This thesis gives readers an opportunity to explore the special relationship that exists between music and literature. Specifically, it confronts this question: 'How can fiction writers employ musical ideas in the construction of their stories and novels?' In so doing this thesis lays out what artists, critics and philosophers have had to say about the relationship between music and literature, and, after setting up the historical context and defining some terms, it shows how musical concepts have been employed in the construction ofnovels by Thomas Mann, Fyodor Dostoevsl'Y and Michael OndaaUe. Importantly, the thesis identifies some musical ideas in these works that the critical community has not yet identified, and offers a more useful definition ofsome musicoliterary terms (such as leitmotif) than have been employed in the past. Towards the end of this work readers will be introduced to the soon-to-be-published novel Some Interludes YVith Charles Mingus, by Paul Meyer, and they will learn how the author ofthis novel has used musical ideas to shape his writing as well.

Three Jumpers (An Elegy for Trevor) is a comic novel about a man who comes to believe that he makes no impact on the world, that the world is entirely unaffected by his existence. Concluding that he has no reason to live, Trevor decides to die. To produce a fitting valediction that might serve as both a memorial and a cautionary tale, he hires a writer, the narrator, Bardolph. The story tells of how, through the writing process, each of these two protagonists struggles to come to terms with his own mortality, and his consequent descent - Trevor's morbid downward spiral towards suicide and Bardolph's spiritual descent towards irreparable loss of faith. Three Jumpers aims to be, among other things, a satire in the Dryden tradition, commentating on 'the Condition of England' through a broad range of 'vices, ignorance, and errors.' It is also an elegy - hence the subtitle. The inherent irony is that the narration - at the core of which is the narrator's struggle with, and apparent failure in, writing the elegy - turns out to be that very elegy. More importantly, the novel is intended as a parody, albeit, in the best Beerbohmian tradition, a good-humoured and affectionate one. Within the novel there lurk parodic literary allusions, many of them to the chosen texts of the study. The accompanying study is a critical consideration of the Californian comedies (from 1939 to 1948) of Aldous Huxley and Evelyn Waugh. There are four key texts, After Many a Summer (1939) and Ape and Essence (1949 (1948 in USA)) by Aldous Huxley and 'Half in Love with Easeful Death' (1947) and The Loved One (1948) by Evelyn Waugh. These texts are chosen because they are rich in what is defined as death-work (the treatment of death in the text), and they share the Forest Lawn funeral home as a setting. In this way, they highlight Huxley's and Waugh's preoccupation with matters of mortality and spirituality. The study develops and applies a 'chromatic' model of comic literary fiction; while chroma (the essence of colour) might be defined in terms of wavelength and luminance, the comic fictional equivalents are taken to be genre (authors' 'pitch', their response to readers' requirements) and colour (the brightness of the narrative). From this chromatic perspective, the study draws the following main conclusions. Death-work is not a feature of genre but of narrative colour and, contrary to Bernard Bergonzi's view that 'we expect comedies to end more or less happily' (Bergonzi 27), comedies may well reach successfully funny morbid and untimely mortal ends with little hint of happiness either in the here and now or in the hereafter. After Many a Summer is an allegory about American world domination. Waugh is no satirist, and The Loved One is a farce, and is clearly informed by After Many a Summer. Ape and Essence should be read as an allegorical attack on the United States' censorship regimes in train during the late 1940S. Evelyn Waugh's essay, 'Half in Love with Easeful Death', provides Aldous Huxley with the narrative structure for Ape and Essence.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Sussex, 2008.The thesis outlines the course of Victorian nonsense as a playful form of children's literature since Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll and its resurgence in the modernist novel as a dialogic form of writing that calls attention to the physicality of the text: its texture, sound, shape and colour.

