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The thesis proposes that the figurative and extensive use of the ‘mask'—persona, masquerade, disguise, impersonation—provides a crucial literary device for the development and liberation of the expressive potential of Katherine Mansfield and Eileen Chang (1920-1995). Chapter 1, ‘Introduction', elucidates the relationship between mask and language with respect to the writings of Mansfield and Chang by revising John Keats's idea of ‘the chameleon poet', Robert Browning's conception of dramatic monologue, Oscar Wilde's insights into truth and masks, and Ezra Pound's adoptions of ‘personae' in his poetry. The affinities between Mansfield and Chang will be explored by looking at their critical writing as well as criticism on them, revealing their shared awareness of the masks of a person in daily life as well as in fiction and drama. Chapter 2, ‘Katherine Mansfield's Art of Changing Masks', explores how Mansfield's characters switch between three types of masks—speech and the non-verbal, gender, animality—to respond to changes in their situations. Particularly important for this exploration are Joan Rivi re's ‘Womanliness as Masquerade', Michael Goldman's theory of masks in acting, and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's concept of ‘becoming-animal'. Chapter 3, ‘Prosopopoeia: Katherine Mansfield's “special prose” ', considers Mansfield's attempt ‘to bring the dead to life again' in what she calls ‘special prose' as a ‘prosopopoeia', or in Cynthia Chase' phrase, ‘giving a face to a name'. In this chapter I will also trace how Mansfield's work was first translated into Chinese in 1923 by the Chinese poet, Zhimo Xu (1897-1931), which made her one of the most widely-read foreign writers in the Chinese-speaking world. More importantly, I suggest that Xu's use of quotations from Keats and other nineteenth-century poets in portraying Mansfield in his memoir calls our attention to her decisive and still insufficiently examined relationship to poetry. Chapter 4, ‘ “Hiding behind a foreign language”: Eileen Chang's Self-Translation and Masquerade', examines Chang's penchant for translating her fiction and essays from Chinese into English or vice versa. Taking a cue from Pound's view of translations as ‘elaborate masks' and Deleuze's idea of the writer being a ‘foreigner' in their own language, I examine some of the ways in which that the mask of a foreigner / foreign language enables Chang, a bilingual fiction writer and essayist, to gain the emotional and spatial distance from which to reflect on Chinese culture and her personal life. Being inspired by Mansfield and Chang's courage to get away from the notion of writing as self-expression and Dionysus' gift of crossing boundaries through the assistance of the mask, the creative component of the thesis, Chapter 5, consists of 4 short stories. I conclude the thesis with a poem entitled ‘Gifts (for Katherine Mansfield)' and a quick fiction called ‘The Functions of Theory', considering theory and literary terms as a variety of make-up that I apply to the face of my thesis. While critical chapters contain embedded fiction, the creative component demonstrates and tests how the interior space behind the mask allows me to liberate my creative energy. In these stories, I attempt to cross the boundaries between male and female, Chinese and non-Chinese, human and animal, creative and critical writing.

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This thesis examines modern fiction's debt to Romantic poetry for its key concepts in terms of educating an individual. The persistence of William Wordsworth's views on education in the modern fiction of James Joyce and E. M. Forster is evidence of The Prelude as a classic study of the growth of an individual. It is argued that Wordsworth does not envisage the institutional mode of education as a totally reliable means of educating an individual. He challenges the assumptions underlying the institutional mode of education. It is argued that the influence of Wordsworth's views on education is not limited to Victorian writers alone. Joyce and Forster take up a position similar to Wordsworth. Almost all the protagonists in the novels and short stories discussed in this thesis are educated at privileged institutions of education, and yet they rebel against the mode of education there. All the novels and short stories discussed, in a series of close readings, bear testimony to the fact that Wordsworth's The Prelude is fundamental to both Joyce and Forster in terms of the growth of an individual. Seen within the framework of the Romantic notion of education, this thesis contributes to an increase of the understanding of modern fiction. It is possible to study this theme in other modern writers such as D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and Ford Madox Ford. The thesis retrieves a traditional reading of the writers under discussion by foregrounding the pattern of humanitarian values the Wordsworthian model of growth engenders. The recent studies in my field are referred to where necessary to indicate what they are missing in their study of Joyce and Forster.

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This research was conducted to see why some scholars have decided that Elizabethan prose fiction is no longer of value to a modern audience; this essay will apply narratological analyses and theory to examine Elizabethan prose fiction, noting where and how these works build their stories to involve their readers: differently than we would nowadays. The main subjects within narratology used for the analyses are the narrator, the narratee, focalisation, point of view and perspective. The main result found is that the overt intradiegetic narrator and narratee are the leading players when it comes to involving the reader in Elizabethan prose fiction.

