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This thesis discusses the poetry of Chatterton by entering into his created world. By re-assembling, from various strands in the Rowleyan poetry and prose, the inner world of Thomas Rowley and his patron William Canyno-e, it seeks to highlight the poetry by speaking of it from the inside - it acquiesces with Chatterton's fictionalizing, just as, I have argued, Chatterton himself acquiesced with eighteenth century demands for such a fiction. This device allows me to offer a notion of Chatterton's portrayal of the relationship between Rowley and Canynge as one of subtle conflict, and to suggest that such a portrayal directly influenced the Rowleyan poetry, particularly ‘Aella’, where these conflicts emerge in the poetry most richly. After this central chapter on 'Aella' (Ch.5), the thesis is content to follow a more biographical mode, - discussing Valpole's dealings with Chatterton and shifting, with Chatterton's removal to London, to a more eighteenth century, London-based view, - but always keeping in sight that inner world which Cbatterton had devised at Bristol and which could re-emerge at any time - as I have suggested it did in the 'Balade of Charitie', which I hav6 argued as being written in London rather than Bristol.

This thesis investigates the various strands of the female education debate which emerge from eighteenth-century conduct books, women's magazines and the novels of Fanny Burney and Jane Austen. Across this body of work the main objective is to advise the middle-class woman about appropriate conduct in society. A surprising amount of consensus is shown to exist on this subject, even between conservative and radical writers. However, questions about gender equality placed conservative conduct-book writers and proto-feminists in ideologically opposed positions. In contrast, Burney, Austen and the authors of eighteenth-century magazines were unwilling either to demand gender equality or accept the inherent inferiority of the female sex. Taking a moderate stance in the female education debate, they either avoid extreme views or negotiate between them, often reaching contradictory conclusions. It will be argued, that the wide range of material and variety of opinions incorporated within these works, particularly the women's magazines, actively enabled the construction of a middle ground. This position was by no means stable and the parameters of what was considered acceptable and respectable for women were subject to continual modification. Central to the characterisation of the magazines as moderate works is the potential, built into the structure and integral to the content of these texts, for individual readers to resist meaning or interpret it in different ways. The novels portray the consequences of education through the integral detail of their heroines' lives. These works assume that domestic duties should be a priority for women, but they show that the education available to the female sex was inadequate for its purposes. Moderate writers are shown to adapt a variety of strategies in order to question the aims and objectives of female education without challenging the status quo.

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Thin theoio is concornod frith : hafteobuj (1671-1713), and frith tho fotion exid contont of hie major publichad work, Cht wt, -, rtnttc%n of iT? on, Mrnrorn, t , inionst T . ncn (1711). +ýr . rýr. ýrrrr ýr It illuatratoo a ciCnific^nt theme in Shaftoaburj'a t: orIc. Tho overall poropectivo that to procented trt: en tho form of t domonotration of the natura of tho intellectual cntorpriao upon which Shaftooburv t; ao onCaCo:d in t.'r itirj the Chnrr'.c terintie; ':. Aa cocentiai bacl -, rou to thin tho cooial card intellectual contort in tfhicli Shaftoctr rv dovoloped hie viouc io deocribed. The Cýharnctexiot ct, n is then to be coon as Shaftoc-. burj'a croativo reoponcö to the raciai and intellectual forces tvhich acted upon hin; hie public reoponco and af fiz ationg, an dictinot fror hie private pero cion. After .n intro; tuctorj bioer pi ical outlinot attention to iron to hnftoobury'o oar1; r phi1osophicaL -davolopment czad political nsr;: ronoca. Shaftcob'irj to coon an having boon unozcj with contemporary philooorhicnl activitjt particularly moral philocophyp and cllco vith the practice and princiDleo fount in tho contemporary political vorlcl. ACainot thin bacnround, haftoo'bur7lo ctu. ica In fom^n Stoicicx aro coon to hwvo provided an intellectually c ticfyiat philocoph7. Thereafter tho thcoio to concorncd to doionctrntc how S2 : fteobury attempted to ro-locate intolliCont diccuc cion of phil6cophic¬s1 quecrtiona tong hire conteoporarida. He did this by criticizing viewo and prutiooo then provalont; and by offerinC both a philosophical practice and a philocophica7, 'ayato&t. The uholo of thin activity has been called the cocialication of philosophy, 'hies approach aaaarto the importance of social implication, iii, addition, to technical refinementp in 3haftcabury'a philocophy

