics, this thesis asserts basic and important considerations for writing poetry. Chapter One seeks a model for the creative process that will aid in sustaining poetic composition but without dictating a specific method of writing. In presenting several theories of creativity it discusses ways of understanding these mental processes in preparation for the actual poem. It suggests an approach to poetry that will keep the writer focussed and aware of his or her limitations. Chapter Two establishes what it means to be writing poetry in an ‘age of cognitive science’ where some literary scholars have made a ‘cognitive turn’, by explaining the field of cognitive poetics. It considers specifically the cognitive poetics of Reuven Tsur as an important theory to enhance poetic composition. It connects some of Tsur’s discussions on poetic elements to enhance the craft-oriented approach to poetry. Chapter Three examines the poetic line as the basic unit of a poem which any compositional theory must consider. It reiterates the neural theory of the line as a ‘carrier wave’ of conceptual information that is both pleasing to the ear and the mind. It then re- evaluates specific poetic experiments concerning the line, and suggests a method of scanning to help the contemporary reader’s awareness of poetic rhythms. Chapter Four examines trope, specifically poetic metaphor in relation to the assumption of conceptual metaphor theory that poetic metaphors are extensions of everyday metaphors. It welcomes an alternative cognitive-literary explanation by re-iterating metaphor theories from Reuven Tsur and Don Paterson. Finally, it argues that the practitioner is always writing the variation of the ‘one’ poem that he or she has discovered. Part 2 of the thesis, ‘The Secret Uncles: Poems’, consists of my own poems.

‘See SCOT and SAXON coalesc'd in one’ : James Macpherson's 'The Highlander' in its intellectual and cultural contexts, with an annotated text of the poem

Lindfield-Ott, Kristin — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This thesis explores James Macpherson’s The Highlander (1758) in relation to originality, Scottish identity and historiography. It also situates the Ossianic Collections in the context of Macpherson’s earlier poetical and later historical works. There are three parts to it: a biographical sketch of Macpherson’s early life, the annotated edition of The Highlander, and discursive commentary chapters. By examining The Highlander in detail this thesis questions the emphasis of other Macpherson criticism on the Ossianic Collections, and allows us to see him as a writer who is historically minded, very aware of sources, well versed in established forms of poetry and thoroughly, and positively, British. The Highlander stands out among the corpus of his works not because it can give us insights into the Ossianic Collections, which is its usual function in Macpherson criticism, but because it can help us understand what it is that connects Macpherson’s earlier and later works with the Ossianic Collections: history, Britishness, tradition. Macpherson’s poetical works are united by a desire to translate Scotland’s factual past into sentimental British poetry. In the Ossianic Collections he does so without particular faithfulness to his sources, but in The Highlander he converts historical sources directly into neo-classic verse. This is where Macpherson’s originality lies: his ability to adapt history. In different styles and genres, and based on different sources, Macpherson’s works are early examples of Scotland’s great literary achievement: historical fiction. Instead of accusing him of forgery or trying to trace his knowledge of Gaelic ballads, this thesis presents Macpherson as a genuine historian who happened to write in a variety of genres.

Anglo-Saxonism in nineteenth-century poetry

Jones, Chris — Tue, 04 May 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This article essays the first survey of nineteenth-century poetry that imitates, alludes to, or draws on, theories about Anglo-Saxon language and/or literature. Criticism has so far overlooked such a field as forming a distinct body of literature with shared preoccupations and influences, although some previous attention has been paid to the Anglo-Saxonism of individual poets or texts. This essay, then, provides the first scoping exercise of the extent and limits of a field one could term nineteenth-century Anglo-Saxonist poetry. This corpus is briefly contextualized within the wider field of Anglo-Saxonist literature, itself an important sub-genre of medievalism and medievalist literature. A possible fourfold typology is offered as a framework within which further study might be continued. Some consideration is briefly paid to the use of Anglo-Saxon in the poetry of William Wordsworth, Walter Scott, Alfred Tennyson, Lewis Carroll, William Barnes, William Morris, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. The importance of antiquarianism and philology is emphasized, with passing reference made to writers such as Sharon Turner, George Marsh, and to the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The essay addresses a neglected topic in the broader field of the reception of the Middle Ages, and in particular the recovery and reception of Anglo-Saxon, or Old English language and poetry. The essay concludes by suggesting that new narrative models of literary history made be required to accommodate the concept of ‘nineteenth-century Anglo-Saxon poetry’.

New Old English : The place of Old English in twentieth- and twenty-first-century poetry

Jones, Chris — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This article begins by noting that the narrative coherence of literary history as a genre, and the inclusions and exclusions that it is forced to make, depend on the often unacknowledged metaphors that attend its practice. Literary history which is conceived as an unbroken continuity (‘the living stream of English’) has found the incorporation of Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon) to be problematic and an issue of contention. After surveying the kind of arguments that are made about the place of Old English as being within or without English literary tradition, this article notes that a vast body of twentieth and twenty-first century poetry, oblivious to those turf-wars, has concerned itself with Old English as a compositional resource. It is proposed that this poetry, a disparate and varied body of work, could be recognized as part of a cultural phenomenon: ‘The New Old English’. Academic research in this area is surveyed, from the 1970s to the present, noting that the rate of production and level of interest in New Old English has been rapidly escalating in the last decade. A range of poets and poems that display knowledge and use of Old English largely overlooked by criticism to date is then catalogued, with minimal critical discussion, in order to facilitate further investigation by other scholars. This essay argues that the widespread and large-scale reincorporation of an early phase of English poetic tradition, not in contiguous contact with contemporary writing for so many centuries, is such an unprecedented episode in the history of any vernacular that it challenges many of the metaphors through which we attempt to pattern texts into literary historical narrative. It is suggested that the weight of evidence in this area strongly suggests that in recent decades we have been living through 'The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Renaissance'.

Lives and limbs : re-membering Robert Jones : a biography

Whiteley, Joanna — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This is a biography of Robert Jones, 1857-1933. He was a surgeon, and is credited with bringing orthopaedics from its quack past into its scientific present. This work explores Jones’ life and times, and examines whether he is entitled to the epithet ‘father of orthopaedics’. It looks at the history of bonesetting, the influences on Jones’ development and medical training, and some key moments in his career – notably his involvement in the building of the Manchester Ship Canal, the planning of Heswall Children’s Hospital, and the Great War. It argues that although there are other medical men who could have been credited with fathering orthopaedics, he is indeed the father – at least of orthopaedics in Britain, if not internationally. This version of Jones’ life begins with something of his biographer’s journey, before it explores what and who influenced Jones, and in turn what his legacy has been to the medical profession. The accompanying Critical Commentary explores whether or not it is possible to offer a definition of biography as a genre in the light of its history and purpose. It examines critical views, considers the mythology that grows up around historical figures, and also explains the rationale for the structure chosen for organising the material presented in this new biography of Robert Jones, Live and Limbs: Re-membering Robert Jones.

