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This thesis examines the implications for text and subject of the digital technology of hypertext. Focussing on the printed texts of Alasdair Gray, it explores the complex relationship between humans and technology depicted in his fictions. Gray’s fictional examples provide the basis for a wider discussion regarding the impact of technology upon the lives of the subjects who engage with it and in particular who engages with the technologies of writing. It aims to illustrate how digital technologies of writing can be considered in light of some of the textual concerns raised by fiction and criticism in the late age of print, notably issues of narrative theory and the cultural function of linear stories and histories. Straining in many respects against the limitations of the printed form, Gray’s boundary-pushing texts, whilst remaining firmly rooted in the aesthetic tradition of the book as object, perhaps anticipate a more flexible textual form. The digital space of hypertext can be seen to offer a new arena for the textual debate, but does it live up to the claims of some of its critics, particularly in terms of its rapport with aspects of contemporary theory? And what may be the consequences of text dematerialised in the digital medium? As well as considering the textual possibilities of hypertext, the thesis also looks at the ways in which subjects relate to technology as well as those by which technology – and particularly writing technology – relates to them. Given the ambiguous role of technology in the life of the subject – employed on the one hand as part of a project and promise of rational enlightenment through science and on the other as a military and ideological means of repression – the consequences of technological development and of the digital revolution for the written word must be closely considered. Finally, the thesis questions the types of texts that may be constructed through an engagement with the digital technology of hypertext and what types of subjects these in turn might construct.

The physical appearances and specific behaviour of the characters in Tiriel , even the subtly ironical choice of names, suggest Blake's persistent opposition to the prevalent materialist-determinist philosophy of his day and to any form of dogmatism. This opposition accounts for the imaginative assimilation of originally unrelated literary material within a new symbolic context. Human misery does not originate from innate limitations or from a primordial fall from Divine Grace. It is caused by the immanent phenomenon of legalism in thought, ethics and aesthetics. Physical, intellectual and emotional oppression deformation and corruption begin in childhood and are primarily perpetrated and perpetuated by repressive methods of education. Har and Tiriel are self-centred promulgators and, together with the other members of their family, warped products of Natural Law and Natural Religion. Tiriel's quest demonstrates that an increase in empirical knowledge is not necessarily accompanied by spiritual progress, nor does it improve the human condition. The complex vagueness of aspects of the poem contributes toward a more definite shaping of Blake's thought and symbolism in his later 'prophecies.' Portions of The Book of Urizen may be read as satire directed against the philosophic premises of seventeenth and eighteenth-century rationalism in general, and of Locke's theory of knowledge, in particular, Theme, structure and symbolism of the poem reflect this opposition and implicitly affirm Blake's own idealist metaphysics of reality. Abstracted from Eternity, Urizen's monolithic world has no extrinsic cause. It is a projection of his limited self-awareness. However, his solipsism fails to resolve the persistent contradiction between ideality and reality, thought and thing, subject and object. Los imposes temporal order and physical form on Urizen's disorganised thoughts. The limited anthropomorphic universe, produced by this intervention is a prison for mind and body, thought and desire. Henceforth, sensation and reflection determine the will to act. Man has rendered himself dependent on the fictitious 'substance' of matter, and on an equally mysterious remote deity. Both are only known by their 'accidents.' Natural science and Natural Religion are their respective rationalised form of worship. Both the pursuits of knowledge and of happiness require the suspension of desire. In The Song of Los Blake adopts a supra-historical perspective. Representative personages from biblical history, the history of religions generally, philosophy and science are associated by their common failure to sustain their visionary powers. Blake incorporates into his poetic typology of decline, structural elements derived from biblical, classical and modern conceptions of history without adopting their respective philosophical backgrounds. The notion of scientific progress and the advance of civilisation, concurrent with linear historical process, are dismissed. The achievements of empirical science, organised religion and autocratic government--synonymous with intellectual and physical oppression--kindle Orcls "thought creating fires." Despite its apocalyptic connotations, his violent outburst is of a highly ambivalent nature. The Four Zoas adumbrates the spiritual history of mankind. The poem is also a complex epic phenomenology of the human mind. Eden is an aspect of ideal reality where natural and human organisms are identified, and where life is sustained by loving self-sacrifice. After the Han's Fall elemental uproar reflects the mind's regression to the level of a perturbed oceanic consciousness which can no longer integrate the dissociated phenomena of the generative world into a living human form, thriving on love and understanding. Nature is transformed into a self-engendering monster. The human mind is englobed by the illusion of reality conceived as external and material, and by a fatalistic view of temporal process. Nevertheless, both misconceptions impose a degree of stability and order on the anarchic forces released by the cosmic catastrophe. Man's Fall is due to the dissociation of reason and affection. "Mental forms" are externalised and idolised. Eventually, under Urizen's control, imaginative energy in forced into rigid geometric form and regular motion. The beautiful illusion of the pseudo-Platonic "Mundane Shell" reflects the essential structure of Urizen's intelligence. however, it does not provide a lasting solution to the human dilemma. after the Fall. After the collapse of his creation, Urizen explores his alien environment by empirical means. he is a prisoner of his own restricted conception of reality. Unexpectedly, in Night VII(a), the Spectre of Urthona and Los are transformed into labourers of the Apocalypse. Regenoration starts with the annihilation of 'self.' Aware of his responsibilities, Los builds Golgonoozat the city of art. Emulating Christ's self-sacrifice, visionary activity is a form of self-denial. Time becomes a function of imaginative creativity. The imaginative world created by Los incorporates visionary time and space. Natural existence is realised as being endowed with regenerative qualities. Los no longer rejects Orc but sublimates his energies. Orc's destructive powers become an integral aspect Of the Last Judgment. Throughout Night VIII the providential and redemptive character of mortal life is stressed. Plunging into "the river of space" is a baptismal, if painful, experience. Although guided by Divine Providence, individual man has to work for his own salvation. In Night IX prophetic and apocalyptic views are fused as Los acts in a temporal context when tearing down the material, social and metaphysical barriers to vision erected by Urizen. The symbolism of Revelation is employed to adumbrate the artist's ultimate task in history. History is not beyond human control. Submission to the "Divine Vision" is an active ethical achievement capable of generating a powerful social dynamic, rather than tentatively removing it. Tyranny is overthrown because once the visionary poet has revealed its deceptions, mankind follows his example and removes it physically. This optimistic vision of the Last Judgment is an affirmation of the poet's absolute faith in the power of inspired vision to regenerate and humanize all aspects of life in this world.