The five novels of Tobias Smollett are the greatest achievement of a man whose literary output, like that of many of his contemporaries, was prodigious both in quantity and variety. Despite an improvement in recent years (most remarkably in P-C Douce's Les Romans de Smollett : 1971), Smollett's fiction remains comparatively neglected by students of English literature. Whilst literary historians perpetuate old errors and misconceptions of the nature of Smollett's work, other critics create new myths, both social and literary - of Radical Dr. Smollett or Smollett the Picaresque Novelist, for example. The picaresque nature of Smollett's fiction has long been a stumbling block for critics who either regard the term as meaning no more than episodic and roguish, or who, correctly rejecting such a facile and.misleading approach, decide that we cannot under any circumstances describe Smollett's novels as "picaresque". By examining Spanish picaresque fiction both as a literary form and as a social document, we find that its particularly successful fusion of form and content lead to a powerful and important vision of a society during a period of fundamental social change. Turning again to Smollett's work we see that the author adopts the literary structure of the Spanish "novelas picarescas" not (as some critics appear to believe) because he was unable to think of anything better, but in the belief that the picaresque novel form was uniquely appropriate as a means of translating his pessimistic vision of eighteenth century society into fictional terms. Writing during a period which saw the traditional social, economic and political influence of the landed gentry decline as the commercial interests of the bourgeoisie gained in importance, Smollett was personally in a perplexing social position. Though concerned to uphold his status as a "gentleman", which separated him from his social inferiors, he was also - as a younger son - obliged to earn his own living away from the privileged atmosphere of the country estate. It is both from his personal experience and from his distaste for a society which placed money above morality, that Smollett's advocacy of the values of the landed gentry, and his distaste for those of the newly rich middle classes derive. Though he could not remain unaffected by his years of historical, social and political writing, Smollett's defence of an (idealized) traditional, land-based society remains paramount throughout his fiction. Though he abandoned the picaresque novel form after Roderick Random and Peregrine Pickle, his work reflects an attempt to find a new fictional form for his conservative vision which - after partially unsuccessful attempts in Ferdinand Count Fathom and Sir Launcelot Greaves - he finally achieved in his last, best and most humane novel Humphry Clinker. It is both Smollett's literary achievement and the nature of his social vision which are discussed here.

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James Thomson (1700-1748) has long held an important place in English literary studies. He and his poetry have been the subject of much critical and biographical comment from his own time to the present. Yet almost no critical attention has thus far been directed toward the distinctive influences which the poet's Scottish background had upon his work. In fact, Thomson spent the first, formative twenty five years of his life in Scotland. This thesis, which is both a biographical and a literary-critical study, attempts to discover the Scottish influences - literary, environmental, religious, cultural and educational, social and political - on Thomson, to examine his works with these in mind, and to show how his "Scottishness" helped to shape his poetic art. Chapter I poses the nature and extent of the "problem" of critical failure to deal with Scottish influences on Thomson; it surveys 250 years of Thomson criticism, and moves toward a broader, working definition of literary "Scottishness" than has traditionally been applied. Chapter II re-evaluates the poet's youth in the Scottish Borders, placing him in a Scottish landscape and considering early Scottish Calvinistic and literary influences. In Chapter III, juvenile biography continues, dealing with Thomson's ten years in the Scottish capital as Divinity-student and apprentice-poet, with special attention to the literary milieu of early eighteenth-century Edinburgh. Chapter IV is a detailed study of the juvenile poems written during these significant years in Edinburgh. Chapters V and VI consider the various Scottish influences on The Seasons. Chapter V treats of The Seasons as a poem of natural description, and as such a part of the Scottish tradition. Chapter VI examines the Scottish aspects of The Seasons as a religious-philosophical poem, as a neoclassical poem, and as a socio-political poem, and also discusses the poetic language of the poem, especially with regard to vernacular humanistic and Scots dialect influences. In Chapter VII, a view of Thomson's life as a Scot in London completes the biographical work of the thesis; his Liberty and dramas are examined in this context. In Chapter VIII, Thomson's last major work, The Castle of Indolence, is shown to maintain vital continuities with the poet's Scottish background, particularly in its religious-didactic purpose, allegorical conception and poetic language. The brief concluding Chapter IX outlines the extensive influence which Thomson himself exerted over subsequent Scottish poetry.