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The novel has often been viewed as instantiating the alienation of the self from society, replacing the involved pre-modern self with an inward-turning ‘subject’. Ian Watt’s influential characterisation of the novel form, and particularly Richardson’s work, is that it is ‘individualist and innovating’. The idea that the novel’s ‘primary criterion [is] truth to individual experience’ has coloured subsequent analysis, which has accordingly focussed on the individuality – that is, the isolation or separateness – of Richardson’s characters rather than their connectedness, or sense of community. This thesis attempts to rectify the individualist bias of previous literary criticism. Through detailed textual analysis of Richardson’s conduct book, <i>The Apprentice’s Vade Mecum,</i> and his novels, <i>Pamela, Clarissa, </i>and <i>Sir Charles Grandison, </i>I provide a re-reading of Richardson’s work which reinstates the importance of relationship in the novel with reference to religious and philosophical contexts. Situating Richardson’s work as part of the reaction against the work of Mandeville, I show how religious ideas underpin his representations of the community, gender and the subject. By using the concept of subjectivity, and the subject, rather than the over-determined category of the individual, I show how his novels act as literary figurations of social practice. I argue that these writings offer a theory of human relations in their focus on the subject and its social duties. Locating and critiquing inadequate, immoral and dysfunctional forms of relationship, they offer a social grammar of obligation, morality and self-sacrifice.

My thesis traces connections between late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century literary criticism, contemporary literary criticism and the poetry of Alexander Pope. I look at four topics: visual art, gender, finance and history. The thesis shows how vocabulary associated with each of these topics is used in Augustan literary criticism, contemporary literary criticism and Pope's verse. Vocabulary associated with the first three topics is frequently used in Augustan literary criticism to evaluate and judge literary works. In contemporary literary criticism, these vocabularies are used to provide a context in which to explain and criticise literature: the images produced by literature, the way in which literature relates to gender and gender politics, and the effect of economics on the production of literature are the dominant concerns of much of this writing. Augustan literary criticism is closely connected to the study of history, so closely that often no distinction is made between the two. Much recent criticism is also concerned to see literature as the product of historical forces. Pope wrote verse on all four of these topics. By offering readings of the relevant poems, I show how one of the fundamental questions of literary criticism, how meaning is produced in writing, may also be profitably put to the contextual material which literary criticism often provides as an answer to that question. I present the study of literature and literary criticism as the study of meaning. The thesis offers a summary of contextual approaches to Pope and to poetry in general, and presents much new work on the modes of Augustan literary criticism. It substantially alters the standard characterisation of the early eighteenth century as dominated by Locke's linguistic philosophy, analyses a broader and more challenging set of philosophical approaches to language, and demonstrates in close readings of verse the sophistication and seriousness of the poetic works of Pope and many other Augustan writers.

"The greater part of readers [...] will wonder that on mere trifles so much labour is expended, with such importance of debate, and such solemnity of diction. To these I answer with confidence, that they are judging of an art which they do not understand; yet cannot much reproach them with their ignorance, nor promise that they would become in general, by learning criticism, more useful, happier or wiser" (<I>Yale, </I>VII, 108-9). There is an ethics of attention deep in the conduct of this extract, hostile to mockery of trifles but somewhat ashamed of elevating minutiae. It is typically honest about the dubious value of heeding the little. Chapter 1 examines Johnson's double attitude to minutiae, and argues that the border category of diminutives allows him to challenge assumptions about the proper domain of literature. By rehearsing a conflict between great and little, Johnson calibrated the opposing claims of pagan and Christian values. Ancient criticism stated that each subject merited a corresponding style: little matters calls for the low, lofty matters for the high. Gospel writers, however, repeatedly stress Christ's Incarnation in a person of humble station as a positive descent to the humanly little. There is, on Christian terms, no definitively low subject. Nor should everyday occurrences, if they assume the significance of epoch-making events, be expressed in a correspondingly base manner. A double attachment to pagan and Christian tradition accounts for Johnson's simultaneous contempt and regard for trifles. Chapter 2 examines his paternal relation to a sub-genre of nonhuman adventures. These stories are referred to as 'little lives', a phrase taken from Johnson's description of his biographies.

