The Caribbean islands have been distinguished by mass migratory patterns and diasporic communities that have moved into and out of the region; as a consequence, the genre of the letter has been an important one to the culture and has provided a template for many creative works. This dissertation is the first major study on West Indian epistolary practices: personal letters, emails, verse epistles, epistolary novels, letters to editors, etc. It focuses on a contemporary period – from the 1930s to the present, and on examples that have come out of Jamaica. The dissertation offers both close-readings on a range of epistolary texts and theoretical frameworks in which to consider them and some of the ways in which Caribbean people have been addressing themselves to each other, and to the wider world. My first chapter looks at the non-fictional letters of Sir Alexander Bustamante and Sir Vidia Naipaul. It reflects on the ways in which the public personas of these two men had been created and manipulated through their public and private letters. My second chapter tries to expand a critical project which has been satisfied to simply place contemporary epistolary fiction within an eighteenth century genealogy. I propose another conversation which understands recent examples of West Indian epistolary fiction within their contemporary cultures. My third chapter looks at examples of Jamaican verse epistles and considers how three poets – Lorna Goodison, James Berry and Louise Bennett – have attempted, with varying degrees of success, to create an epistolary voice that is both literary and oral. My fourth chapter looks at the popular Jamaican newspaper advice column, Dear Pastor. It considers the ways in which evangelical Christianity has impacted on the construction of a West Indian epistolary voice and consequently the shape of a West Indian public sphere. My final chapter considers how technology has changed epistolography; specifically how the email, Facebook messages, and tweets have both transformed and preserved the letter. I end with a presentation of a personal corpus of emails titled The Cold Onion Chronicles with some reflections on remediation of epistolary forms.

The thesis takes Mandeville's medical works at Leiden as a starting point. Translations of his first three works - all originally published in Latin - lay the foundation for a consideration of his approach to medicine, medical discourse and the contemporary seventeenth-century debates on Cartesian thought. From this basis, Mandeville's early English works are examined in detail. His fables are seen to develop the first stages of a complex theory of imitation which is closely related to his medical ideas on digestion. Mandeville elaborated this theory in three major works - The Virgin Unmask'd (1709), A Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Passions (1711) and The Fable of the Bees (1714). Each of these works is examined in the context of contemporary texts and ideas. Taken as a trilogy, the works are shown to explore the problems of the individual in a rapidly changing society. The thesis argues that in The Virgin Unmask'd Mandeville considers the nature of seual identity and the various ways in which the new consumer society could operate to determine that identity. In A Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Passions, it is shown that Mandeville continues his exploration of the effects of consumerism on the individual. In this text, however, he is concerned with consumption in both its literal and metaphorical dimensions as he fully develops the medical theories on digestion which he had begun to consider as a student in Leiden. Finally, Mandeville's first edition of The Fable of the Bees is examined in the light of his medical works and his interest in the nature of consumerism. Through the readings of each of these texts it is shown how Mandeville uses both the dialogue form and the `Remarks' of The Fable of the Bees to equip the reader with a set of interpretative tools. By using his chosen literary forms to question the notions of `knowledge' and `ignorance', he offers a perspective from which to `anatomize' the structures of power that were beginning to take shape in early eighteenth-century England.

This thesis considers the use of the allegorical personification of the nation as a woman in the work of the twentieth century Scottish writers Hugh MacDiarmid, Naomi Mitchison and Alasdair Gray. The image of nation as woman, whether as mother, virgin, goddess or victim is widespread in European iconography from the eighteenth century onwards, but is not common in Scotland until the twentieth century. Not only is the objectification of the female figure intrinsic to such imagery objectionable from a feminist point of view, but the female stereotypes which surround the figure of the nation are contradictory, and it ultimately reinforces a sexist ideology which constructs women as victims. These political flaws and contradictions are highlighted when the metaphor is considered in the context of Scotland's peculiar political situation. The three authors considered here exemplify very different uses of the nation-as-woman trope. Comparing their work shows that the image is used differently by male and female writers, and that the changes in both gender politics and nationalist theory during the course of the twentieth century mean that its use in the 1990s is much more self-conscious and parodic than when it is used by Hugh MacDiarmid in the 1920s. Nation as woman is a trope which is much more easily used by male authors, as for example in the work of MacDiarmid and Gray, whereas Naomi Mitchison, in appropriating the voice of mother Scotland, finds problems asserting her own voice as a woman writer in Scotland. The work of all three writers demonstrates an awareness of the problems inherent in the trope. From the 1920s to the 1950s MacDiarmid uses the female figure to represent both Scotland and his creative muse, but acknowledges the lack of such a tradition in Scotland by importing his female figures from other cultures and literatures. The version of Scottishness which MacDiarmid creates privileges the position of a male nationalist in relation to a female nation, and his influence in the Scottish literary scene is such that Naomi Mitchison, as a woman writing in the 1940s, finds it difficult to address the 'matter of Scotland' without resorting to the gendered iconography of woman as nation. Alasdair Gray, writing forty years later, is also influenced by MacDiarmid, but this is shown through his post-modern rewriting of MacDiarmid's key poem A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, and his problematisation of many of the political and aesthetic contradictions inherent in the nation-as-woman trope.

