Anthropology and literary criticism can interact fruitfully in the investigation of theoretical, general and specific issues concerning literature. Anthropological concepts of magic and ritual are useful to account for those fictions which defy neat labels and sit at the crossroad between the fantastic and the mimetic impulses. Furthermore, the reading process of such fictions can be interpreted as a liminal experience, whereby the reader’s consciousness is ritualized. Adopting a phenomenological stance and a socio-anthropological methodology, the thesis presents the author’s auto-ethnography of reading, also integrating the latest findings of cognitive linguistics and psychology of fiction into the theoretical reflection. Other conceptual tools, such as ideas concerning performative language, the hero quest and epiphany, metaphor and symbolism, are elaborated in order to illustrate the reading of ‘hybrid’ fictions, and how the reader is actively involved in the process. Moreover, three sample novels are analysed in the light of concepts of magic from a thematic and structural point of view, as texts which posit the issue of the de-reification of the real and of the imagination itself as a critique of the discourses of modernity. Overall the thesis supports an ecological view of the (literary) imagination, conceived as a relational process whereby nature and culture are seen as co-extensive and not in opposition to each other.

This dissertation explores women’s participation and engagement in literacy courses from an identity perspective within the broader context of women’s life stories and the socio-cultural, economic and institutional contexts within which the courses take place. The approach I develop rests on a combination of literacy, discourse and identity theories. It draws on the social theory of literacy to show how women’s valuations of literacy and education contributed to the construction of the subject positions they attempted to enter through their participation in literacy courses. Drawing on Norman Fairclough’s understanding of discourse, I focus on the link between identity processes and the discourses and socio-political structures which are understood to be in a dialectical relationship with each other. I draw on feminist theories of self and subjectivity to understand how women attempted to change aspects of their selves created by the interplay of their social and material circumstances, their agency, and specific life trajectories. In Turkey, the majority of the participants in the literacy courses are women. The state-funded People’s Education Centres (PEC), with their extended network, attract the majority of the participants. Adult literacy programmes are organised as Level 1 and Level 2 by the Ministry of National Education (MoNE) and these two levels of adult literacy and basic education courses in Turkey are offered under the monitoring and inspection of said Ministry. I chose for the sites of my research two PEC literacy courses in disadvantaged areas of Istanbul where the occasional shanty house coexists with haphazardly-built apartment buildings. Methodologically, my study has an ethnographic approach to feminist discourse analysis. I observed one Level 2 literacy course at each centre over the course of four months. I had repeated interviews and conversations with seven women participants at Akasya PEC and four women participants at Lale PEC. Fieldnotes and interview transcriptions of more structured interviews constituted the major body of my data. The study shows that women’s accounts of their participation in the courses were underlined by discourses of formal education and literacy. These discourses have a prominent role in the official policy documents. However, the dissertation argues that the significance of the discourses of formal education and literacy was equally rooted in women’s attempts to redress, through their participation in the courses, some of the structural and institutional injustices they experienced as girl-children. These injustices made it difficult for my participants to access most of the prestigious literacy practices, knowledge and associated identities. The study highlights the meanings of the subject position of the schooled person which women attempted to take on through their participation. It also brings to the fore ways in which the discourses of formal education and literacy and the subject position of the schooled person were underpinned by socio-political structures such as gender, social class, ethnicity, rural-urban migration and the extent of poverty individual women lived in. It reveals women’s persistent attempts to access and continue the courses within the constraints of bureaucratic hurdles and socio-economic hardship and responsibilities. The study demonstrates how women “took hold” of the dominant literacy practices and power relations they found in the literacy classrooms. It shows the ways in which women aligned themselves with the schooled literacy practices and at times challenged the dominant literacy practices and power relations they found in the classroom. The study shows that women’s understanding of the value they found in education changed as a result of their educational experiences. It shows that women found joy in learning things they found both challenging and important. These findings contribute to discussions on the symbolic value of education and school literacy practices for literacy learners by exploring the roots of this symbolic importance in women’s life stories. The study demonstrates the importance of both schooled literacy practices and the broader value of education and the emerging specific uses of literacy in everyday life. The findings challenge the portrayal of literacy learners in policy documents and most of the literature in Turkey which assume that their most important literacy need is access to school literacy practices. The findings also challenge the deficit view of literacy learners in policy documents which undermines their social and economic capabilities. Thus the study extends understanding of what is considered as literacy that has the potential to improve one’s material and social conditions by exploring the perspectives of different women who lived in differing levels of poverty and socio-economic obligations. It also contributes to arguments on the reasons of finding value in education by showing the ways in which women found joy in learning in formal literacy classrooms as a result of their educational experiences.