As this study is concerned with the noetic process of a pre-literate, oral tradition in eighteenth century Scotland, we are obliged to address that mental economy through residual artifacts which survive in translation as products of a print driven, literary culture. As such, those artifacts have already been engaged to a literary process and, if they are to be subjected here to a further breach of cultural integrity, it is a minimum requirement that we attempt to respect the intellectual and psychological priorities which energise the traditional word. The central aims of the study are: to establish useful parameters of literary understanding for these residues, to assess the manner of translation through which the original materials were subjected to a literary process and to elucidate the nature of the literary product that they became, as well as that of the literary creativity which they inspired. With this in mind, our attention is directed initially toward the way in which a traditional text generates meaning for a contemporary, literary audience. The application of oral theory to Scottish traditional poetry and song, in chapter one, aims to propose a literary model of a particular tradition at a critical stage in its development. This model seeks to recognise both the conceptual underpinning of that process and the accumulative feedback that occurs when literary styles and politics infuse and regenerate within the process of transmission and translation to become embedded in the 'oral' artifacts of a culture in transition. In chapter two we look, in the editorial conflict between creative and conservative mediators, to identify the aesthetic circumstances of that tradition in a transitional culture so as to elucidate the nature of those artifacts as literary products. As a measure of how these competing forces pressurise traditional sources, we engage with the dynamic of cultural negotiation surrounding the authentication of traditional 'texts'. This focuses our attention on the status of the traditional aesthetic within the existing literary critique and the implications that aesthetic conflict held for original, imaginative writing.

