In this comparative study of the form and theology of Flannery O'Connor and Simone Weil I interrogate how Weil's philosophical writings and her theology illuminate O'Connor's use of both narrative and non-fictional forms, and her Catholicism. The Introduction analyses how Weil's concept of superposed reading provides a new method of approaching both O'Connor, her writings, and O'Connor studies, and focuses on how such apparently different women interconnect. Chapter One explores how both Weil and O'Connor attempt to write their theologies on the souls of their readers yet are each subject to constraints imposed by form. Weil's concept of locating equilibrium between incommensurates is discussed, and her distinctively philosophical approach to fictions and fictionality is used to investigate O'Connor's notion of prophetic fictions and the writer's role. Chapter Two assesses how both writers revivify Christian paradoxes. Weil's monstrous concept of affiiction, and O'Connor's use of the grotesque genre to jolt secular man into an awareness of the sacred are scrutinised. Chapter Three studies how both writers consider an encounter between God and man is possible through the action of grace. My Conclusion interrogates how Weil's work can deepen our understanding of O'Connor's writings, and examines how successful O'Connor is at realising a truly Christian literature. I conclude that despite being a writer of powerful fictions, O'Connor can not be totally successful in her mission as writer-prophet because ultimately fiction escapes orthodoxy.

Throughout the 1980's and early 1990's, it became increasingly apparent to interested observers that there was a growing trend towards using theatre in museum settings. The work was varied, ranging from single costumed characters working on galleries to help interpret for visitors items in the collection, to literally hundreds of re-enactors creating entire battle scenarios watched by thousands of visitors. This study considers the ideas and methods behind the various styles of theatre which have emerged in British museums and questions what it is that both theatre and museum professions think they will achieve by enlivening the traditionally silent enclaves of our museums in such a way. The study proposes that we are, in fact, witnessing the emergence of a new form of educational theatre which is context-specific and which embraces the needs of museums and their visitors rather than being concerned solely with theatre as an art form. 'Theatre-in-museum', as it has become known, is a synthesis of theatre as a learning medium and the educational and cultural mission of museums. This kind of theatre echoes, to some extent, aspects of other educational theatre movements including those associated with Brecht, Littlewood, Cheeseman, Heathcote, and Boal. Like many movements,'theatre-in-museum' as emerged out of a period of rapid change and instability, this time in the shifting world of museums which are themselves re-defining their role at the end of the twentieth century. Chapter One presents a thesis about' theatre-in-museum and will include: an analysis of contemporary museology; an analysis of the characteristics of 'theatre-in-museum' as a theatreform; and, the results of a national research project aimed at establishing the extent to which theatre is used in contemporary museums. Chapters Two to Six will feature five case studies explaining contemporary practice in this field. The critical attributes of five styles of theatre-in-museum will be explored along with the principal aims and methodologies associated with each one. A concluding chapter will consider the current state of 'theatre-in-museum' and will propose further action if the work is to flourish in future years.

The thesis offers a critical comparative reading of testimonial literature emergent from the Holocaust and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Through identifying aspects of thematic and stylistic commonality between these literatures, this thesis aims towards establishing a series of narrative traits that characterise the testimonial genre. This comparative stance informs the structure of the thesis, in that each chapter deals with examples of testimonies emergent from the Holocaust and the atomic bombings. Chapter one engages with the history of autobiography criticism and genre theory, and through close readings of both testimonial and autobiographical works by Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel, posits areas of potential difference between the two forms of life-writing. The traditional understanding of the autobiographical contract, as defined by Philippe Lejeune, is challenged through a comparative analysis of the way in which the self is constructed in Holocaust and A-bomb testimonies. Chapter two focuses on the narrative challenges posed by the encounter with trauma. Informed by structuralist theories of language and critical readings of testimonial writing, this chapter examines the way in which the experience of trauma intensifies the arbitrary nature of the relationship between language and experience, to the extent that language appears to fail. Drawing on Blanchot's theory of the communicative possibilities of silence, the thematic and stylistic representation of silence, in its many forms, is considered in the context of Holocaust and A-bomb testimonies. Chapter three explores the representation of the female experience in testimonial texts. Beginning with Cixous' and Irigaray's theories of écriture féminine and fémininité as an interpretative lens with which to approach women's narratives, this chapter considers the way in which women's testimonies are influenced by both a poetics of gender and a poetics of trauma.

