This thesis examines British Science Fiction between 1945 and 1969 and considers its response to the Cold War. It investigates the generic progression of British SF in the post-war years, assessing the legacy of the pre-war style of scientific romance in selected works from the late 1940s, before exploring its re-engagement with the tradition of disaster fiction in works by John Wyndham and John Christopher in the 1950s. The thesis then moves on to contemplate the writings of the British New Wave and the experimentations with form in the fiction of J.G. Ballard and Brian Aldiss as well as the stories and articles incorporated within New Worlds magazine during Michael Moorcock’s period as editor. Following on from this is a consideration of the emergence of SF film and television in Britain, marking out its convergence with literary works as well as its own distinctive reactions to the changing contexts of the Cold War. This thesis therefore diverges from existing literary histories of post-war British writing, which have largely focused on the numerous crises affecting the literary novel. Such examinations have tended to represent the Cold War as an ancillary theme – despite Britain being the third nation to acquire nuclear weapons – and have generally overlooked Science Fiction as a suitable mode for engaging with the major transformations taking place in post-war British society. Reacting to such assumptions, this thesis argues that British SF was not only a form that responded to the vast technological changes facilitated by the Cold War, but equally, that cultural life during the Cold War presented considerable challenges to Science Fiction itself – with visions of nuclear war and authoritarianism no longer the exclusive property of the speculative imagination but part of everyday life. Additionally, by concentrating on overtly British responses to the Cold War this thesis aims to further illuminate an area of cultural history that has otherwise received limited attention.

This thesis endeavours to examine the presence and absence of female scientists in Victorian fiction by exploring the female experience of science in fiction and in reality. The impact of culture, society and traditional notions of female ‘knowing’ are explored. Real-life women scientists’ work is considered in addition to fictional creations. Firstly, the research explores women such as Jane Marcet’s contribution to popular science writing and the dissemination of scientific knowledge to a predominantly female readership. Secondly, the steps towards women scientists becoming experts in their chosen fields of science are scrutinised. From the limited fictional portrayals of female scientists themes such as the challenges of being an expert scientist, and the implications scientific learning has for love, self-knowledge and on women’s place in society are found. Novels examined include Wilkie Collins’s Heart and Science: A Story of the Present Time, Harriet Stark’s The Bacillus of Beauty and H.G. Wells’s Ann Veronica. Shared experiences and themes also emerge in female detective fiction, where texts such as C.L. Pirkis’s The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective, highlight how the female detective draws upon traditional female knowledge alongside scientific method and utilises them in the field of crime. Both the female scientist and the female detective illuminate how subjugation to the periphery creates new arenas in which women encounter science.

This thesis explores the representation of coma within contemporary fiction and non-fiction, including Irvine Welsh’s Marabou Stork Nightmares, Alex Garland’s The Coma, Stephen King’s The Dead Zone, Iain Banks’s The Bridge, Tom McCarthy’s Remainder and Jeff Malmberg’s documentary-film Marwencol. Initially examining these representations of coma through the lens of ‘trauma theory’, I examine how it is frequently depicted as a purely psychological trauma, often ignoring the physical consequences of brain injury and the impact this can have upon the patient’s identity. During the course of my investigation, I draw links between diverse theoretical fields rooted in literary criticism, philosophy, classics and medicine, creating my own critical framework against which representations of coma can be critiqued and which allows me to explore both authors’ and audiences’ fascination with the condition. Ultimately, I examine how misrepresentations have led to the proliferation of confusion and misinformation surrounding coma within the public arena and I look at the potential damage that this has for the real ‘survivors’. My approach is focused on close-reading, drawing out comparisons between archetypal tropes, common in depictions of coma, that have led to the condition being conflated with others states or disorders of consciousness (from the sleep and dream-states, to the chronic disorder of consciousness, the persistent vegetative state), which further contributes to the overall distortion of public perceptions of the condition. As part of my research, I have run a writing group, the members of which are all survivors of coma and brain injury. I have published collections of their work and I draw on this resource of first-person testimony to critique fictional misrepresentations. In doing so, I have produced an addition to the field of trauma-narrative analysis, examining a medical condition that, whilst depicted frequently in literature and the media, has remained largely unexplored within the sphere of literary analysis.