This thesis investigates literary relationships between three contemporary women writers—Jeanette Winterson, Pat Barker and Hilary Mantel—and their proposed female precursors—Virginia Woolf and Muriel Spark. Analysing the usefulness of the most influential theories of intertextual relations—Harold Bloom's "anxiety of influence", T. S. Eliot's model of tradition and the post-structuralist notion of intertextuality among others—the thesis proposes a revised model of literary influence, drawing on the concept of psychological trauma as developed in writings of psychologists and trauma theorists since the (re-)invention of the category of post-traumatic stress disorder by the American Psychiatric Association (1980). The thesis seeks to demonstrate the numerous ways in which a vocabulary taken from contemporary trauma theory can shed new light upon the phenomenon and paradigms of literary influence, as well as upon the specific literary relationships under investigation here. While there are many differences between literary influence and traumatic experience, the thesis argues that the former can be seen as a threat to the writer's uniqueness, literary identity and the integrity of his or her text, in ways analogous to how trauma itself can be defined as a threat to the subject's psychological and often bodily integrity. Relying on the elaboration of an idea of the 'trauma' of literary influence that draws on the psychological research on trauma, the thesis examines, through the analysis of Winterson's, Barker's and Mantel's respective fictions, a number of possible new approaches to the study of intertextual relationships in women's writing with potential to extend beyond the focus of the thesis. The discussion of Winterson's engagement with Virginia Woolf's work foregrounds the issues of writerly self-promotion and self-invention and connects Winterson's reliance on Woolf's fiction and essays with the concept of narcissism as elaborated by the self-psychologist Heinz Kohut. By contrast, the investigation of Pat Barker's very different engagement with Woolf's oeuvre draws attention to the highly ambivalent nature of her return to Woolf's fictional and critical work and incorporates the horizontal dimension of sibling relationships, thus emphasising the desirability of combining vertical and horizontal approaches in the study of literary influence. Finally, the analysis of Hilary Mantel's engagement with Spark's work illustrates the difference between a 'traumatic' and a 'non-traumatic' return to the work of a particular predecessor and demonstrates the applicability of the concept of anorexia to the study of intertextual relations. Through its emphasis on the connections between literary influence and the concept of psychological trauma, and its creation of new sub-models of intertextuality, the thesis attempts to demonstrate not only the necessity to construct ever new theories of literary relationships, but also the flexibility and the wide applicability of a modified 'trauma' model of literary influence.

This thesis examines literary representations of women’s work in British and American fiction written and published between 1848 and 1915. It introduces and explores the concept of affective labour to bring to light and evaluate the previously overlooked labours of women in fiction. Adopting the lens of affective labour, the study seeks to focus on the ways in which women strive for self-fulfilment through forms of emotional, mental and creative endeavour that have not always been fully appreciated as ‘work’ in critical accounts of nineteenth-century and twentieth-century fiction. The thesis both reconsiders some well-established and well-known novels by Elizabeth Gaskell, George Gissing, and Arnold Bennett, and introduces some less familiar work by women writers of the time. Many critical studies of nineteenth-century fiction have concentrated on American fiction or British fiction exclusively. This thesis has a strong transatlantic emphasis, as well as a determination to look at both canonical and non-canonical writings. It has two main objectives. Firstly, it seeks to demonstrate the aim of women’s affective labours in the struggle for self-fulfilment. Secondly, in showing how powerful narratives are generated by a persistent concern with affective labour, the thesis seeks to re-evaluate and re-establish some valuable but largely forgotten or neglected works of female British and American writers. Accordingly, the thesis also attempts, where possible, to record significant changes in the reception history of each novel. The thesis is separated into two sections, Section One (Chapters 1-5) examines British fiction, and Section Two (Chapters 6-9) explores the work of American woman writers of antebellum and post-bellum fiction.

The creative component of this thesis, the novel Gris-gris, explores how a mother's betrayal of her daughter and the resulting rape of that daughter is reiterated through three following generations of women within the same family. In the contextualizing component, I explore approaches to effectively crafting the pivotal rape scenes in Gris-gris to avoid reducing the novel, in the reader's mind, to being primarily one "about rape". I did not want the scenes to be pornographic or voyeuristic, metaphorical or ambiguous. I wanted them to be honest and truly affecting - but not hijack the novel's central narrative, which is how one mother's betrayal reverberates through following generations. Two popular, literary novels with plots that hinge on rape scenes are Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Isabel Allende's The House of Spirits. The architecture and positioning of the rape scenes in these works has much to do with each novel's unique narrative power. My original contribution to knowledge, therefore, is a study -- from the point of view of a practicing creative writer -- of 1) how these two writers craft rape scenes in these novels and 2) how, in the writing of Gris-gris, I situate and develop my own practice in terms of craft, while responding to personal and social considerations. This study will inform the creative writer who is assessing how to modulate scenes of rape in literature as one novelist's considered approach to the delicate balances involved in crafting such scenes.

