This contextualist study re-examines the contested critical question of Jonathan Swift's political character. It is concerned with the historical meaning of Swift's texts and attempts to recover their original political impact. Politically-literate contemporaries claimed to read Jacobite Tory politics in Swift's texts. Rather than dismiss the judgement of Swift's contemporaries, this study asks whether there is anything about Swift's political writing in polemical context that could have led contemporaries to construe the politics of his texts as Jacobite Tory. The conclusion this study reaches is that aspects of Swift's political rhetoric are consonant with Tory and Jacobite polemic. While contesting current conceptions of Swift as a Whig, this study offers a partial revision of that scholarship which describes Swift as a non-Jacobite Tory. The thesis is based on an analysis of Swift's prose, poetry and correspondence and contemporary (mainly printed) sources books, pamphlets, poems on affairs of state and newspapers. Some new or neglected polemical contexts and analogues for Swift's works are suggested. Chapter 1 considers some of the problems and contested issues in interpretation of Swift's political biography and writing. Chapter 2 witnesses Swift's combination of High Church attitudes with a radical political critique of Whig establishment. Swift is read in juxtaposition with Jacobite Tory authors such as George Granville, Lord Lansdowne. Chapter 3 relocates A Tale of a Tub in historical context to reveal the satire's relation to High Church Tory polemical languages. Chapter 4 discusses the disaffected Tory aspect of Gulliver's Travels. Chapter 5 attempts to register the complexity of the textual evidence of Swift's attitude to Jacobitism. Detailed attention is given to his politically-revealing attitudes to the Dutch. A coda briefly describes Swift's discontent with the Revolution settlement, examines this Church-of-England Man's sentiments on the crucial ideological issue of resistance, and suggests the importance of Hugo Grotius in Swift's political thought.

Social Reality and Narrative Form in the Fiction of Henry Green contests the dominant reading of Henry Green's fiction as an abstract, autonomous textual production. My thesis situates Green into a number of literary and socio-historical contexts and argues that doing so challenges a number of prevailing critical orthodoxies. I also argue that Green's fiction is formally constructed through a variety of dislocations, from displacing the centrality of plot, undermining the integrity of character, silencing the narrative voice and questioning the authenticity of the self. To relate social reality to narrative form, each of the four main chapters is dedicated to one of four substantive aspects of material reality: age, class, geography and the body. In the first chapter, I examine Green's relationship to the writing of his generation and to the concepts of age and youth. I argue that Green was deeply ambivalent towards generational belonging or the notion that identity could be supplied through one's generation. My second chapter investigates Green's treatment of social class and positions his Birmingham factory novel, Living, against 1930s theories of proletarian fiction and its canonical texts. My third chapter considers sites of authority both in the external world (geographic space) as well as within the novelistic space. The eclipsing of the narrator and the subsequent translation of the imaginative faculty to the reader is a part of Green's strategy to displace sites of authority. My final chapter looks at Green‘s treatment of the physical body and argues that disability is a central aspect of his novelistic practice. The impossibility of unity and wholeness, therefore, sheds light not only on the physicality of modern man but also on wholeness as a mental and linguistic possibility when the times are 'breaking up.'

