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This thesis consists of two parts. The first part, the creative writing component, is an 82,000 word novel called Mr Loverman, about a seventy-four year old closet homosexual Antiguan man who has lived in London for fifty years and is making the decision to leave his wife of fifty years and move in with his long term male lover. The second part of this thesis is a 30,000 word critical commentary entitled The Representation of Black Men in Black British Fiction. This is an investigation into how black men have been portrayed by black novelists in novels from the 1950s onwards. It examines the field’s interests and critical perspectives, gender balances and generational trends. The commentary also examines the decision-making creative process of writing Mr Loverman and looks at how it disrupts expectations of heterosexuality and reconfigures postcolonial experience by prioritizing sexuality over race.

The study seeks to establish how theories and concepts derived from electro-acoustic practice can inform musicians about the'nature of instrumental thought. Instrumental/vocal musical languages are particular representations of a wide framework of fundamental musical laws. The most successful expression of these laws is through concepts of electro-acoustic music. As a result many points of contact between hitherto unconnected areas of music are revealed. Three principal'subJect-areas are investigated: 1) The'development of Pierre Schaeffer's musical researches: The researches under consideration are those conducted from 1948 up to-the publication of the revised edition or the “Traite des Objets Musicaux" in 1977. The importance of new musical-concepts and Schaeffer's Programme de la Recherche Musicale are discussed. There has been no-extensive examination of these in English. Consequently, neither Schaeffer's position, nor French electro-acoustic music's role in the development ofcontemporary music has been efficiently assessed. 2) The Cologne studio's development during the period 1953-70: Particular emphasis is given to a discussion'of the studio's relationship with the evolution of serial thought. This relationship is identified as the main stimulus for many of the studio's musical concepts in addition'to its preoccupation with electronic sound generation. Furthermore, the conflict between Paris and Cologne regarding musical-languages is examined and the theory or eventual convergence of views is contested. 3) The, nature of Schaefferian music theory: The concepts of valeur/caractere, permanence/variation and Schaeffer's concept of the "instrument" are discussed. It is proposed that Schaefferian concepts offer & significant methodology for the study of contemporary music. They assist, therefore our understanding not just of electro-acoustic music but contemporary music in general.

The muniments of Durham cathedral, city, and diocese have been explored in order to present and assess the contribution made by lay musicians to worship in the cathedral. By 1335-60 the boys and men had become sufficiently established to merit specific payments. Whether or not the lay Cantor dates back that far is uncertain, but in 1390 it was agreed that what was required was a Cantor-Instructor. No proof for the implementation of this earlier than 1415 has come to light, nor has any contract earlier than that made by the monastery with John steel in 1430. From it and those of his successors, and from Rites of Durham, a picture emerges of the Cantor's duties and of the part played by boys and men in the daily Lady Mass in the Galilee chapel and in the Mass of the Name of Jesus on Fridays in the nave. Following the suppression of its monastic arm in 1539 Durham was re-constituted a cathedral only in 1541 . The pattern of worship established c.1560 continued until the 1620s, when the innovations introduced by John Cosin caused Peter Smart (a Calvinist) to preach a vituperative sermon on 27 July 1628. From the litigation which ensued much emerges about whole ordering of worship in Durham since the 1560s. Produced whilst the ceremonialists held sway were several sets of new music books for the choir. Some 40% of these are still in Durham. such is the detail in the muniments that it has proved possible to suggest when the books were transcribed and by whom. It has also proved possible to identify the contributions of no fewer than eight Durham scribes to the music books at Peterhouse, Cambridge. That their work should be so far afield is explained by the fact that when John Cosin became Master of Peterhouse i n 1635 he re-established the post of College organist and drew heavily upon the Durham repertoire. The succession of Cantors and Masters of the Choristers provided the framework on which to interweave details of their lives, historical events and musical developments. Biographical information relating to the other members of the choir has been assembled in Appendix 1. This is followed other Appendices many of which present together all occurrences of certain fields of information.