Doughty's popular fame depends still on one prose-book, but his poetry is still neglected by the majority and ignored by a large section or those who know. To redress the balance and put the whole in perspective, this thesis begins by discussing minutely his roots in East Anglia, his family background and his school and university days. Here for the first time a list of his father's library books and a rare early poem written by the young Doughty in Cambridge are used to prove that contemporary literature was in Doughty's mind, when he reacted against the facile ways of literary expression and the immorality in literary circles. That reaction is shown to have decided his future career. His studies after that in earlier literature are traced minutely, and their certain fruits shown in the turns of his thought and the new ideals in lire in general and in literature in particular. When he left to the Continent in 1870, he is shown to have reached the mature stable basis of everything that one finds in all his prose and poetry. In general his attitude was one of reaction against the Nineteenth Century and an attempt to bring back the vigour of patriotism and the liveliness of the literature of Renaissance and Elizabethan England. With the Nineteenth Century as a basis, and the Renaissance as an ideal, a pattern is laid for a detailed study of different problems based on the various Doughty works. Each book is looked at mainly from one angle, although the other different sides of the work are not neglected. Doughty's attitude towards Islam, Arabia and the Arabs is shown to be a result and a continuation of the orthodox Christian European attitude through the ages. So follows a historical study of that background in European thought and English Literature from the earliest times to the Nineteenth Century. An objective unemotional attempt to defend Islam and the Arabs follow. Then the linguistic side of the problem, the influence of Arabia on the style of 'Arabia Deserta' is studied, and Doughty's knowledge of Arabic is assessed. 'The Darn in Britain' gives us the chance to study Doughty's knowledge of and ideas on the epic form. 'Adam Cast Forth' provides an opportunity for studying all the sources or the beautiful legend, and of Doughty'a usage Of these sources. 'The Cliffs' provides an opportunity for a study of Doughty's ideas on the contemporary scone and his solutions for the problems of today. 'The Clouds' is used to study the discursive rambling all inclusive 'form' of Doughty's works. 'The Titans' is Doughty's nearest poem to his geological studies, so Doughty's scientific ideas and their imaginative expression are dealt with. 'Mansoul' is his last message. Consequently his belief in the doctrine of the 'Inspired Poet', his belief in Man, his hope in the future of humanity, and his philosophy of virtue and love, his Religion and his humanism are studied. 'The Conclusion' follows, with an apology for the great length necessary to deal with the mind, ways and works of this voluminous poet. In an appendix the list of books at Theberton Hall Library in, given and in another that rare poem at his young days "The Lay of the Long One". All through the thesis, Doughty's manuscript Word-Notes, Book-Notes, and letters and all the books written the various scholars and critics on his works are used to get a better understanding of his thought and his books in this panoramic survey, of his life and works.

This dissertation examines in detail the work of Elizabeth Gaskell, a mid-Victorian English author. It establishes that she was significantly influenced in her writing by the Unitarian social milieu to which she belonged during her lifetime, and by a wide range of other dominant influences, such as Romanticism and the rise of Darwinism. It demonstrates that conflicting doctrinal strains within Unitarianism, and emphases in Unitarianism differing from that of other prevailing influences within society, jointly contributed to the particular nature of her literary output. Elizabeth Gaskell's work is characterised by a series of binary oppositions, a feature of her fiction which serves to illustrate her individual response to conflicting values or concepts. Rather than dogmatically resolving the series of antinomies revealed throughout her work, she maintains their co-existence in such a manner that the mutual interdependence of each set of polarities is perpetuated. This suggests that she preferred, despite varying emphases at certain points, an intelligent open-endedness regarding opposing views. In fact, her work infers an acceptance that textual vitality and purpose is fostered by allowing such tensions to exist. The binary oppositions exhibited in her work that are discussed in this dissertation are varied in nature. In Chapters Two and Three, the Priestleyan notion of necessarianism, a form of moral determinism, is set against the equally evident notion of free-will and divine benevolence. In Chapter Four, the radical edge of her Unitarian faith is balanced by an equally strong appreciation of the benefits of social respectability. Elizabeth Gaskell's work reflects a recurrent commitment to the Unitarian espousal of truthfulness, but she also understands the textual benefits of concealment and deception.

