The history of Orkney literature is the first full survey of the literature of the Orkney Islands. It examines fiction, non-fiction and poetry that is uncomplicatedly Orcadian, as well as that which has been written about Orkney by authors from outside the islands. Necessarily, the work begins with the great Icelandic chronicle Orkneyinga Saga. Literary aspects of the saga are examined, as well as its place within the wider sphere of saga writing. Most significantly, this study examines how the saga imposes itself on the work of subsequent writers. The book goes on to focua on the significance of Orkney and Orkney history in the work of a number of key nineteenth- and twentieth-century figures, including Sir Walter Scott, Edwin Muir, Eric Linklater, Robert Rendall and George Mackay Brown. The Victorian folklorist and short story writer Walter Traill Dennison is re-evaluated: The History of Orkney Literature demonstrates his central significance to the Orcadian tradition and argues for the relevance of his work to the wider Scottish canon. A fixation with Orkney history is common to all the writers considered herein. This preoccupation necessitates a detailed consideration of the core historiography of J. Storer Clouston. Other non-fiction works which are significant in the creation of this distinctly Orcadian literary identity include Samuel Laing's translation of Heimskringla; the polemical writings of David Balfour; and the historical and folklore studies of Ernest Walker Marwick. The study welcomes many writers into the fold, seeking to map and define a distinctly Orcadian tradition. This tradition can be considered a cousin of Scottish Literature. Although the writing of Orkney is a significant component of Scottish Literature at various historical stages, it nevertheless follows a divergent course. Both the eighteenth century Vernacular Revival and the twentieth century Literary Renaissance facilitate literary work in the islands which nevertheless remains distinctly independent in character. Indigenous Orcadian writers consider themselves to be Orcadians first and Scots or Britons second. Regardless of what they view as their national or political identity, their sense of insular cultural belonging is uniformly and pervasively Orcadian. What emerges is a robust, distinctive and very tight-knit minor literature.

This thesis examines the use of collage as a form of autobiography in Hugh MacDiarmid’s Lucky Poet (1943). It traces the development of the use of autobiographical detail and the use of collage in MacDiarmid’s work from To Circumjack Cencrastus (1930) to Lucky Poet. It aims to show that though there is a clear precedent for both these elements in the earliest of MacDiarmid’s work, To Circumjack Cencrastus represented a turning point in MacDiarmid’s progression towards the use of collage as an autobiographical form, and the subsequent development of his interest in autobiography can be traced through the Clann Albann project (1931-1933) and Stony Limits and Other Poems (1934) to Lucky Poet. It examines the difference between autobiographical memory, as developed in the Clann Albann poems, and the representation of immediate experience in poems written while MacDiarmid was on Whalsay, particularly those included in Stony Limits and Other Poems (1934). Its analysis of Lucky Poet, and of the earlier works, focuses on the ideological and artistic use to which MacDiarmid puts autobiography. It includes a brief account of the place of Lucky Poet within recent critical debate regarding the autobiographical genre, but centres on a detailed analysis of MacDiarmid’s reference to Søren Kierkegaard and Lev Shestov. It shows how he developed, through reference to Shestov’s In Job’s Balances and Walter Lowrie’s biography of Kierkegaard, a concept of the suffering and self-sacrifice of the artist, and a related belief in the need to embrace – as an artist – both the danger and the freedom of Shestov’s abyss. It demonstrates how this freedom is realized in the rejection of social conventions and in the publication of unpalatable or provocative material. The thesis concludes by comparing MacDiarmid’s autobiographical writing to that of Edwin Muir and Sir Thomas Urquhart, arguing that Muir rejects the notions of self-sacrifice and rebellion developed by MacDiarmid while Urquhart, despite his distance from MacDiarmid in historical period and social class, ultimately stood for the same principles.