The life of Sir Walter Scott, [by] John Macrone ; edited with a biographical introduction by Daniel Grader

Macrone, John — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: John Macrone (1809-1837) was a Scotsman who arrived in London around 1830 and became a publisher, in partnership with James Cochrane between January 1833 and August 1834, and independently between October 1834 and his death in September 1837. A friend of Dickens and Thackeray, he published Sketches by Boz and, posthumously, The Paris Sketch Book. One of his other projects was a life of Scott, which he began to write soon after the death of the novelist; but his book, chiefly remembered because Hogg wrote his Anecdotes of Scott for inclusion in it, fell under the displeasure of Lockhart, and was cancelled shortly before it was to have been published. A fragmentary manuscript, however, was recently discovered by the author of this thesis and has now been edited for the first time, together with a biographical study of Macrone, in which extensive use is made of previously unpublished and uncollected material.

A swipe at the dragon of the commonplace : a re-evaluation of George MacDonald's fiction

Stelle, Ginger — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This thesis offers a re-evaluation of the fiction of George MacDonald (1824-1905), both fantasy and non-fantasy. The general trend in MacDonald studies is to focus primarily on his works of fantasy, either ignoring the rest (which includes non-fantasy fiction, sermons, poetry, and criticism) or using them to illuminate the fantasies. The overall critical consensus is that these works, particularly MacDonald’s non-fantasy fiction, possess little inherent value. Though many critics acknowledge similarities between MacDonald’s fantasy fiction and his non-fantasy fiction, MacDonald has been the victim of a critical double standard that treats fantasy and realism as completely irreconcilable, and allows certain features to be acceptable, even desirable, in one form that are completely unacceptable in the other. The thesis begins by looking at MacDonald’s writings about the imagination and about literature, from which a clear theory of literature emerges, one with strong opinions about the function and purpose of literature, as well as about what makes good literature. By re-examining MacDonald’s fiction, its plots, characterization and narration, in the light of his own theories, the reasons underlying the artistic choices made throughout his fiction take on a more deliberate and calculated appearance. Furthermore, by placing MacDonald in his proper context, and looking at the diversity of generic options available to the Victorian writer, the critical double standard underlying much MacDonald scholarship, based on a strict fantasy/realism separation, crumbles. What emerges from this analysis is a different MacDonald—a careful craftsman who consciously and skillfully uses the tools of his trade to produce a unique and specific reading experience.

Fantasy as a mode in British and Irish literary decadence, 1885–1925

Mercurio, Jeremiah Romano — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This Ph.D. thesis investigates the use of fantasy by British and Irish 'Decadent' authors and illustrators, including Oscar Wilde, Max Beerbohm, Aubrey Beardsley, 'Vernon Lee' (Violet Paget), Ernest Dowson, and Charles Ricketts. Furthermore, this study demonstrates why fantasy was an apposite form for literary Decadence, which is defined in this thesis as a supra-generic mode characterized by its anti-mimetic impulse, its view of language as autonomous and artificial, its frequent use of parody and pastiche, and its transgression of boundaries between art forms. Literary Decadence in the United Kingdom derives its view of autonomous language from Anglo-German Romantic philology and literature, consequently being distinguished from French Decadence by its resistance to realism and Naturalism, which assume language's power to signify the 'real world'. Understanding language to be inorganic, Decadent writers blithely countermand notions of linguistic fitness and employ devices such as catachresis, paradox, and tautology, which in turn emphasize the self-referentiality of Decadent texts. Fantasy furthers the Decadent argument about language because works of fantasy bear no specific relationship to 'reality'; they can express anything evocable within language, as J.R.R. Tolkien demonstrates with his example of "the green sun" (a phrase that can exist independent of the sun's actually being green). The thesis argues that fantasy's usefulness in underscoring arguments about linguistic autonomy explains its widespread presence in Decadent prose and visual art, especially in genres that had become associated with realism and Naturalism, such as the novel (Chapter 1), the short story (Chapter 3), drama (Chapter 4), and textual illustration (Chapter 2). The thesis also analyzes Decadents' use of a wholly non-realistic genre, the fairy tale (see Chapter 5), in order to delineate the consequences of their use of fantasy for the construction of character and gender within their texts.

Words incarnate : contemporary women’s fiction as religious revision

Rine, Abigail — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This thesis investigates the prevalence of religious themes in the work of several prominent contemporary women writers—Margaret Atwood, Michèle Roberts, Alice Walker and A.L. Kennedy. Relying on Luce Irigaray’s recent theorisations of the religious and its relationship to feminine subjectivity, this research considers the subversive potential of engaging with religious discourse through literature, and contributes to burgeoning criticism of feminist revisionary writing. The novels analysed in this thesis show, often in violent detail, that the way the religious dimension has been conceptualised and articulated enforces negative views of female sexuality, justifies violence against the body, alienates women from autonomous creative expression and paralyses the development of a subjectivity in the feminine. Rather than looking at women’s religious revision primarily as a means of asserting female authority, as previous studies have done, I argue that these writers, in addition to critiquing patriarchal religion, articulate ways of being and knowing that subvert the binary logic that dominates Western religious discourse. Chapter I contextualises this research in Luce Irigaray’s theories and outlines existing work on feminist revisionist literature. The remaining chapters offer close readings of key novels in light of these theories: Chapter II examines Atwood’s interrogation of oppositional logic in religious discourse through her novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Chapter III explores two novels by Roberts that expose the violence inherent in religious discourse and deconstruct the subjection of the (female) body to the (masculine) Word. Chapters IV and V analyse the fiction of Kennedy and Walker respectively, revealing how their novels confront the religious denigration of feminine sexuality and refigure the connection between eroticism and divinity. Evident in each of these fictional accounts is a forceful critique of religious discourse, as well as an attempt to more closely reconcile foundational religious oppositions between divinity and humanity, flesh and spirit, and body and Word.

Living in the past : Thebes, periodization, and The Two Noble Kinsmen

Davis, Alexander Lee — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: Our sense of the distinction between the "medieval" and the "early modern" is structured by two notions: that the early modern period is characterized by the death of a chivalric culture that is dominant in the medieval period; and that the early modern is distinguished from the medieval by its superior historical self-awareness. This essay reassesses these themes through a reading of Shakespeare and Fletcher's The Two Noble Kinsmen (1634). This is a play of knighthood and chivalric spectacle, adapted from Chaucer's Knight's Tale, which brings Chaucer on stage in the play's prologue. Reading the play through a tradition of "Theban" narratives that proliferated from antiquity through the Middle Ages shows that the representation of chivalric culture in The Two Noble Kinsmen constructs a vision of the past very different from how modern accounts distinguish between medieval and early modern cultures.

St Andrews University Library in the eighteenth century : Scottish education and print-culture

Simpson, Matthew — Fri, 01 Jan 1999 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: The context of this thesis is the growth in size and significance of the St Andrews University Library, made possible by the University's entitlement, under the Copyright Acts between 1709 and 1836, to free copies of new publications. Chapter I shows how the University used its improving Library to present to clients and visitors an image of the University's social and intellectual ideology. Both medium and message in this case told of a migration into the printed book of the University's functions, intellectual, spiritual, and moral, a migration which was going forward likewise in the other Scottish universities and in Scottish culture at large. Chapters II and III chart that migration respectively in religious discourse and in moral education. This growing importance of the book prompted some Scottish professors to devise agencies other than consumer demand to control what was read in their universities and beyond, and indeed what was printed. Chapter IV reviews those devices, one of which was the subject Rhetoric, now being reformed to bring modern literature into its discipline. Chapter V argues that the new Rhetoric tended in fact to confirm the hegemony of print by turning literary study from a general literary apprenticeship into the specialist reading of canonical printed texts. That tendency was not without opposition. Chapter VI analyses the challenge from traditional oral culture as it was expressed in the marginalia added to the Library books at St Andrews University by its students, and argues that this dissident culture helped to form the voice of the poet Robert Fergusson while he was one of those students. Chapter VII goes on to show how Fergusson used that voice to warn his countrymen of the threat which print represented to their culture, and to show how it might be resisted in the interests of both literature and conviviality.