This thesis sets out to define the field of Berlin English-language fiction since 1989 by identifying its distinctive forms of representation of space and memory. The post-Wall Berlin thriller can be characterised as a literary category based on genre combinations and a turn to the past. Distinct spatial iconographies emerge in thrillers representing Nazi Berlin, post-war ‘rubble Berlin’ and the divided Cold War period; even the twenty-first-century city is related to 1920s cabarets. Applying Huyssen’s observations on Berlin as a palimpsest of dynamic relations between past and present, I show that the Berlin thriller’s concern with memory is responsive to contemporary uncertainties in the decades following the fall of the Wall. I proceed to compare British perspectives on divided Berlin in novels with thriller associations by Ian McEwan, John le Carré and James Lasdun. I posit that British involvement in the shared governance of divided Berlin during the Cold War era has fostered a special nostalgia for the city which has influenced the intimacy with which these authors represent the city. Through analysis of spatial relations with both parts of the divided city, I reveal unexpected British affinities with East Berlin, ambivalent memories of the Wall and regret at its fall. McEwan’s detailed psychological mapping of topography illustrates how ruins and abandoned space can preserve memory and challenge Nora’s definition of the memory site as a compensatory form. The contemporary, post-unification city is represented in a sample of novels from a wider Anglophone context. The transitory nature of the visitor narrative is challenged by the growing awareness of the city’s memory which informs Berlin novels by American author, Anna Winger, Mexican novelist, Chloe Ardijis and Irish-German author, Hugo Hamilton. Contrasts between insider and outsider relationships with the city are explored and related to representations of peripheral space. A new emphasis on the greening of Berlin is related to eco-critical perspectives: the prospect of emergence from a traumatic past, as signalled by Hamilton is countered by the premonitions of its return as a haunting presence in Aridjis. The diversity of representations of the past in English-language Berlin fiction since 1989 has been driven by the dynamics of the end-of-era perspective created by the fall of the Wall. I show how a seeming tendency towards detachment from post-unification Berlin contrasts with continuing engagement with memory sites in the contemporary city.

Abstract: Carol Gilligan proposed the concept of an ‘ethics of care’ in her book, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, published in 1982. Her argument was written in agonistic response to a revival of neo-Kantian ethical theorising in the seventies philosophical arguments that granted women a distinctly subordinate place to men as fully fledged ethical beings. In opposition to these theories-- particularly those of Lawrence Kohlberg-- which considered women to be too involved in personal relationships to be able to achieve the requisite levels of detachment to morally gauge ethically demanding situations, Gilligan argued for an ethical code that privileges relationships of involvement and care over abstract principles of a categorical imperative type. She argued that women who felt the need to prioritise such relationships are not deficient in their ethical sensibility but function according to a different but most certainly fully viable value system. Gilligan’s thesis came under fire from later feminists and ethical theorists as the concept of difference took a new turn in feminist theory-- especially post-structuralist-inflected theory of the later eighties and nineties. It is my contention in this thesis that her ideas are still crucially important. And as ethical theory comes to recognise the important role of affect in moral and ethical judgement, her ideas can be revisited in relation to contemporary preoccupation with these issues about knowing and judging. Although revolutionary in its proposition that different people may have different ways of responding to ethically significant situations, Gilligan’s theory of care does not question the traditionally imposed binary between man and women as being rational and emotional respectively. My argument, substantiated by my analysis of current fiction by women (and two men), centres around the proposition, that although these responses do not necessarily and directly correspond with either sex, the responses themselves have a lot of merit. It is revealed in my examination of contemporary novels from different parts of the world that rational/emotional responses relate, instead, to the particular situation of individuals-- advantaged/disadvantaged-- in different social and political structures. I have termed these responses masculine and feminine in my thesis, but have attempted to define masculinity and femininity as related to these socio-political situations, instead of being biologically determined. The definition of femininity in my thesis encompasses particular kinds of responses to various ideas such as cosmopolitan interactions between cultures and even beauty and shame. The novels that I look at in my thesis are: Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss, Toni Morrison’s Paradise, Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, Latife Tekin’s Dear Shameless Death, Salman Rushdie’s Shame, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun and Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child and Ben, in the World. My argument is that by coming to a more or less general understanding of what I am regarding as the variously inflected feminine/disadvantaged position, it is possible to arrive at a coherent ethical value system that is directed to the margins of various social and political structures.