This thesis undertakes an architectonically arranged analysis of a particularly prevalent and powerful rhetorical figure in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English religious literature, the metaphor linking false religion with pestilential infection. Heterodoxy is considered by authors representing diverse doctrinal backgrounds in this theologically turbulent period, to be tantamount to deadly contagion, underscoring the severity of its perceived threat to a given orthodoxy. Under this scheme, both physical plague outbreaks - the threat of which is very real in the period covered in this study (1621-1722) - and heretical disseminations, threaten to reach epidemic proportions. Especially striking is the widespread incidence of this figurative phenomenon, which is called into polemical service by such diverse disputants as the staunch Presbyterian Thomas Edwards at one extreme, and the High Church Anglican Jonathan Swift at the other. It is the fact Swift’s categorization of the Presbyterian denomination as the “Epidemick Sect of Æolists” in A Tale of a Tub (1704), which launched this inquiry into an extensive corpus of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century texts rooted in religious controversy. Just as Swift does in so many ways, this investigation radiates principally backward and into the seventeenth century proper. To a lesser extent, it also looks forwards into the eighteenth century by tracing examples of this recurring metaphor in Swift’s later work as well as in Daniel Defoe. Detailed analysis of the individual seventeenth- and eighteenth-century texts is prefaced by an introductory chapter which surveys biblical precedents for this particular metaphorical application.

This thesis explores the interpenetrations of aesthetic and socio-political issues in three modernist novels by John Dos Passos, Jean Rhys, and Samuel Beckett. It aims to argue for the importance of theory and the retrieval of voices of dissent in contemporary modernist studies. Theodor Adorno’s aesthetic theory, Raymond William’s cultural critique, and the contemporary conceptualizations of Jacques Rancière, Isobel Armstrong, and Jean-Michel Rabaté are applied to the primary texts in an attempt to uncover dissenting qualities at both a textual and contextual level. In this process, the thesis also addresses the ways in which each text and author can be seen to challenge the socio-literary landscape of their time. One of the premises upon which this study has been predicated is that the particularities of modernist form can be reconsidered and reappraised with the help provided by theorists who remind us of the political import and even the radicalism of literary aesthetics. Numerous texts could be refreshingly reassessed in contemporary modernist studies, if approached from reconciliatory angles that acknowledge the value of contradiction as an intrinsic feature of critique in the process of reevaluating the socio-political relevance of modernist aesthetics. In particular, the retrieval of voices of dissent against the social, economic, and political contexts of modernist narratives is indispensable to the attempt to envisage and nurture a socially responsive and responsible modernist studies in the twenty-first century. In the three chapters of this dissertation, Manhattan Transfer, Voyage in the Dark, and Murphy are seen to critique the status quo within modern capitalist metropolises and give dissent a variety of voices. The overarching aim of this thesis is to account for the elements that compose this variety. At the same time, all three of the case-studies have been approached from analytical perspectives that recognize and emphasize not only the necessity, but also the radical limitations and failures of dissent. These limitations and failures are often seen to be enciphered in the interpenetrations between the texts’ aesthetics and socio-politics, as well as conditioned by the textual and semantic effects of contradiction. Within a newly envisaged, socially responsive and responsible modernist aesthetic, the radicalism of critique can be illuminated by the radicalism of aesthetic frameworks. It is my hope that the analyses undertaken in this thesis, along with the aesthetic and critical theories that have assisted them, can be seen to partake of such contemporary concerns.

This research is a study of the notion of hospitality in the novels of Sir Walter Scott from a postcolonial perspective. Through the analysis of various acts of hospitality in the Waverley Novels, this thesis intends to examine how the notion of hospitality is represented as one of the most significant, ancient Scottish traditions defended and performed by people who have less power in society, but is abused by those (often the ruling class) who intend to use it as a mechanism to increase their existing power. Therefore, through the analysis of power relations between various host and guest characters, this thesis attempts to demonstrate the ways in which those groups who are under the rule of hegemonic power are constructed as the subaltern, a postcolonial term derived from the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci’s usage in the Prison Notebooks. However, in contrast to the accepted view of subaltern muteness and passivity, this thesis argues that in his novels, Scott not only represents subalterns as individuals but also gives them agency to initiate action in engaging or resisting colonizing power. The subaltern groups of particular interest to this investigation include the Jacobites, the Covenanters, the Scottish Highlanders, socially-underprivileged classes, and the Orientals. This thesis ultimately seeks to demonstrate that, because of their serious concern over the underprivileged, subdued, or alienated identities in history, the Waverley Novels render Scott in this dimension a postcolonial novelist.

