This PhD thesis focuses upon the work of the neglected modernist poet Joseph Macleod (1903-1984), exploring in particular the development of his poetic style from the impacted, allusive and opaque high modernist long poem The Ecliptic (1930), through to the five books of poetry written under the pseudonym ‘Adam Drinan’: The Cove (1940), The Men of the Rocks (1942), The Ghosts of the Strath (1943), Women of the Happy Island (1944) and Script From Norway (1953). In these poems, he developed a documentary style of verse containing a strong simplicity and a socialist focus upon locality. An Old Olive Tree (1971), his final poem sequence, is entirely autobiographical, containing poems which meditate upon the friendships and familial ties which moulded his identity, and the ageing process. The causes and the implications, artistic and political, of his transformation are related to the key environments and literary relationships of his life. This exploration entails an investigation into his personal papers. The NLS archive is extensive, and in preparation for this work I undertook a first full listing of the contents of the previously uncatalogued materials. I am selective in my use of material from this vast primary resource, which contains over ten thousand items. I do, however, wish to give an indication of the literary correspondences this writer, theatre director, theatre historian and broadcaster maintained, in particular as a poet in contact with other significant poets and writers of his time. Macleod’s writing style changed over time in response to various factors, including his recognition of the importance of addressing audience and readership, as much in his work as an actor and director of the Cambridge Festival Theatre (1928-35) and in his work for the BBC as a radio announcer during the World War II, as in his poetry and prose writings. The thesis consists of six chapters, each dealing with an area of Macleod’s life and work, in chronological order. For the sake of clarity, Chapter One is an introduction giving biographical details and an overview of Macleod’s life and work, such as his early life at Rugby School, and his important and close friendship with the artist, critic and art theorist Adrian Stokes there. It also considers his time at Balliol College, Oxford, and his key friendship with Graham Greene, his time at the Cambridge Festival Theatre, and begins to examine his middle years announcing at the BBC. Chapter Two considers Macleod’s early poems and in The Rugbeian, the school’s literary journal, and his editorship with Stokes. It investigates his contributions of poems to The Oxford Outlook (edited, at the time, by Greene), as well as Oxford Poetry, 1924 and 1925. Chapter Three examines Beauty and the Beast (1927), Macleod’s book of literary observation, his first publication in book form, which appeared in the United States as well as in Britain. Chapter Four examines his major work, The Ecliptic, and his correspondence with Ezra Pound, and highlights Macleod’s views on both past and contemporary poetry. Chapter Five briefly considers his work at the Festival Theatre, as an actor, producer, director and writer, and the poetry he wrote and published for the Cambridge Festival (New Lease) Programme (1933-35) while he was editor. It also considers his interest in socialist politics. The main chapter focus is The Cove and The Men of the Rocks, the first two books published under the pseudonym ‘Adam Drinan’, considering the reasons for his adoption of a pseudonym. Chapter Six looks at the final three Drinan books, The Ghosts of the Strath (1943), Women of the Happy Island (1944) and Script From Norway (1953), and the essays he wrote at this time for Scottish journals. It examines the influence of the BBC upon his writing during his mature period. The Conclusion engages briefly with his last years in Italy and his final published collection, An Old Olive Tree (1971), and assesses the complete trajectory of his poetic journey. Two Appendices are included, the first of which contains the poet’s key correspondence, and second gives brief details of Macleod’s works, along with the publishers and editors responsible for their production. Dates of publication, and significant responses both at the time and later are included, to clarify the as yet relatively thin critical context of his work after its original reception.