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This thesis sets out to engage its readers in an exploration into the possibilities of encapsulating feminist perspective in the grammatical resources of English. It takes a problematizing course. Along the way it shows how patriarchal discourse works to sustain its illusion. To put the primary focus simply: what does it mean to feminists to say <i>something happened </i>rather than <i>I did something?</i> This question then leads me to wonder about other aspects of speaking and writing feminisms. I approach these matters by reading feminist discourses through literary texts by women. I take literature as a way of enabling me to image what the consequences of writing in a particular way might be. In Frankenstein’s (grammatical) ways of eluding responsibility for his actions I find a prophetic warning to feminists looking for ways to erase their selves from text. In response, I look for ways of representing a double self, a self who acts with intention even as s/he cannot know all of what s/he does, and find something of this in the grammar of Angela Carter’s ‘The Bloody Chamber’, whilst Zora Neale Hurston’s writing sounds a multiple and contradictory self. I begin to suggest that the double status of innocence and guilt has parallels in reading practice: that patriarchal discourse only succeeds where we read success into it. This is one of the stories of ‘A Country House’ by Dorothy Edwards. Reading becomes as significant as writing. In the light of all that I have garnered, I then put feminist discourses under detailed scrutiny: in particular, I read Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose, and Maggie Humm. I conclude by showing how other feminist concepts, such as women’s time and border crossings, might be embodied in grammar, turning again to the imaginative work of Angela Carter for illumination. Dorothy Richardson’s <i>Pilgrimage</i> echoes through my text. The strategy of the thesis is to produce close readings of texts of all kinds, readings which turn on grammatical analysis but which emphasize the multiplicity of meanings to be found. It aims to advance the project of feminist stylistics. At different moments it calls on Michael Halliday, Randolph Quirk <i>et al,</i> Raymond Williams, Stanley Fish, Deirdre Burton, bell hooks, Drucilla Cornell, Elizabeth Ermarth and Diane Elam, amongst others. There is no adherence to any one version of feminism but rather an attempt to show how all feminists might engage further with the issues of how they read and write. The conversational style of the thesis is intended to evoke such engagement.

The scientific creation of the artificial human is a topic which has fascinated literature since the dawn of modern scientific methodology in the late eighteenth century. Science fiction literature, which arose in definable form at the same time, became predominantly - but not exclusively - the literary form which addressed this use. The construction of a credible science fiction narrative, then, goes hand in hand with the construction of artificial man. E.T.A. Hoffmann, in his two tales, 'The Sandman' and 'The Automata', was the first to engage with these concerns, conjoining the magico-mystical tradition of early speculative philosophy to the practical, experimentally verifiable tenets of natural philosophy or science. This formulation of disparate elements - which is, in part, a continuation of the links between the occult and the scientific in the seventeenth century and before - created a foundation from which all future science fiction texts would stem, their success often depending on the ability of the narrative to weld these elements together. Such connections also inspired the first scientifically created artificial humans: primarily primitive automata of a mechanistic nature, but infused with the mystical theories of esoteric science found in mesmerism. Mary Shelley's <I>Frankenstein </I>reveals a similar narrative construction to Hoffmann's tales, as well as a similar engagement with the distinct forces of mechanism and mysticism. <I>Frankenstein</I>, though, proves that these elements are historically relevant; symbolising the conflict between romanticism and materialism that predominates in the early nineteenth century. Victor Frankenstein's scientifically created man is a product of both these positions, an untenable problematic with which he struggles - as does the whole novel - from the moment of his creation until his death. The onset of industrialism does not clarify such problems. Indeed the science fiction narrative became backgrounded in this period, due mainly to the monopolising effects of a materialistic scientific and social culture.

This thesis seeks to further elucidate the connotations of love as a philosophical, sociological and literary topic in drama. Comparing a number of plays, it suggests and elaborates various standards for a partial initial typology of love dramas, concentrating on the dramaturgy, content and language styles of Chinese, Indian, German, English and French examples, thus casting the net widely to provide the broad range to complement and interact with my analytical detail. This study is organised according to an underlying chain of logical categories not any chronological sequence of development, and explores and links the classifications of religious love, imperial and royal love, love freed from spatial and temporal bonds, and universal love. Proceeding in a basically empirical manner, this work, in intimate and indispensable involvement with the central examination of the love theme, also gives close and considerable attention to the effects of stylistic elements, such as the resort in certain plays to the imagery of beauty and sublimity as embodiments of the idea of love, the collective subconscious informing such aspects as the linguistic, rhetorical and animistic, the distortion of time and space, histrionic semiology, absurdity as a modernistic aesthetic category, the alienation effect in Classical Chinese theatre and Epic Theatre, and other key questions. The issue of mutual influences between China and the West is broached, judgements on the mixed impact from Western drama theory on the Chinese are suggested, and the widely neglected and highly significant problem of the influence of Chinese drama on Europe and America is highlighted, while the dramaturgical Westernisation of China in the name of modernisation, crucially involving the treatment of love, is also extensively probed and analysed.

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