Thesis--Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität. / Cover title. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1990. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 235-241). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1990. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 235-241). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1972. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1968. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1989.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1989. / Also available in print.

This dissertation is a study of the relationship between the modern Künstlerromane of Arnold Bennett, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf and issues of embodiment. Born of the field of aesthetics, the literary genre of Künstlerroman inherits its conflicts. The chief dilemma of the form is how an isolated artistic consciousness connects with the world through a creative act. Bennett, Joyce, and Woolf offer different and contradictory resolutions. By examining how each writer conceives the body, I discover in Woolf the idea of an ethical aesthetics that contravenes the assumed polarity between mind and body, between self and other, and between material and ideal. Written only a few years apart, Clayhanger (1910), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), and The Voyage Out (1915) tell a compelling story of the relationship between embodiment and a creative life.

This thesis considers the teaching of English literature within extramural organisations for adults in England between 1885 and 1910. This challenges the assumption that the beginnings of English as a tertiary-level academic subject can be traced back only as far as the foundation of the Oxford English School at the end of the nineteenth century; in fact extramural English courses had been flourishing for decades before this, and these reached their zenith in the final years before it was introduced at Oxbridge. Oxford created an Honours School of English in 1894, and the Cambridge English Tripos was established in 1917; in ideological terms, such developments were of course crucial, yet it has too often been the case that the extramural literary teaching being conducted contemporaneously has been sidelined in studies of the period. My first chapter will consider the development of English in various institutional and non-institutional environments before 1885, including Edinburgh University, Dissenting Academies, and Mechanics’ Institutes. Thereafter I will explore the campaign, led by University Extension lecturer John Churton Collins, to incorporate English literature as an honours degree at Oxford. Focusing on the period between 1885 and 1891, this second chapter will assess the veracity of some of Collins’s most vehement claims regarding the apparently low critical and pedagogical standards in existence at the time, which he felt could only be improved if Oxford would agree to institutionalise the subject, and thereby raise the standard of teaching more generally. Collins’s campaign enjoyed more success when he drew attention to the scholarly teaching available within the University Extension Movement; my third chapter is underpinned by research and analysis of previously unexplored material at the archives of London University, such as syllabuses, examination papers, and lecturers’ reports. I examine the way in which English literature, the most popular subject among Extension students, was actually being taught outside the universities while still excluded from Oxbridge. Thereafter my penultimate chapter focuses on an extramural reading group formed by Cambridge Extension lecturer Richard G. Moulton. This section considers Moulton’s formulation of an innovative mode of literary interpretation, tailored specifically to suit the abilities of extramural students, and which also lent itself particularly to the study of novels. Uncollected T. P.’s Weekly articles written by Arnold Bennett highlight the emphasis that he placed on pleasure, rather than scholarship. My final chapter considers Bennett’s self-imposed demarcation from the more serious extramural pedagogues of literature, such as Collins and Moulton, and his extraordinary impact on Edwardian reading habits. A brief coda will compare the findings of the 1921 “Newbolt Report” with my own assessment of fin-de-siècle extramural education.

From the first electric lights in London along Pall Mall, and in the Holborn Viaduct in 1878 to the nationalisation of National Grid in 1947, the narrative of the simple ascendency of a new technology over its outdated predecessor is essential to the way we have imagined electric light in London at the end of the nineteenth century. However, as this thesis will demonstrate, the interplay between gas and electric light - two co-existing and competing illuminary technologies - created a particular and peculiar landscape of light, a 'lightscape', setting London apart from its contemporaries throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Indeed, this narrative forms the basis of many assertions made in critical discussions of artificial illumination and technology in the late-twentieth century; however, this was not how electric light was understood at the time nor does it capture how electric light both captivated and eluded the imagination of contemporary Londoners. The influence of the electric light in the representations of London is certainly a literary question, as many of those writing during this period of electrification are particularly attentive to the city's rich and diverse lightscape. Though this has yet to be made explicit in existing scholarship, electric lights are the nexus of several important and ongoing discourses in the study of Victorian, Post-Victorian, Modernist, and twentieth-century literature. This thesis will address how the literary influence of the electric light and its relationship with its illuminary predecessors transcends the widespread electrification of London to engage with an imaginary London, providing not only a connection with our past experiences and conceptions of the city, modernity, and technology but also an understanding of what Frank Mort describes as the 'long cultural reach of the nineteenth century into the post-war period'.