This thesis explores Joyce’s aesthetic enterprise in Ulysses from the perspective of ethics, arguing that my psychoanalytic study necessarily points to the entwinement of ontology, epistemology and ethics. Joyce’s literary experimentation not only revolutionised western literature, writing his name into world history, but also inaugurated an emergent subjectivity in modernity. In answering Spivak’s question, ‘Can the Subaltern speak?’, one of my main theses is that the subaltern can speak through the process of self-naming, through the self-invention of a new subjectivity and a New Symbolic. In Chapter One, I critically review Lacan’s theorisation of the ethical models in his long career, engaging in the current debates among Lacanians regarding the definition and efficacy of Lacan’s theory of the (ethical) act and the interconnected ethico-political theories in the contemparay landscape. I evaluate Lacanians’ diverse stances toward Žižek’s interpretation of Lacan centered on the emphasis of negativity and Badiou’s theory of event and truth-procedures. After offering my own theoretical evaluation and intervention into the above-mentioned debates, I also seek to foreground the place of love in Lacanian psychoanalysis and to elucidate how love manifests itself ethically. In my reading of ‘Scylla and Charybdis,’ I argue that Joyce, through Stephen’s idiosyncratic theory of Shakespeare, articulates his artistic ambition as a work of/for a singular universal, endeavouring to transform the human subject by way of writing a book of himself, and of making a self out of writing. I take Joyce’s literary experiment in ‘Cyclops’ as an arrangement deployed through the narrative by the Nameless One that juxtaposes with the rhetorical excess of interpolated digressions. Drawing on Lacan’s theorization of the look and the gaze, I contend that Joyce conducts a literary traversal of fantasy, a working through of symptomatic nationalism. The interpretation of ‘fantasmatic’ working offers an alternative reading to the historicist approaches and critiques of Gibson and Nolan. I also argue that neighbour love has already prefigured in ‘Cyclops,’ in Bloom’s proclamation of the ideal of universal love and in the poetic justice of Bloom’s escape from his xenophobic, Cyclopean neighbours. The psychoanalytically-inspired theory of ‘de-activation of the law’ and Badiou’s conception of ideological ‘subtraction’ are enlisted in my interpretation of neighbour love. I read ‘Circe’ as Joyce’s experiment with a sinthomatic construction of subjectivity, contending that there is a constant process of unknotting and reknotting in the construction of textual subjectivity. I examine whether the sinthomatic construction of subjectivity, as it is evidenced in the fantasmatic episodes, truly invents a new structural stratification of subjectivity and alternative libidinal organization. By way of Lacanian psychoanalysis and Žižek’s theory, I argue that masochism in ‘Circe’ is not necessarily ethical but can function as a preparatory step towards the true ethical act. Pseudo-messianism and masochism are opposed to the true messianism manifested through neighbour love as a genuine ethical act. Enlightened by Lacan’s complex theory of the psychoanalytic act and Badiou’s idea of new neighbourhood, I try to capture the ethical impact of genuine messianism. I interpret Joyce’s modern version of ‘Penelope’ as a sinthomatic writing as well, finding this female countersign to be problematic by way of an ethical evaluation of the sinthome as a (singularised) sexual relation and an investigation of Joyce’s belief in his sinthome. Furthermore, my ethical reading is also explored through the productive tension between what I term ‘sinthomatic eroticism’ and love. I invoke both Lacan’s idea of love as ‘compensaiton’ of the non-existence of sexual relationship, and Badiou’s work on love as a way of creatively carving out what I term ‘the ethical space of love’ as a space (not entirely disengaged from but) distinct from the psychoanalytic domain of sexual desires or eros.

This thesis investigates the fictionalized life writings which are engrafted upon four of Marina Warner's novels through the mise en abîme technique called "metabiography". These novels are In a Dark Wood (1977), The Lost Father (1988), Indigo; or Mapping the Waters (1992) and The Leto Bundle (2000). Across this body of work, the evolution of metabiography in the postmodern novel is traced as it gradually turns from the theme of biographical research and its difficulties into the inclusion of different types of life writings within the very structure of these novels. Most importantly, it will be argued that a parallel comes to the fore between the textual exposure of life writing mechanisms and the taken-for-granted ideas or myths surrounding it. In other words, once the biographer's research methods and artistic writing techniques are fictionally uncovered, the alleged detachment and factuality of the genre are destroyed. Moreover, Warner's metabiography presents such a thematic and structural variety that other types of myths are deconstructed; either by (re)positioning the latter within their socio-historical circumstances, or by identifying their correspondences with different trends of literary theory and criticism. Warner's own concerns as a cultural historian provide the guiding principle to the typology of themes expanded by her fiction. The most recurrent ones are Catholicism, female iconography and its role in the subjection of women as well as post-colonial issues. Warner's engrafted life writings will thus be categorized and studied in relation to the variety of themes demystified: religious, folkloric, gender and ethnic/racial. The denomination of myths will be applied to the latter due to their nature as prejudiced ideas and generalizations.