The present study investigates formulae – fixed phrases used by an oral poet in composing narrative verse – in the Older Scotts poem known as the Brus, composed (probably in writing) by John Barbour, Archdeacon of Aberdeen, in the last quarter of the fourteenth century. This thesis examines the apparent discrepancy of an oral-derived technique used in a sophisticated poem composed in writing by an educated and literate author. Following the discussion of previous critical approaches to Barbour’s Brus, the present study offers a summary of theories of the formula and formulaic composition relevant to the discussion, before providing examples of three types of formulae found in the Brus: formulae whose primary function is to preserve rhyme and metre in the poem, and which have minimal dependence upon their narrative context (prosodic formulae or fillers); formulae which set-up or provide transition between scenes, and which depend slightly more upon their narrative context (discursive formulae); and formulae which narrate the action of the poem’s plot, and therefore depend greatly upon their narrative context (historic formulae). The thesis then examines recurring incidents such as scenes of individual combat and large-scale battles, identifying the formulaic phrases employed in their construction, as well as the cyclical arrangement of such incidents to impose a specific interpretation of the poem upon the reader or audience. Finally, the present study examines the influence of medieval rhetoric and Latin-derived ‘literate’ culture on Barbour’s poem, uncovering a mixture of ‘oral’ and ‘literate’ modes of discourse which cooperate and complement each other in Barbour’s highly purposeful work of historical fiction. More and more critics are aware of the mixture of ‘oral’ and ‘literate’ discourse in Middle English (see, for example, Coleman 1996); by contrast, this aspect of Older Scotts literature is an understudied topic in an already understudied field. Additionally, no scholar has to may knowledge undertaken a study of the formula in any Older Scotts text. The present thesis will hopefully make a valuable first step in both these areas.

This thesis examines modernist short fiction in English from the 1890s to the 1980s, with particular reference to works by James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Beckett and Donald Barthelme. The term 'interrogative' is evolved in the course of the study to describe the relationship of the reader and of interpretative discourse to the form. It is argued that the modernist story is marked by indeterminacy and a resistance to teleological structuration as a result of its narrative strategies of ellipsis, reticence and interdiction. Unlike those existing theories which emphasize 'unity' or 'ambiguity' in the short story, the interrogative approach takes as its starting point a post-Saussurean definition of language as differential and plurisignificant and uses this to demonstrate the form's constitutional resistance to determine critical exegesis.

With the publication of Jude the Obscure (1985) Hardy had finished his work with the novel. Just five years later Dreiser published Sister Carrie (1900), thus making it possible that he could have found in Hardy a model. The resemblances to the Hardyan novel in both the early and later works of Dreiser are striking and varied enough to give encouragement to a hypothesis of direct influence. The evidence in support of this hypothesis we propose to take note of carefully in this study. The study is divided into six chapters. Chapter One focusses on the broadly pessimistic and deterministic philosophy that runs throughout the novels of both authors in the sense that both were `blown to bits' by reading evolutionary theories that attacked accepted views of man, God, and the universe. Thus, both found in the works of Darwin, Huxley, and Spencer evidence that man is not the creation of a benevolent deity, but rather of the interaction of unknowable forces existing in a world of struggle where survival of the fittest is the basic law. Accordingly, both concluded that man is basically determined by the natural and social forces operating from within and without to ensure man's unhappiness. In Chapter Two the protagonist of Sister Carrie is discussed in relation to the more deeply tragic heroes and heroines of Thomas Hardy, particularly Tess Durbeyfield. Carrie has the dreaminess of Jude and the natural vitality of Tess, and like Tess she is a child of nature. The chapter goes on to trace the Hardysque and Dreiserian theme of the fallen woman whose natural goodness and self-sacrifice for others keep her `Pure'. Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1981), and Jennie Gerhardt (1911), are the novels discussed in relation to this common theme. Chapter Three takes for its subject-matter the novelists' portrayal of society in the context of Herbert Spencer's application of the theory of `the survival of the fittest' to social behaviour. Donald Farfrae in Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), and Frank Cowperwood in Freiser's The Financier (1912), and The Titan (1914), are discussed as aggressive exponents of the Nietzschean superman figure, committing themselves to the values of materialism. Although both men win in the battle of life and survive, nevertheless, they undergo an inner spiritual defeat. Chapter Four probes the depth of the conflict between flesh and spirit, body and soul, vice and virtue in Hardy's Jude the Obscure and Freiser's The `Genius' (1915). Both heroes, Jude and Eugene, are sexually driven and in bondage to desire, but at the same time possess transcendental traits. In Jude's case, this contest between the spiritual and the sensual culminates inevitably in his death; Eugene, less convincingly perhaps, eventually finds temporary ease for his divided being and restless soul in the religious doctrines of Christian Science. Chapter Five examines Jude the Obscure and Dreiser's An American Tragedy (1925) as tragedies of `unfulfilled aims and aspirations'. Initially, attention is focussed upon the tragic aspect of both stories and the question of whether or not the two novels are in fact tragedies is discussed. Jude Fawley and Clyde Griffiths have opposite aims and ambitions. Jude's intellectual aspirations are contrasted with Clyde's materialistic desires. The ambition of each hero, however, is marked by failure, and the destiny of both is the same. Each is finally frustrated by forces in his nature, his society, and his circumstances. This study concludes, in Chapter Six, by noting that characters in the novels of Hardy and Dreiser rarely come to a satisfactory accommodation with life. The novels' tragic conclusions are due, in large part, to social, cultural, and universal influences which make any sense of personal fulfilment difficult, if not impossible to achieve.