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This thesis examines the theological anthropologies of the child implicit in the work of four writers in the modern period: Thomas Traherne, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Friedrich Schleiermacher and Charles Peguy. It puts to each author two questions: '\Vho is the child?' and. '\Vhere is the child?' The first question shows that in none of these cases is the child principally a transcription from personal experience. Rather, he or she is a figure through whom to explore a particular understanding of the imago Dei in humankind. The second question sheds light on the wider cultural and theological context in which these understandings emerge and demonstrates the extent to which each author's wider thought is marked by his picture of the child. Taking account of newly-published manuscripts, the chapters on Traherne argue that his child is not merely a figure of innocence, but an icon of the whole human condition and a means to illustrate the centrality of theosis, humanity's redemptive participation in God, to his theology. Traherne sees the child as the imaginative centre from which to articulate an orthodox theological anthropology in the new idiom of the early modern era. The chapter on Rousseau focuses on his widely influential work, Emile 011 De nducatiol1. Rousseau's goal of a purely natural theology goes hand-in-hand with his isolation of the child Emile from both human culture and revealed religion, to be educated by nature alone. Despite his commitment to a form of Christian faith, Rousseau's exclusion of revelation deprives theology and anthropology of their previously interdependent integrity, attempts to split apart nature and culture, and exposes the child to new levels of adult manipulation. The chapters on Schleiermacher discuss the novella, Die lf7eihl1achtsjeier, showing how the child, Sofie, embodies the author's conception of freie Geselligkeif, the free response to fellow humans and to God that is held to be the essence of human life. I then trace the resemblances between the portrait of Sofie and the pattern of Schleiermacher's hermeneutical thought, indicating both the insights and the theological risks that follow from this analogy. Turning finally to Peguy, I investigate both the well-known image of the child as 'la petite esperance' in his poetry and the less familiar range of references to the child and childlikeness in his late prose works. I argue that, despite the dominance in French Catholicism of an anti-Modernist reverence for childhood innocence and his own occasional tendency to nostalgia, Peguy's child is best seen as a figure of the liturgical category of anamnesis, by which humanity is constantly called to renewal in relationship with the incarnate Christ. Tracing continuity and change through this series of figurings of the child, I show that the appeal to the child, far from being a naive move, has wide-ranging repercussions for each author's whole theological project. In conclusion, drawing on the work of Balthasar and Lacoste, I seek to indicate how a contemporary understanding of human existence before God can be fruitfully enriched by taking proper account of the child.

This thesis features a range of texts that exemplify my practice. They include experimental prose, poetry, hybrid forms of writing that merge theory and practice, and scripts for live performance and digital film. To these examples I apply an autobiographical writing method, one that simultaneously reflects and creates, in an enquiry designed to uncover the detail and complexity of my writing motivation through a discursive account of its context. In a process that acknowledges the centrality of language to the construction of female identity, I begin by exploring the importance of autobiography to both my writing and this thesis. Next I give an account of an artistic project, designed to identify and collect perspectives on the main areas of debate and concern. I then revisit the writing of significant gender theorists, including Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray and Helene Cixous. The sections that follow use two scripts for live performance to illustrate the 'predicament' of the female performer and the importance of myth to women's artistic practice. My conclusion, and the thesis as a whole, is a demonstration of, and an enquiry into, a method of 'writing through'. This reflexive strategy questions how writing functions, how it responds to, and incorporates various influences. It attempts to understand how such a process, such writing, not only enquires into context, but also can impact on it, in a methodology less concerned with representing knowledge and more concerned with releasing it.

This thesis summarises a period of practice-led research into relationships between imting and performance. It considers ways in which performance (especially performance art) might serve as a critical and methodological lens through which to explore the practice of writing — primarily the author's own. It is located in the recentiy designated field of Performance Writing, whose interdisciplinary approach it adopts. Responding to a perceived condition of impasse (not writing) in the author's relationship to textual production, the thesis charts a process of deploying performance (and subsequentiy video) art as a research methodology, using its emphasis on temporal, spatial, material and corporeal concerns, to focus on writing as material and physical act - aspects of writing that are magnified by the experience of being a miter not imting. The thesis suggests that the experience of impasse was symptomatic of difficulties reconciling the relationship between language and subjectivity, and that this difficulty originates in the author's exposure to certain theological and doctrinal practices. It acknowledges, however, that the emphasis on ritual performativity and embodiment in much Christian liturgy has shaped both his relationship .to the written word, and his performance-based approach to challenging the condition of impasse itself. The thesis is divided into two main parts: the first considers context and methodology; the second tracks the narrative of the research, from the condition of impasse to the production of poetic writing. Sub-divided into three phases {Performing (not) Writing^ Hybrid Practice and Poetry and Performance, the second part deploys differing modes: fragments of autobiographical narrative, specific theoretical discussions, examples of, and commentaries on, practical experiments, and the inclusion of practical work itself. The thesis draws on specific theoretical and philosophical perspectives that are themselves engaged with interplay between questions of writing, subjectivity and interdisciplinarity - most notably those of Jacques Derrida and Helene Cixous.

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