Phillis Wheatley famously became the first black woman to publish a book of poems when Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral appeared in London in 1773. For literary scholars the publication ofthis book has made her a key figure of black vernacular traditions and discussions of racial identity throughout the twentieth century. This thesis examines a variety of Wheatley's texts published in England and New England in the early to mid-1770s. It also considers the different historical contexts in which these texts were published and how they have influenced their production. In chapter two the publication history of Poems, the text upon which twentiethcentury literary critics have primarily focused, is considered. It is argued that Poems was primarily produced for the consumption of a London rather than a New England audience and that the text is explicable only through the London context. Chapter three provides a discussion of Wheatley's identity within the context of New England religious debate in the early 1770s. It is argued that as a result of the growth of heterogeneous religious styles, New Englanders were preoccupied with the issue of identifying and displaying a converted identity. Wheatley's early broadsides were part of the local printers' response to this need, and became a commercial vehicle through which the conversion of the New England consumer could be displayed. Chapter four goes on to discuss several of Wheatley's texts published in New England newspapers and magazines during the war years with England. It is argued that the representation of Wheatley in the early years of the Revolution reflected the developments in slavery discourses as the rebellion against England progressed. In chapter five it is concluded that there are in fact many different Phillis Wheatleys, each having a distinct identity as a result of the myriad of influences in each particular market. It is argued therefore that Wheatley's racial representation was formed out of the social and economic contradictions within eighteenth-century society and a variety of mediating factors. The implications of these [mdings for critical practices of studying identity are discussed.

The basic aim of the thesis has been to investigate what it meant to claim gentility, the status of a 'gentleman' or 'gentlewoman', in early modern England. Arguing that gentility should be viewed as a highly contingent socio-political rhetoric, the study concentrates on how that rhetoric was deployed and contested at one particular cultural site, namely, London's comic stage during the period <I>c. </I>1690 to 1725. Chapter one focuses on the most common of 'would-be' gentleman figures, the prosperous London citizen. Recovering previously unremarked features of the citizen's portrayal as cuckold, particularly his ritualistic humiliation elements of the ritual of skimmington (or charivari), the chapter disputes the idea that the stage figure was a representation of class struggle which was declining the popularity. Ideally, 'gentlemen' were society's elite on the basis of a complex configuration of birth, wealth and political authority. What to do when the citizen's wealth and authority (but not his birth) equalled or surpassed that of the gentlemen? Chapter two suggests that the citizen's cuckolding was a means of address this troubling social inconsistency, relating his satirical treatment to changes in the economy and politics of late Stuart London. Attempting to overcome the paucity of direct audience response to the cit-cuckold stereotype, chapter three shows how the theatre space conditioned the meaning of the onstage action. Contrary to prevailing views, it maintains that the audience was mainly genteel (or 'would-be' genteel) and that competing perceptions of the social order frequently sent waves of tension rippling through the playhouses in Drury Lane and Lincoln's Inn Fields, thereby influencing possible interpretations. The fourth chapter directs our attention back to centre-stage, introducing its most popular funny (gentle)man, the fop or beau.

Numerous novels appeared in Britain in the years after 1789 addressing the debate on the French Revolution and the ideas emanating from it. Some novels sympathising with the radical cause have received significant scholarly attention, but those which took a conservative line have so far escaped any sustained analysis. These were the anti-Jacobin novels. This thesis contains an analysis of over a hundred novels, published 1790-1816, all of which to some extent contributed to the conservative cause. Some were deliberately designed by their authors as propaganda; others simply absorbed aspects of this conservatism. Either way, these novels provide a valuable insight into the nature of British conservatism during and after the French Revolution. My introduction having provided a survey of the research so far undertaken into the politics and fiction of the period, chapter two examines the reputation of the novel as a literary form in the late eighteenth century and the way in which conservative novelists used the novel to open up another front in the campaign against what they saw as the encroaching Revolutionary menace, thus imbuing the novel with a new respectability. Chapters three to seven analyse common themes and techniques of these novels. First I consider the anti-Jacobin novelists' depictions of revolution as a locus of unmitigated barbarity and anarchy. Second I survey the development and meaning of the umbrella term 'new philosophy' to describe the radical ideas to which the anti-Jacobins were possessed. Third I look at the frequent use of the 'vaurien' motif, that is to say a single character designed to embody Jacobinism and expose it as nothing more than the tool of self-serving villains. Fourth I investigate the novels' defence of social hierarchy, especially against levellers, the socially and economically ambitious, and (in chapter seven) against the corruption of the élite , who were also presented as providing a foothold for Jacobinism in Britain by the neglect of those duties which endowed the hierarchy with their <I>raison d'être. </I>

