This thesis investigates the Renaissance reception of Euripides, arguing that Greek tragedy had a direct and important influence on Shakespeare. Euripides, I demonstrate, was both more widely accessible and more culturally significant than has generally been recognized. Beginning with Erasmus and ending with Milton, I establish the foundation of a detailed and historically specific understanding of how Euripides’ works were being read and understood. Paying close attention to the materiality of Euripides’ textual appearances across a variety of dramatic and non-dramatic texts and contexts, I set Shakespeare’s relationship to Greek tragedy within a more precise framework. The first three chapters set the reception of Euripides in the context of sixteenth-century European humanism. Chapter 1 argues that Erasmus established modes of reading Euripides that were enduringly influential, examining Euripides’ place in humanist curricula and teaching materials, followed by the translations of Euripides by Erasmus and Buchanan. Chapter 2 considers the material forms in which Euripides appeared before the Renaissance reader, especially the paratexts which shaped (or attempted to shape) the reader’s experience of Euripides. Chapter 3 turns to look at the two surviving translations of Euripides into English. The next two chapters focus in on Shakespeare. Chapter 4 briefly surveys the critical landscape, examining parallels between specific plays, but also opening out the discussion to include genre. Chapter 5 examines Shakespeare’s most extensive engagement with Euripides, offering a fresh reading of The Winter’s Tale as a meaningful reception of Alcestis. Finally, Chapter 6 traces Milton’s receptions of Euripides in relation to sixteenth-century trends, arguing that Samson Agonistes stands on the brink of a turn towards Sophocles that was beginning to occur as Aristotle’s Poetics gained a new kind of dominance over the interpretation of tragedy. But Milton’s poetic instincts remain Euripidean, gesturing to a chain of receptions leading back to Erasmus.

The thesis examines the way writers use fiction as a rhetorical vehicle to thematise and to theorise the project of autobiography — a transformation of life into narrative that involves a negotiation between aesthetics and ethics. It analyses four fictional autobiographies, published since 1988, by Paul Auster, Julian Barnes, Lydia Davis, and Philip Roth. Each text presents an autodiegetic narrator narrating crucial moments in her/his life; they are ordered progressively according to the way each engages with the issue of narrative artifice on the narratorial and/or authorial level. I explore what makes the character narrator’s life-story work, that is, the way s/he negotiates the possible tension between form and ethics, the resolution of which is what I call narrative integrity. The double meaning of the word “integrity”, as a formal and an ethical quality, encapsulates the dual demands of formal coherence and ethical commitment inherent in the challenges of autobiography. This thesis discusses four forms of narrative integrity — contingency, consistency, coherence, and counterpoint — and suggests ways in which they are interpreted differently on the representational and the rhetorical level of the text. Adopting a rhetorical approach to fiction, I address the way the particular representation of autobiography in each text is used rhetorically, not autobiographically, by the author to theorise certain aspects of self-representation in general. I argue that integrity as a critical concept helps elucidate the complications involved in life writing by foregrounding the issue of form, which is necessary, if also potentially problematic, for the articulation of personal truths. This project situates itself within the broad field of ethical criticism in literary studies and explores the relationships between fiction, narrative ethics, and life writing.

Military-medical personnel have a uniquely complex perspective and experience. The medic, whether in the capacity of doctor, nurse, or ambulance driver, is vulnerable, both vicariously and directly, to the effects of extreme physical and psychological harm, as well as inherently involved in alleviating, but also intensifying, pain and trauma. This thesis explores the representation of such caregiving experiences in first-hand life-writing, focusing primarily on memoirs, diaries, and semi-novelisations. By exploring the experiences of doctors, nurses, stretcher bearers, orderlies, and ambulance drivers, and crucially the ways they represent those experiences, this thesis explores the complexities that accompany both the experience and the attempt to articulate and communicate it. The intensity of the experiences is manifest in their representations, their hypersensitivity to the literal and figurative qualities of their sensory environment, and the somatic and spatial disorientation that accompanies the crisis situations of care. Very little attention has been given to space and medicine in the First World War context; existing scholarship dwells upon the metaphor and analogy of ‘No Man’s Land’ to explain the medics’ experience, with relatively little further scrutiny. This thesis develops from an initial premise that liminality is only one of the spatial characteristics of the medic’s experience under conditions of war, and this research is thus conceptually informed by a richer array of spatial concepts. There is much that attention to spatial contexts can tell us about the embodied experience of medics, how they relate to both environment and other bodies, as well as the affective dimension of their experience of trauma, and of the coping strategies they develop. This thesis situates military-medical writings within the wider context of war literature and the literature of medicine, and makes a contribution to critical medical humanities scholarship.