Whilst researching his bibliography of Neil M Gunn, the writer found photocopies of papers said to have been in Gunn's desk at the time of his death, amongst which were copies of both sides of a handwritten sheet' torn from a looseleaf notebook. This document, produced in response to perceived criticism by Eric Linklater, offers a unique insight into Gunn's view of his literary achievement at the end of his novel-writing career. In it Gunn sets out the theoretical concept of all his twenty novels being components of a single, composite, 'Novel of the Highlands', an abstract concept referred to in this thesis as a'meta-novel'. The thesis examines the literary viability of this meta-novel; it follows a tripartite form: chapter one, which records inter alia Highland problems, forming the introduction, chapters two to four inclusive forming the central developmental section before culminating in chapter five, the conclusion. The developmental section offers a critique of the problems outlined in the introduction via a series of 'epicyclic journeys' which approach the problems from the perspectives of childhood, history and culture, each contributing to the achievement of a positive conclusion. By considering the interplay between each chapter heading and the content of the individual novels allocated to it, the implied plot structure of the overall work can be established. Gunn habitually re-used and adapted his material over time. The evolution of this material in the individual novels is discussed. The meta-novel represents another, and final, re-use of material and, through the exercise outlined above, it is hence possible to speculate on which elements of the individual novels Gunn deemed to be important in retrospect, as it is these that develop the meta-novel's plot. Thus, crucially, the examination prompted by the existence of this primary document enables a re-evaluation of Gunn's individual novels, which this thesis also undertakes.

This thesis is a critical biography of Robert Tannahill (1774-1810). As a work of recovery its aim is to lay out the details of the life and in so doing to make the case for Tannahill as a distinctive figure in Scottish literary history. Part One covers the main events in Tannahill’s life, and analyses his poetry, songs and play, The Soldier’s Return, drawing heavily on his extant correspondence throughout. Part Two of the thesis gives all of Tannahill’s extant correspondence. The received critical opinion of Tannahill in the nineteenth century was that his true talent lay in the writing of Scottish pastoral songs. In accordance with this perception the other aspects of his work have, generally, been treated as marginal by previous critics. This thesis aims to broaden the critical understanding of Tannahill as a writer working in the first decade of the 1800s by taking into consideration his social and political milieu, the writers he was influenced by and his response to particular events in his life and in the world. I argue that Tannahill was not party political, but had sympathy for Whig causes such as abolition of the death penalty and of slavery. He also opposed cock-fighting and animal cruelty. Key to understanding much of Tannahill’s output was his attitude to the wars with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France (1793-1815). Fear of French invasion of the British Isles was something that exercised Tannahill a good deal. His attitude to war was that it was pointless human folly, but his dislike of all imperialism, including British and French, makes his position complex and the complexity of his response to war is a recurring theme throughout. Tannahill’s upbringing in Paisley and his position as an artisan weaver had a profound effect on his writing, as did the influence of Robert Burns. Tannahill was fiercely independent, despised literary patronage and inherited wealth and power. There is an attempt to explain and understand how and why Tannahill came to hold these points of view and to point out where they find expression in his work. Chapter 1 looks at Tannahill’s upbringing and life in Paisley. Chapter 2 deals with the ‘Critical Reception’ of his work from 1815 to the present. Chapter 3 looks in depth at his attitudes to war and the threat of French invasion. Chapter 4 concentrates on Tannahill’s play The Soldier’s Return and considers how it fits into the pastoral tradition. Chapter 5 looks at the content and some formal aspects of his poetry and Chapter 6 deals with the range of his lyrics and songs. Part Two is a project of retrieval, sub-titled The Letters of Robert Tannahill, it presents in chronological order eighty-two letters, the vast majority of which were written by Tannahill to friends and acquaintances between the years 1802 and 1810. It has been compiled from holograph manuscript sources found in the University of Glasgow Library, the National Library of Scotland, University of Edinburgh Library and Paisley Central Library. In addition, letters previously published in the David Semple edition of Tannhill’s Poems, Songs and Correspondence (1876) have been inserted to give the most comprehensive collection of Tannahill correspondence to date. These letters give a fascinating insight into Tannahill’s life and work. The guiding editorial principle for transcription from holograph has been: to provide as accurately as possible a text free from editorial interference.

