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This thesis is comprised of two articles that examine sympathy, material culture, and ownership in Victorian literature. In the first article, I explore the figure of the heiress in the Victorian literary tradition, focusing on Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and Charles Dickens's Great Expectations. George Eliot marked the heiress figure as unsympathetic, no matter her incarnation: whether the moralist of popular fiction or madwoman of gothic fiction, she is representative of excess and indulgence—ideas that society wanted to condemn in harmony with Georges Batailles's observation that a time of indulgence will be checked by a return to conservative bourgeois ideals. The heiress is made a vessel for these cultural anxieties, representing both the desire for and reaction against material possession within the larger male imperial imaginary landscape. The heiress is a way for the male protagonist to indulge in a decadent coming-of-age narrative before being scalded by his secular desires, abandoning this dream for bourgeois security. I employ the criticism of Batailles, Laura Brown, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, etc., in order to discover how the heiress is objectified and controlled, yet, in the greater narrative structure, finds ways to act outside of the male linguistic system as an agent for change—bringing about the collapse of the fake set and props of the material world. In the second article, I examine Charles Dickens's attempts to control his printed materials and his belief that he could coalesce the expanding literate public into a faithful readership. However, Dickens was troubled by illicit reproductions of his work by the popular presses. In order to look at Dickens's concerns not only over losing control of his product, but also having the emotional essence of his characters and stories compromised, I turn to Bleak House which, critics have established, is in part a treatise against unlicensed copies. I argue that the character of Lady Dedlock serves as a representation of Dickens since she, like him, relies on the popular press in order to maintain her social standing, yet she also imagines that she is above them—though, in reality, much of her "private" life is already in public hands. I focus, specifically, on an unlicensed image of Lady Dedlock (that she is unaware of) that has been reproduced in a collection that anyone can purchase. In the end, Dickens allows his fiction to speak for him, forcing the reader to process the invasive horror of unlicensed copies through the emotion they feel for the actual, authentic woman. / Graduation date: 2012 / Access restricted to the OSU Community at author's request from June 20, 2012 - June 20, 2014

by Wong Man-ki. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 157-163). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / 論文提要 --- p.iii / Acknowledgements --- p.v / "Introduction ""Intertextuality"": Definitions and Issues" --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter1 --- Intertextuality in the Eighteenth-Century Novels: Samuel Johnson's Rasselas and Ellis Cornelia Knight's Dinarbas --- p.34 / Chapter Chapter2 --- Postmodern Intertextuality (I): The Subversive Rewriting Project in Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber --- p.61 / Chapter Chapter3 --- Postmodern Intertextuality (II): Toward a Broader Scope ´ؤ Multiple Art Forms in Marina Warner's The Mermaids in the Basement and Paula Rego's Nursery Rhymes --- p.100 / Selected Bibliography --- p.157

Lee Kar Man Ida. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-108). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / 論文提要 --- p.iii / Acknowledgements --- p.v / "Introduction The Victorian Age, the Literary Double and Freedom" --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter I --- Struggle against Restraints: Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde --- p.24 / Chapter Chapter II --- The Ambition to Transgress: Locating Freedom in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray --- p.52 / Chapter Chapter III --- Jekyll and Dorian: Impossible Mission to Achieve an Unrestrained Freedom against the Social Orthodoxy --- p.77 / Works Cited List --- p.101

In the Victorian novel, gender-based social norms dictated appropriate behaviour. Female wrongdoing was not only judged according to the law, but also according to the idealized conception of womanhood. It was this implicit cultural measure, and how far the woman contravened the feminine norms of society, that defined her criminal act rather than the act itself or the injury her act inflicted. When a woman deviated from the Victorian construction of the ideal woman, she was stigmatized and labelled. The fallen woman was viewed as a moral menance, a contagion. Foreign women who committed crimes were judged for their 'lack of Englishness.' Insanity evolved into not only a medical explanation for bizarre behaviour, but also a legal explanation for criminal behaviour. Finally, the habitual woman criminal and the infanticidal mother were seen as unnatural. Regardless of the crime committed, female criminals were ostracized and removed from 'respectable' English society. / vii, 163 leaves ; 29 cm.

This thesis investigates the connection between the spiritualist movement and the literary ghost story, both of which came to prominence and mass popularity during the second half of the nineteenth century. While existing critical literature has viewed both phenomena as symptomatic of a wider Victorian fascination with the supernatural and the nature and possibility of an afterlife, little attention has been paid to the relationship between the two movements. By examining spiritualist literature alongside the work of both canonical and lesser-known writers, I attempt to address this area. My thesis argues for an understanding of the post-1850 ghost story as a dramatic representation of a new conception of the dead largely created by spiritualism, and reads the appearance, actions, behaviour and narratives of literary ghosts as an ongoing reflection and discussion of this idea.