This dissertation’s main purpose is twofold, on the one hand it gives new insights into the construction and meaning of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, on the other hand it makes a contribution to the field of cognitive narratology, furnishing a complete practical example of the application of cognitive narratology’s tools to a relevant literary work. I take the Alice books as a case study to illuminate the working of cognitive narratology as an interdisciplinary project, relying both on classical narrative studies and on methods taken from the cognitive field. This focus also serves a synthetic view of cognitive narratology itself, which is in its essence a combination of the revaluation of classic narrative concepts and the introduction of new ones. A useful theoretical concept to give a general understanding of my methodology as the tying together of different overlapping approaches, is the idea of the Alice books as a cognitive playground, a huge mental landscape where different intellectual suggestions and speculations coexist with experientiality and affections. Wonderland and the Looking-Glass land are thus presented as fantastical cognitive playgrounds where different minds interact with each other creating the big and complex aesthetic space of the literary text. Each of my chapters examines a specific topic in relation to the minds of the author, the readers and the characters. After a preface and a first chapter outlining the main theoretical currents of cognitive narratology and pointing out the special fit of the Alice books for this kind of analysis, the subsequent chapters are: “Virtual Alice”, “Mirrored Alice”, “Emotional Alice”, and “Unnatural Alice”, each of them offering different, although interconnected, insights into the peculiar dialogue which can be established between the Alices and the cognitive narratological approach.

This thesis considers representations of the biblical dancer Salome in the context of the broader choreographic imagination that formed across late nineteenth- and twentieth-century literary cultures. Through interdisciplinary readings of plays and poems, silent films, dancers’ memoirs, newspaper reviews, and other sources, I show how Salome’s dance, reinvented by Oscar Wilde in his play 'Salomé' (1893), became the model for an array of responses to dance, creating new interplays between dramatic writing, choreography, and film aesthetics during this period. In light of the depictions of dancers associated with the late nineteenth-century schools of Decadence and Symbolism, the broad critical consensus regarding images of Salome has emphasised their misogyny, apparently precluding the opportunity for feminist interventions. However, I read Wilde’s landmark play as a departure from earlier formulations of the Salome myth, showing how his text imagines a space for female performance that was creatively redeployed by later playwrights and dancers. Across my five chapters, I consider the fascination for dance displayed in texts by Wilde, W. B. Yeats, and Samuel Beckett alongside the work of more commonly overlooked performers and filmmakers, including Loïe Fuller, Maud Allan, Alla Nazimova, and Germaine Dulac, suggesting fresh ways of reading the historical and intertextual connections between these figures. Drawing in particular on accounts of dance and aesthetic philosophy in the recent work of Jacques Rancière, I unveil problematic constructions of the dancing body in writing of this period in order to show how dancers engaged with issues of gender and creative individualism on their own terms. The interdisciplinary approach that I develop draws on debates across modernist studies, film studies, cultural history, and dance studies, bringing to light neglected collaborations between playwrights and dancers, and thereby challenging received wisdoms about the literary canon and the boundaries between different art forms.

This thesis looks at the interpenetration of mysticism and modernity in the writings of Rabindranath Tagore and William Butler Yeats. The relationship of these poets from Ireland and India, and their analogous ambivalence about the nationalist politics of their respective countries have received some critical attention. My thesis, by contrast, explores their involvement in mystical spirituality of both orthodox and heterodox kinds, arguing that in both of these poets’ works mysticism is not put to the service of their modern(ist) poetic projects, but deeply forms and informs those as well as their modern sensibilities. While this study revises tired readings of these poets’ relationship and offers some comparative insights into their mystic modernity, after the introductory chapter I deal with them separately in individual chapters in order to offer some in-depth reading of their works. Chapter 1 historicises the formation of Tagore’s mystic-modern orientation by studying his complex engagement with Brahmoism, Hinduism, and Western humanist ideas, while concentrating on his pre-Gitanjali poetic development. Chapter 2 examines Yeats’s early mystical associations with particular emphasis on his foundational engagement with Indian spirituality, both philosophically and poetically understood, as well as its repercussions in and relevance to the creative, mystical, and cultural-political activities of his early career. Returning to Tagore in Chapter 3, I focus on his mid to late career works in order to analyse the development of his mystic-modern notion of the spiritual evolution of man. The chapter particularly examines his complex engagement with astronomical and evolutionary sciences and his attempt to synthesise them with his eclectic mystical vision. Finally, Chapter 4 shifts to Yeats’s antithetical vision, as expressed in his mystical system and related poetry. This chapter also explores the congruity between Yeats’s later interest in Eastern Christianity and his revived enthusiasm for Indian mysticism.