This thesis argues that nineteenth-century shifts in hermeneutics enabled women to re-vision Victorian conceptions of womanhood by reinterpreting biblical narratives within fictional texts. Due to these shifts, the meaning of biblical symbols was increasingly tied to the personal experience of the reader. This enabled women to reinterpret these symbols to reflect their own experiences as women. This hermeneutic approach was formulated out of critical enquiry into the nature of the biblical text which resulted in questioning the authority of the Bible. Questions regarding the authority of scripture opened up the possibility for Victorian authors to use fictive texts in order to reinterpret biblical symbols, resulting in the constant re-visioning of biblical symbols by readers and writers. As the authority of scripture became unstable, gender roles, which were rooted within a biblical symbolic, also became destabilized. The novels of female authors who reimagined biblical symbols gave voice to these authors’ own experiences as women as they embodied these symbols within their life and work, resulting in new understandings of Victorian womanhood. George Eliot was particularly conscious of the hermeneutic shifts which were taking place throughout the century due to her extensive involvement in the philosophical and theological movements of the era, and her novels demonstrate how these shifts influenced her work. The reinterpretation of biblical narratives within her novels also reflects how she embodied these female biblical symbols within her own life. While Eliot’s awareness of the shifts taking place within hermeneutic practice is evident in her work, she was not alone in adopting this hermeneutic practice. Novelist Elizabeth Gaskell also reimagined and embodied biblical symbols, yet her experience as a Victorian woman was strikingly different from Eliot’s own and led her to distinct reinterpretations of these symbols in her life and novels. Likewise, social activist Josephine Butler reinterpreted female biblical narratives in order to understand her life in relation to the ‘fallen’ women she worked with. These three women have been chosen for this project because of how they represent nineteenth-century shifts in hermeneutic practice toward biblical symbols in addition to the shared affinities and prominent differences between them. To explore these issues requires a theoretical framework which encompasses literature, philosophy, sociology, history, theology, and feminist theory; however, fundamentally this project is concerned with theological hermeneutics and the nature of biblical symbols. This project examines the influence of nineteenth-century theologians David Friedrich Strauss and Ludwig Feuerbach on Victorian hermeneutics and applies more recent work by Paul Ricœur, Jacques Rancière, and Caroline Walker Bynum to formulate a framework through which to understand the Victorian interpretation of biblical symbols. As Victorian women readers re-visioned female biblical symbols as encountered through sacred and fictive texts, the fresh interpretations of these symbols enabled women to negotiate new ways of understanding gender. These hermeneutic shifts toward biblical symbols created a symbolic understanding of womanhood which was able to better convey the complexity of female experience, providing women with an understanding of womanhood that better correlated with their own experience as women.

The thesis sets out to examine the little studied phenomenon of translating and rewriting children’s literature during Fascism. Under Mussolini’s rule, books for children had to perform the important task of forging the ‘new Italians’. For this reason, the presence of foreign literature on the Italian book market became increasingly problematic, as the regime attempted to achieve cultural and economic autarchy. This research aims to show how, rather than merely reflecting dominant ideologies, the translation of books for children was a site for negotiation, allowing different, and sometimes conflicting narratives and discourses to be identified and fruitfully examined. By adopting an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, where theories from Translation Studies, Children’s Literature, and studies on Fascism, are integrated, translations and rewritings of books for children are employed as hermeneutic tools to explore the multifaceted nature of the regime’s ideology and cultural production, beyond the official façade of unity and consistency. Central questions concerning the construction and defense of Fascist identity are addressed through a selection of case studies, showing different strategies and functions of translating and rewriting for children. The Fascist rewritings of Collodi’s Pinocchio are analysed in relation to Fascism’s relationship with tradition, focusing on the ways in which the past was ‘rewritten’ at different phases of the dictatorship. The challenges of translating a book that had been openly condemned by Fascist institutions are examined by looking at the two translations of Alice in Wonderland which appeared during the 1930s. The complex reception and the controversial success of American comics is investigated, where the different strategies of translation and re-creation reveal complex dynamics of interactions between imported and native products. Finally, the process of rewriting an apparently timeless and universal tradition is observed in the book series ‘La Scala d’Oro’, which was highly regarded by official culture, despite publishing mostly foreign titles.