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This thesis shows that 'Shakespeare' (both the works and the man) was at the forefront of literary activity in the nineteenth century. By focusing on concerns about the identity of the British nation and its people it shows that Shakespeare was a constant presence in the debates of the day and that a number of agendas were pursued through what were ostensibly writings about Shakespeare's plays and the biography of their author. The Introduction first notes Shakespeare's transition from Elizabethan playwright to Victorian cultural icon and proceeds to outline nineteenth-century critical practice and changes in the social organisation of knowledge. From here the shift in how Shakespeare was considered is noted as well as the fact that, despite increasing interest in the history of the phenomenon, the nineteenth century has been largely neglected. What exploration there has been of this period has tended, by its nature as part of larger surveys or issue-specific studies, to oversimplify the complexities of nineteenth-century criticism. Further to this, the nineteenth century itself is often treated as a time of unsophisticated development and as a precursor to modern thought rather than a period of interest in its own right. A variety of what this thesis terms 'literary pursuits' during this period are then contextualised, as well as the changing role of the critic in nineteenth-century society. This is accompanied by an exploration of the community of readers and writers who would have engaged with these works. Finally, the methodological decisions which have directed this thesis are explained, including the privileging of page over stage, and the choice of those nineteenth-century writers who have been examined. The main body of the thesis is divided into two sections: Part One (Chapters One and Two) gives a broad taxonomy of ways in which nineteenth-century writers used Shakespeare as a means for addressing other issues, and Part Two (Chapter Three) uses a specific case study through which to examine these particular issues. It shows that attitudes to Shakespeare were shaped by an ongoing dialogue concerning the identity of the nation and its population. However, while there was much commonality regarding the agendas for which Shakespeare was used, the ways in which various different writers approached this was surprisingly diverse. Chapter One, 'Nationalism,' looks at how Shakespeare could be used in order to serve a nationalistic agenda: this involved either allying Shakespeare with the nation itself (by utilising Shakespeare's nationality, writing in a rhetorically charged manner, or interpreting Shakespeare's works in a certain fashion), or equating the nineteenth century with the early modern period (and highlighting various commonalities or differences with those times). The concept of nationalism is contextualised by looking at various attitudes to the nation which were driven by the challenges of the expanding Empire. Chapter Two, 'Moralism,' looks at the ways in which Shakespeare was used as a tool by those who sought to promote certain behavioural traits amongst their readers. The different ways in which writers made use of Shakespeare are situated within a discussion of nineteenth-century philosophical and moral positions. This chapter looks successively at what is termed 'Private Moralism' (a concern with abstract ideas, such as self-control and adherence to familial or religious ties), and 'Public Moralism' (that is, efforts to improve the outward or physical attributes of individuals, such as financial accumulation or class status). Part Two of the thesis focuses on how Victorian writers used Shakespeare specifically in relation to Shakespeare's Sonnets. To this end, Chapter Three, 'The Sonnets,' looks at how writings on the Sonnets pursued moral or nationalistic agendas. This chapter also seeks to draw together the strands of nationalism and moralism by showing that anxieties about the state of Britain fed into writing about the Sonnets at this time and that this involved a complex debate about the Sonnets, ancient Greece, and the nature of what would today be termed homosexuality. A significant contention of this chapter is that nineteenth-century attitudes towards the Sonnets need to be appreciated on their own terms rather than anachronistically via a modern understanding of homosexuality. The Conclusion suggests that Shakespeare was used by nineteenth-century critics and biographers as a location within which to debate certain overarching concerns of the day. How these issues were approached, however, took different forms and Shakespeare was employed for different ends, which points to a general unease regarding the identity of the nation. As the formal institutionalising of the English Literary canon was taking place during the period covered by this thesis it seems reasonable to suggest that the use of Shakespeare was related to Shakespeare's position of dominance within the canon. Finally, suggestions are made as to how the ease with which Shakespeare could be used - as well as the unavoidable difficulties which are attendant with Shakespeare - might have affected this process of canonisation.

