This study explores the shifting notions of postmodernism developed through Muriel Spark’s fiction, and thereby clarifies this artist’s own postmodernism. I use Jean-François Lyotard’s definition of the notion in his The Postmodern Condition (1979), that there is no grand narrative, as my starting point, and deploy various postmodernist theories, which can illuminate Spark’s art and can in turn be illuminated by her art, in my arguments. Throughout the thesis, I focus on two of Spark’s most important themes as crucial keys to understanding her postmodernism: the theme of individual subjectivity and the theme of the interplay of life and art. The thesis begins with the claims Spark makes for her individuality and her individual art through the voice of “I”. Chapter I considers issues about being a woman and an artist, which Spark raises around the narrator-heroine of a fictional memoir, A Far Cry from Kensington (1988). Here I present this heroine as a definition of the strength of Sparkian women who liberate themselves by practicing art. Chapter II discusses Loitering with Intent (1981), a fictional autobiography of a fictional woman novelist, alongside Spark’s own autobiography and her various biographical works. This section illustrates Spark’s notion of the “author” in relation to the “work” - and an author in control in her sense - by investigating the dynamic interplay of life and art in the form of this novel. Chapter III analyses The Driver’s Seat (1970), the novel which most shockingly elucidates the postmodern condition according to Spark and demonstrates her postmodernist narrative strategies. Her concern with the crisis of the “subject” in the world in its postmodern phase is observed in the figure of the heroine, a woman who has tried and failed to be an author in control. I argue that Spark here theorises the notion of subject, by providing her own version of the psychoanalytical “death drive” and also represents the Lacanian real as the unfigurable with this figure. Chapter IV and Chapter V follow the developments of Spark’s discussion of the crisis of the “subject” in two of her later novels. Chapter IV concentrates on the theme of Otherness in Symposium (1990). Chapter V discusses Reality and Dreams (1996), in which Spark pursues the theme of excess and opens up the contradictions inherent in this notion to bring about a new philosophy of life by art as excess.

This thesis establishes contexts for the interrogation of modern travel narratives about African countries. The nineteenth century saw significant advances in travel in Africa’s interior. For the first time much of Africa was revealed to a Western audience through the reports of explorers and other travellers. My thesis focuses on more recent representations of African countries, discussing changes in travel writing in the twentieth century, from 1930–2000. This thesis studies key twentieth-century representations of four African countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, the Republic of Congo and South Africa. I interrogate Western constructions, with a specific focus on narratives by Evelyn Waugh, Wilfred Thesiger, Dervla Murphy and Redmond O’Hanlon. Narratives of South Africa by Laurens van der Post, Noni Jabavu and Dan Jacobson also provide important insights into African self-construction in travel writing, which is, as yet, an under-developed genre in African literature. I begin by sketching a historical framework of the Western idea of Africa which, most recently, has been characterised by nineteenth-century interpretations of the Dark Continent. The process of decolonisation and the emergence of postcolonial discourses have challenged these constructions. An analysis of travel narratives from 1930–2000 reveals a variety of responses to the growing distaste for older, colonial attitudes. Increasingly, Western travellers seek both to create culturally relevant Africas and to subvert older Western creations. Travel writers seek to re-present destinations, to examine and modify existing discourses. There are fewer texts of exploration, but many writers now travel in order to write, looking for new ways to re-imagine and, thereby, rediscover what is already known. Developments in modern thought influence writers’ self-representations, as well as their presentations of the Other. Twentieth-century women construct themselves according to new social constructions of femininity, no longer juxtaposing hardiness with more traditional feminine traits, but proving that their capability and endurance as travellers equals that of men. The traveller is always central to the narrative and so it is always important to interrogate the writer’s self-presentation. Trends in twentieth-century travel narratives reveal an increasingly personal focus; this can bring a unique quality to the account, but also raises questions of authenticity. Foregrounding the creative process of producing a travel narrative reveals the agendas which inform self-presentation. This thesis points towards the potential for much further study on the continual process of re-presenting Africa but, also, the contextualisation of Western travel narratives continually points up the lack of African self-representation in travel writing. There has been little response from Africans to the long history of Western travellers imagining Africa; future dialogues with African texts of self-exploration and self-representation will, potentially, reveal new complexities, bringing greater depth and diversity to the discourses already in place.

This thesis attempts to account for the unusual problems raised for interpretation by the works of Angela Carter, as well as the particular pleasures which they provide. It demonstrates how Carter's self-conscious novels speculate about the very nature of fiction and, in doing so, challenge conventions which govern the way we interpret not only fiction but also ourselves and our world. The second half of the thesis is concerned with issues of sexual difference, specifically the strategies used by Carter to demystify the false universals which govern gender politics. Chapter 1 engages with both Nights at the Circus and a selection of reviews of Carter's work in order to establish the particular reader/text relationships which her fiction demands. The breakdown of the traditional distinction between centre and margins in The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman is the focus of Chapter 2: this chapter incorporates Jacques Derrida's model of invagination in its examination of the distinctive intertextual qualities Carter's work displays. Chapters 3 and 4 demonstrate an important strategic technique employed by Carter's novels to expose and exploit specific reading conventions which underlie the interpretation of character, identity, and gender. Chapter 3 shows how four novels, The Magic Toyshop, Heroes and Villains, Love, and The Passion of New Eve, promote a 'realist' mode of reading character whilst continually reminding the reader that character is a construction, in order to demonstrate the power of the conventions which create the illusion of knowablc individuals both within and outside fiction. Chapter 4 shows how The Passion of New Eve foregrounds a central feminist question, 'What is a Woman?' This chapter examines the ways in which Carter utilises gender stereotypes, particularly those used to define the female body, in order to debunk them. It also contains an account of the debate about pornography which Carter's work has excited amongst critics. Finally, Chapters 5 and 6 discuss the New Eve figures which recur across Carter's fiction and examine the affirmative feminist politics which sustain it. Chapter 5 asks the question, 'What constitutes a liberated female subject?' while Chapter 6, returning to Nights at the Circus, celebrates Fevvers as just such a figure. Each chapter demonstrates how Carter's work continually anticipates readers' responses and dramatises its own fictional procedures. Each chapter also attempts to illuminate, from a variety of perspectives, the liberating 'reading space', which her fiction opens up.