In this thesis, I discuss how three poets with a connection to Wales, Gwyneth Lewis (born 1959), Pascale Petit (born 1953) and Deryn Rees-Jones (born 1968), develop their poetic practice beyond ordinary notions of home and belonging. Drawing on Wendy Wheeler's New Modernity? Change in Science, Literature and Politics, this project is described as a poetics of 'ecology,' using the broader meaning of the term, which refers not only to the study of plants and animals, but also to institutions and people in relation to their sense of place. I argue that Lewis, Petit and Rees-Jones promote an awareness of ecology or interconnectedness and they achieve this project by going beyond personal or individual concerns in a kind of poetic exile. This poetic exile entails the rejection of a 'whole' and 'bounded' selfhood and the acceptance of otherness or difference in one's own identity means that the boundaries between the self and other disintegrate or blur. I proceed in the general introduction to the thesis to consider the problems of modernity as described by Wheeler and I use her model to identify the melancholy modernity of R.S. Thomas; Dylan Thomas' poetic mourning; and the preoccupation with maternity in Gillian Clarke's poetry. Wheeler suggests that such phases emerge from anxiety about lost teleologies or insecurity of the ontological self, and ecology is the acceptance that human beings are never hermetically sealed, secure units. In the body of the thesis, I explore how Lewis, Petit and Rees-Jones exile themselves from ordinary selfhood to discover ecology with others. The chapter devoted to Le,vis discusses her commitment to decreation, a project that unravels the dominance of the centre over the margin through poems praising angels of the minor, the diminutive and the bathetic. The next chapter considers Petit's exile to Latin America and I argue that by interrogating the strangeness in other cultures, she forces Westem culture to recognise its own strangeness unravelling the clear distinction between 'civilised' and 'barbaric' cultures. Rees-Jones similarly focuses on the strangeness of the human self in her representation of liminal, marginal subjects, such as the clone passing for human. I conclude that the angel, Latin America and the clone are all poetic tropes by which these poets dissolve the oppositional binary of self versus other.

This thesis attempts to trace the development of two kinds of humorous sensibility in the fiction of the period 1800-1850, and to analyse the tensions between them. Humour as inherited from the eighteenth century contained diverse and sometimes contradictory elements which were strongly developed in the Romantic period, so nineteenth century humour could recommend an ideal individual morality, express social optimism, and hold out the hope of social reconciliation; yet at the same time it could subversively celebrate individual autonomy at the expense of social and moral concerns, and transform reality through ironic perspectives or grotesque forms. Edgeworth used the humorous character for didactic social purposes in her Irish novels; Scott, however, made his humorous characters the main imaginative embodiments of the social themes of his Scottish novels, maintaining a balance between didactic function and individual idiosyncrasy, a balance sustained by Galt in his novels about local history. But sceptical tendencies appeared: Austen warned that the humorous character was a threat to social order; Peacock's humorous characters were finally overwhelmed by a rancorous satirical spirit; and in Don Ju an, Byron used a version of Romantic Irony to undermine moral assertion. Romantic theories of humour were untouched by any taint of scepticism; such theories stressed the moral function of the humorous sensibility, seeing it as a genial and reconciling force based on love for mankind (the subversive power of the grotesque mode was viewed with suspicion); and Sartor Resartus embodied the highest moral and metaphysical possibilities of the humorous imagination. Beyond this, however, Thackeray's development of ironical perspectives further undermiined humour's positive and optimistic tendencies; and in Dickens's early novels there is a profound tension between the moral and social tendencies of the humour, and the increasingly anarchic, grotesque directions it takes. Eliot rejected the egotistical, ironic . and grotesque possibilities of humour, instead seeing moral improvement and social reconciliation as a matter of coming to terms with unattractive reality.

This thesis is a study of the Gothic fiction of Sabine Baring-Gould (1834- 1924), with particular attention given to Baring-Gould’s roles as squire and parson. I have chosen to analyze two of Baring-Gould’s Gothic works, the novel Mehalah (1880) and the novella Margery of Quether (1884), both which allow a particularly profitable examination of the influence of Baring-Gould’s roles on his fiction. In studying these texts I apply my theory of Gothic fiction as a particularly modern genre built upon a "Gothic threshold," a meeting point of extreme opposites which ambivalently contrasts and merges the categories of the modern and the medieval. In the first chapter I describe how Baring-Gould’s unique Hegelian-influenced Tractarian philosophy influenced his creation of the dialectical setting of Mehalah. I argue that because of this influence Mehalah should be recognized as a significant contribution to the literature of the Oxford Movement. In the second chapter I argue that Mehalah’s historical setting in the time of the French Revolution and the influence of Wuthering Heights reinforce Mehalah’s use of the “Gothic threshold” structure and contribute to its theme of ambivalent progress. In the third chapter I discuss the influence of Baring-Gould’s sermon-writing on Mehalah and consider connections between Baring-Gould’s role as parson and the novel’s botched marriage theme. In the final chapter I discuss Margery of Quether as an innovation in the Gothic and vampire tradition as perhaps the only Gothic work that directly dramatizes the Land Law debate and presents that debate as a "Gothic" contest. I argue that Margery channels Baring-Gould’s tensions as a landowner. In the conclusion I argue that Mehalah and Margery display Baring-Gould’s technique of constructing miniature Gothic battles that relate to larger confrontations, and that the ultimate terror presented in these works is the conclusion of the battle between ancient and modern forces.