This thesis examines the intellectual significance of early Caribbean writer Herbert George de Lisser in his literary writings and as such is a work of recovery and criticism. Each chapter concentrates on a specific, predominantly European, literary genre and investigates how de Lisser experiments with these genres in order to not only support and recognise the emergence of a local national literature, but also to create a cultural national identity based upon the symbolic use of women to define Jamaica as a nation. Situating de Lisser within colonial discourse and the socio political arena of the British Empire, the introduction sets out the postcolonial theoretical framework and relocates de Lisser within the context of West Indian literature, debating his literary neglect alongside his need to be reclaimed. Chapter I debates the traditional notions of nationhood and examines the dislocation and (re)gendering of nation and nationhood through the lens of women as founders of a nation with the main emphasis on his novel "Anacanoa." Chapter II concentrates on de Lisser's "historical" novels and explores the representation of heroism and the search for a national identity in two of de Lisser's novels, Revenge and Psyche, written at the beginning and the end of his career. This chapter examines the way in which the novels' (re)negotiation of the representations of heroism is explored within individual characters. Chapter III examines women as a symbol of Jamaica through the lens of female independence and national identity. The focus of this chapter rests on de Lisser's literary works that have received a limited amount of literary investigation, namely Jane's Career and Susan Proudleigh, with a third novel "Myrtle and Money" which is not only a sequel to Jane's Career (although written some 30 years later), but also creates a trilogy of texts that serves to represent the political complexities of early twentieth century Jamaica. Chapters IV and V act as sister chapters and examine the representation of women through the (re)clamation and (re)creation of folk legends and the commodification of literature in the novels Morgan's Daughter and The White Witch of Rosehall. These chapters consider how de Lisser's appropriation of a legend encourages that legend to evolve into a symbol for nationalism and historical heritage. Experimenting with the genres of sentimental literature and gothic fiction respectively, de Lisser investigates the dichotomy of European and Jamaican cultures. Chapter VI focuses upon the general constructions of nationhood which are founded upon traditional hegemonic public and private spheres. With an in-depth investigation into his periodical Planters' Punch which was produced from 1920-1945, this chapter analyses how de Lisser continuously blurs these spherical boundaries by creating strong women who are capable of fulfilling the "role" of the male in civilised society and therefore relocates them into the public arena. Finally, the conclusion explores de Lisser's perception of women and highlights how by investigating his literary works through his representation of women, de Lisser is able to be reconciled within a more delineated and inclusive Caribbean literary canon.

This thesis, entitled ‘Shaping, Intertextuality and Summation in D. H. Lawrence's Last Poems’ , is the first full-length study of the poetry written by Lawrence in 1928-30, posthumously labelled ‘More Pansies’ and ‘Last Poems’ by Richard Aldington in 1932. My opening chapter discusses the characteristics of these two late poetry notebooks, challenging interpretations offered by Holly Laird and Christopher Pollnitz. I argue for the necessity of moving beyond an analysis limited to the consideration of poem sequences within a verse-book, or the evolution of individual poems through draft-stages. This conviction provokes a discussion of intertextual theory, in order to establish an approach which will facilitate the placing of Lawrence's late poetry in wider contexts. The resulting methodology aims to combine an empirical selection procedure in which intertexts are chosen according to key triggers or signposts within Lawrence-text, with an awareness that such selection is arbitrary, constituting an inevitable retrospective ordering. Chapters 2-7 each focus on a specific text, area or genre in which significant intertextual assimilation is identified. In chapters 2 and 3, four crucial poetic precursors - Keats, Shelley, Swinburne and Whitman - are discussed, both in relation to Lawrence's blatant allusions, and in terms of the insidious ‘weaving’ of precursive text into Last Poems. Chapter 4, emphasising that intertextuality should be recognised as spanning genre divisions, focuses on the significance of the pre-Socratic fragments published in John Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy. Chapter 5, also foregrounding prose intertexts, discusses three relevant anthropological works: E. B. Tylor's Primitive Culture, James Frazer's The Golden Bough and Gilbert Murray's Five Stages of Greek Religion, in relation to the poems advocating a conscious 'return' to different modes of writing and living. In Chapter 6 the term ‘intra-textuality’ (self-borrowing) is introduced, with Sketches of Etruscan Places as the focus. Lawrence's writing (in addition to his wide reading) on the Etruscan civilisation is seen to underlie fundamental mythological aspects of Last Poems. Intra-textuality remains the focus of Chapter 7, which discusses Apocalypse (the only major work written by Lawrence after Last Poems) as well as numerous related intertexts, in order to illuminate Lawrence's use of key apocalyptic symbols in the late poetry. The concluding chapter considers whether or not the posthumously imposed title Last Poems is appropriate, and whether this ‘body’ of verse can be treated justifiably as a summation of Lawrence's life and/or art. The short prologues to the 1930 edition of Birds, Beasts and Flowers, and the prose poem 'Fire', are brought into play as texts which succeed Last Poems, taking Lawrence's (freeverse) poetry writing in new directions. My interrogation of the concept of ‘fastness’ provokes a consideration of the implications of creative immortality and the possibility of different kinds of renewal, or ‘fresh starts’.

