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Taking a more philosophical than literary view of Lawrence, this thesis interprets Lawrence's life and work in terms of its philosophical import and suggests that Lawrence's mature thinking can be seen as exemplifying the spirit of pragmatist philosophy. To that end, the ideas of pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty are drawn upon in order to shed light on the course and outcomes of Lawrence's philosophical development. Daniel Dervin and Terry Eagleton are also prominent among other critics to whom I refer. Drawing on texts from several of the genres in which Lawrence wrote, the case is made that the particular circumstances of Lawrence's early life and emotional development first drew him towards an essentialist philosophical position which in tum led him into an ill-conceived 'messianic' phase. Among the texts considered here are Lawrence's short story' A Modem Lover' and essays including 'The Crown' and 'The Reality of Peace'. These texts span the period 1910 to 1917. Lawrence's association with the philosopher Bertrand Russell is also discussed. Lawrence's eventual abandonment of philosophical idealism is discussed in relation to his 'Democracy' essay of 1919 and the 1921 novella The Ladybird. Following a period of acute personal crisis in the aftermath of his failed messiahship, Lawrence's thinking is shown to have developed along lines which closely parallel Rorty's idea of' contingency'. The main text discussed here is Lawrence's Sketches of Etruscan Places, a piece of travel writing dating from 1927. A further stage sees Lawrence moving to a position analogous to Rorty's idea of 'irony'. The key text here is Lawrence's novella The Escaped Cock (written in two stages spanning 1927-8). The thesis culminates in an extended discussion of the three versions of Lady Chatterley's Lover (written during the period 1926-8) viewed in the light of Rorty's notion of 'solidarity'.

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This thesis sets out to find Margiad Evans (1909-1958) in her works. To this end it offers an analysis of her four novels, her autobiographical texts, both published and unpublished, and her private writing, including letters and journals. Benefiting from insights drawn from autobiographical and psychoanalytic theory, the thesis explores the relationship between the life and the work and illuminates the various processes by which Evans uses the raw material of her experiences to create and recreate an identity. This resulting self is multi-faceted and shifting, but a continuing thread is her aim to construct for herself the identity of writer. Writing, therefore, becomes a perfonnative act creating and reinforcing the desired identity. This thesis explores the significance of the body in Evans's texts: she not only perceives body as text but also intuits how the text might come to stand for the suffering body. The latter, the need of the writer to construct herself through language, becomes acute for Evans as her body fails and motivates the writing of her two pathographies. A Ray of Darkness (1952) is one of the first of its examples of the genre. I also demonstrate the various ways in which Evans's texts can be read in the light of the history of Modemism. I explore the way shifting borders and identities are portrayed in the texts, as well as their self reflexive concern with their own production and the blurring of the distinction between fiction and autobiography. The thesis shows the continuity and development of Evans's personal therapeutic ideology of writing through all her texts. Evans's subject is always herself, but crucially herself as an author intimately and passionately involved in the process of writing.

This thesis examines Graham Greene's treatment of ideas of home through the full course of his writing career and finds that, while the sense of home proves elusive for Greene's characters, they nonetheless consistently search for such a place. As Greene's career progresses it becomes ever more apparent that "home" is not necessarily the home of traditional expectation, but may be found in a variety of unforeseen places and experiences. Chapter One deals with the 1930s-the upheaval of the inter-war period and nostalgia for the lost security of the Victorian world-as experienced by Greene's youthful characters, all of whom are, in varying degrees, either actually or metaphorically homeless. Chapter Two sees the characters moving on into adulthood, becoming settled (or trapped) into conventional family homes. The background of the Second World War brings a sense of danger into ordinary life: many characters revel in this intrusion of the unheimlich into the everyday. In Chapter Three, which considers Greene's work in the 1950s and 1960s, Greene's characters struggle with the new uncertainty of the post-war, atomic age. Facing the fear of total destruction, many retreat into detachment, leaving behind old notions of home. Their aim is to go ever further, never back. Chapter Four covers Greene's last years and his fiction in the 1970s and 1980s, as he sought and found his own final home. His characters discover a more abstract sense of home, as Greene plays with ideas of fiction and reality and finds a blurred line between the two. Ultimately, my thesis finds that Greene and his characters are made more, not less, concerned with ideas of home by their homeless status, and that eventually, a sort of home is available to almost all who will look beyond the obvious, conventional means to it. These characters will attain a sense of personal authenticity without which, in Greene's work, no real home may be found.

This thesis investigates the relationship between literary and popular/populist fiction by examining Conrad's use of five character types common in popular fiction in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the detective, the infonner/spy, the spymaster, the anarchist/terrorist, and the swindler. Conrad's fiction has previously been situated in relation to 'exotic' genres such as adventure fiction ; what is original about my thesis is its use of a very wide range of texts from 'urban' genres such as detective and espionage fiction to reconstruct what Conrad's contemporary readers would have expected from novels featuring the character types listed above. This enables a more thorough examination of Conrad's engagement with urban genres than has previously been attempted, using popular texts not previously examined in relation to Conrad. The thesis argues that Conrad appropriated character types from populist genres for three reasons: as a commercial strategy to make his fiction marketable, as a way of responding to topical or contentious social and political issues, and as a means of creative experimentation. The thesis argues that Conrad's fictions are simultaneously ' literary' and 'popular', and that Conrad achieved distinctive aesthetic effects by applying particular literary techniques - what he called "treatment" - to popular subjects such as crime and espionage. This rewriting of genre fiction enabled Conrad to balance the demands of the literary marketplace with artistic and ethical aspirations, and to produce a wide range of narratives that varied significantly in aesthetic effect.

My thesis offers a new way of considering Virginia Woolf s writing, and the different ways in which she introduced the idea of conversation in her writings. The thesis examines this relatively unexplored area of her work, focusing on six different kinds of "conversation" in some of her fiction and non-fiction. These conversations comprise: sending and receiving letters; social and personal conversation; verbal-visual cross-fertilisation; lectures, discourses, or talks that she gives to audiences large and small; hidden conversations or implicit exchanges that Woolf holds with her reader; and the printed discussions and dialogues that Woolf creates between her characters. After providing a general introduction, and a review of critiques of Woolf s idea of "conversation", Chapter One explores the idea that Woolf s conversations with artists originate with her sister, Vanessa Bell. The second chapter describes the interaction between Woolf s writing and Impressionism and suggests that Woolf writes in a bold and colourful style that resembles the techniques of Impressionist painters. Chapter Three discusses Woolf s conversations with her friend, Roger Fry, which comprise both an exchange of letters, and direct conversations. Chapter Four explores how, in To the Lighthouse (1927), Woolf s words interact with Post- Impressionist ideas, thus creating a figurative dialogue between verbal and visual arts. In Chapter Five, the conversation that Woolf establishes between the writer and the reader is considered. Here the origins and shifting meanings ascribed to conversation in Woolf s fiction and non-fiction are discussed. The conclusion drawn is that Woolf did indeed adopt a conversational style in a deliberate move to create a mass audience for her work.

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