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This thesis is a qualitative discourse analysis of the case of Karla Homolka. The purpose of this thesis has been to examine how Karla Homolka was socially constructed within the three data sources: (1) the trial transcripts from R. v. K. Bernardo, 1993; (2) her testimony In Chief, cross-examination, re-dress, and re-cross-examination from R. v. P. Bernardo, 1995; and (3) The Report to the Attorney General on Certain Matters Relating to Karla Homolka, 1997. A critical examination of how Homolka was constructed as being representative of both the two sides of three dichotomies was conducted. The three dichotomies are: (1) angelic/demonic; (2) Madonna/whore; and (3) woman in danger/dangerous woman. Evidence supporting Homolka's construction as being simultaneously the two sides of each dichotomy was found. The motives behind the varying claims purported by the different claims-makers were examined. It was concluded that Homolka's characterization as being simultaneously in danger and dangerous led to the clouding of the comprehension of her character and her role in the crimes she committed. This confusion regarding her persona has demonstrated that there is a newly emerging category of offender, that of the sexually violent female predator. It was proposed that this confusion might lead correctional officials to be more oppressive and possibly more punitive with respect to other violent women.

'A Singular Person': Portraits of Subjectivity in the Poetry and Prose of Matilda Betham represents the first book-length study of Matilda Betham's literary output. A poet, biographer, and portrait artist, Betham is best remembered for her friendships with S. T. Coleridge, the Lambs, and Robert Southey. Referring to manuscript and printed material, this thesis uses feminist and New Historical critical methods to examine Betham's contribution to British Romanticism. It offers a biography of Betham and a historically contextualised analysis of her own construction of women's role in civic affairs. Betham's political affiliations, as well as the generic range of her poetic and scholarly representations of history, suggest her engagement with contemporary discussions surrounding subjectivity and self-representation. Her Biographical Dictionary participates in a construction of female identity that redefines the feminine while acknowledging the influence of preceding historians. The location and recovery of her autobiographical writings inform this examination of Betham's biographical research. The thesis argues that Betham's political views surrounding broad social representation also emerge in her exploration of the relationship between the lyrical voice and enfranchised selfhood. Betham combines her scholarly and poetic depictions of the individual enacting social change in The Lay of Marie , a historically informed metrical romance that compares to compositions by poets, both male and female, who similarly consider the demands of subjective interpretation of publicly available modes of historical discourse.

This thesis adopts a social-cultural approach to the history of politics to explain contradictions in the "Laurier legend" and connect social and political history traditions. It argues Laurier is best understood as the representative of Quebec-Est where he engaged in the social-cultural work of politics, linking citizens to their government. Quebec-Est guided him consistently. It was an urban, working-class, commercial and industrial, French Canadian Catholic riding, devastated by economic decline in the mid-nineteenth century. This social and economic context reduced the immediacy of national conflicts over language and religion and encouraged compromise, to secure government resources needed to renovate the port, bridge the St. Lawrence, build a railway to the west and regain the city's "rightful" place in Canada. It fostered a political culture characterized by intense partisanship, personal accountability and broad public interest in local businesses---including their labour disputes. When Laurier was first elected, Quebec-Est had relatively close-knit business and social networks. As it grew, social relations became more structured, impersonal, and a greater range of activities reduced public space for politics while the Church successfully resisted and adapted to these modern trends, regaining local influence. The thesis traces this evolution through changes in the instruments for shaping and expressing public opinion that connected Laurier to Quebec-Est: the Liberal party, the party newspaper, election campaigns and patronage. Much was expressed through conflict between two factions: 'les vrais liberaux,' organized around pre-existing personal networks of businessmen and labourers, and 'les parentistes,' a more impersonal organization of larger, more conservative, businessmen structured around patronage. When, one, or both, held sway, Laurier fulfilled the riding's ambitions. When they fought, he could address other concerns. A definitive 'vrai liberal' victory over 'les parentistes' in 1906 deprived Laurier of a disciplined organization for patronage distribution, encouraging him to rationalize the civil service and newspaper management. He remained loyal to the party, but it had become disconnected from the larger manufacturers, Catholic labour unions and Church organizations with growing influence in the riding. The party's new structure and Laurier's reforms explain his defeat in 1911; he even---very nearly---lost his seat that year.

In Reform and Cultural Revolution, James Simpson has argued that the many affiliations of John Lydgate (1370-1449) mitigate against the traditional critical portrayal of the poet as a mere Lancastrian propagandist. My dissertation explores the influence of Lydgate's major affiliation, his Benedictine monasticism, on his political work. I argue that the autonomy of the Benedictine order was already under siege a hundred years before the Tudor dissolution of the monasteries and that the resulting anxieties and remedial strategies of the Benedictine order could not help but have an impact on the work of a fifteenth-century Benedictine poet. I attempt to show that, far from being uniformly "pro-Lancastrian," Lydgate's political poetry (which comprises just about all of his secular work and much of his religious work) is often openly resistant to the main activities of the Lancastrian regime: the usurpation and murder of Richard II; the suppression of the alien priories and the taxation of the church; the invasion of Normandy and the continuation of the war in France after the Treaty of Troyes and the death of Henry V; and the encroachment of the Lancastrian hierarchical church---under the direction of a succession of powerful archbishops of Canterbury---on the autonomy of the religious orders, the monks in particular. I read Lydgate's works as a reflection of Benedictine policy that, more often than not, stands in opposition not only to the Lancastrian dynasty, but to the official hierarchy of the orthodox church in England, and I reconstruct the poet as a Benedictine spokesman very much in control of his own voice.