Hardy’s visual imagery reveals both the eye of the draughtsman and the eye of the artist. His style ranges from awkward pedantries to flowing poetic beauty. This PhD thesis first examines the eccentric scientific imagery, and then the more sustained poetic visual themes such as the ‘near’ and ‘far’ view, or the use of light and shade. Hardy’s reference to paintings, etchings and sculptures is examined in detail, with illustrations provided throughout the text. / Whole document restricted, but available by request, use the feedback form to request access.

Whole document restricted, see Access Instructions file below for details of how to access the print copy. / The French farce of the period 1450-1550 contains a cornucopia of verbal expressions that we may term 'exclamatory’; swearing, oaths, curses, insults, supplications, interjections, exhortations, scatology, invocations of saints, and so on. Yet this literary form, considered by researchers be a repository of spoken French of the later Middle Ages, remains largely unexplored from this standpoint. Indeed, there are few studies of 'expressive' modern language in existence, due largely to the inferior status given to this linguistic register by the majority of researchers. This thesis seeks to examine and quantify the formulaic nature of exclamatory discourse in the farces. By adopting a broader definition of the word 'exclamation' than that currently accepted, we seek to unite the disparate and fragmentary attitudes of the few researchers who have expressed the view that this aspect of discourse merits further analysis. It is asserted that examination of formulae (i.e. leitmotivic usages) allows an objective assessment of affective language; the formulaic constructions are shown to be themselves subject to formulaic modification. A database of 7668 quotations (68,500 words) from 99 farces is used to establish a taxonomy which shows usage in context. The taxonomy is organised around headwords, which form the nuclei of the various expressive domains. From this taxonomy, 858 formulae are extracted and described. The relative frequency of occurrence of the phrases in the taxonomy is portrayed in graphical form. The field of research from 1900 to the present is examined. The attitudes of researchers are shown to have undergone evolutionary rather than revolutionary development in the course of the century; the abovementioned divergence of methodologies (and definitions of the field of research), is asserted to have hindered an advance of research in this area. Possibilities for further research are suggested, for example in the field of comparative inter-lingual studies.

Whole document restricted, see Access Instructions file below for details of how to access the print copy. / This thesis establishes a critical edition of the diaries of Geneviève Bréton (1849-l9l8) written between 1874 and 1914. As 'diary' and 'journal' are synonyms, the words are used interchangeably throughout the thesis. Geneviève Bréton was an educated, privileged and literary woman, the third child in a prestigious Parisian family. In this thesis, I argue that her diaries or private writing play the role of an alternative to, for a woman, socially stigmatized public writing. Although she wrote compulsively throughout her life, experimenting with the novel, she devotes most attention to the diary genre, exploring it beyond its conventional parameters as a feminine outlet. Diaries provide a compromise for Bréton as she finds a way around the limitations imposed by sexual difference and cultural mores in nineteenth-century France. As a woman, and as a wife, she accepts the social and cultural imperatives of her environment but, where possible, on her own terms. I argue that for Bréton, the daughter of publishers and friend of writers, the diary genre is a surreptitious entry into their world, her private form of literary expression and creation. I suggest that she recognises this fact at the end of her life when she herself undertakes the preparation of her 1867-1871 journals for publication. The 1874-l9l4 diaries are held in manuscript form in the archives of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris. The first five years of the diaries, based on the material prepared by Bréton, were published in 1985. The present work will facilitate further publications. The corpus of the later diaries, transcribed over a four-year period in the National Library archives in Paris, is preceded by a three-part introduction: a presentation and discussion of the methodology chosen to transcribe the diaries; an analysis of the nineteenth-century family, social, and literary contexts that influence the writing; and the development of a thesis on the rationale behind the existence of the diaries, their character, content, and volume. Bréton began the task of editing and retyping her journals. This edition of the subsequent journals carries on the undertaking of 'publishing and republishing Silenced texts' Julia Swindells, 'Liberating the Subject? Autobiography and "Women's History": A Reading of the Diaries of Hannah Cullwick' in The Personal Narratives Group eds., Interpreting Women's Lives: Feminist Theory and Personal Narratives, 1989, p.24.: that of drawing out the untold stories of creativity and rebellion against confinement which are part of history and literary history.