In spite of a recent surge of interest in space and place in saga scholarship, there has been no sustained study of the presentation of landscape in skaldic poetry. This thesis seeks to establish that there is, in fact, a highly sophisticated poetry of landscape preserved in the Íslendingasögur, and that study of these verses is crucial to any assessment of the relationship between people and land in these texts. I identify and discuss various poetic treatments of landscape in the sagas with particular attention to the associations of certain topographical features, and examine the function of these verses within the larger context of the narratives in question. Each of the three chapters deals with a different type of landscape: Chapter 1 is concerned primarily with poetic depictions of the Icelandic highland, and discusses the central role of the poet in engaging with the land; Chapter 2 examines the use of coastal landscapes and seascapes, and considers the varied responses that these verses demonstrate to littoral space and its inherent tensions; and Chapter 3 considers poetry composed about agricultural landscapes, with particular reference to expressions of ownership and the use of verses in the context of legal disputes and physical conflicts. Over the course of this study, I demonstrate the range and power of medieval Icelandic landscape poetry, the broader function of these verses in the Íslendingasögur, and the various ways in which these verses represent the experience of engaging with the natural world.

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This thesis addresses the religious poetry of Elizabeth Singer Rowe, arguing that her Dissenting identity provides an important foundation on which to which to critically consider her works. Although Rowe enjoyed a successful career, with the majority of her writing seeing multiple editions throughout her lifetime and following her death, her posthumous reputation persists as an overly pious and reclusive religious poet. Moving past these stereotypes, my thesis explores Rowe’s engagement with poetry as a means to convey various aspects of Dissent and her wider religious community. This thesis also contributes to the wider understanding of Dissenting creative writing and influence in the years following the Glorious Revolution of 1688, using Rowe’s work as a platform to demonstrate complexities and cultural shifts within the work of her contemporaries. My argument challenges the notion that Rowe’s religious poetry was a mere exercise in piety or a display of religious sentimentalism, demonstrating powerful evolutions in contemporary discussions of philosophy, religious tolerance, and the relationship between the church and state. A popular figure that appealed to a heterodox reading public, Rowe addresses many aspects of Dissent throughout her work. Combining close readings of Rowe’s poetry and religious writings with the popular works of her contemporaries, this study explores latitudinarian shifts and discussions of depravity within her religious poetry, the impact of the Clarendon Code and subsequent toleration on her conceptualisation of suffering and imprisonment, as well as her use of ecumenical language throughout her writings.

This thesis provides a critical edition of four Middle English versions of De remediis contra temptaciones by William Flete, along with an edition and modern English translation of the Latin De remediis. De remediis is a treatise of religious direction concerned with the spiritual temptations of doubt and despair. Despite its wide circulation and influence in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, it has received little scholarly attention. The Latin source text and the Middle English versions ME1a, ME1b, and ME2, each an independent translation of the Latin, are edited here for the first time. The version ME3, an expanded adaptation of ME2, is presented for the first time in a critical edition with variants from all of the witnesses. Two translations that have previously been classified together as ‘ME1’ are here identified as distinct. The texts are edited from the following base manuscripts: ME1a from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 131; ME1b from olim Foyle MS, Beeleigh Abbey, Essex (sold at Christie’s 11 July 2000); and both ME2 and ME3 from Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Hh.1.11. Comprehensive variants from all of the manuscripts and printed witnesses are recorded in the apparatus to each edition. The Latin De remediis is edited from Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ff.6.44, with selected variants. The introduction discusses De remediis and the four Middle English versions, the treatise’s treatment of religious doubt and despair, the fourteen manuscripts and two early printed editions of the Middle English versions, and the textual relationships between the witnesses.