The singin lass : a reflection on the life of the poet Marion Angus (1865-1946) in the form of an account of her life and work, and three extracts from 'Blackthorn', a novel

Chalmers, Aimée Y. — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: Part 1 of this thesis comprises a biography which, for the first time, places Marion Angus within her historical, family and social context. A version of this was published as the introduction to my edited collection The Singin Lass: Selected Work of Marion Angus (Polygon, 2006). Assumptions made about the poet's activities and attitudes derive from critical reading of archival material: her published 'diaries', letters and prose, as well as her poetry. The appraisal of her work places it within literary contexts. The development of her linguistic awareness of the Scots language is traced and the extent of her commitment to it noted. I conclude that assessment of her work has frequently been affected by erroneous judgements about her lifestyle and that the poetry, which has greater depth than it sometimes is given credit for, illuminates her struggle rather than defines her character. Her strength and resilience, as well as her contribution to Scots literature, should be respected and admired. Part II comprises three extracts from Blackthorn, a novel based on aspects of the life and work of Marion Angus. My starting point was the marked contrast between her earlier prose and her later poetry. This, I believe, reflects an actual family crisis which is central to my narrative. The extracts presented here (dated 1900, 1930 and 1945-46) present a credible alternative to inaccurate assumptions which were made about her life. I explore two actual significant relationships in her life: with a sister who becomes wholly dependent on her, and with a younger friend who looks after her in her final year. In the absence of any firm evidence of lovers, I speculate on other relationships.

Sound Effects : the oral/aural dimensions of literature in English

Jones, Chris — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: Sound Effects traces the history of the relationship between oral conditions and aural effect in English literature from its beginnings in the Anglo-Saxon period through to the twenty-first century. Few collections nowadays, other than textbook histories, would attempt a survey of their field from the early middle ages to the present day, and it is not our intention here to offer a continuous narrative. But despite the many centuries covered by this collection, the reader will find that certain themes recur in different contexts and that the individual essays speak to each other, often over long distances of time. It ends where it might have begun, with Homer, though in modern English form. The effect of this pattern is to create an “envelope” structure in which the ancient oral forms of Greek and Anglo-Saxon verse reappear as contexts for understanding how these forms survive and how sound works in the poetry of the modern world. The scope of the volume is also determined by its subject, since we are concerned with tradition as well as with the oral and aural. In particular, we are concerned with how literary production and reception respond to the different waves of media evolution from oral to written, manuscript to print (and the theater), and the later development of machine technology. We are not specifically concerned with the computer and the Internet, though they are an unstated presence behind the project as a whole. A subsidiary theme is the way in which sound, understood in both oral and aural terms, provides the agency through which high and low, elite and popular cultures are brought into conjunction throughout English literature.

"Where now the harp?" Listening for the sounds of Old English verse, from Beowulf to the twentieth century

Jones, Chris — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This essay examines the representation or staging of oral performance and poetic composition within Beowulf, in order to argue that poem thematizes and mythologizes its own origins, and is as much interested in recovering the sounds of oral performances that pre-date its own manuscript inscription as modern Anglo-Saxon scholarship has been. The second half of the essay considers the recovery and reimagining of an Anglo-Saxon “soundscape” in the work of two twentieth-century poets, W. S. Graham and Edwin Morgan. The invocation of this “Saxonesque” patterning of sound invokes or triggers a historically constituted set of associations with the whole body of Old English poetry; that is, an allusion to a corpus, rather than to a specific text, is made through sound patterning. Description: Additional multimedia to accompany this article is available from http://journal.oraltradition.org/issues/24ii/jones

Rethinking the 'Spectacle of the Scaffold' : Juridical Epistemologies and English Revenge Tragedy

Hutson, Lorna Margaret — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: Michel Foucault's analysis of penal torture as part of a regime of truth production continues to be routinely applied to the interpretation of English Renaissance drama. This paper argues that such an application misleadingly overlooks the lay participation that was characteristic of English criminal justice. It goes on to explore the implications of the epistemological differences between continental inquisitorial models of trial and the jury trial as it developed in sixteenth-century England, arguing that rhetorical and political differences between these two models are dramatized in the unfolding action of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus.

A rhetoric of nostalgia on the English stage, 1587-1605

Johanson, Kristine — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: In locating the idea of nostalgia in early modern English drama, ‘A Rhetoric of Nostalgia on the English Stage, 1587-1605’ recovers an influential and under-examined political discourse in Elizabethan drama. Recognizing how deeply Renaissance culture was invested in conceptualizing the past as past and in privileging the cultural practices and processes of memory, this thesis asserts nostalgia’s embeddedness within that culture and its consequently powerful rhetorical role on the English Renaissance stage. The introduction situates Elizabethan nostalgia alongside nostalgia’s postmodern conceptualizations. It identifies how my definition of early modern nostalgia both depends on and diverges from contemporary arguments about nostalgia, as it questions nostalgia’s perceived conservatism and asserts its radicalizing potential. I define a rhetoric of nostalgia with regard to classical and Renaissance ideas of rhetoric and locate it within a body of sixteenth-century political discourses. In the ensuing chapters, my analyses of Shakespeare’s drama formulate case studies reached, in each instance, through an exploration of the plays’ socio-political context. Chapter Two’s analysis of The First Part of the Contention contextualizes Shakespeare’s development of a rhetoric of nostalgia and investigates connections between rhetorical form and nostalgia. I demonstrate the cultural currency of the play’s nostalgic proverbial discourse through a discussion of Protestant writers interested in mocking the idea of a preferable Catholic past. Chapter Three argues that Richard II’s nostalgic discourse of lost hospitality functions as a political rhetoric evocative of the socio-economic problems of the mid-1590s and of the changing landscape of English tradition instigated by the Reformation. In Chapter Four, Julius Caesar and Ben Jonson’s Sejanus constitute a final analysis of the relationship between a rhetoric of nostalgia and politics by examining the rise of Tacitism. The plays’ nostalgic language stimulates an awareness to the myriad ways in which rhetoric questions politics in both dramas.