The thesis is divided into five parts. The first consists of a revue of the opinions of the critics on the work of Georges Bernanos, and then proceeds to define the aims of the thesis: (i) to combat the pernicious idea that we are dealing with a "Catholic Opus", one where the term "Catholic" would imply "idealistic" or "out of touch with reality", and to arrive at a different way of approaching the work; (ii) to lay bare the hidden unity of the work since the new interpretation we are seeking will derive from the relation of the parts to the whole; (iii) to show the radical nature of Bernanos's thought which lays bare the roots of the Discontents of our Civilisation and, by so doing, imparts a prophetic tone to his writings. In the second part Bernanos is placed within the context of his times and compared to other intellectuals, both Catholic and non-Catholic, in order to separate the "Catholic" from the "non-Catholic" elements in his work. Next, using the methods of Charles Mauron, we study the Youthful Works. In the third part, following the methods of Lucien Goldmann, we place the Novels in the context of Ecclesiastical Politics. In the fourth part we trace the transformation of the Novelist into the political pundit, then we go back to La Grande peur des bien-pensants to retrace the origins of his political thinking. Chapter twelve, "Birth of the Modem World", traces the development of capitalism in France and concomitant evolution of the value-system and ways of thinking. The fifth part contains the second half of the "Ecrits de Combat" entitled "The Modem World" which gives us Bernanos's view - a prophetic view - of the world we inhabit at present, Then the Conclusion. / Whole document restricted, but available by request, use the feedback form to request access.

The thesis is divided into five parts. The first consists of a revue of the opinions of the critics on the work of Georges Bernanos, and then proceeds to define the aims of the thesis: (i) to combat the pernicious idea that we are dealing with a "Catholic Opus", one where the term "Catholic" would imply "idealistic" or "out of touch with reality", and to arrive at a different way of approaching the work; (ii) to lay bare the hidden unity of the work since the new interpretation we are seeking will derive from the relation of the parts to the whole; (iii) to show the radical nature of Bernanos's thought which lays bare the roots of the Discontents of our Civilisation and, by so doing, imparts a prophetic tone to his writings. In the second part Bernanos is placed within the context of his times and compared to other intellectuals, both Catholic and non-Catholic, in order to separate the "Catholic" from the "non-Catholic" elements in his work. Next, using the methods of Charles Mauron, we study the Youthful Works. In the third part, following the methods of Lucien Goldmann, we place the Novels in the context of Ecclesiastical Politics. In the fourth part we trace the transformation of the Novelist into the political pundit, then we go back to La Grande peur des bien-pensants to retrace the origins of his political thinking. Chapter twelve, "Birth of the Modem World", traces the development of capitalism in France and concomitant evolution of the value-system and ways of thinking. The fifth part contains the second half of the "Ecrits de Combat" entitled "The Modem World" which gives us Bernanos's view - a prophetic view - of the world we inhabit at present, Then the Conclusion. / Whole document restricted, but available by request, use the feedback form to request access.

One key debate in the critical reception of Shakespearean late romance concerns how best to approach the functionality of the dramatised worlds that constitute it. What I call ‘containment’ readings of late romance argue that the alternative realities explored in the plays – realities of miraculous revivals, pastoral escapes and divine interventions, – serve to affirm the inevitable return of extant power structures. Utopian readings dispute this, making the case that the political and existential destructurations exposed in these plays point toward a new orientation for the dramatic subjects they produce. With the aim of contributing to the debate between containment and utopian readings, I explore in this thesis how late romance produces its subjects. I interrogate the plays’ structures with the help of the anthropological model of the limen, which is shown to be a useful category through which to educe the meaningfulness of certain ritual sequences. The limen’s three phases – separation; limen; aggregation – are employed to make sense of the transitions that subjects undergo in the four plays studied: Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest. To study the liminality of these plays is, I argue, to study how dramatic subjects are produced therein, guided by the fact that their language shares properties with ritual discourse. When studying this discourse the focus falls on that class of language which impinges most lastingly on subjects: performatives. How performatives function in late romance will show us how real the changes induced in liminal subjects are. I examine the four plays in turn and find that their performative language produces subjects in a limen-consistent fashion. Aristocratic subjects are first of all estranged from those discursive practices that nourish their identity; their subjectivities are then glued back together in the ritualised, emblematising language of the limen. The conclusion I draw from my interrogation of the liminal patterns uncovered is that the functionality of late romance is broadly consistent with containment readings; I claim to have extended such readings, however, in showing that Shakespeare’s dramatisation of the state’s return to power usefully exposes its logic and symbolic grammar.