In response, the thesis provides extended and in depth readings of Quin’s books, short pieces, manuscripts and letters to demonstrate how these by turns overtly experimental, allusive, chaotic and frustrating texts are also carefully crafted, replete with clues and motifs, and in conversation with their time and place. Aware of the need to somewhat ‘introduce’ the writer, my readings draw out and consider locations of resonance and discord between her writing, life and cultural contexts. In addition, engagement with specific sources – from George Eliot to Beckett, Woolf to Sartre, Jane Harrison to William Burroughs, Dostoevsky to Alain Renais – reveals how Quin’s writing responds to, interrogates, encompasses and transcends these. Where relevant, the thesis is also informed and extended by a more theoretical approach. Indeed, my distinctive methodological approach reveals the points at which life, writing, historical context and theory are productively interwoven. Throughout, I argue that while the writing seems anachronistic by being immersed in earlier literature, it is precisely this immersion which energises its resistant rebellion to and ironic interrogation of the dominant ideologies and literary practices of its time. In this, Quin’s is writing both of the shadows and designing its own.

This thesis explores the dynamic relationship between the nineteenth-century novel and the screen, interrogating evolving trends in film and television adaptation from the mid-1990s to 2009. In contrast to many other studies in this field, such productions are understood as both adaptations and ‘costume dramas’, whilst the often neglected televisual context is highlighted alongside the paratexts which shape and surround adaptations. At the same time, the enduring (yet often dismissed) notion of ‘fidelity’ is recognised and developed, as expectations of faithfulness extend beyond the literary text to privilege the legacies of prior adaptations. As this thesis will show, classic-novel adaptations are increasingly framed by change and tension, as movements towards ‘contemporising’ representations of the past, and reinvigorating costume drama, have been shadowed by a growing unease with the stylistic innovation and ubiquity of the genre. An introductory chapter outlines theoretical approaches towards, and critical studies of, adaptation and costume drama, contextualising this thesis whilst defining new directions for study. Chapter one focuses upon Jane Austen, re-exploring the significance of Andrew Davies’s Pride and Prejudice (1995) and examining ‘Austenmania’s’ tense pull between tradition and innovation. Chapter two considers how conflicting perceptions of what constitutes ‘Gaskellian’ become interlinked with the struggle to characterise contemporary period adaptation. Chapter three explores the evolving interrelationship between the Brontës, the ‘Brontë Myth’ and the screen, whilst chapter four readdresses the long history of adapting Dickens, the ‘Dickensian’ film redefined by Davies’s ‘soap-like’ treatment of Bleak House (2005). A concluding chapter examines classic-novel adaptation in 2009, returning to Austen as emblematic of many of the issues confronting the genre, and offering some thoughts about its immediate future. Above all, this study interrogates the ever-shifting relationship between text and screen, enabling refreshing interpretations of both novel and adaptation.

Comprising of a novel and complementary discourses, this thesis investigates the traditional distinctions between theory and creative practice, and contributes new insights into the practice, craft, and theory of the contemporary novel. Carrington’s is a novel about people living with the complexities of mid-life, set against the backdrop of a busy department store. Alongside the novel, my research looks at the question of whether the pre-planning of a novel stifles creativity. As part of testing this theory, I have been able to compare the process of writing an unplanned novel (Cappuccinos) and a second novel (Carrington’s) which involved much planning. I investigated where creativity comes from and looked at the physiology of the body and the two hemispheres of the human brain. In relation to that, I looked also at the education system that has weighed heavily on left brain teaching and ignored the right brain qualities of creative students. I interviewed six published authors, including Susan Hill and Joan Bakewell, to investigate the processes they use in taking an initial idea through to a final draft. A further exploration was made of the 50,000 word annual National Novel Writing Month competition which has no planning methods. I also examine the methods used in the writing of my novel and make a study of literary craft.