The sixth sense : synaesthesia and British aestheticism, 1860-1900

Poueymirou, Margaux Lynn Rosa — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: “The Sixth Sense: Synaesthesia and British Aestheticism 1860-1900” is an interdisciplinary examination of the emergence of synaesthesia conceptually and rhetorically within the ‘art for art’s sake’ movement in mid-to-late Victorian Britain. Chapter One investigates Swinburne’s focal role as both theorist and literary spokesman for the nascent British Aesthetic movement. I argue that Swinburne was the first to practice what Pater meant by ‘aesthetic criticism’ and that synaesthesia played a decisive role in ‘Aestheticising’ critical discourse. Chapter Two examines Whistler’s varied motivations for using synaesthetic metaphor, the way that synaesthesia informed his identity as an aesthete, and the way that critical reactions to his work played a formative role in linking synaesthesia with Aestheticism in the popular imagination of Victorian England. Chapter Three explores Pater’s methods and style as an ‘aesthetic critic.’ Even more than Swinburne, Pater blurred the distinction between criticism and creation. I use ‘synaesthesia’ to contextualise Pater’s theory of “Anders-streben” and to further contribute to our understanding of his infamous musical paradigm as a linguistic ideal, which governed his own approach to critical language. Chapter Four considers Wilde’s decadent redevelopment of synaesthetic metaphor. I use ‘synaesthesia’ to locate Wilde’s style and theory of style within the context of decadence; or, to put it another way, to locate decadence within the context of Wilde. Each chapter examines the highly nuanced claim that art should exist for its own sake and the ways in which artists in the mid-to-late Victorian period attempted to realise this desire on theoretical and rhetorical levels.

Dark saying: a study of the Jobian dilemma in relation to contemporary ars poetica ; Bedrock: poems

Boast, Rachael — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: Part I of this thesis has been written with a view to exploring the relevance a text over 2500 years old has for contemporary ars poetica. From a detailed study of ‘The Book of Job’ I highlight three main tropes, ‘cognitive dissonance’, ‘tĕšuvah’, and ‘dark saying’, and demonstrate how these might inform the working methods of the contemporary poet. In the introduction I define these tropes in their theological and historical context. Chapter one provides a detailed examination of ‘Job’, its antecedents and its influence on literature. In chapters two and three I examine in detail techniques of Classical Hebrew poetry employed in ‘Job’ and argue for a confluence between literary technique and Jobian cosmology. Stylistically, the rest of the thesis is a critical meditation on how the main tropes of ‘Job’ can be mapped onto contemporary ars poetica. In chapter four I initiate an exploration into varying responses to cognitive dissonance, suggesting how the false comforters and Job represent different approaches to, and stages of, poetic composition. A critique of an essay by David Daiches is followed by a detailed study of Seamus Heaney. In chapter five I map the trope of tĕšuvah onto contemporary ars poetica with reference to the poetry of Pilinszky, Popa, and to the poems and critical work of Ted Hughes. The chapter concludes with a brief exploration into the common ground shared between the terms tĕšuvah and versus as a means of highlighting the importance of proper maturation of the work. Chapter six consists of a discussion of how the kind of ‘dark saying’ found in ‘Job’ 38-41 impacts on an understanding of poetic language and its capacity to accelerate our comprehension of reality. I support this notion with excerpts from Joseph Brodsky and a close reading of Montale’s ‘L’anguilla’. Chapter seven further develops the notion of poetry as a means of propulsion beyond the familiar, the predictable or the clichéd, by examining the function of metaphor and what I term ‘quick thinking’, and by referring to two recently published poems by John Burnside and Don Paterson. In chapter eight I draw out the overall motif implied by a close reading of ‘Job’, that of the weathering of an ordeal, and map this onto ars poetica, looking at two aspects of labour, which I identify as ‘endurance’ and ‘letting go’, crucial for the proper maturation of a poem or body of poems. The concluding chapter develops the theme of the temple first discussed in chapter one. I argue for a connection between Job as a temple initiate, who has the capacity to atone for the false comforters, and poetry as a form of ‘at-one-ment’. This notion is supported by reference to Geoffrey Hill and Rilke. Part II of the thesis consists of a selection of my own poems, titled ‘Bedrock’.

The uncocked gun? representations of masculinity in contemporary crime fiction

Massey, Susan — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This thesis examines the representation of masculinity in the work of three contemporary male crime writers – George Pelecanos, Henning Mankell and Ian Rankin. It considers whether or not the feminist movement, and the resultant deconstruction of gendered identity, has had an impact on the work of male authors. As the topic of masculinity becomes increasingly visible both within sociological discourse and popular culture, have male writers sought to critically engage with their own gender roles or are they more concerned with propagating hegemonic norms? Crime fiction has a history of accommodating revisionist, feminist projects but is there similar space in the genre for male writers to create viable, non-phallic detective heroes? By focusing on writers of three different nationalities – Pelecanos is American, Mankell is Swedish and Rankin is from the UK – the thesis examines the interaction between masculinity and national identity, and compares the extent to which American, Swedish and British masculinity can be viewed as being ‘in crisis’. Chapter I provides a theoretical outline, discussing the academic approach to Men’s Studies, before addressing the specific issue of the representation of gender within the crime fiction genre. Chapters II, III and IV focus on a close reading of the texts of Pelecanos, Mankell and Rankin, respectively.

John Milton's use of logic in 'Paradise lost'

Wilson, Emma Annette — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: The thesis pioneers a new methodology for the analysis of early modern literature: it embarks on a stylistic appreciation of Paradise Lost using early modern methods of interpretation and comprehension, specifically logic. In doing so it engages in the contest between historicist and stylistic criticism, providing a new methodology by which these two approaches are united to perform historically appropriate stylistic analysis of literary texts. Logic formed the bedrock of all early modern intellectual operations, including the literary, and it was the art used for all forms of analysis and interpretation. Yet in modern studies, logic has suffered from its own interdisciplinary dexterity: it is comparatively seldom studied, and when examined this tends to be in connection within a specific field of interest. As such there is a lack of a comprehensive developmental understanding of this subject in line with its original pragmatic purposes. This thesis addresses this quandary by examining a wide range of texts from the period to produce a syncretic appreciation of this art, similar to that acquired by early modern students. Having extrapolated the principles of early modern logic the second half of the thesis applies these in a practical way to analyse Milton’s style in Paradise Lost, reaching a new appreciation of the poem in accordance with the logical precepts that enabled its original production. The overarching aim of the thesis is to produce an innovative methodology enabling historically appropriate stylistic analysis of early modern texts, uniting the customarily disparate approaches of historicist and stylistic criticism in a literal and pragmatic way to open the possibility for future application of this methodology to other early modern literary texts.

The Elizabethan Theatre of cruelty and its double

Di Ponio, Amanda Nina — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This thesis is an examination of the theoretical concepts of Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) and their relation to the Elizabethan theatre. I propose that the dramas of the age of Shakespeare and the environment in which they were produced should be seen as an integral part of the Theatre of Cruelty and essential to its very understanding. The development of the English Renaissance public theatre was at the mercy of periods of outbreaks and abatements of plague, a powerful force that Artaud considers to be the double of the theatre. The claim for regeneration as an outcome of the plague, a phenomenon causing intense destruction, is very specific to Artaud. The cruel and violent images associated with the plague also feature in the theatre, as do its destructive and regenerative powers. The plague and its surrounding atmosphere contain both the grotesque and sublime elements of life Artaud wished to capture in his theatre. His theory of cruelty is part of a larger investigation into the connection between spectacle, violence, and sacrifice explored by Mikhail Bakhtin, René Girard, and Georges Bataille.