This doctoral thesis seeks to examine some of the narrative techniques of the medieval Welsh and Irish prose narratives and compare and contrast them in an attempt to provide an insight into the mind and the methods used by the final redactor of the Four Branches. The sample of narratives selected for this research consists of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi, Compert Con Culainn, Aided Óenfir Aífe, Tochmarc Emire, Mesca Ulad, Echtra Nerai, Táin Bó Fraích, Scéla Mucce Meic Dathó, and Longes Mac n-Uislenn. The thesis consists of seven chapters. The first chapter explains the main purpose of the research and the reasons behind selecting the primary sources. The second chapter presents a short survey of the existing scholarly views on the material, the editions of the texts used for the purpose of the present thesis, the manuscript sources, and a discussion of the oral tradition. The third chapter explains the theoretical and methodological background on which the research is based. The fourth chapter concentrates on the narrative structure of the texts examined, and offers a graphic representation of the structure of each text. The fifth chapter examines certain narrative devices such as triads, lists, onomastic tales, embedded tales, cynneddfau and geasa, the watchman device, and poetry and roscada; this chapter also offers a discussion on how the use and placement of these devices in the narrative affects the flow of the narrative. The sixth chapter moves away from the level of the narrative structure and explores the variations in the inquit formulae used in the texts. The seventh chapter concludes the research by presenting an attempt at outlining a possible profile of the editor of the Four Branches. Appendix A offers a graphic representation of the narrative structure of Culhwch ac Olwen. Appendix B is a brief note on the censorship of the Four Branches.

In a world that is both globalised and yet deeply divided, Muslim literary studies is crucial to understanding the complex relationship between Islam and the West. It is emerging as an inevitable and insightful field of enquiry that offers analyses of the growing body of fiction that explores the Muslim experience of Britain and the US. Contemporary fiction about Muslims is receiving substantial critical attention, and through this interdisciplinary thesis I show that it can also be a useful source in political theory. I make a contribution to this field by approaching contemporary fiction about Muslims through the lens of history and memory. I do this by examining a number of novels published from 1988 to 2015 that are either written by British Muslims or offer an insightful portrayal into the lives of Muslims in Britain. In the introduction to this thesis, I outline my theoretical framework, specifically how I apply the concepts of history and cultural memory. I also discuss the interdisciplinary nature of the work, drawing connections between political research and literary analysis. In Chapter One, I explore Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and Robin Yassin-Kassab’s The Road From Damascus, showing how close encounters in multicultural spaces do not necessarily suggest successful multiculturalism due to the ongoing evocation of colonial attitudes. In Chapter Two, I discuss Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers and Monica Ali’s Brick Lane. I suggest that both novels consider the importance of cultural memory in how Muslim migrants understand their British identities. Chapter Three examines Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, moving away from debates regarding Islamic history and instead making connections between British colonialism and race relations in the 1980s. My final chapter discusses Leila Aboulela’s The Kindness of Enemies and Ahdaf Soueif’s The Map of Love. I argue that both novels use the concept of genealogy, or tracing ancestors, to interrogate cross-cultural relations in a time of imperialism and state violence. Ultimately, I submit that by approaching these texts through the theoretical lens of history and memory, we can gain a greater understanding of the Muslim experience of multiculturalism.