Twentieth-century criticism has treated The Excursion, Wordsworth's long poem of 1814, as representative of the poet's decline. My Ph.D. thesis opposes this view, arguing for a fresh understanding of the poem through close consideration of narrative and the role of the reader. I suggest that in this work Wordsworth is attempting to create a dramatic poetics in which the role of the poet is to balance different perspectives rather than to speak as a single authoritative voice. In Chapter One I look at the reception of The Excursion in1814-15 and the reasons for contemporary dissatisfaction with Wordsworth's dramatic voice. Charles Lamb's positive response provides the starting point for my own reading of the poem as "conversational". Chapter Two argues that the poem's philosophy is "performative", that is, concerned with the way in which moral ideas can best be communicated as much as with the ideas themselves. Chapter Three suggests that two kinds of affective response (the pathetic and the sublime) form the basis of Wordsworth's attempt to make the reader "active". Chapter Four returns to the question of "sublime" response suggesting that the poem develops an "aesthetics of indeterminacy" through which to empower the reader. The poem's narratives and presentation of character undermine dependence on any single authority within the text. The last two chapters show how such intentions in the poem are a direct product of Wordsworth's later poetics, in which he develops a very different model of the poetic voice from that of The Prelude. Chapter Five reconsiders the "epitaphic" books in the light of Wordsworth's writings on the epitaph and argues that the significance lies in their value as a poetic form in which the text itself is released from poetic authority. Finally, Chapter Six looks back at The Prelude from the perspective of The Excursion showing how the later poem attempts to value the ordinary rather than the poetic mind. I compare the handling of third person narratives in each poem and consider the workings of "narrative memory" in The Excursion as the essential means by which the individual experiences of an internalised sense of community. The aim of this chapter, as of the whole thesis, is to argue for a positive appreciation of Wordsworth's later poetics and, following this, a re-definition of the "Wordsworthian canon".

This thesis demonstrates that Clare’s faith is a highly personal and complex negotiation between the reality of the ‘religion’ confronting him in the world, a remarkable knowledge of literature and thought, and a reasoning and intelligent appropriation of influence. It begins by establishing that Clare’s love of certain aspects of Anglican orthodoxy was entirely compatible with his experimentation with alternative denominations. Its survey of ‘religion’ includes the Church of England and its adherents alongside other religious groups, insisting on an understanding of the Christian faith as an implicit presence (although one which was highly politicised, far from unchallenged, and certainly perceived as declining) within the quotidian life of Clare’s society. The thesis examines the importance of ‘alternative beliefs’ as phenomena coexisting with organised religion, assessing the extent of their coincidence, and thus offering a reassessment of what orthodoxy might mean to Clare’s village community. It goes on to acknowledge Clare’s intelligence and idiosyncratic learning (particularly his Bible reading), examining his attitude to ‘science’ and to such concepts as ‘Reason’, ‘Deism’, and ‘Revealed’ and ‘Natural’ religion. The second part of the thesis asserts that Clare’s religious conviction is reinforced by intense subjective spiritual experience. Having explored some ramifications of this, it goes on to reconsider Clare’s thematic treatment of ‘Eden’ and ‘eternity’, Concluding that, within a climate of religious enthusiasm, Clare interprets a sublime rapture repeatedly experienced in the presence of nature as the felt presence of the deity, it suggests that, even when intellectually he doubts his own faith, he is unable fully to relinquish a particular ‘knowledge’ of divinity. The thesis then analyses Clare’s representations of ‘evil’, demanding to know how faith in an omnipotent, benevolent deity is reconciled with a progressive and devastating sense of the predatory cruelty inherent in the natural world (this sense collides with Clare’s fervent love for his environment, coalescing with events emblematic of essentially theological ‘Falls’ which Clare believed, were perpetuated throughout his life). The thesis concludes by attempting to trace the elements of Clare’s creed, and by developing a new understanding of what his conception of ‘God’ might be.

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Part I concerns the extent to which Eliot’s novels raise challenging questions about the epistemic function of experimental inquiry and provoke us to reflect on the nature of cognition. In Part II, I demonstrate how Eliot’s writings interrogate the nature of right action and engage in ethical inquiry. In Part III, I contend that Eliot’s writings invite us to distinguish between three distinct modes of teaching: a doctrinal mode, an exemplary mode and an aesthetic mode. I argue that Eliot utilises the third of these modes to impart knowledge and ethical guidance of a kind that more austere forms of writing cannot accomplish, because such knowledge and guidance are inseparable from the delight that readers experience in the act of reading fiction. I grapple with three critiques of Eliot’s authorial conduct. These are Bernard Paris’, that her experiments in life were ‘rigged’; Martha Nussbaum’s, that her writings falsify our human position; and Friedrich Nietzsche’s, that morality was not (yet) a problem for Eliot. By contesting these critiques, I strive to substantiate three positive claims of my own. First, for Eliot the aim to maintain a rich mode of being must precede and inform all endeavours to construct systems of knowledge or to determine moral laws. Secondly, for Eliot it is possible to perform non-scientific experiments in ethics by developing disciplined forms of reading and fiction-making. Thirdly, Eliot had to develop a specifically aesthetic mode of teaching because such ‘truths’ as she sought to convey could not be expressed through more conventional literary forms. I demonstrate how Feuerbach and Spinoza’s conceptions of human nature shaped the structure of Eliot’s fictions, even as her utilisation of the art of fiction-making facilitated the expression of different valuations and an alternate sense of life than we find expressed in these theorists’ writings.