China was subject to increasingly pressing foreign presence and influence from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, but it was never formally colonised. Accordingly, foreign residents of many nationalities occupied an ambiguous position in the country. This was particularly so during the latter decade of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries, a period of internal unrest, revolution and external wars that saw expatriates either dismissed as irrelevant bystanders in China’s radical process of domestic change, or subject to sporadic but sustained campaigns to rid the country of their presence. Focusing on fiction written by Western residents of China during the period during 1890–1914, this thesis investigates, from a primarily historicising perspective, the extent to which their ambivalent ‘insider/outsider’ status, and the turbulent political and social conditions that they experienced or witnessed during this time, informed the work that they produced for domestic expatriate or overseas markets. It addresses the fictional output of several expatriate novelists, principally: Homer Lea; Mrs Archibald Little (A.E.N. Bewicke); Charles Welsh Mason; Paul and Veronica King (‘William A. Rivers’); and Bertram Lenox Simpson (‘Putnam Weale’). All produced factual works as well as fiction, and careful examination of their diverse fictional subtexts uncovers points of view often radically at variance with their opinions of record. Variously involved in social reform work, employed in Chinese government service (in the form of the Chinese Maritime Customs), engaged in criminal enterprise and associated with revolutionaries, these authors were also part of extensive professional, family and friendship networks throughout the country. An examination of their fictional representations of two social concerns – interracial liaisons and footbinding – reveals that in the context of the latter there is a significantly gender-differentiated response; while the Boxer Rebellion and the 1911 republican Revolution prompt both male and female writers to embark on remarkably similar generic explorations of events, as they universally invoke Romantic and Gothic strategies respectively in otherwise diverse works. In their similarities and in their differences, expatriate authors’ literary engagement with revolutions both social and political suggest that the China they sought to portray in fiction was as subtly varied as their own, distinct, personal relationships with the country they called home.

The proposition that ecological crisis can be ameliorated or even resolved if humans were to 'reconnect to the natural world', has been steadily gaining in popularity since the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962). In a collection of my own poems, Habitude, I unpack this idea, asking what 'connection to nature' might mean and exploring ways in which ecological poetry can be said to enact - thematically and formally - the kind of connection it seeks to encourage. I discuss the use of the poetic 'I' and its absence, scrupulous observation (of mindscape as much as landscape) and mythopoetic narrative, as poetic 'strategies of connection'. In this way, the poems invite the reader to (re)negotiate an emotional, intellectual and spiritual relationship between the human and nonhuman. Habitude suggests that 'connection to nature' is not 'shining union' (Tim Lilburn) but interrelationship, an interdependent co-existence of diverse and disparate species. With reference to both ecocritical texts, in particular the work of Timothy Morton, and contemporary ecopoetics (John Burnside, Robin Robertson, Kathleen Jamie, Don Paterson, amongst others), I present a deliberately polyphonic thesis in an effort to formally embody the notion of interrelationship. Polyphony is represented not just in the different writing styles (academic/conversational/poetic/personal) and genres (poetry and prose), but also in the presence of three distinct voices: alongside the collection of poetry, I engage in two conversations with fellow ecological poets, Susan Richardson and David Troupes. The conversations focus on ecopoetic practice and 'strategies of connection'. In an essay which offers a personal take on 'ecopoetry' and its role in facilitating interrelationship, I explore the strengths of ecological poetry at this time of accelerating climate change and biodiversity loss. I suggest that its value lies not so much in 'saving the earth' (Jonathan Bate), but in offering a covert politics of potential – a space to renegotiate human-nonhuman interrelationship, whilst resting in uncertainty.

<p> This dissertation discusses how Victorian writers, artists, and critics represent historical queens as shadows of Queen Victoria throughout her long reign (1837&ndash;1901). Focusing on Victorian representations of four queens&mdash;Catherine de Medici, Mary Stuart, Queen Elizabeth I, and Marie-Antoinette&mdash;this project seeks to establish a literary genealogy by showing how British writers drew upon historical interpretations of dead French and English queens to express psychological ambivalence, political anxiety about female monarchy, national, confessional difference, and complex sexual and erotic dimensions. Rather than approach these queens as historical persons, this dissertation concentrates on the literary, figural, and spectral qualities that translate unevenly across cultural, religious and historical lines. The dissertation uses interdisciplinary methods drawn from history, psychoanalysis, and feminism to examine how Victorian writers relate their representational strategies to novels, dramas, visual texts, and historiographies in which the queens are sources of sensation, fascination, English moral exceptionalism, and spectacle. The mix of canonical and non-canonical writers recasts the familiar images of these queens in a new light and brings unfamiliar and long forgotten writers into the discussion. In examining how these cultural texts work against the grain of more canonical texts, the dissertation shows how they have the potential to unsettle what it is thought is known about Victorian attitudes toward female monarchy. Finally, I argue that it matters that Queen Victoria is on the throne because she casts her shadow over these cultural texts while they are being produced and consumed.</p>