The central concern of this study is the exploration of the possibilities of a "dialogic" interaction between postcolonial texts and Western criticism. Its preoccupations are the difficulties in producing a responsible and ethical mode of relationship between Western Critical Practice and the postcolonial text. This problem is posed in terms of "inter-cultural" hermeneutics and constitutes an ongoing agenda concerning how postcolonial texts have been and should be read. I term this agenda "the aesthetics of reception." "Dialogue" assumes a two-way exchange. Linking the texts under discussion is the fact that they are "inter-cultural" works that operate within a multiple discursive environment. Many Postcolonial literary texts, whilst drawing on diverse indigenous aesthetic traditions, also interrogate and transform Western orders of representation. They are built upon indigenous and Western aesthetics. I term the study of this complexity "the aesthetics of production." The "Aesthetic", as well as a body of theory on art, is also a discourse of the body and sensation. Part of the thesis explores the representation of the body in the writing of Neil Bissoondath and V.S. Naipaul. I examine the implications of their "bodily style" on historical representation and upon the category of the "postcolonial" itself. My short-hand for these issues is "the aesthetics of embodiment". The writers discussed comprise two Nigerians (Tutuola and Okri) , one Ghanaian (Armah) and two Trinidadians (Naipaul and Bissoondath). The thesis is, therefore, a study of diversity and cultural difference. I have chosen such disparate texts (with the important proviso that all are written in English) in order to test the "performativity" of the concept of the "postcolonial" under the stress of this diversity. The thesis is not a piece of conventional literary criticism, nor a comprehensive account of the authors in its remit. Literary texts are the occasion for the investigation of hermeneutic and theoretical issues presented by postcolonial textuality. The texts under discussion therefore share equal precedence with "secondary materials" from ethnography, literary criticism and critical theory. The overall task of the thesis lies in the challenge of reading postcolonial texts in a spirit of ethical dialogue and the exploration of the difficulties of achieving such an ambition.

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This thesis initially uses writing by B.S. Johnson, Giles Gordon, and contributors to Gordon’s 1975 anthology Beyond the Words: Eleven Writers in Search of a New Fiction, to construct a critical framework by which this ‘New Fiction’ may be defined. As a critical approach to contemporary writing in the late twenty-first century, The New Fiction constitutes a focused critique of formal conservatism, identifying a literary mainstream failing to learn from the innovations of Modernism and adapt writing methodology to suit the cultural situation of the novel at this time. The New Fiction proposes a range of methodological solutions to this problem, encouraging writing which engages with other media, explores solipsistic and experiential subject matter, and wilfully employs formal and linguistic unorthodoxy. Additionally, The New Fiction confounds the pervasive notion of B.S. Johnson in particular as a ‘one-man avant-garde’, identifying collaborative and communicative links between he and other innovators such as Ann Quin, Alan Burns, and Eva Figes. In doing so, the thesis provides evidence for an active and coherent literary group supported by publishers Marion Boyars and John Calder, comparable to groups such as the French nouveau roman. Neither the critical nor the contextual aspects of The New Fiction as a whole is the subject of sustained critical examination, and a primary goal of this thesis is to contribute substantially to the field in both of these areas, supported by case studies of writing by Johnson and Quin. A second aim of this thesis is to employ The New Fiction’s critical framework, considering the return of several New Fiction writers to mainstream publication in the twenty-first century. New editions, and a new wave of criticism, provide an opportunity to investigate the potential application of The New Fiction as more than simply a historical case study of the avant-garde novel. The latter part of this thesis draws connections between The New Fiction and more recent criticism, examining the critical trajectories which connect Johnson, Gordon, and their collaborators to other critics concerned with literary innovation, and the novel’s relationship with new media. This examination is supported by way of direct comparison to twenty-first century American writers, making new critical readings identifying the presence of methodological and ideological similarities in the writing of Mark Z. Danielewski and Jonathan Safran Foer. Ultimately, this thesis argues that The New Fiction continues to provide a valid critique of contemporary writing alongside valuable historical context, in the reading of innovative twenty-first century works.

As a literary category, 'impressionism' has only recently begun to receive regular critical attention. Where impressionism is firmly enshrined in Art History, the term has often been thought redundant in literary criticism. Several scholars have attempted to define and defend impressionism as a literary phenomenon, and while the present study seeks also to bolster its status emphasising how it constitutes a crucial moment in the development of modern literature it also scrutinises the deeper implications of the aesthetic. It is, in addition, the first comprehensive exploration of the literary relationship between the fictional work of the four central exponents of literary impressionism in the English language: Joseph Conrad, Stephen Crane, Ford Madox Ford, and Henry James. Chapter One traces and summarises the aesthetic and cultural origins of literary impressionism. Chapter Two presents a working definition of impressionism, and considers the problems surrounding any such attempt. Chapter Three explores the unique and complex interaction between author, text and reader in impressionist fiction, and observes the potential contradictions involved. The moral and political capacity and alignment of the impressionist aesthetic are the subject of Chapter Four. Chapter Five examines the representations of, and implications for, identity, while Chapter Six develops the more radical implications of the fifth: investigating the consequences, opportunities and dangers of heightened subjectivity. The Conclusion locates the position and status of impressionism in literary history, looking beyond its relationship with modernism to anticipations of the theories and practices of our own time.