This thesis proposes that the current popularity of heroic fantasy arises from the genre's capacity to reveal "meaning" to the alienated subject within late modernity. While consumerism potentially undermines the subject's sense of stability both as an individual and as a member of a coherent and unified social group, the hero's journey conveys a compelling model for attaining a purposive subjectivity by acting on behalf of the broader community. However, this "healing" message is in turn appropriated by multinational corporations and nation states for financial advantage. Heroic fantasy can thus be read at various points of its production and consumption as both legitimating and contesting dominant institutions and ideologies.With particular reference to the books and films of The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, ontological security is discussed at both individual and collective levels across three horizons: commodification, gender, and nationalism. A combination of close textual analysis and the application of core concepts from cultural studies - particularly ethnographic study, hegemonic power relations and political economy - provides the methodological flexibility necessary to trace consumers' contradictory and ambivalent responses to the three themes: the anti-materialist message incorporated in the genre's moral economy is jeopardised by the rampant commodification of the texts; the normative masculinity and emphasised femininity common to the genre is contested by female readers; and the utopic visions of a secure and homogeneous community are exploited by the New Zealand government rebranding the country as Middle-earth. These arguments are oriented toward a New Zealand perspective; interviews with readers of Harry Potter and a discussion of the World Premiere of Peter Jackson's film adaptation of The Return of the King in "Wellywood" contribute to this specific context.This thesis therefore asserts that once heroic fantasy is placed in the contexts of production and reception conflicting trends are revealed, suggesting that the social impacts of heroic fantasy are complex and equivocal. Although the genre is readily commodified by the very system that it retaliates against, analysis suggests that heroic fantasy resists reification into a single dominant discourse as appropriation is never absolute.

Focusing on "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and The Singing Detective (1986) by Dennis Potter in dialogue with theories from Freud, Szasz, Foucault and Butler, my thesis considers the role of medicine in encouraging a patient toward a normative subjectivity. The protagonists of each text have become ill as a result of their inability to accept the social contradictions and lies upon which gendered subjectivity is reliant; the unnamed narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper" comprehends femininity as servitude to male demands, while Marlow of The Singing Detective desires the power patriarchy offers him as a male, but his loss of belief and faith prevent his ascension to masculine status.Both the narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Marlow resist the imposition of normative gender by practitioners of mainstream medicine. Therefore, a more complex and subtle method of treatment, the psychoanalysis developed by Freud, is employed in The Singing Detective, thereby encouraging the patient to identify illness and discontent as personal, not societal, responsibility.I commence the thesis with an overview of the unequal power relations presupposed and encouraged by medical discourse. Through a process of 'hystericisation' the patient is infantilised and made dependent upon medical care. Linguistic control is central to manipulating patient behaviour within the hospital, and correspondingly the narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Marlow both seek a new subjectivity through their writing. Difficulties in appropriating language leads to internal incoherency for the protagonists, met by a split subjectivity - a defence mechanism which allows the protagonists to deviate from, at the same time as preserving, their 'good self'.The refusal of "The Yellow Wallpaper's" narrator to relinquish her defiant self and assume femininity is contained by patriarchy - embodied by her husband, John - as insanity. The strict limitation upon a nineteenth-century woman's expression prevents her from positively escaping her physician/husband's script leading to her mental demise. By contrast, Marlow successfully resocialises himself by modifying the hypermasculine persona he idealises, and is finally situated to confront and reform the social contradictions that precipitated his ill-health. However, subdued by having been led to identify discontent as a personal problem, Marlow is unlikely to challenge the power relations which have made his subjectivity possible. His capitulation to normalisation demonstrates a fundamental point linking the otherwise divergent theories of Freud and Foucault, that the creation of agency first requires the subject's subordination.