In this study, I set out to examine the multifarious ways in which Romantic-era women writers appropriated the Gothic for genres other than the novel, and to explore the implications of these appropriations. I look at different manifestations of the Gothic written by women in non-novelistic texts –– such as drama, autobiography, poetry, and chapbooks –– and I contend that the relationship of women writers to gothic writing is more complex and ambivalent than has been shown in earlier studies, revealing the special and intricate relationships of Gothic with genre and gender. In the first chapter, I compare two plays that are based on a well-known highland legend, Joanna Baillie’s _The Family Legend_ and Thomas Holcroft’s _The Lady of the Rock_. I elucidate the role played by genre and gender in formulating two adaptations that bear, each in its own way, on themes of liberation, tyranny and domestic violence. One of the main issues addressed by this chapter is how Baillie appropriates gothic tropes and adapts a legend to suit her gender specific literary and political purposes. In the second chapter, I refer to Diane Hoeveler’s concept of “gothic feminism” and use it to read Mary Robinson’s _Perdita: The Memoirs of Mary Robinson_ and “Golfre: A Gothic Swiss Tale”, a long narrative poem. I consider these texts as instances of an ideological appropriation of varieties of the Gothic that victimizes women, and thus reveals their vulnerability in order, paradoxically, to make a case for their rights and to expose hegemonic patriarchal constructs. In the third chapter I look at the poetic works of the little known Anne Bannerman whose utilization of the Gothic has centred on the deformed body, in this way obliquely revealing her own definition of and experience with disability. The fourth chapter examines yet another minor women writer, Sarah Wilkinson, who lived in almost total obscurity, yet wrote numerous gothic chapbooks. I study her appropriation of the didactic modes of Gothic that are found in chap-literature, and in this way I highlight a new strand of the Gothic that weaves gothic trappings with elements of both popular literature and middle-class morality. In the fifth and final chapter I return to Joanna Baillie in order to study _Orra_ which I believe to be one of her most unusual plays in that it uses gothic conventions to offer a critique on these very conventions. I use Elizabeth Fay’s definition of the “radical critique gothic” to illuminate my reading.

This thesis examines the representations of the self as a cultural agent, both reacting to and actively shaping codes of social and artistic respectability, as displayed in the diaries of the canonical Victorian writers Lady Elizabeth Eastlake, Henry Crabb Robinson, George Eliot, George Gissing, John Ruskin and Gerard Manley Hopkins. It analyses the impact of wider ideological and social imperatives on the diarists’ subjective experience and reads their tendency to silence the self as a symptom of the cultural pressure to merge their private and public persona. These diaries represented a forum in which the diarists perpetually negotiated their own value within the Victorian ideology of productivity and thus not only reflect their inner world but also the cultural climate of the nineteenth century. Chapter One traces the selected diarists’ reluctance to reveal private information, as well as their tendency to foreground professional productivity, to the social pressure to efface emotions relating to the self and to only cultivate those that nurtured the community. It identifies the similarities between the compulsive self-discipline advocated in the psychological discourse of the period, particularly Alexander Bain’s The Emotions and the Will (1859), and the willingness to both live up to and actively shape the cultural codes of respectability that Elizabeth Eastlake and Henry Crabb Robinson display in their diaries. Chapter Two compares and contrasts the desire for maximal professional productivity as exhibited in George Eliot’s and George Gissing’s diaries. Both worked obstinately in order to increase their own value: whereas Eliot sought to redeem her ‘guilt of the privileged,’ Gissing desperately needed to increase his financial solvency through literary output. Chapter Three discusses the ways in which John Ruskin’s diary helped him block out unrespectable and painful private experiences through transforming his obsessive desire to appropriate and “feel” visual experience into a professional task. Chapter Four shows that Gerard Manley Hopkins—because he was acutely concerned by his cultural otherness caused by his homosexuality—not only sought refuge and validation by joining the Jesuits, but by narrowing his realm of experience to nature, merged the private and the public self into the figure of the professional, asexual, dutiful and disinterested observer.