This thesis attempts to identify a particular epistemological stance as a trans-historical generic feature of the British novel, seeking theoretical commonalities across readings of four novelistic texts. Drawing upon conventional critical reliance on realism as a definitive feature of the novel, chapter one examines the dialectical interplay of empiricism and scepticism in the intellectual climate and public discourse of eighteenth-century Britain as an influence on realistic literary modes and proposes that the novel as a genre is preoccupied with problems of epistemology. Chapter two considers Jane Barker’s Galesia trilogy as an example of novelistic engagement with a common theme in the empiricism/scepticism dialectic: the epistemological complications entailed by individual subjectivity. Barker’s thematic emphases on uncertainty, multiplicity, and fallenness coincide with a generically entrenched, and thus novelistic, orientation toward open-endedness and unfinalizability, as articulated in the work of Mikhail Bakhtin. Chapter three associates realism with mimesis, a figure whose tendency toward duplicity and reversibility align it with Jacques Derrida’s concept of pharmakon. Mimesis-as-pharmakon is considered in the context of Tobias Smollett’s The Adventures of Roderick Random. Chapter four shifts critical focus to contemporary fiction -- Martin Amis’s Money: A Suicide Note -- and examines how postmodernist literary techniques, particularly the metafictional inclusion of an author figure, reiterate the novelistic portrayal and exemplification of epistemological provisionality that underlies eighteenth-century texts. Chapter five, with analysis of Ian McEwan’s Saturday and reference to the philosophy of Iris Murdoch, suggests that the problems of knowledge entailed by situated individual subjectivity, as represented by the novel, privilege a corresponding ethical posture of deference and openness to the other. In an afterword, these ethical implications are extended to suggest a possible political significance to the genre.

British Aestheticism’s demand for an elite audience has been conceived as emblematizing its reputation as a socially-disengaged movement. This thesis revises literary historical accounts of the movement by challenging such long-held assumptions. It aims to develop a more complex understanding of Aestheticism’s theorized reading practices in order to examine how the movement’s elitism evolves out of a concern for specialized methods of critical engagement with form, which are conceived as having ethical consequences. For authors and critics associated with British Aestheticism, a specialist appreciation of form, far from being a retreat from ethics, represents a refined mode of social engagement. In short, this study considers how the movement’s theories of art’s social utility are held to depend upon its elitism. Scholarship has tended to utilize recuperations of Aestheticism to suit certain theoretical agendas and in the process has revised our understanding of the movement’s elitism. Feminist scholarship, for example, has defined a broader, more inclusive and capacious movement in which the link between art’s social utility and aesthetic value is redefined so that Aestheticism is open in principle to anyone, including the public at large. Nicholas Shrimpton has pointed out that the use of the term Aestheticism in recent scholarship ‘as a chronological catch-all [means] the term “Aesthetic” has been stretched so thin that it is [in] danger of collapsing.’ This thesis aims to recuperate the elitism of British Aestheticism, arguing that we should not allow modern values and priorities to reconstruct our understanding of Aestheticism’s critical terms and concepts. In doing so, it aims to re-historicize the Aesthetic Movement. More precisely, it shows how Walter Pater, Henry James and Vernon Lee (pseud. Violet Paget) formulate frameworks of ‘ideal’ aesthetic response against the backdrop of their engagements with intellectual and literary culture. Each chapter traces a number of connecting threads concerning stylistic supremacy, readerly ethics and artistic responsibility that run between the works of these three figures. The first chapter reassesses Aestheticism’s elitist critical practices in relation to its readerships. This chapter pays close attention to the relationship between Pater, James and Lee’s aesthetic theories and authorial strategies expanding our traditional picture of the evolution of Aestheticism to encompass a more complex understanding of its theorization of its readerships. The second chapter traces the influence of the philosophical concept of Arnoldian disinterestedness as a negotiated framework of ‘ideal’ aesthetic response. It considers how a tension between elitism and ethics underlies this critical practice. Whilst this activity preconditions its practitioners for social interaction, it requires a specialist critic to undertake it. The third chapter examines how late-19th century psychological discourse informs our understanding of the tension between elitism and ethics which inhabits Aestheticism’s appropriations of disinterestedness. Overall, the argument of this thesis aims to reassess to the movement’s traditional emphasis on artistic integrity, readerly ethics and stylistic supremacy, but, at the same time, to rethink the periodicity and capaciousness of Aestheticism itself.