Whole document restricted, see Access Instructions file below for details of how to access the print copy. / Torrent of Portyngale is a late medieval romance, preserved in a single manuscript, MS Chetham’s 8009. It is a complex mix of romance themes: adventure, loss and restoration, family and social status, piety and hypocrisy, woven around the love between Torrent, the orphaned son of a Portuguese earl, and Desonell, heir to the throne of Portugal. Cohesion to so wide a range of thematic material comes from the author’s careful elucidation of the religious and moral significance of the text’s events. While popular literature with a didactic purpose is not uncommon in medieval literature and elsewhere in romance (cf. Sir Amadace), modern criticism has failed to fully appreciate the purposeful combination of the two in Torrent of Portyngale. Torrent is perhaps the most critically neglected member of the Middle English verse romances. This is, in part, due to the state of the text, which suffers from extensive scribal corruption. The first modern edition, by James Halliwell (1842), was also careless and did little to create a good impression. The poem’s most recent editor, Eric Adam (1887), appreciated the shortcomings of Halliwell’s work and sought to restore Torrent. He incorporated evidence from fragmentary early prints of the text and drew on the fruits of nineteenth–century romance scholarship. Despite his good editorial intentions, however, it is now clear that he also made errors and editorial decisions that have coloured the way in which Torrent has been viewed since. The substantial body of twentieth and twenty–first century scholarship on Middle English romance and medieval studies in general has diminished the value of Adam’s edition to the point where it may be regarded as obsolete and a new edition long overdue. This fresh edition of Torrent has been prepared from microfilm of the manuscript. It re–examines the text’s phonology, morphology, syntax, dialect and vocabulary, to indentify and evaluate overlooked clues to help answer such fundamental questions as its date (scholars have dated it from the mid– fourteenth century to the first half of the fifteenth century) and provenance (it has been mapped from East Anglia to South Lancashire). Both the unflattering reputation that Torrent of Portyngale has gathered in modern times and the long–held notion that it is lacking in originality are challenged by the thorough re–examination of the state of the text, its scribes and their practices and evaluating them against prior and current romance scholarship. This new analysis provides a window through which Torrent can be viewed and valued as a product of its time, allowing it to be judged more accurately against its contemporaries and offering many new insights into a text that was clearly once popular.

The primary aim of this thesis Me he korokoro kōmako [‘With the throat of a bellbird’] is to demonstrate the existence of a distinctive Māori aesthetic in Māori literature written in English. Its introductory section, of three chapters, investigates the ways in which mainstream critical discourse in various ways appropriates Māori literature to its own Western-derived models of meaning and values, and proposes instead a definition of a Māori aesthetic grounded in the principle of whakapapa, whose whole cultural components for Māori literature include distinctive textual functions for myth, orality, acts of naming, other aspects of language, and symbolism. The concept of whakapapa also provides the organizing principle and methodology of the central chapters of the thesis, which are divided into two Parts – each of six chapters. These are framed by a Prologue and Epilogue, whose subject is the profound cultural symbolism of the waka in the work of a founding figure for Māori writing in English, Jacqueline Sturm, and in Star Waka, by a major later writer in English, Robert Sullivan. Part One devotes three chapters each to the adult fiction of one female writer, Patricia Grace (Potiki and Baby No-Eyes), and one male writer, Witi Ihimaera (The Matriarch). Part Two, following the principle of whakapapa, devotes six chapters to Māori literature for children. Its primary text is the major anthology of such writing – Te Ara O Te Hau: The Path of the Wind, Volume 4 of Te Ao Mārama, edited by Witi Ihimaera, with Haare Williams, Irihapeti Ramsden and D.S. Long. It grounds its reading of the volume’s many texts (literary and visual, in Māori and in English) in the many distinctive cultural behaviours and meanings attached to the figure of Māui. Each of the authors and texts has been chosen in order to study and exemplify a particular aspect of the Māori aesthetic defined in the Introduction, through close readings which draw strongly on the work of major Māori social historians, authors of iwi histories and genealogies, and interpreters of cultural meanings attaching to the natural worlds, and recent work on literary stylistics by Geoffrey Leech and others. It also draws on conversations with numerous Māori informants, including some of the authors discussed. The readings are designed to reveal the rich, culturally contextualised knowledges which Māori readers bring to the texts, and which their authors share and invoke through their deployment of the values and practices of whakapapa. While such representations and explorations of self offer new interpretive possibilities for Pākehā readers, they are also part of a global movement in which indigenous peoples engage in the politics of decolonisation from a position of strength, the stance of self-knowledge. E kore e hekeheke he kākano rangatira Our ancestors will never die for they live on in each of us. / Whole document restricted, but available by request, use the feedback form to request access.