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This is a Creative Writing thesis, which incorporates both critical writing and my own novel, Cold City. The thesis explores ‘myth-revision’ in selected works of Fantasy fiction. Myth-revision is defined as the retelling of traditional legends, folk-tales and other familiar stories in such as way as to change the story’s implied ideology. (For example, Angela Carter’s ‘The Company of Wolves’ revises ‘Red Riding Hood’ into a feminist tale of female sexuality and empowerment.) Myth-revision, the thesis argues, has become a significant trend in Fantasy fiction in the last three decades, and is notable in the works of Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman and Philip Pullman. Despite its incorporation of supernatural elements, myth-revision is an agnostic or even atheistic phenomenon, which takes power from deities and gives it to moral humans instead. As such it represents a rebellion against the ‘Founding Fathers’ of Fantasy, writers such as Tolkien or CS Lewis, whose works stress the rightful superiority of divine figures. The thesis pays particular attention to how the myths surrounding the Winter Solstice are revised in this kind of fiction. Part One consists of my novel Cold City, with appropriate annotations. In Part Two, Chapter One compares and contrasts Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials with CS Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia. It argues that Pullman’s sequence of children’s novels is an anti-Narnia, which revises CS Lewis’s conservative Christian allegory into one supporting Pullman’s secular humanist viewpoint. Chapter Two explores myth-revision in Elizabeth Hand’s novel of adult Fantasy Winterlong. It examines how Hand ‘revises’ the Hellenic myth of the god Dionysos, especially as it is related to Euripides’ tragedy The Bacchae. Chapter Three examines the use of ‘Ragnarok’ – the ancient Norse myth of the end of the world – in Cold City.

This thesis argues that the drama of George Chapman (1559-1634) can be read in light of his deep ambivalence towards the political elite of the Jacobean court. It suggests that Chapman’s lack of success in securing courtly patronage, and his constant battle with indebtedness (which resulted in several court appearances and two imprisonments) left him divided in attitude towards the system of courtly reward – he resented his lack of success but continued to struggle to fit in and gain the approval of the powerful figures of the era. I argue that this gave him a critical perspective on many of the important issues of the time. My work examines the configuration of English national identity in his plays, positing an idea of Englishness which is separate from, and often critical of, the monarchy, and which relies on a structural parallel with the French court in order to imagine English identity. It then considers the ways in which money and debt are dealt with in several plays, arguing that Chapman felt deeply concerned by the perennial indebtedness of Jacobean culture but was also aware of the necessity of maintaining his own credibility and supply of credit. It further examines the representation of patronage, suggesting that Chapman saw the soliciting of aristocratic patronage in distinctly sexual terms, almost as a form of artistic prostitution. It then considers the many situations in the plays where royal patronage towards a favourite breaks down, and argues that this often results in allegations of treason which Chapman shows to originate in the paranoia or suspicions of the monarch. Finally, it looks at the concept of virtue in the plays, arguing that Chapman viewed virtue as fundamentally unsustainable in a corrupt court setting, but that he saw some form of engagement in public life as being a moral obligation on the virtuous man. Throughout I argue that Chapman was deeply radical in his social outlook, critical of inherited privilege and government by personal or absolutist rule. The social tensions and political struggles presented in his plays were to find their full expression in the violence of the Civil War and in the trial and execution of Charles I.

This dissertation systematically evaluates the historicity of the epic poem The Bruce, written towards the end of the fourteenth century and attributed to Archdeacon John Barbour of Aberdeen. For the purposes of analysis, the poem has been divided into 119 discrete episodes, which cover 95 percent of the text. Ninety-one of these appear in other historical sources. A rigorous evaluative methodology establishes a satisfactory level of historicity of these 91 episodes, significantly higher than has been allowed by many critics of the poem. The 28 episodes that do not appear in other sources are assessed by a parallel methodology. The analyses of these two types of episode provide an original rationale for judiciously using The Bruce as a sole source. Using the battle of Bannockburn as a case study, the value of The Bruce as a source is clearly demonstrated. By implication, it may also be regarded as an indispensable source for the 1306-1329 period as a whole. However, a textual analysis of the poem indicates that at least four, and perhaps as many as six, hands were at work in the writing of The Bruce. It is suggested that John Barbour may have been the lead author and editor. The dissertation concludes that The Bruce was written as a historically accurate (insofar as the term was understood in the fourteenth century) account of the part Robert I and his lieutenants played in the War of Independence. It is nationalistic in tone. Its core ideologies are chivalry and freedom of the Scots from English domination. It uses literary devices to make the content accessible, persuasive and memorable. Thus, it may also be regarded as a fundamentally important contribution to Scottish literature.

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