In this thesis I examine single women in the interwar fiction of five women writers. Jean Rhys, Rosamond Lehmann, Dorothy L. Sayers, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and Virginia Woolf were all writing during a period of intense speculation about unmarried women and all gave major roles to them in their fiction. During the period following the First World War the single woman was repeatedly dismissed as ‘surplus’ or ‘superfluous’, with the suggestion that there was no place for her in Britain. Anxieties circulated about her financial status, her moral standing, and her sexual and psychological stability. I propose that single women offered distinct textual challenges and revolutionary opportunities to women writers, and I consider the effects of these women on the narratives of writers who chose to offer them a place in their texts.

This thesis focuses on the concept and style of quarrelling in the writings of four British Romantic authors: General John Burgoyne (1722-1792), Thomas Paine (1737-1809), William Cobbett (1763-1835), and Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). All four authors engaged in radical writing about war, politics and various controversial social issues during the American War of Independence and the Regency period (1811-1820). This study situates their political arguments in the historical context and the political discourse of the time. It demonstrates how their style of arguing is particularly aptly described by the term 'quarrelling' because of the combination of personal motives, interests and conflicts with the discussion of larger public problems during this turbulent historical period. I start with a discussion of General Burgoyne’s pamphlets, through which he sought both to justify the political decision of the surrender of British troops at Saratoga and to clear his name of accusations of being personally responsible for losing the war. I compare Burgoyne’s suppression of anger and use of a polite style of arguing to Thomas Paine’s gradual transition from a humble quarrelling approach in his pamphlet The Case of the Officers of Excise to a more openly angry and sarcastic attitude in his later works in support of America’s independence. Paine’s predominantly rational and objective rhetoric is then contrasted to William Cobbett’s cantankerous attitude in his pamphlets, letters and his own newspaper The Political Register, through which he conducted polemical battles blending public issues with personal conflicts. Finally, the thesis compares the rhetorical devices of quarrelling exemplified in the political prose of Burgoyne, Paine and Cobbett to the use of poetry for the purposes of political quarrelling by Shelley. In this wide range of quarrelling attitudes, the thesis outlines the fluctuation between personal emotions, in particular anger, and an objective or polite tone in the written quarrels of each author, as well as between these authors. It thus demonstrates how their stylistic choices were affected by their social positions and circumstances and the different audiences they were addressing. The comparison of these four authors’ methods of combining personal and public arguing aims to give a sense of how quarrels were conducted within the public sphere in the Romantic period.

This thesis explores abstraction in the writing of Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, and Virginia Woolf. It argues that the “abstract”, a familiar concept in the visual arts, is also invaluable for reading certain aesthetic innovations in Modernist fiction. The scientific and philosophical discoveries of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century had a profound impact upon concepts of truth and reality. The dualism that had dominated western philosophy for centuries was deeply undermined by various intellectual advances: relativity and uncertainty reigned in the stead of balanced, absolute opposites. The abstract experimentation of Conrad, Forster, and Woolf is deeply entrenched in the contemporary crisis of dualism. Each of these authors appropriates and reimagines a traditional, philosophical dualism in order to add another, expansive dimension to familiar and descriptive language. The manifestations of abstraction in their fiction varies greatly: ranging from the use of geometric, abstract images, to the invocation of related abstract concepts, like negativity and ineffability. Despite the diversity of form, each of these abstractions depends upon a conceptual dualism, between the concrete and metaphysical, visible and invisible. Embattled dualisms pervade the novels examined here: Conrad’s Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’, Lord Jim and The Secret Agent; Forster’s Maurice, Howards End and A Passage to India; and Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and The Waves. The dualistic play of each of these authors proves crucial for expressing their fundamental vision. Conrad’s alliance of irreconcilable antagonisms structures a perpetual tension and stalemate, effecting something of his pessimism and horror at the fundamental senselessness of existence. Whereas Forster’s abstractions promote his more optimistic outlook. The interminable oscillation between opposites in his writing is a source of truth, rather than an admission of a fundamental ignorance. Forster’s dualisms are a stimulus for connection, realising his central ethos – ‘only connect’ – in the very aesthetics of his literature. For Woolf, abstraction helped her overcome the fundamental problem facing the artist: the struggle to find an image to convey what s/he means. Woolf’s abstraction translates the metaphysical vision of the artist into a concrete image: it reconciles vision with design. By reading the metaphysical dimension of Conrad, Forster, and Woolf’s ‘double vision’ as abstract, we can appreciate their stylistic innovations as strategies for responding to and realising shifting concepts of reality.