The importance of Robert Buchanan's onslaught upon Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Poems in 1871-2 has never been minimised by the poet's biographers. This crucial episode undoubtedly contributed to Rossetti's death ten years later. Buchanan's criticism also raises the question of the poetry's "fleshliness", with which all Rossetti students eventually have to come to terms. Some critics consider him to be a romantic, trying to express his apprehension of the eternal to be found behind natural phenomena; others see him, as Buchanan saw him, as a man vainly trying to etherealise man's basest drives, a sensual materialist masquerading as a spiritual idealist. Buchanan's indictment has been said to be clearly representative of "the 'classical' or conservative school of criticism." Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, published in 1866, had shocked many. It was widely known that Rossetti had been one of the major influences upon the younger poet, and Buchanan expressed the outrage many felt at the immorality of the more mature, and thus more reprehensible, Rossetti. Buchanan's manner and tone were adopted to impress readers with his judicious impartiality, even though personal animus certainly inspired his criticism. Buchanan despised Rossetti's effeminacy, his lack of sanity, his lack of humanity, even; he despised his introspection, his effete luxuriation "in his own exquisite emotions." While such objections are virtually the same as those made against Keats, Buchanan did subscribe to the romantic belief that the sincere expression of some clearly perceived truth gave poetry its distinguishing characteristic of "spiritualization." To him, Rossetti's insincerity was the most patently obvious thing about his work. Thus it can be seen that Buchanan used both classical and romantic criteria to achieve his purpose. Buchanan, on the one hand, and Swinburne and William Michael Rossetti, on the other, had been exchanging polemical broadsides for at least five years prior to 1871. The thesis traces the origins and the course of the controversy, and presents salvoes by both Buchanan and Swinburne which have hitherto gone unnoted. Rossetti had not figured in the controversy before, but it was Buchanan's harsh review of William Michael's edition of Shelley that prompted the poet to organize the critical reception of Poems in the first months of 1870. This fact, until recently, has received scant attention in other accounts of the controversy, but this "working the oracle", besides giving Buchanan another stick with which to beat Rossetti, must have made the anticipated attack all the more deadly when it finally came. The continuation of the controversy after Rossetti's breakdown in June 1872 is described, as is the reluctant involvement in it of Walt Whitman, a poet whom both sides admired greatly. To assess what validity that attack may have had for Rossetti, a close textual collation has been made between the "fifth" edition of Poems, that reviewed by Buchanan in the Contemporary Review of October 1871, and subsequent republications of the poetry. It is clear that Rossetti did revise several poems because of the views that Buchanan represented. The omission of the sonnet "Nuptial Sleep" from subsequent collections has long been known to be directly attributable to Buchanan's attack. The thesis ends with a brief account of Buchanan's literary career from 1871 until his death in 1901. A confirmed mutineer and controversialist, he gradually lost credit as a poet worthy of serious consideration, and now his work has found a neglect that it may not totally deserve. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

The works of Joseph Conrad and Jules Verne share a fascination with geography: concern with geographical issues made explicit in their non-fictional works is also implicit in their fiction. Unfortunately, limited knowledge of or interest in geographic theory on the part of the literary critic has made the relation between literature and geography a relatively unpopular focus; to redress the balance, it is necessary to outline briefly some of the ways in which geographical theory may usefully inform the practice of literary criticism. Areas to be introduced include geography and literature as spatial distribution, as spatial perception, as inscription on and description of the environment, as text, as cultural matrix. The above areas serve as a focus for the comparative analysis of a series of novels by Joseph Conrad and Jules Verne in which three issues are foregrounded: first, the interrelations between concentrated place and surrounding space in the sea-tales The Nigger of the Narcissus and Vingt mille lieues sous les mers; second, the reading and writing of cultural landscape in Heart of Darkness and Voyage au centre de la terre; third, the geopolitics of territory, boundary and landclaim in Lord Jim and L'lle mystérieuse. In each case, relevant geographical theory is drawn upon: in the first instance, the phenomenological notions of Yi-Fu Tuan and Edward Relph; in the second, the landscape evaluations of Carl Sauer and Courtice Rose; in the third, the geopolitical and politico-geographical definitions of Glassner, De Blij and Cohen. The first section (on The Nigger of the Narcissus and Vingt mille lieues sous les mers) explores the spatial notions of topophilia, placelessness and geometricity inherent in the relation between ship and sea. The second section (on Heart of Darkness and Voyage au centre de la terre) discusses the various connotations of landscape: cultural imprint (rewriting), false perspective (mis-reading), textual sign-system (encoding/decoding), which suggest that landscape can be interpreted as a controlling mechanism of and means of access to the text. The third section (on Lord Jim and L' Ile mystérieuse) outlines the geographical motifs of the two novels (division, (dis)possession, ascent and descent, etc.) and infers possible motives behind these motifs, relating topographical issues to personal and political ones and paying particular attention to the implications of island environments and communities and to the connections between imperialism, colonialism and narrative strategy. Finally, the 'literary geography' of Conrad's and Verne's novels is situated in its historical context and related particularly to the late nineteenth-century debate on the relative merits of positivism and phenomenology. In Verne's work, the doctrine of positivism, which has been constituted in terms of an ideology of science, is only celebrated in so far as its limitations are recognized. In Conrad's work, man's struggle to conquer Nature through a physical and verbal mastery of his environment is reinterpreted as an attempt to overcome his own duality. Conrad's predominantly phenomenological geography of the mind serves as a critique of positivist doctrine, but its fractured topography also suggests that the attempt to substitute 'more traditional views of the social and moral order' (Watt, 163) is, perhaps, little more than a saving illusion. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This work examines the author's experience in teaching A Doll House by Henrik Ibsen to students in the course Play Analysis, THEA 2440, at the University of North Texas in the Fall 2003 and Spring 2004 semesters. Descriptions of the preparations, presentations, student responses, and the author's self-evaluations and observations are included. Included as appendices are a history of Henrik Ibsen to the beginning of his work on A Doll House, a description of Laura Kieler, the young woman on whose life Ibsen based the lead character, and an analysis outline form that the students completed for the play as a requirement for the class.