Dorothy Wordsworth and Hartley Coleridge : the poetics of relationship

Healey, Nicola — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: My thesis studies Hartley Coleridge and Dorothy Wordsworth to redress the unjust neglect of Hartley’s work, and to reach a more positive understanding of Dorothy’s conflicted literary relationship with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I provide a complete reassessment of the often narrowly read prose and poetry of these two critically marginalized figures, and also investigate the relationships that affected their lives, literary self-constructions, and reception; in this way, I restore a more accurate account of Hartley and Dorothy as independent and original writers, and also highlight both the inhibiting and cathartic affects of writing from within a familial literary context. My analysis of the writings of Hartley and Dorothy and the dialogues in which they engage with the works of STC and William, argues that both Hartley and Dorothy developed a strong relational poetics in their endeavour to demarcate their independent subjectivities. Furthermore, through a survey of the significance of the sibling bond – literal and figurative – in the texts and lives of all these writers, I demonstrate a theory of influence which recognizes lateral, rather than paternal, kinship as the most influential relationship. I thus conclude that authorial identity is not fundamentally predetermined by, and dependent on, gender or literary inheritance, but is more significantly governed by domestic environment, familial readership, and immediate kinship. My thesis challenges the long-standing misconceptions that Hartley was unable to achieve a strong poetic identity in STC’s shadow, and that Dorothy’s independent authorial endeavour was primarily thwarted by gender. To replace these misreadings, I foreground the successful literary independence of both writers: my approach reinstates Hartley Coleridge’s literary standing as a major poet who bridged Romanticism and Victorian literature, and promotes Dorothy Wordsworth as one of the finest descriptive writers of nature and relationship.

Foreign and native on the English stage, 1588-1611 : metaphor and national identity

Pettegree, Jane K — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This thesis explores the role of metaphor in the construction of early modern English national identity in the dramatic writing of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The metaphorical associations of character names and their imagined native or foreign stage settings helped model to English audiences and readers not only their own national community, but also ways in which the representation of collective ‘Englishness’ might involve self-estrangement. The main body of the thesis comprises three case studies: Cleopatra, Kent and Christendom. These topographies -- personal, local and regional -- illustrate how metaphorical complexes shifted against both an evolving body of literary texts and under pressure from changing historical contexts, variously defining individual selves against the collective political nation. Each section explores inter-textual connections between theatrical metaphors and contemporary English non-dramatic texts, placing these within a wider European context, and ends by discussing a relevant play by Shakespeare (Antony and Cleopatra, King Lear and Cymbeline respectively). The first case study examines ways in which Cleopatra was used as a metaphor to define individual against collective identity. I shall suggest that such Oriental self-alienation might be seen as enabling; Cleopatran identities allow English writers, readers and audiences to imagine aesthetic alternatives to public identities. The second case study looks at the idea of Kent as an emblematic identity that both preserved local peculiarity while providing a metaphor for collective English identity. Writers use Kentish ambiguity to explore discontinuities and uncertainties within the emerging political nation. The third case study examines the idea of Christendom, used as an imaginary geography to bridge the gap between individual and political identities. I suggest that attempts to map Christendom to literal territorial coordinates might be resisted in ways that produced, again, alternative, non-national literary identities.

Not drowning but waving : the American Junior Year abroad

Karnehm, Katrina A. — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: “Not Drowning but Waving: The American Junior Year Abroad” explores and describes study abroad amongst college students while also showing the historical roots of study abroad. This thesis seeks to understand the history and current issues in study abroad while also giving a literary description of the experiences, personal changes, and development of insight in the students who decide to study abroad. The Introduction serves both as the introduction to my project as well as an overview of the history and current issues within study abroad. It is divided into three main parts. The first section discusses the impetus for the project, the research methodology, relevant literature, and the genre of creative nonfiction. The second section covers the history of American travel and study abroad, as well as the work of the Fulbright Program. The third section is a short survey of contemporary trends within study abroad, and addresses issues of gender, race, location, and student behavior while abroad. The creative portion of this thesis describes the study abroad students’ stories, experiences, and insights during and after a semester in Europe. The first three chapters of this section—“Leaving”, “Destinations” and “Guardians at the Gate”—describe some of the initial experiences during a semester abroad. Chapter one looks at the process of traveling to a new country and adapting to new cultural norms. Chapter two describes the study abroad destinations where I did my primary research for this project. Chapter three explores some logistical issues in study abroad, namely academics, finances, and housing. Chapter four explores the challenges students face after the initial excitement of study abroad wears off, and looks at the issues of student responsibility, danger, harassment, and alcohol abuse. Chapter five describes student travel habits, which is one of the most popular elements of study abroad but also one of the more problematic. Chapter six looks at the challenge of re-entry to North America for study abroad students, and chapter seven provides a conclusion to the piece.

Paradoxical solitude in the life, letters, and poetry of John Keats, 1814-1818

Theobald, John — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This thesis proposes two distinct but connected ideas: that John Keats’s idiom of friendship was haunted by “sequestered” longings and that he ultimately valued specific, one-on-one partnerships as a basis for his poetical character. The Introduction places the thesis within its critical context and outlines “paradoxical solitude,” a concept the poet expressed by joining a “kindred spirit” in a wilderness retreat in “O, Solitude.” I begin by examining the evolving role of solitude in Keats’s literary predecessors (Chapter I). I then trace the development of ideas of creativity and solitude from his 1814-1815 verse, including his first association with a coterie and the influence of Wordsworth (Chapter II). Building on these findings, I explore the poet’s introduction to the Hunt circle in 1816, assessing his relationships with its members and their overstated roles in the production of Poems (Chapter III). I then discuss how Keats regarded the composition of Endymion in 1817 as a poetic “test,” specifically tailored to reinforce his identity as a solitary poet (Chapter IV). I contend that Keats engaged in a dialogue of independence with Reynolds, adapted the theories of Hazlitt, and restlessly travelled throughout England as a means of rejecting the highly social periods of 1818 (Chapter V). I then consider the creative gains of his northern expedition with Brown in the summer of 1818. I argue that Keats exaggerated his development into a “post-Wordsworthian” poet, positioning himself outside both the coterie’s sphere and the reach of Blackwood’s criticism, and inspiring the theme of Hyperion (Chapter VI). In closing, I analyze Keats’s advice to Shelley to be a selfish creator of his poetic identity. Only through paradoxical solitude, I argue, was Keats able to construct the poetic identity that led him to compose the poems on which his fame rests in the 1820 volume.

Liturgy translated : languages of nature, man and God in Smart’s Jubilate agno

Powell, Rosalind — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This thesis explores Christopher Smart’s search for an ideal language of religious expression and its presentation in Jubilate Agno. The concept of translation is utilised as an interpretative tool to explore the poet’s understanding and manipulation of languages. My investigation of Smart’s translation in Jubilate Agno is divided into three categories: the language used to describe nature, the language of man and the language used to describe God. Chapter One explores Smart’s poetic emphasis on reading the world correctly. The analysis concentrates on four themes: the inability to express the divine and the risk of vanity in science in the early poems, anti-Newtonianism, Smart’s rejection of scientific language, and the poet’s catalogic and categorical impulses in Jubilate Agno. Chapter Two is concerned with human communication through reading, writing and speaking. I investigate how the religious poet aims to create a new kind of universal language as he attempts to dissolve the dichotomy between divine and human expression. Chapter 3 explores the poem’s “extra-lingual” modes of communication and Smart’s interest in other ways of reading, interpreting and communicating to achieve sublime, divine language through depictions of artistic beauty. The thesis concludes by comparing Smart’s poem to other liturgical forms.