'Dissembling', derived from courtiers' practice of sprezzatura. has the rhetorical ability to present one ostensible meaning/intention while simultaneously harbouring another meaning/intention. In this thesis, I suggest that three Elizabethan, writers - Lyly, Greene, and Shakespeare have selected this deceptive act as a means to amplify their writing. Lyly exerts the art of dissembling with the intention of enriching his writing verbally. The art enables him to write fiction of love, while he presents his works as either didactic treatises or encomiastic writings. As far as Greene's art of dissembling is concerned, it is a class-conscious one. In his courtly love romances, Greene explores both strengths and weaknesses of women as a way of reflecting his interest in both of the two different social positions of courtiers and shepherds. In his social pamphlets where he depicts middle-class traders in the framework of the prodigal son story, Greene attempts to marry the uneducated with the learned. Greene's tries at theatrical devices with the intention of lifting the boundary between reality and illusion in his plays help Shakespeare to gain an insight into the attainment of dramatic moments in his plays. Shakespeare, by dint of his art of dissembling, takes to multiplying the dissembling of the courtly and the lowly, the elite and the non-elite, reality and illusion which Greene has achieved throughout his career. In Shakespeare's good hands, Greene's art of dissembling is enriched by a movement towards 'bafflement' in both poetic and dramatic terms. An exploration of the way in which the art of dissembling is handed down from Lyly through Greene to Shakespeare encourages us to reconsider a connection between courtly culture and popular culture, the significance of Greene on the Elizabethan literary scene, a most neglected of the major Elizabethan writers, and the relationship of Shakespeare to Greene.

This thesis analyses the representations of North America in English travel narratives between the years 1607-1660. Texts in both print and manuscript format are examined to discover how authors described the geography, climate, landscape, flora and fauna of America, as well as the settlements established there by the English. The thesis is mostly concerned with literature concerning Virginia and New England, although the settlements of Newfoundland, Maine and Maryland are also briefly mentioned. The first chapter describes the methodology of the thesis and locates its place alongside the existing literature. A chapter explaining the pre-history of English involvement in North America in the reign of Elizabeth I follows. Chapter Three describes the connection between printing and adventuring on which the thesis is predicted, explaining how the authors’ intentions and experiences affected their portrayal of the New World. The ways in which authors understood the geography and climate of America are explored in Chapter Four, including the influence of European thinking and the writers’ experiences in America itself. The landscape, including rivers, mountains and forests are examined next in chapter five, with a special focus on the Englishmen’s subduing of the landscape and their reactions to its potential. Chapters Six and Seven deal with the flora and fauna of the New World, tracing how the settlers’ initial high hopes of using the diversity of wildlife they encountered gave way to the realisation that familiar crops and animals imported from Europe would prove more useful than those found locally, with a few notable exceptions, such as tobacco. Chapters Eight and Nine analyse the changing representations of the English settlements themselves, by comparing the English experiences in Virginia and those of New England. Again, initial hopes give way to an acceptance of a less idealistic vision for the plantations. Chapter Ten brings the focus of the thesis back to England, asking how printed information about the New World was transmitted around the country by various practitioners of the printing trade, and who was able to digest this information. The representation of America, not only in travel narratives, but also in other forms of literature such as ballads, poetry and plays, are reviewed more broadly in chapter eleven, and an attempt is made to define the responses of individual and collective readers to the news from the New World that they gathered. In its conclusion, the thesis explores the influence of this literature on the new scientific thinking and on England’s relationship with her colonies.