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This thesis explores the cultural impact of Locke's Essay Concerning Human , Understanding in forging a new and highly influential gendered language of ideas. It examines a range of early. eighteenth-century literature by men and women to explore the ways in which' alternative forms of property were harnessed to differently define the spaces of,the male and female minds. Engaging with recent criticism which has pinpointed this period as being central to a number of new'conceptions and categorisations of space, it therefore examines the consequences of this new language of intellectual property on the ways in which men and women differently perceive and represent the changing world around them. Focussing . particularly on the early periodical it analyses the problems and possibilities of the coffee-house and the drawing room for writers of, and within, Jiirgen Habermas's,emerging public sphere to discover the ways in which real or textual access to, and manipulation of, these spaces determined the authority of the publication. It then examines theways in which metaphors of landed property, linked particularly to colonial exploration and aligned with the male mind, enabled the male writer to assume a textual dominance over the unfamiliar terrain of the postFire city and which defined the archetypal urban observer as exclusively and enduringly male. Finally, it examines the w,llrk of Benedict Anderson and Linda Colley in order to explore contemporary responses to, and perceptions of, new understandings of the nation. It investigates the ways in which metaphors of consumption used to define the female mind meant that the concept of nationhood was anathema to women. Rather it explores the ways in which, through a language of commodity goods, women were able to come to a more extensive knowledge of the world.

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Eighteenth-century social and political relationships between Britain and France have long enjoyed great scholarly interest, and the linguistic influence of French on English is being defined with increasing precision. Until now, however, there have been only brief stylistic considerations of the literary role played by French in eighteenth-century English prose literature. My thesis seeks to address that deficiency by investigating the literary usage and significance of French language in English literature. As the period is noted for the explosion of interest in language and its cultural ramifications; this study continuously considers the metonymical function of French usage as a signifier of broader social corollaries. This thesis attempts to forge a link between identifiable social attitudes and their incarnation in specific linguistic usage. I initially set out a context of opinion on French language and culture, and attitudes to borrowing and imitation, derived from journal, essay and treatise. Such a context demonstrates that France is unrivalled as the 'other' against which British identities were forged. Rates of lexical borrowing from French reached an historical low in the eighteenth century, and the proliferation of grammars and dictionaries bespoke a desire to define, limit, and control language. Yet the language of the developing novel, I argue, was inflected with French idiom, an idiom that offered a uniquely rich and potent strain of evocation and association. Writers of the novel, from Richardson and Smollett, to Brooke, and Burney, deploy French flexibly but with precision; each author exercises great control in borrowing idiom for purposes ranging from plot development and characterisation, to satire and pathos. My research explores those constructs, and because I found that the question of literary French usage is gendered, much of my thesis is structured along lines of gender. The letters of Lord Chesterfield, Samuel Johnson, and William Shenstone, Fanny Boscawen, Hannah More, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, form counterpoints to the novel, and establish areas both of commonality and divergence between French usage in the fictional and familiar prose of men and women. In its final chapter, this study turns explicitly to the wider social concerns underlying preceding discussions, viz. the significance of French usage to English manners and morals in the novels ranging from John Cleland's Fanny Hill to Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote. This thesis necessarily incorporates extensive but germane quotation, and embraces historical sociolinguistics, social history, stylistics, literary theory, and practical literary criticism. While this study cannot claim to be comprehensive, it seeks to open out a field of study hitherto neglected.

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Mary Wollstonecraft’s <i>A Vindication of the Rights of Woman</i> makes its feminist argument primarily through literary criticism. Recent scholarship has generally considered the literary critical dimension of <i>Rights of Woman</i> as a minor component of Wollstonecraft’s explicit political argument and cultural critique. This thesis locates and analyses three literary critiques in <i>Rights of Woman</i> in order to illustrate the specificity of Wollstonecraft’s methods. Wollstonecraft’s critique of Milton utilises a practice of quotation and commentary, and interrogates his prominent role in literary and political canons. Her critique of Rousseau’s <i>Emile</i> is highly instructive because she both attacks its content and attempts to undercut the modes by which this paradigmatic statement of the submissive domestic female had become ‘a prevailing opinion of a sexual character’. Wollstonecraft’s critique of John Gregory, the author of the influential conduct book <i>A Legacy to His Daughters</i>, claims that this work perpetuates Rousseau’s repressive norms, even without the conscious knowledge of its apparently capable author. In doing so, Wollstonecraft theorizes the existence of a self-reproducing ‘male’ literary tradition, one which comprises a broad range of texts, whether by ‘great’ writers or less gifted men, a notion which challenges benevolent images of a purist canon of aesthetic value. In the development of her criticism, Wollstonecraft draws from two contemporary critical traditions. The first is that of the bluestocking women, whose public mastery of literary knowledge gives them the status to promulgate social agendas. The second is the literary periodical, which stands at the very centre of print culture in the eighteenth century. A specific analysis of the literary critical dimension of <i>Rights of Woman</i> illuminates new aspects of the organisation and rhetoric of this key work.

As soon as the reading public realized that the much-enjoyed first volumes of Tristram Shandy were written by a priest and, furthermore, that this parson was publishing sermons under the name of Hamlet's exhumed jester, the sincerity of Sterne towards his vocation was questioned-if not flatly denied. This immediate reticence and indignation has expanded and persisted. The stumbling blocks are two: bawdy fiction is not fitting from a priest; and, the sermons, full of plagiarism, lack evangelical heat. The aim of this dissertation is to review the contexts of mid-eighteenth century Anglican homiletics with reference to Sterne's oeuvres. Once we understand what was expected from the pulpit in content and style, we are equipped to observe ways in which Steme strove to meet those expectations. To date no published work has responsibly considered his much-alleged plagiarism. This is rectified, and the evidence unveils an interested and very capable sermon-writer. We then consider Sterne's fictions. That, alongside ribaldry, the first volumes of Tristram contain an entire sermon has led some to conclude Steme was mocking religion. On the contrary, tracing themes of the homilies through both novels we come to appreciate an intended reciprocity between the works. Of interest in this regard is Sterne's engagement with fideistic scepticism, and the manner in which he developed his parabolic contribution to this tradition of faithful, learned ignorance. I suggest that, far from the buffoonery of a snickering prankster, Sterne's fiction represents the elements of his orthodox sermons within a provocative and curiously accessible mode. As such, his canon has integrity. He lusted earnestly, and endeavoured carefully that these little books might stand instead of many bigger books', and his hope was that they would do us good.

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