Over the four hundred years which have elapsed since the publication of The Faerie Queene, the effectiveness of Arthur as the central hero of the poem has been called into question time and time again. Critics have objected to the sporadic nature of Arthur's appearances, and to the fact that this quest is unfinished. In the first chapter of my thesis I provide a survey of Spenser criticism, covering neoclassical and romantic views as well as a selection of twentieth century studies. My own argument centres on the belief that the role of Arthur in The Faerie Queene is not best understood in terms of a narrative with a beginning, middle and end. In contrast to the titular heroes of each book, perfection is the starting point of Arthur's story, not a goal he gradually works towards. The effects of Arthur's interventions do differ from book to book, but this reflects the evolving moral allegory of The Faerie Queene rather than the development of Arthur himself. In order to highlight the pre-eminence of Arthur vis-a-vis the titular knights of The Faerie Queene, chapter two compares the presentation of Arthur in a selection of medieval texts: the Celtic Arthur of the Mabinogion, the courtly king of Chretien de Troyes, Arthur's relation to the Grail in La Queste del Saint Graal, the warrior-king of Layamon's Brut, and the gathering together of different types of Arthurian narrative by Sir Thomas Malory. There has not been extended study of Spenser's Arthur in this context - those critics who touch on the topic tend not to go beyond the generalisation that Spenser exploits the prestige of Arthurian tradition whilst avoiding the constraints of reworking the familiar story.

published_or_final_version / Comparative Literature / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

No description available.

The main aim of this thesis is to explore Christina Rossetti?s poetic vocation and persona as a nineteenth-century woman poet in the competitive literary marketplace. It begin by mapping out the socio-historical factors that, I argue, shape the construction and reception of women poets. Gender ideology is central to this issue, which the thesis explores by comparison of Christina Rossetti?s work with the paintings and poetry of her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti. An overview of contemporary critical opinion and reception history in Chapter One demonstrates the construction of the Rossettis? professional image and sense of vocation. The following chapters compare reciprocal works by each poet in a range of literary genres: the early semi-autobiographical prose works ?Maude? and ?Hand and Soul?, the narrative poems ?Goblin Market? and ?Jenny?, and the amatory sonnet sequences Monna Innominata and The House of Life. Fundamental to these comparisons is the image of woman, for femininity is seen to be at the heart of the nineteenth-century aesthetic. The concept of woman as image is unravelled, in Chapters Two, Four and Six, in a discussion of Dante Gabriel Rossetti?s wife, Elizabeth Siddal, who was also a painter and poet. Elizabeth Siddal?s value as an image superseded her value as an artist and indeed a woman. The inter-relation between fallen women and women poets is linked to the problems of women poets as both poetic producers and poetic inspiration. The particular problem of the woman poet is a continuous strand of argument throughout the chapters. Christina Rossetti?s poetry is seen to explore the choices available to nineteenth-century women in a dominant patriarchy. Her resistance to and compliance with these choices is shown as central to her work. The final chapter joins the strands of the argument to focus on woman as icon, commodity and image as it is demonstrated by both brother and sister. Elizabeth Siddal is shown to have lost her identity in favour of her image. Dante Gabriel Rossetti is identified by the image of the women represented in his poetry and painting. These women become the sign of his artistic persona. Christina Rossetti?s tenacity in retaining her identity is located in her religious faith, her poetic gift and her ability to both comply with and resist patriarchal dominance.