This edition of the <i>Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám </i>is the first edition of that poem to be based on principles of modern textual criticism and to include the fullest account of the poem's texts and textual history. A corrected text of the <i>Rubáiyát </i>has long been needed: my edition provides the most accurate multiple texts of the FitzGerald's work to date and a complete account of the poem's textual history, incorporating new material previously unreported or unpublished. In its very shape as well as in its textual commentary, the edition argues for editorial principles that accommodate the practical aims of literary critical editing, a nuanced understanding of the participation of authorial intention in the sociology of texts, and a sensitivity to the peculiar semiology of the critical edition. The contents of the edition are divided into three parts. The first of these comprises an introduction in which biographical accounts of Omar Khayyám and Edward FitzGerald are dovetailed with a history of the <i>Rubáiyát's </i>composition and publication. FitzGerald's textual intentions cannot properly be understood without recognizing the crucial influence exerted by friends, publishers, printers, and foreign piracies over the poem's earliest composition and over its subsequent revisions. I argue that the stages of FitzGerald's writing should not be fused, and confused, in a single-minded progress, and I make extensive use of biography and textual history to insist on the integrity of each published text of the <i>Rubáiyát. </i>Following the introduction, I discuss in a textual note the problems of editing the texts of the poem and the editorial principles guiding my choice of texts and presentation. An explanatory list of emendations made to FitzGerald's texts accompanied by local arguments for each correction is supplied in a succeeding note. The second part of the edition comprises critical texts of the four original editions of the <i>Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám</i> published between 1859 and 1879.

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The thesis aims to offer new insights into Lord Byron's writing, focusing in particular on <i>Don Juan</i>. It attempts this through an investigation into the concept of 'system', a highly resonant term in the early nineteenth century and one the poet repeatedly invoked in a pejorative sense to indicate an unresponsive mind-set antithetical to the poetic. The introductory chapter offers an historical description of 'system' and its related vocabulary, drawing out the different applications of the world (intellectual religious, political and aesthetic). In particular, Byron's antisystematic attitude is related to and distinguished from philosophical scepticism, a subject central to some recent studies of Byron. The remaining four chapters explore the most significant manifestations of 'system' and the resistance to them cultivated in Byron's later writings. Chapter two considers Byron's prose intervention in the controversy over the nature of Pope's poetry in which he attacks a 'systematic' approach to literary writing. Particular emphasis is placed on Byron's engagement with the historical background to the controversy, especially Johnson's implied censure of Joseph Warton. The third chapter looks at the philosophical and religious aspects of Byron's thought through a reading of the drama <i>Cain</i>. The play is considered with reference to past critical interpretation, which has tended to view the play as expressive of a religious or philosophical 'position'. Navigating between these divergent arguments, the chapter suggests that the play resists any dogmatic interpretation and is most fruitfully thought of as a mediation on the role of the poet. Chapter four investigates the presentation of human consciousness in <i>Don Juan</i> through the poem's obsessive interest in physical process and its effects on mental states.

My dissertation aims to determine the means by which Marian Evans began to write fiction. It argues that her beginnings were achieved through a process of self-reinvention, from which she emerged as George Eliot, the artistic identity for which she became universally known. My thesis is that Marian Evans was only aware of, and therefore able to present, her self-reinvention while actively engaged in that process. The fiction is therefore read for its expression of the shifts and schisms in her identity. In the light of the seemingly unbridgeable distance between the limited voice of Marian Evans' letters, diaries and essays, and the breadth of sympathy and insight found in George Eliot's fiction, this process of self-reinvention is analysed for its capacity to realise large reserves of latent potential. I employ a varied psychoanalytic methodology, drawing principally upon the theories of Melanie Klein and D.W. Winnicott, to demonstrate that George Eliot's artistic beginnings were achieved through challenges to, or circumventions of, the super-ego. The super-ego is represented in her fiction by Nemesis, the goddess of retribution. Paradoxically, therefore, my dissertation refigures scenes of traditional closure as moments of beginning. My reinterpretation does not sever George Eliot from all previous understandings. Through a literary history of Nemesis I establish that this feature is identified traditionally with necessity. I show that necessity was a transitional concept in the nineteenth-century, viewed either as an absolute bond between cause and effect, or as open to the subjectivity of the imagination. I argue that it is the dialectic between Nemesis as a lawful, moral figure and Nemesis as an eruptive, revolutionary figure, which energises George Eliot's fiction. The discordance between the conscious agenda of the fiction and its creative process is charted through the early fiction.

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