The thesis examines certain aspects of Dickens's relationship to a number of his English Romantic predecessors, namely Wordsworth, Coleridge, Hazlitt, Hunt, De Quincey and Lamb. The central line of enquiry concerns the pre-occupation of these writers with the relationship between the adult self and its formative childhood origins, with the ways that "the child is father of the man", and the possible light that can be thrown upon certain of Dickens's novels by tracing the ways in which he inherits and modifies the fruits of this pre-occupation. Chapter one introduces this theme as an element of the Romantic outlook, and gives a summarised account of those manifestations of it in Dickens that are to be discussed at length later in the thesis, Chapter two begins with an account of the residual traces of the theme in the early novels, and then proceeds to a discussion of how the Wordsworthian-Coleridgean advocacy of a continuity between child and adult selves is developed in Charles Lamb in a manner at times more pertinent to Dickens's nature than it is in the major figures themselves. The dissimilarity between Dickens and Lamb on this score is also emphasised. Chapter three is a study of the inter-relation between the Romantic endorsement of continuity, and the 'sentimentalist'- derived idea of comedy as an essentially genial activity, followed by a study of Dickens's comedy in the light of these ideas. Chapters four and five offer readings of Dombey and Son and David Copperfield, stressing how Dickens, in marked contrast to Wordsworth but not unlike De Quincey, is in these novels sensitive to the tension between the claims of morality and the claims of continuity, the desirable integrity of the adult self to its childhood roots. Chapter six is a reading of Bleak House, being mainly an elucidation of Dickens's study in that novel of the consequences in later life of the absence of those conditions in childhood that the Romantics assumed to be the pre-conditions of healthy later life. Finally, chapter seven examines Little Dorrit along somewhat similar lines, but pays special attention to the novel's complex sense of the interdependence of 'continuity and what it feels to be the somewhat ambivalent ability to resignedly accept life's limitations as inevitable: Dickens's attitude to this interdependence is compared to and contrasted with Wordsworth's.

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‘Through a Lens Darkly: Investigating “Reality” in The Village’ documents the process of rewriting my novel The Village. Organised into three sections, in addition to the full manuscript of the published novel itself, this thesis sets out to examine the ways in which I sought to represent a particular authorial reality in the final draft, after registering its absence in the first version of the book. The first section tackles the process of writing the first draft, the response from my editor, and a distillation of the flaws in the story-telling approach that I felt were preventing the text from having an authentic quality at that point. The second section documents the first part of my endeavour to correct this, through my search for telling detail within video and audio recordings of Sanganer (the North Indian ‘prison-village’ on which The Village is modelled). The third section focuses on the specific influence of three writers on the style and content of the final draft of the novel: Doris Lessing, James Salter and Daniyal Mueenuddin. I read Lessing for insight on tackling issues of exotica and colonialism within the text, Salter for the ability to create a diffuse, ambiguous point of view (in order to force the reader to engage with his or her own viewpoint), and Mueenuddin for techniques to create a powerful sense of place. I have given examples of the ways in which my engagement with these aspects of craft had impact on the final, published version of The Village. A short summary of the novel is given in the appendix at the end of this document. All references to The Village: a doctoral thesis are to the manuscript of the novel supplied as the second part of this manuscript.

This thesis explores how a selection of British children‟s stories written by three female authors between 1880 and 1915 reflected and contributed through verbal and pictorial sartorial images to the construction of a new version of identity: one that is not determined by birth and thus cannot be contained by established mechanisms of control. Scholarship in queer theory has already drawn attention to how dress is employed in literature and popular culture to construct identity, but this thesis draws attention to the centrality of dress images in the gradual construction of more liberated versions of not only gender, but also national and class identity. By providing three substantial case studies involving rigorous close reading of the language of dress, this study also lays the foundations for future research. This thesis consists of an introduction, five chapters and a conclusion. Using Beatrix Potter‟s The Tale of Tom Kitten (1907), the Introduction argues that reading the language of attire permits a more nuanced understanding of how a story participates in the discursive construction of identities through a discussion of images of dress, undress and cross-dressing. Chapter Two examines images of dress in the popular press, to illustrate how clothing was closely involved in socio-political discourses and how it both expressed and influenced contemporary (often contesting) constructions of identity. Chapter Three explores how in some nineteenth-century children‟s texts the bodies of animals were implicated in socio-political discourses. Close reading reveals a shift over the course of the century, from clothed animals largely being used to confirm existing social structures to their use to challenge and even transgress existing social boundaries. The chapter explores the implications of this change on constructions of identity that emerge as more negotiable. The next three chapters are based on reading the language of clothing in selected stories by, respectively, Burnett, Nesbit and Potter, focusing on the relationship between clothing and identity. Finally, the Conclusion offers a sartorial reading of a select list of texts belonging to other genres, written in other countries and at other times, to suggest the possibilities of future research in this area. Key texts discussed are Burnett‟s A Little Princess, Being the Whole Story of Sara Crewe Now Told for the First Time (1905), Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886) and The 3 Secret Garden (1911) as well as the lesser-known The Lost Prince (1915). My discussion of Nesbit involves the three stories about the Bastable children in The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899), The Wouldbegoods (1901) and The New Treasure Seekers (1904). In Potter‟s case, I examine the well-known Peter Rabbit stories as well as a range of others, such as The Tale of the Two Bad Mice (1904), The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle (1905), The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher (1906), The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck (1908), The Tale of Samuel Whiskers (1908), The Tale of Ginger and Pickles (1909), The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse (1910), The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes (1911), The Tale of the Pie and the Patty-Pan (1911) and The Tale of Pigling Bland (1913).