This dissertation examines relationships between Northern Irish Troubles fiction and its secondary critical literature. Producers of genre are viewed as consumers of the genre to which they contribute and the consumption of genre is seen as a pre-requisite of production. The research method is designed to examine genre systematically through the analysis of a large data set representative of the genre spectrum. It employs analytical concepts drawn from semiotics, specifically, paradigms and syntagms. Results are interpreted using Raymond Williams' "structures of feeling" and a modified version of Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model. The review of the secondary literature of Troubles fiction reveals two interpretative models. The first sees Troubles fiction as a static site of cultural production in which a narrow range of negative or false stereotypes is endlessly reproduced. The second sees Troubles fiction as a site of cultural production that has experienced a form of cultural rupture as a younger generation of writer critiques and re-interprets conventional representations. Analysis reveals that neither interpretative model emerging from the secondary critical literature fully describes Troubles fiction. Conventional critical approaches to Troubles fiction based on intuitive and impressionistic ways of seeking knowledge miss minute shifts in the genre's history. In particular, critical studies miss the return to relatively conservative thriller codes and conventions in novels published in the early 1990s during the peace talks. Critics have most regard for novels written by Irish literary authors and novels containing literary and technical modifications. The modality-orientated content modifications of 1980s thrillers do not attract literary interest. This study sees genre as historically contingent, taking the view that the relationship between the macro-level perspective of generic system and the micro-level perspective of individual novel is best explored through specific description and comparison of novels both diachronically and at the level of the synchronic moment.

This study undertakes an examination of fool-master discourse in Shakespeare with the help of discourse stylistics, an approach to the study of literary texts which combines findings from the fields of discourse analysis, conversation analysis and pragmatics. The analysis aims to show how the relations of power which exist between dramatic characters are manifested by the linguistic organization of the dialogue as interactive process. Fool-master discourse in Shakespeare is analysed from three different perspectives: the use of the pronouns of address (you/thou); the organization of the discourse as a whole; and the politeness strategies used by fools and their employers in face-to-face interaction. With regard to the pronouns of address, it is shown that neither a structural model nor a sociolinguistic one are sufficient per se to satisfactorily explain the constant shift of pronoun which occurs in Early Modern English dramatic texts. It is suggested that a model of analysis rooted in discourse analysis and pragmatics ought to be developed. Burton's framework is used to study the conversational structure of fool-master discourse, and to show how the power relations obtaining between dramatic characters are manifested by the internal organization of dramatic dialogue. Politeness phenomena in fool-master discourse are studied following Brown and Levinson's model and it is shown that both the fools and their employers orient to face in interaction. Finally, this study of power relations in fool-master discourse shows that, contrary to much current critical opinion, the fools in Shakespeare are not licensed jesters who enjoy unlimited freedom of speech. Feste, Lavatch and Lear's Fool need to resort to complex linguistic strategies if they want to make their criticisms and, at the same time, avoid being punished.