This dissertation has two main objects. It attempts a general survey of Jacobite song from its origins during the Civil War to its artistic demise in the 1830s, and tries to explain why it continued to attract the attention of Scottish poets for generations after the political collapse of the movement. Secondly, it traces the diffusion through Scottish society of a complex body of political myth, considering a question perhaps given its clearest expression by Willa Muir: Until the eighteenth century, contempt for Highlanders was well rooted in Lowland Scotland ... How has it happened, then, that the public image Scotland now presents to the world is composed of elements from Highland culture ... An extraordinary shift must have taken place in the back of the Lowlanders' minds.1 The thesis relates this "extraordinary shift" to the rise of the Bonny Highland Laddie as an amatory symbol, describes his identification with the Young Chevalier in popular song, and assesses the influence of this composite figure upon the idea of Scotland in the century after the Union. 1 Living with Ballads. London, 1965. pp. 216--8.

This thesis comprises a study of the life and works of Gilbert Stuart (1743-86). In nine chapters it chronologically charts his varied career as an historian, literary reviewer, editor, pamphleteer, and political commentator. In doing so, it ventures to discern the meaning of his political and religious views, the significance of his historical and critical approach, and the nature of his character. Stuart is known, if at all, for challenging some of the leading literary and political figures in Scotland: among them David Hume, Lord Monboddo, William Robertson, and Henry Dundas. He is regarded as a disappointed and dissipated hack writer who was motivated by personal animosity and financial gain. As a consequence, his writings have been rather hastily dismissed. No attempt is made to vindicate Stuart's character. It is intended, however, to look beyond dismissive remarks in order to discover the significance of his life and works. An assessment of his output, placed in an appropriate context (intellectual, social, literary, and/or political), reveals a more detailed picture of the Scottish Enlightenment and of eighteenth-century culture generally. In a twenty-year career, Stuart wrote six historical works, over three hundred literary reviews, and a number of pamphlets and political articles. Some have been briefly noted for their perceptive remarks on subjects. More often they are cited for the severity of their attack on William Robertson, the Principal of the University and leader of the powerful Moderate Party of the Church of Scotland. From an account of his early years, Stuart might have been regarded as a promising candidate for Robertson's inner circle of Scottish literati. He was the son of an Edinburgh University Professor, educated as a lawyer, and by his early twenties had written a well-received 'conjectural' work on English constitutional history. What Stuart wanted above all was the security and prestige of a professorship at the University. In the first part of his career as an independent writer, he worked towards this goal by supporting Robertson and his Moderate policies. In 1778 Stuart was denied the Professorship of Public Law. He attributed this failure to Robertson and consequently commenced an attack on him. On the one hand, this vituperativeness caused Stuart to undermine the scholarship and impartiality of his views. On the other, it resulted in stylistic and methodological innovations which entitle his writings to credit.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The purpose of the study is to show, as indicated by the title, a continuity between Henry Fielding's dramatic and narrative writing,· where the link is represented by Fielding's inclusion of his audience of theatre spectators and of readers in his experimental modes of representation. The first chapter is dedicated to The Author's Farce, the issue of proper language usage, the figure of the playwright in the London of the late 1720s, and Fielding's critique of the growing fashion for nonsensical entertainments. The Author's Farce also shows an important example of Fielding's innovative use of the framing device in plays. The second chapter is dedicated to the burlesque Tom Thumb, which explores and exemplifies a critique of "supernatural" language.by creating its own language and playing with traditional figures of speech such as the metaphor; Fielding's experimentalism with the metaphor pushes drama into the narrative territory of metonymy. The third chapter centres on the analysis of The Tragedy of Tragedies, its links with the Scriblerian tradition of literary satire, and its re-interpretation of that tradition; the figure ofH. Scriblerus Secundus opens Fielding's text to dialogism and offers an example of performativity within a prose context. With The Modem Husband, Fielding experiments with a form of drama of wider scope, while at the same time interpreting traits traditionally associated with sentimentalism; he introduces themes that show a specific social and moral concern, and represent an anticipation of his later novels. This is the main topic of chapter four. The last chapter analyses A Journey from This World to the Next as an example of prose that combines, in its innovative use of the first-person narrator, narrative prose with the forms of drama. The farce Eurydice Hiss'd is an unprecedented dramatisation of audience response, while the final part on the puppet show in Tom Thumb shows how Fielding combined audience response and anti-sentimental themes in the new, complex fabric of the narrative discourse of his later novels.

No description available.