The aim of this study is to make a critical examination of the different perceptions presented by Zulu authors on King Shaka, the most controversial and celebrated Zulu king. Chapter one is an introductory chapter which provides a short biography of Shaka and identifies the mythology surrounding his name. The chapter ends with an exposition of theoretical approaches too be used in the study. Chapter two assesses the novelists' views and chapter three examines how the playwrights present Shaka. In both genres Shaka emerges as a hero. In chapter four, which is on poetry, various themes conveyed by Zulu poets on Shaka are discussed. In the concluding chapter, opinions by some historians on Shaka are stated and assessed. Further, general observations on the findings of this study are summarised / African Languages / M.A. (African Languages)

Margaret Oliphant's fiction has generated some interest in recent years, but her prose essays have been ignored. Critics contend her essays are unimportant and dismiss Oliphant as a hack writer who had little sympathy with her sex. These charges are untrue, however, because many influences complicated Oliphant's writings on the Woman Question. She suffered recurring financial difficulties and gender discrimination, she lacked formal education, and most of her work was published by Blackwood's, a conservative, male-oriented periodical edited by a close personal friend. Readers who are aware of these influences find Oliphant's earliest three essays about the Woman Question especially provocative because in them Oliphant explored the dichotomy between the perceived and the real lives of women. Oliphant refined her opinions each time she wrote on the Woman Question, and a more coherent, more clearly feminist, perspective emerges in each succeeding article. In "The Laws Concerning Women," despite Oliphant's apparent position, pre-feminist markers suggest that she is tentative about feminist ideas rather than negative towards them. "The Condition of Women" offers even more prefeminist markers, Oliphant's ostensible support of the patriarchal status quo notwithstanding. In "The Great Unrepresented," an article cited by some as proof that Oliphant was against women's suffrage, she argues not against enfranchising women, but against the method proposed for securing the vote. In this article, many pre-feminist markers have become decidedly feminist. Scholars may have overlooked Oliphant's feminism because her rhetorical strategies are more complicated than those of most other Victorian critics and invite her audience to read between the lines. Although her writing sometimes lacks unity and focus, and her prose is often turgid, convoluted, and digressive, she creates elaborate inverse arguments with claims supporting patriarchy but evidence that supports feminism. A rich feminist subtext lies beneath the surface text of Oliphant's essays, demonstrating that her perspective on the Woman Question is far more complex than it initially appears.

Henrik Ibsen's critics have long acknowledged his mastery of the stage, that is, his use of the physical and off-stage settings, architectural details, props, and space as symbol. However, study of Ibsen's symbolic settings has been limited to one play or to aspects of his stagecraft in general terms. Peter Tenant's Ibsen's Dramatic Technique discusses the settings and stage directions of his major plays as they relate to plot and theme. In Patterns of Ibsen's Middle Plays, Richard Hornby studies the settings and scenic background only for An Enemy of the People. Edward Beyer in Ibsen's The Man And His Work focuses on the plays' symbols as they relate to theme. Finally, David Thomas presents an excellent study of stage space in The Lady From the Sea. These authors and others have touched upon the genius of Ibsen's stagecraft. More can and should be said because understanding Ibsen's symbolic settings will lead to a deeper reading and appreciation of his plays. Ibsen's use of the symbolic setting provides focus and unity to the plays that were written between 1882 and 1892. His settings become a projection of his major themes and the characters• souls or psyches. Areas on and off the stage, props, furniture, and architectural details may be a stage projection of the protagonist's mind, intention, motivation, or suppression. Since the essential nature of drama is conflict, Ibsen often uses his settings as symbols of conflict. Varied settings, architectural details, placement of the furniture, and the characters• positions and movement on the stage provide a visual symbolism for his themes in An Enemy of the People, Rosmersholm, Lady From The Sea, Hedda Gabler, and The Master Builder. Ibsen's settings often caused a great deal of trouble to stage because they were complicated. Indoor settings were his effort to create a realistic illusion, while his later abandonment of indoor settings coincided with his reversion to romantic symbolism, according to Tenant (67). With The Lady From The Sea in 1888, his plays expanded to the open air. Three plays, Rosmersholm, The Lady From the Sea, and The Master Builder, begin in an enclosed setting that gradually and symbolically takes the protagonist to the outdoors and freedom. However, in The Enemy of the People, Ibsen uses enclosed settings that are mirror images of one another, thus symbolizing the pattern of thematic contrasts. Only Hedda Gabler takes place in one enclosed set, which becomes a symbolic entrapment for Hedda. In these latter two plays and The Master Builder, Ibsen enlarged his stage with the help of an inner room or a back room that functioned not only as a way to place his characters and therefore complicate the plot, but also to project his themes and his characters' psychological states. In addition, he uses off-stage settings not only to symbolize further the conflicts within his characters, but also to enhance his themes.

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The background of the mass may be considered from many angles. This present discussion concerns itself with the early development of the form. Since the mass is a Catholic rite, the Catholic viewpoint is followed in religious matters. The purposes of this paper are to provide backgrounds for the Catholic tradition of mass and for Austrian composer Franz Schubert, and to analyze the masses written by Schubert.