The many selves of Simic: an interdisciplinary approach to the poetry of Charles Simic ; Tannic acid sweetheart : poems

McAbee, Donovan — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: Part i of the thesis, The Many Selves of Simic: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Poetry of Charles Simic, examines various “selves” out of which Charles Simic’s poetry grows: Simic the American poet, Simic the visual artist, Simic the agnostic theologian, and Simic the humorist. By drawing on scholarship from a variety of disciplines, the thesis accounts for numerous contexts and tensions within which Simic’s poetry has developed. Chapter One explores what it means to refer to Simic as an American poet. In the process, it analyzes the meaningfulness of the construct “American poetry” and identifies several of its key features alongside Simic’s own understanding of this tradition. Finally, it delineates the way Simic has grafted himself into the tradition of American poetry. Chapter Two analyzes the centrality of visual art to the way Simic construes the figurative space created by a poem. It connects Simic’s poetry to the work of the American collage and shadow box artist Joseph Cornell and argues that Simic approaches poems as distinctly physical entities that possess spatial extension. Lastly, it compares Simic’s spatial poetics to those of the American poet Charles Olson. Chapter Three analyzes Simic’s fascination with Christian mysticism alongside his perpetual agnosticism. It argues that Simic’s poetic via negativa incorporates aspects of both medieval and deconstructionist postmodern forms of negation. It then compares Simic’s mysticism with that of Charles Wright and Mark Strand. Chapter Four argues that Simic’s “desire for irreverence” provides the center of gravity that holds together his various “selves.” The chapter delineates the various emotional registers of Simic’s work and analyzes them alongside theories of humor. Finally, it considers the various comedic influences on the formal strategies of Simic’s work. Part ii of the thesis, Tannic Acid Sweetheart, consists of my own poems.

Crime fiction and the publishing market

Wallis-Martin, Julia — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: The thesis is mainly a substantial part of a crime novel, the title of which is 6, Vermillion Crescent. In that novel, a girl of 14 is murdered by her foster brother. On his release from prison, the former foster child goes in search of his victim’s mother with the intention of murdering her for betraying and abandoning him. The idea for the novel was sparked by events that occurred over 18 years ago, and coincided with the publication of my first novel. There have been a number of changes within the publishing industry since then, and in the critical piece accompanying the novel extract, I explain the most significant of these changes. The critical piece includes a detailed synopsis of 6, Vermillion Crescent.

"One can emend a mutilated text": Auden's The Orators and the Old English Exeter Book

Jones, Chris — Tue, 01 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This article argues that Book I of Auden's 1931 work 'The Orators' does not merely allude to poems in the Old English Exeter Book as source material, but that it participates in a medievalist model of textual production. Auden's poem performs acts analogous to those such as 'compliatio' and 'ordinatio', and deliberately misrepresents and distorts its source texts even as it alludes to them in order to make a point about the transmission and corruption of canonical texts. In addition, some source material is identified here for the first time.

"One a Bird Bore Off": Anglo-Saxon and the elegiac in The Cantos'

Jones, Chris — Mon, 01 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This article provides an explanation and context for Pound's quotation from the Old English poem 'The Wanderer' at the start of 'Canto 27' and discusses the previously unacknowledged stylistic and rhythmical debts to Old English in 'Canto 28'. The article argues that Pound sees this 'saxonist' style specifically as elegiac and deploys it accordingly.

Knight or Wight in Keats's 'La Bella Dame'?: An Ancient Ditty Reconsidered

Jones, Chris — Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This article re-examines the various processes of textual transmission for Keats's 'La Belle Dame sans Merci', which have resulted in two 'competing' texts of the poem. It argues that a medieval model of textual production offers a strategy for dealing with this circumstance, and that, approached in this way, there is no need to resolve the textual 'problem' that the poem poses.

Mulcaster's boys : Spenser, Andrewes, Kyd

Wesley, John — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: Although it is generally acknowledged that an Elizabethan grammar school education was intensely oral and aural, few studies have approached the literature of its pupils principally in light of such an understanding. There may be good reason for this paucity, since the reading of textual remains in the hopes of reconstituting sound and movement—particularly in non-dramatic literature—will always, in the end, be confronted by an inaudible and static text. Yet for the Elizabethan schoolboy, composition and performance were inseparable, whether of an epistle, a theme, or a translation of Latin poetry. The purpose of this project is firstly to describe the conditions which led to and ingrained that inseparability, and then offer some readings of the poetry, oratory, and drama of those whose voices and pens were trained in the grammar school, here Merchant Taylors’ School in 1560s London. Edmund Spenser, Lancelot Andrewes, and Thomas Kyd all attended Merchant Taylors’ in this period, and their poetry, sermons, and drama, respectively, are treated in the following discussion. It is argued that their texts reflect the same preoccupation with pronuntiatio et actio, or rhetorical delivery, held by their boyhood schoolmaster, Richard Mulcaster. I suggest that delivery provides a unique way of assessing literature in the context of an oral/aural education, largely because its classical and Renaissance rules invariably stipulate that vocal and gestural modulations must follow the emotional and intentional sense of words rather than their literal meanings. Delivery is thus shown to exist at the nexus of orality and literacy, performance and text, wholly absorbed with the concerns of speech, but distinct from language as well. In imagining the physicality of this middle ground within their narratives, it is proposed that Mulcaster’s students recalled an education very often spent stirring the emotions with and for their bodily expression.

Translation as creative retelling : constituents, patterning and shift in Gavin Douglas' Eneados

Kendal, Gordon — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: The Thesis analyses and evaluates how Gavin Douglas (Eneados, 1513) has refocused Virgil's Aeneid, principally by giving more emphasis to the serial particularity inherent in the story, loosening the narrative structure and involving the reader in its retelling. Chapter I pieces together (from the evidence not merely of what Douglas explicitly says, but of what his words imply) what for him a "text" in general is, and what accordingly it means for a translator or a reader to be engaged with it. This sets the scene for what follows. The next four Chapters look in turn at how he re-expresses important (metaphysical) characteristics of the story. In Chapter II his handling of time is discussed, and compared with Virgil's: the Chapter sets out in detail how Douglas consistently refocuses temporal predicates, foregrounding their disjunctiveness and making them differently felt. In Chapter III spatial position and distance are analysed, and Douglas' way of dealing with space is found to display parallels with his treatment of time: networks are loosened and nodal points are accentuated. In Chapter IV the way in which he presents individuals is compared with Virgil's, and a similar repatterning and shift reveals itself: Douglas provides his persons with firmer boundaries. Chapter V deals with fate, where Douglas encounters special difficulties but maintains his characteristic way of handling the story. The aim of these four Chapters is to characterise formally how Douglas concretises and vivifies the tale of Aeneas, engaging his readers throughout in the retelling. Finally, Chapter VI looks at certain general principles of translation theory (notably connected with the ideas of faithfulness and accuracy) and argues for a way in which Douglas' translation can be fairly experienced by the reader and fairly evaluated as a lively retelling which (albeit distinctive) is fundamentally faithful to Virgil.