This thesis investigates the problem of historical representation in the context of the contemporary turns to trauma and memory visible in cultural theory and in wider popular culture and contemporaneous with post-Cold war ‘end of history’ discourse. Rather than apply the theories of trauma to readings of contemporary texts, the present study proposes that trauma theory be seen as part of the wider cultural tendency towards memorialization, characterized by a privileging of the notion of witnessing, an emphasis on the punctuality of the traumatic moment, and the fetishization of the historical trace. This thesis argues that what unites these various features of memorial culture is a notion of history that emphasises both the impossibility of comprehension and representation and yet a sense of proximity to a literal past through the traces that remain. If postmodernism designates a ‘crisis of historicity’ which delegitimizes the authority of representations of history, to think history through the prisms of memory and trauma reasserts a notion of historical truth, albeit relocated in the traumatic memory of the survivor, in the ethical imperative to bear witness, or in an aesthetics of the aporia. The parallel discourses of history as trauma and history as memory conflate the problems of historical representation with problems of historical witnessing, and in doing so conceptualize a notion of an historical event with no actor, proposing instead a passive subject without agency and thus without politics. The thesis is organized through close readings of four key texts, each of which can be read to be in dialogue with wider memorial culture, but which also problematize the orthodoxies of contemporary trauma theory in its application to the literary text—Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Robert Harris’s Fatherland, Philip Roth’s Operation Shylock and Aleksandar Hemon’s The Lazarus Project. Focusing on notions of witnessing, testimony, traumatic memory and the trace, and drawing on the work of Slavoj Žižek and Jacques Rancière, this thesis sets out to resist the theoretical creep that would see all history as trauma and all text as testimony, and instead reasserts the necessary role of fiction and the imagination in constructing a relationship to the past.

This thesis considers the portrayal of uncertain or amateur encounters with new technologies in the late twentieth century. Focusing on fictional responses to the incipient technological and cultural changes wrought by the rise of the personal computer, I demonstrate how authors during this period drew on experiences of empowerment and uncertainty to convey the impact of a period of intense technological transition. From the increasing availability of word processing software in the 1980s to the exponential popularity of the “World Wide Web”, I explore how perceptions of an “information revolution” tended to emphasise the increasing speed, ease and expansiveness of global communications, while more doubtful commentators expressed anxieties about the pace and effects of technological change. Critical approaches to the cultural impact of computing technologies have tended to overlook the role played by perceptions of expertise and familiarity, and my thesis seeks to redress this by identifying a broad range of imagery, language and cultural references used to depict amateur or inexpert encounters with computing technologies. My interest in literary representations of amateur or marginalised users of computing technology reveals how the ease and speed of reading and writing promised by technological expertise can be countered by uncertainty arising from limited understanding of the complex processes involved. In a pre-smartphone age, the computer loomed as an object which was simultaneously baffling and enchanting, filled with potential but also obscure in its fundamental workings. Examining instances within experimental literary fiction and poetry which portray, imply, or respond to, encounters with personal computing, I demonstrate how individuals’ attempts to understand a technologically-inflected world can be described and enacted by the use of unusual narrative and poetic devices, where experimental literary strategies work to recreate the complex sensations associated with thrilling, difficult, or incomprehensible aspects of information technologies.

Dans le domaine de la littérature postcoloniale, les autofictions féminines méritent une attention toute particulière. En effet, la femme migrante se situe dans une double marge littéraire : en tant que migrante mais également en tant que femme et parfois même en temps que minorité. Notre étude comparative se base sur des supports littéraires variés (essai, bande dessinée et roman) et tente de montrer comment ces auteures d’origines très diverses illustrent le passage culturel et langagier des femmes migrantes et le rôle important qu’elles tiennent concernant l’héritage de la mémoire historique et collective féminine. Aussi, cette étude s’interroge sur l’existence d’une identité de genre qui fait partie du bagage culturel des femmes et sur la réponse donnée par les personnages représentant les auteures migrantes face à une identité féminine convenue. C’est, en partie, à travers le thème de la transformation que les personnages révèlent les nouvelles possibilités et définitions de l’ "être femme". / In the field of postcolonial literature, women autofictions deserve special attention. Indeed, the migrant woman is in a literary double margin as a migrant but also as a woman and sometimes even as a minority.Our comparative study is based on a variety of literary materials (essay, comics and novel) and tries to show how these authors from diverse background illustrate the cultural and the linguistic passage of migrant women and the important role they play concerning the legacy of female historical and collective memory.Also, this study questions the existence of a gender identity that is part of the cultural baggage of women and the response of the characters representing migrant authors in front of an agreed identity. This is, in part, though the theme of transformation that characters reveal new possibilities and definitions of “being a woman”.