My thesis examines fictions focusing on female education and development by five representative conservative British women writers who flourished between 1778 and 1814 - Lady Mary Hamilton, Clara Reeve, Elizabeth Hamilton, Mary Brunton, and the early Jane Austen. In a climate in which female education is a subject of anxiety in print culture, in which fiction is also a site of contestation, and in which women are emerging as major producers both of educational writing and of heroine-centred, ostensibly didactic fiction, such writers as the ones I focus on produce fictions of female education which are pioneering <I>Bildungsromans. </I>Highly gendered, these fictions explore key tensions generated by the theme of education - including a dialectic between formal and experiential education, between the pliable, receptive pupil obedient to pedagogical authority-figures and the more autonomous, self-sufficient auto-didact, and between a desire for greater institutionalisation of education and a recognition of the flexibility or freedom that distancing from established structures gives. Such fictions, I argue, are compendious and miscellaneous, encompassing diverse domains of knowledge, such as philosophy (particularly the science of the mind), politics, and history. There is a congruence between the ambulatory, tension-ridden patterns of female education found in these fictions, and the kind of distinctive, miscellaneous fictional knowledge they represent - and their creators, I argue, all grapple with the epistemological and ethical status of fiction, which they connect with female experience. These works seek to go beyond circumscribed ideas about female development, such as the notion that marriage ought to be the purpose or end of female education. The courtship novel is by no means the dominant sub-genre of the female-authored novel in the period - an important sub-genre that I analyse is fiction describing communities reformed by educative women (in the line of Mary Astell's <I>A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, for the Advancement of Their True and Greatest Interest, </I>1694, and Sarah Scott's <I>Millenium Hall, </I>1762), such as Mary Hamilton's <I>Munster Village </I>(1778), Clara Reeve's <I>Plans of Education </I>(1792), and <I>The Cottagers of Glenburnie </I>(1808).

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Jeremy Bentham's image of 'the insuperable line', perceived as a pernicious metaphysical divide between the human and animal realms that excluded other species from man's moral responsibilities, has provided a useful point of reference in contemporary debates on animal-welfare. In this thesis, I hope to show how this concept can also be profitably applied to eighteenth-century animal-verse, since poets expressed a similar commitment to deploring this kind of divisive attitude. I explore the ways in which the concept of boundary itself was imaginatively invoked in a rich variety of ways, through predominantly as a means of strengthening the reader's respect for animals and of enhancing his appreciation of their realm. I aim at demonstrating how this was galvanised, in part, by the contemporary fascination with natural history, a subject in which the issues of knowledge, dominion and sociability came together and were held in productive tension. Although my discussion inevitably encompasses the works of such canonical figures as Alexander Pope, James Thomson and William Cowper, all ardent advocates of the animal-welfare issue, I support my argument principally by exploring the verse of several lesser-known poets of the period. Many of these poets have been unduly neglected in contemporary critical discussions of the period's verse, and an evaluation of their lively contribution to the discourse on animals enables a more complex picture of eighteenth-century poetry to emerge. In the first chapter, I examine William Somerville's ardent defence of hunting in <I>The Chace, </I>a poem that unapologetically promotes the anthropocentric notion of man as the unrestrained and arbitrary sovereign of animals. In the second chapter, I suggest how Somerville's conception of human dominion often appeared anomalous in the period, amongst poets at least, and was fiercely challenged by James Thomson, Henry Brooke, Richard Jago and James Hurdis. These poets denigrated man's pernicious effect upon the animal 'economy' and identified animals themselves as deserving subjects for man's moral concern. In the third chapter, I demonstrate how Anna Laetitia Barbauld had enlisted the full voice of her poetry in exposing man's disruptive impact on the life and liberty of other species, as exemplified by her criticism of the experimental scientist.

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The military theme epitomizes <i>Tristram Shandy’s </i>intolerance of systematic interpretation. Sterne recognizes the heterogeneity of war and is preoccupied with various military strategies, technologies, and paradigms, all of which have specific implications. Sterne renders the spatial and physical properties of these elements of war by displaying their effects on the body. He also manipulates narrative form to express this spatiality. In Part 1, an interplay between generic and military developments is theorized and the unique suitability of the novel for rendering modern warfare is postulated. The numerous wars mentioned in <i>Tristram Shandy</i> are then surveyed. Besides the provision of historical detail, the arrangement of this material, its tendency to reflect issues pertaining to Sterne’s conceptual treatment of war, is examined. Part 2 concerns Sterne’s handling of the aspects of war that are a product of rationalism. In <i>Tristram Shandy</i>, Sterne demonstrates how the body is often restrained and victimized in the course of attempts to assimilate it to military systems. An implicit linkage between rationalism itself and bellicosity is apparent in Walter Shandy’s theories and projects. Sterne also the matrixes the corollaries of military rationalism, in particular the development of long-range projectile warfare and the action of military discipline and mechanization. The counter-rational aspects of war are explored in Part 3. Sterne regularly depicts war as chaotic and labyrinthine. The amorphous parts of war are more congenial to the body than the rationalistic facets, admitting of its fluidity and reanimating it. Tristram’s narrative is also informed by principles of nonlinear warfare. In conclusion, the effect of the dissipation of the pronounced physical and spatial presence of war is considered. In <i>A Sentimental Journey, </i>Sterne presents a series of fragile veterans and suggests, through Yorick, a restitution of the virtues of chivalry and gallantry that had been largely negated by modern war.