Immediate passage : the narrative of Joel H. Brown, with a critical essay on form and style in the sea voyage narrative

King, Richard Jay — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: 'Immediate Passage: The Narrative of Joel H. Brown' is an original work of fiction. The protagonist and narrator, Joel Brown, is preparing to set sail for a singlehanded circumnavigation. As he readies his boat and counts down the days until his departure, he reflects on his previous experience at sea, what he expects to see out there, and why he is even going in the first place. The story ends with his departure. It is set in the present day. The novel is supported by an analysis of the choices of form and style in first person sea voyage narratives, showing general trends and authorial choices in the areas of veracity, structure, point of view, voice, tense, direct speech, and the use of maritime language. A glossary of maritime words is provided as an appendix.

Virginia Woolf and the dramatic imagination

Wright, Elizabeth Helena — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This PhD thesis analyses the influence of drama, contemporary to Virginia Woolf, on Woolf’s fiction and life writing. Plays by a range of dramatists from Ibsen to Eliot affected Woolf as both an individual and writer, yet little research has been done to link the late nineteenth/ early twentieth-century theatre with her fictional works or her concept of everyday life as expressed in the diaries, letters and memoir papers. An enthusiastic reader, playwright, theatregoer, and friend of playwrights, critics, actors, set designers and theatre owners, Woolf was naturally stimulated by exposure to this creative force and this research analyses its significance. The thesis begins by examining the non-fiction as a dramatization of her lived reality (see Chapter 1) which reached its apotheosis in the private plays (including Woolf’s Freshwater) that were performed in Bloomsbury (see Chapter 4). The discussion, focused in Chapters 2 and 3, addresses Woolf’s fictional output and explores the effect of the most influential plays and playwrights on Woolf’s novels and the concept of theatre as a metaphor within the texts’ imagery, style and structure.

Infernal imagery in Anglo-Saxon charters

Hofmann, Petra — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This doctoral dissertation analyses depictions of hell in sanctions, i.e. threats of punishments in Anglo-Saxon charters. I am arguing that an innovative use of sanctions as pastoral and ideological instruments effected the peak of infernal imagery in the sanctions of tenth-century royal diplomas. Belonging to the genre of ritual curses, Anglo-Saxon sanctions contain the three standard ecclesiastical curses (excommunication, anathema and damnation). It cannot be established if other requirements of ritual cursing (authoritative personnel, setting and gestures) were fulfilled. A lack of evidence, together with indications of more secular punishments, suggests that sanctions were not used as legal instruments. Their pastoral function is proposed by frightening depictions of hell and the devil, as fear is an important means of achieving salvation in biblical, homiletic and theological writings available or produced in Anglo-Saxon England. The use of the infernal motifs of Hell as a Kitchen, Satan as the Mouth of Hell and winged demons in sanctions are discussed in detail. Sanctions frequently contain the overtly didactic and pastoral device of the exemplum. Notorious sinners believed to be damned in hell (e.g. Judas) are presented as negative exempla in sanctions to deter people from transgressing against charters. The repeated use of terms from classical mythology for depicting hell in Anglo-Saxon sanctions appears to correlate with the preference for hermeneutic Latin by tenth-century monastic reformers. The reasons for employing classical mythological terminology seem to agree with those suggested for the use of hermeneutic Latin (intellectual snobbery and raising the stylistic register), and glossaries constitute the main source of both types of Latinity. The sanctions of the Refoundation Charter of New Minster, Winchester, which is known to display the ‘ruler theology’ propagated by the monastic reform, are examined in their textual contexts with regard to the observations made in the earlier parts of this dissertation.

K 'N' T and the accompanying critical analysis of creative process

Gallant, Deborah Anderson — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: A jaded salesclerk invents the ideal companion, unaware that a well-constructed character always develops the need and means to influence his own story. Unable to envision herself outside of the tedious K ‘n’ T in rural Wagner, New Hampshire, salesclerk Brett Wilson invents her own adventure in the form of Thom—former Blue Tit road-hand, witty escaped con and imaginary friend. Though primarily using Thom as a sounding board, Brett also amuses herself by dreaming up his gruelling yet ridiculous flight from the law. All the back-story and attention to detail move Thom from a mental diversion to a mysterious, opinion-charged reality. Creator and creation quickly find themselves in a comic scuffle—Brett desperate to regain sanity and Thom undermining everyday life until he’s granted self-possession. In the end one of them will have to leave K ‘n’ T.

The Ophelia versions : representations of a dramatic type, 1600-1633

Benson, Fiona — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: ‘The Ophelia Versions: Representations of a Dramatic Type from 1600-1633’ interrogates early modern drama’s use of the Ophelia type, which is defined in reference to Hamlet’s Ophelia and the behavioural patterns she exhibits: abandonment, derangement and suicide. Chapter one investigates Shakespeare’s Ophelia in Hamlet, finding that Ophelia is strongly identified with the ballad corpus. I argue that the popular ballad medium that Shakespeare imports into the play via Ophelia is a subversive force that contends with and destabilizes the linear trajectory of Hamlet’s revenge tragedy narrative. The alternative space of Ophelia’s ballad narrative is, however, shut down by her suicide which, I argue, is influenced by the models of classical theatre. This ending conspires with the repressive legal and social restrictions placed upon early modern unmarried women and sets up a dangerous precedent by killing off the unassimilated abandoned woman. Chapter two argues that Shakespeare and Fletcher’s The Two Noble Kinsmen amplifies Ophelia’s folk and ballad associations in their portrayal of the Jailer’s Daughter. Her comedic marital ending is enabled by a collaborative, communal, folk-cure. The play nevertheless registers a proto-feminist awareness of the peculiar losses suffered by early modern women in marriage and this knowledge deeply troubles the Jailer’s Daughter’s happy ending. Chapter three explores the role of Lucibella in The Tragedy of Hoffman arguing that the play is a direct response to Hamlet’s treatment of revenge and that Lucibella is caught up in an authorial project of disambiguation which attempts to return the revenge plot to its morality roots. Chapters four and five explore the narratives of Aspatia in The Maid’s Tragedy and Penthea in The Broken Heart, finding in their very conformism to the behaviours prescribed for them, both by the Ophelia type itself and by early modern society in general, a radical protest against the limitations and repressions of those roles. This thesis is consistently invested in the competing dialectics and authorities of oral and textual mediums in these plays. The Ophelia type, perhaps because of Hamlet’s Ophelia’s identification with the ballad corpus, proves an interesting gauge of each play’s engagement with emergent notions of textual authority in the early modern period.