This PhD presents a new term for contemporary ekphrastic poetry: curatorial ekphrasis. The thesis is composed of two elements, a critical essay followed by a collection of poetry that informs and is informed by the former, Entitled 'Curatorial Ekphrasis in Contemporary British Poetic Practice', the critical essay challenges established critical approaches to ekphrastic poetics by revealing a curatorial practice currently being undertaken by a number of contemporary poets writing about artworks. Chapter One identifies and evaluates key critical texts about ekphrasis and its role in the relationship between word and image and highlights how theorists have failed to account for the work of ekphrastic poets with a heightened interest or background in art- Chapter Two presents and defines the term curatorial ekphrasis. The chapter discusses the emergence of the contemporary curator in the art world and discusses how the term 'curator' can be appropriated for use in a literary context The following chapters analyse the work of contemporary poets who I argue are writing curatorial ekphrasis, Chapter Three analyses Roger Hilton's Sugar (2005), a poetic sequence by Kelvin Corcoran (b.1956). Chapter Four analyses Paul Klee's Diary (1995), a long poem by Peter Hughes (b.1956). Chapter Five analyses De Chirico's Threads (2011), a verse-drama with soundscape by Carol Rumens (b.1944). The conclusion summarizes my research and also anticipates the creative work, which follows, by highlighting elements in the analysed texts that resonate with my own poetry. The conclusion also suggests areas for future research by both critical and creative practitioners. The critical essay is followed by the creative component of the PhD, a collection of curatorial ekphrasis entitled 'Lucian Freud Portraits'. The poetry collection is sectioned into five rooms, reflecting the layout of an exhibition at an art gallery, The collection includes twenty-nine poems and a poem-libretto. The collection is precede-d by a Preface, which introduces the work, and is followed by a section of notes, The appendix of the thesis includes reproductions of the artworks referred to in the poetry collection, a chronology of Lucian Freud's life, a catalogue raisonne of his entire works and an extensive bibliography of material written about the artist and his works. This information is provided in a similar manner to the wall notes, exhibition guides and catalogues which are offered to visitors of a traditional art gallery. They are not prescribed reading material, but they may prove of interest to the reader seeking further information.