This study examines late Victorian and Edwardian British mummy fiction as a response to the manifold anxieties of the last twenty or so years of the nineteenth century up to the First World War in Great Britain. Mummy narratives of this time reveal the genre to be a very flexible one, partaking not only of the expected Gothic form, but also making fascinating stories out of invasion narratives and mystery fiction, all the while commenting on—and trying to solve—the various challenges of the day. After an introductory chapter that sets the stage for my project, I examine problems of empire and worries about a failing masculinity in the second and third chapters of my study. My fourth chapter looks at the epistemological competition of science and the occult as ways of knowing. I conclude my examination of mummy fiction with a look at silent mummy films as a way to look ahead at the changes that occurred when mummy narratives began to be told in visual form. The whole of the project is examined through a New Historical approach, as I attempt to delineate the place of mummy fiction within the broader discourses of the period. The picture that emerges from the study is one that depicts a worried nation concerned with scientific and social advancement while at the same time largely working to maintain the status quo. / Department of English

The thesis explores how readings of two nineteenth century English novels, Little Dorrit and Middlemarch, can be enhanced by using key elements of Mikhail Bakhtin’s ‘prosaics’ as a lens through which to examine them. Additionally, the readings are used to provide a platform from which to explore the Bakhtinian notion that language is inextricably connected to selfhood. The Introduction (1.1.) offers a brief discussion on Bakhtin and, in particular, to his formulation of a ‘prosaics’, offered in opposition to traditional linguistics (or ‘poetics’) which, he feels, is unable adequately to do justice to the social, ethical and ideological complexity of a dialogised heteroglossia, such as is found in the novel. An explanation follows (1.2.) of why the ‘word’ should not be conceived of as static lexical element but rather as an ‘utterance’. Invested with both clear and distinct meanings as well as dialogic overtones, the word forms the basis of all human communication. As the primary means of expressing the ‘self’, it cannot be heard in isolation but is always responsive and dependent upon “another’s reaction, another’s word – the two ‘interpenetrating’ the single utterance, establishing, as a result, its specific locus of meaning” (Danow 22). Likewise, it follows that the ‘self’ cannot exist purely in and for the individual but is irrevocably linked to the ‘other’. Chapter Two begins with a discussion on the way in which ‘centripetal’ and ‘centrifugal’ forces work simultaneously to shape language (2.1.). It looks at the Bakhtinian idea that language cannot ever have been monologic and unmediated, being instead ever-changing and evolving as a result of numerous influences brought to bear on it such as context, ideology and the discourses of others. The nature of heteroglossia is discussed (with particular reference to ‘dialogized heteroglossia’), as is ‘hybridization’ in which, although a statement appears to emanate from one voice, another parodic or ironic voice will also be evident in refracted form. 2.2. and 2.3 engage in a detailed analysis of selected passages from Books I and II respectively of Little Dorrit with a view to exploring ways in which a Bakhtinian reading is able to provide heightened appreciation of the text. With particular regard to the overtly parodic style of Dickens, I aim to show how Bakhtin’s prosaics, which militates against privileging one ‘voice’ over another, enables the voice of a relatively neglected character, such as Fanny Dorrit, to be adequately heard. Although the emphasis in this chapter is on language, I broach the Bakhtinian notion that both the ‘word’ and the ‘self’ are inscribed through the ‘other’. In Chapter Three the focus shifts to Middlemarch and to Bakhtin’s notion that selfhood can only be properly located in its dialogic relations to ‘another’. The chapter is offered in four parts, beginning with a brief discussion on some similarities between Bakhtin’s and Eliot’s philosophical thinking, particularly in regard to the ethical nature of the self (3.1.). The next three parts provide detailed thematic analyses of selected passages from Middlemarch. Particular attention is paid to Rosamond Vincy and Tertius Lydgate, whose relationship is explored in some detail. In order adequately to chart their development in the novel I begin by situating each of these characters in his or her various ‘fields of action’, or, as Bakhtin would have it, ‘character zones’. Character zones take into account not only the characters’ direct discourses but also other aspects of their being, including their backgrounds, ideologies and the various attitudes held by both the narrator and other characters towards them (3.2.). The next section (3.3.) explores, in dialogical terms, the rise and fall of Rosamond’s and Lydgate’s difficult alliance and it is suggested that their relationship represents the antithesis of the Bakhtinian notion of ‘finding the self in and through the other’. In the final section (3.4.), Rosamond’s and Lydgate’s possibilities for ‘real becoming’ are canvassed when each enters into dialogic relation with Dorothea Brooke. The Conclusion (4) offers a brief discussion of some of the ways in which the novel, as a genre, is open-ended. As such, it affords ongoing discussion in which completeness and conclusiveness is replaced with unfinalizability because “the final word has not yet been spoken” in the ongoing search for meaning (EaN 30). / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2013.

In 'A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism', Jerome J. McGann writes, '[A]n author's work possesses autonomy only when it remains an unheard melody'. For the published and successful writer in the nineteenth century, such autonomy was often unattainable. Publications such as The Pickwick Papers inspired an array of opportunistic successors, including stage plays, unauthorized sequels, jest books, song books, and shilling and penny imitations. Despite the proliferation, this strain of writing is rarely studied. This thesis recovers ephemeral, scurrilous texts, often anonymous or pseudonymous, and reads them in the context of their canonical sources. Retrieving bibliographical environments, it demonstrates how plagiaristic, parodic, and willfully unoriginal works impacted on the careers of three novelists: Charles Dickens, Edward Bulwer Lytton, and George Eliot. The thesis argues that formal distinctions among modes of Victorian writing - criticism, parody, and plagiarism - often blur. Further, it argues that our understanding of a particular novelist's work must be broadened to include sequels, spinoffs, and imitations: to know a particular author means to know the spurious and oftentimes bad (morally or aesthetically) works that the author inspired. The Spurious Victorians of the title form something of countercanon to the 'major' writers of the period. Thomas Peckett Prest, Rosina Bulwer Lytton, and Joseph Liggins, among many others, informed and influenced the literary history that has in turn denied them admission. William Makepeace Thackeray wrote, 'If only men of genius were to write, Lord help us! how many books would there be?' Of course, Victorian print culture found room for the genius and the subgenius, Boz as well as Bos. 'Spurious Victorians' recovers works that have been lost from view in order to better understand the process by which an individual authorial voice emerged amid an echo chamber of competing, imitative voices.