This study of James Baldwin's short stories focuses on the inter-play of reason and intuition within the process of interpretation. It draws on the protest of theological criticism against a narrow understanding of critical theory fostered by the thinking that literature is "autonomous" and that objectivity implies that the critic has to approach texts as an emotional blank slate. The study demonstrates the capacity of literature to elicit specific ethical and theological responses. It argues that even where a literary work does not seem to exhibit themes immediately relevant to theological inquiry, it remains doubtful whether an analysis of such a text can be effective if it is left neutral or purely descriptive. The underlying assumption is that the power of language constantly stimulates the development of sensibilities and reflections on texts-be they "sacred" or "secular." Hence, it is contended that interpretation necessarily demands the making of choices or the preference of one system of value over another. More specifically, and against the background of the mind-set engendered in James Baldwin by his encounter with religion and subsequent experience as a child-preacher, this study examines the range of issues that echo in his collection of short stories. The claim is that the stories are autobiographically driven. To argue this thesis and the related proposition that the stories feed into theological themes relevant to self-knowledge, vicarious suffering, love and forgiveness, their effectiveness as transformative and revelatory texts is highlighted. By drawing on short story theories and challenging the view that short stories are no more than miniature pieces merely echoing "major" works of their authors, it is further argued that the genre can be profoundly forceful and effective in the articulation of complex human issues.

"The invention of Scottish Literature During the Long Eighteenth Century" examines the limited place in the canon traditionally allowed to creative writing in Scotland during this period and the overarching reading of creative impediment applied to it in the light of Scotland's fraught and not easily to be homogenised national history and identity. It interrogates the dominant mode of what it terms the Scottish literary critical tradition and funds this tradition to have many shortcomings as a result of its prioritising of literary and cultural holism. In examining the Scots poetry revival of the eighteenth century the thesis challenges the traditional identification of a populist and beset mode, and finds eighteenth-century poetry in Scots to be actually much more catholic in its literary connections. These more catholic "British" connections are reappraised alongside the distinctively Scottish accents of the poets Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson and Robert Burns. The poetry of James Thomson, it is also argued, fits more easily into a heterogeneous Scottish identity than is sometimes thought and the work of Thomson is connected with the poets in Scots to show a network of influence and allegiance which is more coherent than has been traditionally allowed. Similarly, the primitivist agenda of the Scottish Enlightenment in creative literature is examined to demonstrate the way in which this provides license for reclaiming elements of the historically fraught or "backward" Scottish identity (thus an essentially conservative, patriotic element within the Scottish Enlightenment cultural voice is emphasised.). Also, with the writers of poetry in Scots, as well as with Thomson, and with those whose work comes under the intellectual sponsorship of Enlightenment primitivism such as Tobias Smollett, James Macpherson, James Beattie and others we chart a movement from the age of Augustanism and neoclassicism to that of sensibility and proto-Romanticism. From Burns' work to that of Walter Scott, John Galt and James Hogg we highlight Scottish writers making creative capital from the difficult and fractured Scottish identity and seeing this identity, as, in part, reflecting cultural tensions and fractures which are more widely coined furth of their own country. The connecting threads of the thesis are those narratives in Scottish literature of the period which show the retrieval and analysis of seemingly lost or receding elements of Scottish identity. Creative innovation and re-energisation rather than surrender and loss are what the thesis finally diagnoses in Scottish literature of the long eighteenth century.