This thesis argues that Satan is essentially a literary figure and that he is best understood in the context of narrative. This study furthermore establishes what the literary figure of Satan can contribute to the understanding of evil and how his portrayal has changed as we move into the 21st century. I suggest that the interdisciplinary reading of theology and literature offers the best approach to the character of Satan. The focus of the study lies on novels from the last 100 years, focusing on the implications of the historic, philosophical and theological changes in the late modern landscape on the figure of Satan. Underlying this study are three primary aspects: Firstly, the literary character of Satan raises the question of the nature of evil. Satan has long been cast as evil personified and this work tries to explore the relationship between the abstract concept of evil and the character of Satan: in an attempt to asses whether evil has a face. The literary figure of Satan can be seen as one approach to the abstract concept of evil that is a reality in human life but that cannot be understood in its being, only through expression. Secondly, the diabolical appears as part of any story; the powers of creation and destruction are connected. The figure of Satan is ambivalent and despite all its destructive elements, the character appears as the driving force behind the story. I want to show how Satan can be understood to be the facilitator of the story. Finally, any narrative is based on relation, and Satan is essentially a relational character. We can speak of a ‘mutual dependency’: Satan needs the human mind – we embody him, we give him his form, but equally are we in need of a scapegoat for all that is dark and undiscovered in us. The character of Satan is therefore personal and relational, best approached in the context of the story, with its inherent relationship between form and content.With this work, I am trying to establish a dialogue between theology and literature through the character of Satan, who transgresses boundaries and facilitates discussion, and therefore is by definition a truly interdisciplinary character. In my introduction I will examine the origins of the satanic figure in the theology of Christianity, starting with the Serpent in Genesis 3:1 and its development into a powerful character in myth and story. I also place the focus of this work on the inderdisciplinary reading of Satan, set against the conceptual approach of systematic theology. Part one of this work will shed some light on the dwelling place of the character, discussing the role of Satan as a symbol (of evil) and the difficulties connected to the definitions of Satan. Beginning with the Scriptures and then further elaborating the function of Satan in the story, I will focus on the relation between Satan and the text. Part two discusses six aspects of satanic characters in recent or contemporary novels, focusing on the function that the satanic image can contribute to the discussion of evil in the post-modern world. The novels chosen for this discussion are from 20th and 21st century European or North American writers and their reading is put into context with the Christian concept of Satan in the West. With The Wandering Jew by Stefan Heym, I look at Satan as the restless wanderer, discussing the concept of spiritual homelessness and alienation. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad approaches Satan as the shadow, taking into consideration the modern contributions of psychoanalysis to the understanding of Satan. The discussion of Siegfried by Harry Mulisch centres upon the physical being or nature of Satan, from nothingness, to parasite, or historic figure. With Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy I will discuss the role of Satan in an apocalyptic context, focusing on the reversal of roles in an antinomian world. The discussion of The Testament of Gideon Mack by James Robertson and The Great Bagarozy by Helmut Krauser examines the attributes of a ‘domestic’ devil, with the focus of boredom and identity crisis. The Master and Margarita by Michail Bulgakov concludes with a discussion of the terms reality and fiction in the context of Satan. In the conclusion, I will bring together the thoughts of the previous chapters to suggest an image of Satan that finds its essence in the story, addressing the possibility of redemption for the satanic figure and at the same time, locating him in the realm of the excess. I will identify Satan as the Other and ascribe to him a necessary function in the context of the story.

At the beginning of the twentieth century we find novelists using their medium to express doubt in both the Judeo-Christian narrative as archetype and the possibility of purposive narrative in their own work. Often these writers took well-recognized paradigms of purposive narratives, such as 'the quest', or 'historical narrative' and adapted them to show them failing to reach their purposed denouement. The work of these novelists was paralleled by that of contemporary poets. Although the poets' concerns were less immediately affected by the specific challenges to Judeo-Christian narratives, their concern for the efficacy of language was motivated by a similar sense that language no longer possessed the edenic quality of reaching the thing it aimed at. Furthermore the frameworks of art themselves (perspective, rhyme, formal representation, and so on) were found to be unstable. Literary responses to the failure of language and narrative were varied. In a radically simplified form they may be located on a continuum between two points: at one end a desire to fill the void left by an absent God; at the other a fascination with the possibilities of the void. My thesis situates the work of Conrad in particular, as well as Forster, Eliot, Woolf, Imagism and Dada, on this continuum, during the period of, roughly, 1899-1925. The works of these individuals and groups are considered individually and comparatively through detailed readings of texts and images. Through such consideration it becomes apparent that the fascination of the void, which attracted all these writers to varying extents, also brought them to realize new aesthetic possibilities that seemed to fill the void. In particular, the modernist texts under consideration developed an aesthetic of aperture, that is to say an aesthetic of the momentary, more specifically, the moment prior to comprehension, the moment of experience. In fiction this aesthetic grew out of a deconstruction of purposive narrative in favour of imagistic presentation; in poetry and the visual arts the poem or picture abstracted its object from reality and yet equivalenced reality by presenting an inherent internal logic. That logic apparent in the poem or picture was often placed beyond the grasp of the reader or viewers' understanding, representing the sense that the logical operations of the world or the divine machinations of God, were either beyond comprehension,if not non-existent altogether. This aesthetic of aperture is once again illustrated through detailed examination of particular texts and images. In the works considered this reinstatement of the possibility of purposive narrative and language through an aesthetic of aperture is figured mystically, presented in negative-theological terms of absence, silence and the unknowable. The mysticism identified appears at odds with the predominantly practical theological debates in Europe at the time and yet finds philosophical parallels in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. The thesis concludes that the return, in modernist works, of attempts to fill the void is the result not only of aesthetic, but also of social and personal (in particular the repercussions of world war), desires for at least the possibility of purposive narrative and language.