This thesis examines responses to the idea of a specific female moral agency in depictions of women’s philanthropic work by late nineteenthcentury female novelists. Focusing on depictions of romantic and sexual female experience in the late nineteenth-century campaign against poverty, I explore the role of gender and sexuality in the making of the female moral self in novels by Mrs. Humphry Ward, Iota, Margaret Harkness, Jane Hume Clapperton, Gertrude Dix. I demonstrate the manner in which altruism was linked to romantic love and sexual desire, and show how this idea surfaced in the love-plot in novels by late nineteenth-century women. I argue that the novel was regarded as a valuable instrument to further the process of social reform, owing to its perceived unique ability to arouse the reader’s sympathies; therefore, these novelists used the novel as a tool for constructing the altruistic self. Reading the novels alongside contemporary non-fiction discourse, I undertake an analysis of different romance plots and show how they relate to the debates of the social reform movement of the late nineteenth century. Finally, I suggest that by using the novel, and especially the romance plot, which was regarded as a feminine form of expression, these novelists are defending the idea of a feminine ethic, and a feminine conception of morality that was defined by emotion, feeling, and sympathy, as opposed to the more masculine scientific and sociological ideas behind the late nineteenth century social reform movement.

This thesis explores the relationship between the Gothic tradition and Dystopian novels in order to illuminate new perspective on the body in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland (1915), Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange (1962), Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) and Michel Houellebecq’s Atomised (1999). The key concerns are those of the Labyrinth, Dark Places, Connectedness and the Loss of the Individual, Live Burials, Monsters and Fragmented Flesh. A thematic approach allows for the novels to be brought together under common Gothic themes in order to show not only that they have such tendencies, but that they share common ground as Gothic Dystopias. While the focus is on bodily concerns in these novels, it is also pertinent to offer a discussion of past critical perspectives on the Dystopia and this is undertaken in Chapter One. Chapter Two looks at the narrative structure of the novels and finds similarities in presentation to Gothic novels, which leads to exploration of the position of the body in such a narrative of the unseen. The third chapter looks to the spaces inhabited by characters in the novels to examine their impact on the threat faced by these individuals. The Gothic convention of doubling is the focus of Chapter Four, which finds not only doubling operating in Dystopian novels, but the more complex relationship of triangles of doubling holding characters, fixing them in relation to those around at the expense of selfhood. Chapter Five takes Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s musings on the Gothic as its point of departure and finds that Dystopian bodies occupy a very similarly trapped position. Chapter Six identifies two types of monsters that inhabit the Gothic Dystopian space: those people who transform between the human and the monstrous, and those individuals who form a larger monster based on power that lives parasitically on transgressive bodies. The final chapter displays the impact of the Gothic Dystopia on individual bodies: ‘Fragmented Flesh’. The destruction of a coherent whole, a body with defined and sustainable boundaries, is the outcome of the novels where fear, repression, and the hidden combine to leave little space for cohesion and identification in the Gothic Dystopia.

Critical assessments of Alasdair Gray's work make frequent mention of his postmodern literary strategies and his active engagement with political issues. However, Gray himself is quick to refute claims that he is a postmodern writer, and, although his books are often described as 'political', detailed attention has yet to be paid to the kind of politics Gray espouses. By examining key ideological strands in a range of Alasdair Gray's prose writings (including texts that have attracted little critical interest) and by exploring their central, sometimes unresolved, tensions, this thesis investigates the relationship between literary and political discourses in Gray's work. Attempting to chart the range and extent of Gray's engagement with contemporary issues of political and cultural debate, the five chapters of the thesis demonstrate that Gray's literary techniques are intimately connected to his thematic and political concerns. The thesis draws on a range of critical approaches to address Gray's work, using aspects of post-structuralist, feminist, and postcolonial theories. The first chapter examines autobiographical and semi-autobiographical texts by Gray, opening discussion about his approaches to narrative construction and historiography. It argues that Gray's texts draw attention to their own narrative paradigms and underlying ideological assumptions, and suggests that Gray's destabilization of conventional Western epistemological frameworks unsettles empirical conceptions of human subjectivity and identity, challenging the terms in which personal and national identities can be secured. The discussion of Gray's self-conscious destabilization of categories of identity underlies the questions raised in subsequent chapters. The second chapter highlights Gray's treatment of the hegemonic discourses of imperialism and capitalism. Focusing on his polemical essays and short fiction; the chapter examines the role of literature in imperial processes, the complexities of Scotland's position within imperial discourses, and explores questions of cultural agency and resistance.