Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses. / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-02

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Introduction: We, i.e. contemporary Western man, live in a society which has increasingly embraced Science and Technology as the ultimum bonum. The Machine, i.e. Science and Technology, has come to be seen as an impersonal force, a New God - omniscient, omnipotent: to be worshipped and, alas, also to be feared. This mythologem has come to pervade almost every sphere of our lives in a paradigmatic way to the extent where it is hardly ever recognized for what it is and hence fails to arouse the concern it merits. While some of the more perceptive minds - such as Erich Fromm, Rufino Tamayo, Carl Gustav Jung, Konrad Lorenz and Arthur Koestler, to mention but a few - have started ringing the alarm bells, the vast majority of our species seem to plunge ahead with their blinkers firmly in place (more or less contented as long as they can persude themselves that these blinkers were manufactured according to latest technological and scientific specifications). Man’s uniquely human powers - his creative intuition, his feelings, his moral and ethical potential, have become sadly neglected and mistrusted. Homo sapiens – “homo maniacus” as Koestler suggests? - is now at a crossroads: he has reached a point where the next step could be the last step and result in the annihilation of man as a species. Alternately, avoiding that, there is the outwardly less drastic but essentially equally alarming possibility of men becoming robots, while a third alternative has yet to be found. While it does appear as if a lot of young people, noticeably among students, have started reacting against the over mechanization of life, these reactions often tend to follow the swing-of-the-pendulum principle and veer towards the other extreme, throwing out the baby with the bathwater and falling prey to freak-out cults in a kind of mass-irrationalism, rejecting science and technology altogether. Artists who by their very nature perhaps are particularly sensitive - in a kind of seismographic way - to the currents and undercurrents of their age, have become aware of the effects of science and technology on our way of living, and many of them have in one way or another taken a stand in relation to the position of man in our highly technological world. Looking at the art produced over the last four decades, it is truly astonishing to what extent our changed world reflects in our art - a world and a Weltbild very different from that of our ancestors even just a few generations ago. The purpose of the present study is to survey some of the observations and commentaries that painters and certain kindred spirits from the sciences over the last few decades have offered, in the hope of, if not answering, at least defining and posing anew some of the questions that confront us with ever-increasing urgency.

One of the most frequently repeated questions of our time is what is art? Since we have become conditioned to the idea that ''significant art - a much overworked modern term - belongs to the revolutionary avant-garde, artists carry their search for the new at all costs into the field of non art. P.1

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This thesis investigates aspects of the writing, reading, and marketing of contemporary Scottish poetry, suggesting that readers of contemporary poetry are influenced in their reading by marketplace forces as well as by their early academic training. The thesis attempts to reflect this combination of influences on the reader, but it also seeks to reflect the awareness of these influences in the poets' work. The Dream State concentrates on factors which condition the reading of contemporary Scottish poetry, and on some of the poetry of seven poets who became established in the 1990s: John Burnside, Robert Crawford, W. N. Herbert, Tracey Herd, Kathleen Jamie, Don Paterson and Robin Robertson. Alert to the political climate of Scottish devolution and to a literary climate which saw the simultaneous appearance of the anthology Dream State: The New Scottish Poets and the 1994 New Generation poetry promotion, the thesis examines the pressures of expectation on these Scottish poets writing in English and Scots during the 1990s. The thesis argues that the complexity of their poems and jobs as poets in this period is best understood by 'thinking together' (Steven Connor) the principles of Practical Criticism and publishing history's approach to literature in the marketplace; I draw on research fi-om a combination of critical sources in literary theory and criticism, book history and interviews/correspondence with poets, teachers and the booktrade. Chapters describing critical narratives which can pre-empt reading - the theoretical spaces of contemporary Scottish poetry, the origins of Practical Criticism, and academic/commercial expectations of the reader - are followed by chapters on the work of these seven poets. Chapter 4 examines longer poems as a reflection of the poets' concerns about personal and national identity, and Chapter 5 discusses the poets' exploration of their social and literary environments. The Conclusion discusses the significance of what I term the museum poem and of anthologies of twentieth-century Scottish poetry, drawing on Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project for an appropriate model of contemporary reading.

This thesis studies the step-by-step process of foreign policy making within the British Government from 1931 to 1939. It aims to pin-point the origin, evolution and nature of appeasement, the principal policy-makers' viewpoints and activities in policy formulating and their responsibility for encouraging the aggressive powers. In the Introduction, the subjective and objective roots of appeasement are explored, and the Author examines the reasons why it was pursued for nine years without change. Highlighting the shortcomings in the past and current research on the subject, a summary of the approaches used in the thesis is given. The First Chapter surveys policy-making during the Manchurian crisis of 1931, not only a starting point for appeasement, but also to a large extent the main reason for the European appeasement. The Second Chapter shows how the British Government appeased Mussolini in the Italo-Abyssinian conflict of 1935-36, and how appeasement in the Far East started to cause appeasement in Europe. Chapters Three, Four and Five indicate the development of appeasement policy towards Germany during 1936 - 1939, namely, how it was hatched during the Rhineland crisis of 1936, and how it was, through the Anschluss, brought to a climax at Munich in 1938. Chapter Six analyses the policy of the guarantee to Poland and of the Three Power conversations in 1939 with the observation that these represented the Chamberlain Government's efforts to change their policy within the scope of appeasement, but that appeasement led to their failure. In the Conclusion, the various arguments in favour of appeasement are criticised and lessons drawn from that disastrous age.

The thesis covers the politics of the Conservative Party from the general election defeat of May 1929 to the formation of the National Government in August 1931. It relates the internal crisis in the Party to the pressures of the Party rank and file, and to the general political and economic situation, in order to analyse the process by which Party policy evolved. Debate centred upon two questions: protection and India. In the case of the former, the role of its advocates in the press is discussed. Overall, the thesis emphasised the power of the position of the Party Leader, Baldwin. The Party crisis passed through six distinct phases. In the first (May-August 1929) the status quo in policy was preserved; but during the second (September 1929-March 1930), the balance tilted in the direction of advance over protection, but was restrained by the reluctance of the northern regions. A truce with the press followed (March-June 1930) but collapsed in mid-summer, leaving the leaders dangerously out of touch with their followers' views during the fourth phase of acute crisis (July-October 1930). At the end of the latter period the leaders accommodated their position, appeasing all but a small minority of dissidents, and isolating the press campaign. However, the fifth phase (October 1930-March 1931) saw a renewed outbreak of unease, due to the question of India and the leadership failures of Baldwin himself. In the final phase (March-August 1931) Baldwin re-established his position, and the Conservatives seemed set for electoral victory, having united around the policy of reducing government expenditure. The Party did not seek Coalition, but was diverted into joining the National Government by the sudden and serious financial crisis, believing it to be a temporary emergency expedient.

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