This thesis examines the works of Peacock and the early periodical contributions of Thackeray in the light of recent twentieth-century critical interpretations of satire. In particular, attention to Peacock's use of elements of the Menippean sub-genre in his satirical fiction offers a reassessment of his place in the literary tradition. While Thackeray's early writings demonstrate some characteristics of Menippean satire, a review of his work from the broader perspective of Bakhtin's exposition of carnival influences in serio-comic literature provides a new understanding of the origins and uses of his narratorial devices. A comparison of the work of the two authors, within the time constraint of the first half of the nineteenth century, illustrates how nineteenth-century publishing innovations shaped literary perception of satire. Although the high status of the genre in the predominant culture of the previous century was challenged by the growth of the reading public, satire found new energy and modes of expression in the popular magazines of the period. In addition, writers facing the increasing heterogeneity of new reading audiences, were forced to reconsider their personal ideals of authorship and literature, while renegotiating their position in the literary marketplace. Organized in six chapters, the discussion opens with an account of traditional interpretations of satire, and goes on to examine recent analyses of the genre. The second chapter focuses on the relevance of these new interpretations to the work of Peacock and Thackeray and the extent to which the use of Menippean forms of satire enabled each to challenge the established opinions of their period. Changes in concepts of reading and writing and innovations in modes of publication form the substance of the third chapter and this is followed by an analysis of the work of both writers, using Bakhtin's interpretation of the Menippean sub-genre in the broader context of serio-comic discourse and the carnival tradition, Chapter five is a comparative study of the attitudes of both writers towards contemporary literature and the final section places their work in the political context of the period. Both Peacock and Thackeray made extensive use of elements of Menippean satire in their fiction. The content of their work, however, and their modes of writing were highly individual, to some extent shaped by the different markets they supplied. Collectively, their writings illustrate two aspects of the cultural watershed of the early nineteenth century, Peacock reflecting traditional notions of authorship and Thackeray representing a new industry, regulated by the commercial considerations of supply and demand. As satirists,each succeeded in adapting the genre to satisfy both his own authorial integrity and the expectations of his readers.

The thesis foregrounds the distinctive contribution Dirk Bogarde made to contemporary writing in a second career that developed in parallel to his screen commitments. It dispels the notion that Bogarde followed a familiar path as an actor who wrote books. Instead it establishes his reputation as an innovative writer whose formal technique was substantially influenced by the textual systems of cinema and the cross-fertilisation from acting to writing. In examining the formative factors that steered Bogarde towards authorship, the thesis addresses the role of performance as a generative factor in the evolution of the novels, establishing a discursive link with Bakhtinian dialogism, and specifically, transgredience as a formal imperative. Secondly, it affords a critical insight into why the major concerns with staging and performativity preoccupy his writing career. The thesis claims that Bogarde was an empirically dialogical writer whose use of camera-eye narration fostered the proliferation of competing discourses across the fiction. This formal dynamic is centred on the relationship between stages and dialogism, which incorporates the work of Erving Goffinan as a complementary critique to Bakhtinian theory with its emphasis on self-presentation. The concern with socially-constructed behaviour leads the thesis to address the associated issues of stereotyping and 'otherness', which in terms of body politics is articulated by the mono logic drive to confine the sexual 'other' to a fixed representation. Bogarde's ability to draw on cinematic and performance techniques identifies an area of expertise unavailable to most other writers. This is an unusual repository of skills to bring to writing which is why the thesis makes the claim for his singular achievement as a contemporary author. There are fruitful points of intersection to be explored in this respect with the work of Christopher Isherwood, whom Bogarde read and admired, as a basis for further research. It is hoped that the thesis will play its part in opening up new possibilities for Bogarde's writing to be re-visited by future critics.

Erika Duncan has commented that ‘because of the intangible sentimental quality of Mary Webb’s special genius, there has been a general reluctance to acknowledge her as a major writer.’ This thesis argues against such dismissive approaches to Webb and makes a case for a re-evaluation of Webb as an unusual writer of pantheist spirituality and nature mysticism and one who can now be appreciated for the ecopoetics of her work. Within this framework the study charts the stylistic qualities of her writing and its mutative shifts through a chronological examination of her work which also includes a biographical account of her life and the major influences which shaped her ideas and writing. Aspects of inter-textuality with other writers will be considered throughout and will underscore the value of Webb’s work whilst emphasising the unique and beautiful quality of her voice. The first chapter, ‘Early Responses’, considers her formative experiences and her earliest essays and poems. ‘Mythological Motifs’ then reviews the mythopoeic nature of Webb’s first two novels and her use of myth in furthering her themes. The ensuing chapter, ‘Preceptive Perception’, evaluates both the didacticism in authorial style and the pertinence of Webb’s vision which are features of her third book. Chapter Four discusses her final two completed volumes as ‘A Dyad’ for they represent, respectively, her weakest and her finest writing. The final chapter, ‘A Medieval Message’, focuses on Webb’s last, incomplete, work, analysing its experimental qualities and its potential to reveal Webb’s last efforts to leave a parting missive for her readers before her death. Central critical concepts are that: in the development of Webb’s religious views from conventional Christianity to pantheism she anticipated modern feminist spirituality; and, in her insistence upon the supreme value of nature and its continual risk from human exploitation in connection with the oppression of women and their need for spiritual freedom, Webb is an unrecognised ecofeminist who was reflecting early twentieth-century issues. In addition, I attempt to discover reasons for Webb’s neglect and positively propose a place for her in literary studies. A Conclusion will summarise the main arguments and indicate possible further avenues of research.