Wordsworth's Gothic politics : a study of the poetry and prose, 1794-1814

Duggett, Thomas J E — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This thesis argues for the deep implication of William Wordsworth’s writings over the period 1794 to 1814 in contemporary discourses of the Gothic. My investigation pivots upon the analogy offered in the preface to The Excursion (1814) between the incomplete epic poem The Recluse and a ‘gothic Church’, and aims, through a reconstruction of its literary and historical contexts, to establish the interpretative value of this figure in reading Wordsworth. I begin with a survey of previous critical approaches to, and a new close reading of, Wordsworth’s Gothic figure for his œuvre. I then trace the history of Gothic as a term in British public discourse since the English Revolution, showing how its contested status in the Revolution controversy of the 1790s inflects such texts as the preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800), the ‘Liberty’ sonnets of Poems, in Two Volumes (1807), and the Preamble to The Prelude. I then move to a series of detailed historical readings of Wordsworth’s key Gothic texts, starting with Salisbury Plain (1794). Recovering the network of associations that made Salisbury Plain legible to Wordsworth in 1793-4 as a map of British history, I show how the poem first subverts and then restores the English Gothic narrative of ‘Celtic night’ giving way to ‘present grandeur’. I then turn to Wordsworth’s Burkean prose tract on the Napoleonic Wars in Spain, The Convention of Cintra (1809), reading it in the context of the Gothic imagery of the conflict, and then arguing on this basis that it forms a vital part of the ‘gothic Church’ of The Recluse. Building upon this reading, I then argue that The Excursion’s advocacy of Andrew Bell’s ‘Madras’ system of ‘tuition by the scholars themselves’ shows Wordsworth’s progressive Gothic politics in action. In concluding, I turn to reconsider, in the light of the preceding chapters, in what sense Wordsworth can be called a Gothic poet.

Rising Star

Worley, Christiana — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: Rising Star is a novel about appearances. Thailand Allen is a girl who thinks she understands what she sees. But when what she sees are cracks in her perfect world, maturation and new sight are not far off. Before growth can occur, Thailand must undergo a painful process of learning that carries with it embarrassment, sorrow, anger and confusion. Thailand lives with her mother in a small Texas town called Rising Star. Rising Star is like every other small town with its community gatherings, quirky characters, lavish holiday festivals and wizened elders. But in one way, the town is different. The children of Rising Star can fly. Thailand and her friends are nearing the age of Dreaming, a part of the painful process of maturity that exchanges flight for vivid dreams and at times, prophetic visions. The knowledge that she will soon be grounded brings Thailand a great deal of fear and embarrassment. But these things are soon complicated by a seemingly unconnected mystery. After the discovery of a lost safe deposit key, Thailand and her friends explore record rooms and a Newspaper Office, uncovering mysterious letters and long forgotten newspaper articles that have some connection with the school bully, Paul Rampling. But Thailand soon learns there is more to this discovery than mere intrigue. Her search for answers will take her to an unexpected place, a place where her mother is not who she thought she was, and where her own identity is brought into question.

'A far green country' : an analysis of the presentation of nature in works of early mythopoeic fantasy fiction

Langwith, Mark J. — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This study undertakes an examination of the representation of nature in works of literature that it regards as early British ‘mythopoeic fantasy’. By this term the thesis understands that fantasy fiction which is fundamentally concerned with myth or myth-making. It is the contention of the study that the connection of these works with myth or the idea of myth is integral to their presentation of nature. Specifically, this study identifies a connection between the idea of nature presented in these novels and the thought of the late-Victorian era regarding nature, primitivism, myth and the impulse behind mythopoesis. It is argued that this conceptual background is responsible for the notion of nature as a virtuous force of spiritual redemption in opposition to modernity and in particular to the dominant modern ideological model of scientific materialism. The thesis begins by examining late-Victorian sensibilities regarding myth and nature, before exposing correlative ideas in selected case studies of authors whose work it posits to be primarily mythopoeic in intent. The first of these studies considers the work of Henry Rider Haggard, the second examines Scottish writer David Lindsay, and the third looks at the mythopoeic endeavours of J. R. R. Tolkien, the latter standing alone among the authors considered in these central case studies in producing fiction under a fully developed theory of mythopoesis. The perspective is then widened in the final chapter, allowing consideration of authors such as William Morris and H. G. Wells. The study attempts to demonstrate the prevalence of an identifiable conceptual model of nature in the period it considers to constitute the age of early mythopoeic fantasy fiction, which it conceives to date from the late-Victorian era to the apotheosis of Tolkien’s work.

Journey towards the (m)other : myth, origins and the daughter's desires in the fiction of Angela Carter

Jennings, Hope — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: This study examines Angela Carter’s demythologising of origin myths and will investigate the extent to which her fictions offer viable alternatives that allow for productive representations of women and gender relations outside patriarchal paradigms. In the first half of the thesis (Chapters 1-3), I will primarily focus on how several of Carter’s earlier texts deconstruct existing mythical spaces, particularly the biblical creation story in Genesis. The Genesis myth is central to socio-historical constructions of gendered identities, and in itself, central to Carter’s imagination. She repeatedly returns to this myth in her challenging of the ways in which patriarchal narratives construct violent relations between self and other, specifically where ‘woman’ is situated as the repressed other of male desires and fears. Alongside her demythologising of Genesis, Carter deconstructs Freudian myths of sexual maturation, exposing where these also set up a relationship of antagonism or enmity between the sexes. Although Chapter One will explore how Carter attempts to revise these origin myths from a positive stance, Two and Three will focus on the inherent difficulties faced by the female subject in her struggle against patriarchal myths and their violent oppression of female autonomy. The second half of the thesis (Chapters 4-6) will shift to an investigation of how Carter’s later texts set up both possibilities and challenges for women when attempting to construct their own narratives of origin. Through her problematising of matriarchal myths and feminist fantasies of self-creation, Carter emphasises the need for confronting limitations rather than celebrating transgressions as entirely liberating. The thesis will conclude, however, with an examination of where Carter’s own attempts at remythologising opens up an alternative space, or ‘elsewhere’, of feminine desires that allows for a refiguring of the female subject as well as more reciprocal relations between the sexes.

D. H. Lawrence and narrative design

Elliott, John — Fri, 07 Sep 1990 00:00:00 GMT

Abstract: Lawrence's work has almost invevitably been read as an aesthetic production whereby one must eventually agree or disagree with his vision of "reality". Those who assume a formalist standard of taste often find that Lawrence "loses control" of his material; those who offer ideological apologies for his work argue that disruptions in the aesthetic plane are representative of an exploratory genius, often seen as the outstanding characteristic of literary modernism. Both approaches, explicitly or otherwise , rely on the ultimate sanction of the achieved image, transmuted by the author always in control of his material. Yet anyone who reads Lawrence with an eye to to what the "tale" says in addition to what the "teller" claims discovers that Lawrence is not in full control of his material, thought it cannot simply be argued, on aesthetic or linguistic criteria, that he is out of control. Rather, there exists a "third" state whereby Lawrence both writes and is written, gives us a message with one hand, yet retracts, as it were, with the other. Because this double-move is preeminently suited to the language of fiction, and because it appears in Lawrence's fiction with the greatest versatility and incisiveness, this dissertation analyzes six of his novels for their rhetorical significance, understood as both an organization of tropes and figures and as a system of persuasive doctrine. A new definition for allegory is proposed, the introductions of thematic and structural "blanks" is examined, and a spread of narrative delays are identified and discussed, all concerned with the central problem of writing novels that direct themselves to the resurrection of a pre-linguistic universe, yet ironically depend more and more upon writing to bring this about. Ideas drawn from Continental philosophy and recent critical theory are incorporated for support and instruction. Attention is also focused on Lawrence's revision processes, often with specific emphasis on unpublished manuscript material.