This thesis offers a new approach to the study of actor-audience relations in late medieval English drama and endeavours not only to emphasise the performative elements of medieval plays, but also the effects that they may have produced in performance. Adopting a phenomenological perspective, the work focuses on the audience's corporeal experience of the drama and draws on modern theories of performance, including the intersections with anthropology and, more recently, cognitive neuroscience. The literary, poetic and dramatic aspects of the three case studies chosen are analysed in depth with supporting evidence from the literature, iconography and theory of the period. Five distinct chapters divide the thesis: the first is an overview of the broader context of the study and the methodology used; Chapter Five discusses the findings and implications of the work, and the three central chapters each consider one key element in an audience's experience of medieval performance. Therefore, Chapter Two examines vocal sound in Christ before Herod; Chapter Three investigates the effects produced by the actor's physical movements in The Castle of Perseverance, while Chapter Four shifts attention onto the audience's activities in The Play of the Sacrament and how they may have contributed to the dramatic event. The findings suggest that, in many cases, medieval playwrights and performers had a sophisticated grasp of their medium, understanding its unique impact on human physiology and psychology and, moreover, that they consciously manipulated the fundamental components of the drama to create an experientially profound encounter for their audiences. These conclusions further highlight the need to re-evaluate current concepts of medieval performance space, as well as the extent to which the play texts themselves can illuminate the more ephemeral qualities of medieval theatre. But perhaps the most significant outcome of this thesis is the acknowledgement that medieval audiences not only read and heard what was presented to them, but felt the performances in both body and soul.

The scientist in fiction is much maligned. The mad, bad scientist has framed much of the debate about literary representations of science and with good reason since he is a towering icon of popular culture. Yet, I will propose that an equally preeminent figure provides an alternative model of science in fiction. This is the detective. Links between developing scientific disciplines and the emerging genre of detective fiction have been well described to date. Yet the history of the detective as scientific icon has not been told, particularly not as it engages with the history of the mad scientist. These two paragons of modem culture developed from a groundswell of gothic narrative and imagery that emerged in the late 18th century and continued to entertain and challenge audiences throughout the 19th century, as they still do to this day. My aim is to recover some of the complexity of past public images of science, and the understandings that such icons relate to, as they develop and meander through a variety of 19th century fictions. In a series of time slices I relate these figures, their iconography and narratives, to contemporary debates about science and follow through the elements that each generation retains, remoulds and claims for their own time. Ultimately, I hope to show that an panalysis of the mad scientist alongside other fictional scientific figures provides a far more nuanced picture of potential meanings, than the negative and fearful response that he is often assumed to represent. This is significant because both these icons are current in popular culture today and as such are part and parcel of the present pool of cultural resources that provides tools for thinking about science and society in the 21st century.

In view of the recent introduction of a literature component in the Malaysian English language teaching syllabus, this research study sets out to determine the present situation concerning the teaching of literature in ESL in Malaysia with particular reference to the Class Reader Programme (CRP). This is in order to develop two proposed course designs for the teaching of literature in ESL at the secondary school level with special emphasis on the Malaysian context. Under the present circumstances, this study offers an immediate response to the new developments and challenges brought about by the literature in ESL programmes especially when the Malaysian Education Ministry implemented the CRP at the Form One level in all secondary schools beginning from the 1989 academic year. The Ministry also plans to introduce the forthcoming Elective Literature in English Programme (ELEP) for the upper secondary level (Forms Four-Five) during the 1991-92 school session. These programmes aim to introduce the use of literary texts for language and literary purposes. This study is also in line with the current effort undertaken by the Department of Languages at the Universiti Pertanian Malaysia (UPM) to develop teaching literature in ESL courses for its pre- and in-service education and training (INSET) programme. Questionnaires were developed and used as the means for gathering the data in three separate surveys which were carried out for the purposes of this study. The three respective surveys were to investigate: (1) the Universiti Pertanian Malaysia (UPM) TESL in-service teachers' training to teach literature in ESL in Malaysia; (2) teachers' response to the CRP; and (3) teachers' response to the needs analysis of course components for teaching literature in ESL in Malaysia. In addition, separate interviews which involved two assistant directors from the Ministry of Education, Malaysia had also been undertaken to obtain further information pertaining to the aims and implementation procedures for the literature in ESL programmes (CRP and ELEP) at the secondary school level in Malaysia. The sample for this study consisted of 144 in-service teachers at UPM who were undergoing a four-year Bachelor of Education (B. Ed.) programme in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) and twenty-three Form One English language teachers from eleven selected rural and urban secondary schools in Malaysia who had been involved with the CRP. The outcome of this study primarily revealed that in the English language syllabus the respondents were not adequately prepared to teach the literature component; thereby, establishing the need for teaching literature in ESL courses in teacher education programmes in Malaysia. In relation to this finding, two proposed course designs which cater for the integrated language and literature teaching programmes in Malaysia (CRP and ELEP) were developed as an initial and practical response toward this undertaking. The two proposed courses are known as "Literature in ESL in the Language Class" and "Literature in ESL in the Literature Class”. Essentially, these two complementary courses promote the use of literary texts in the ESL classroom. Due consideration had been given to the following factors in the process of developing the two proposed courses: (1) the aims and objectives of the literature in ESL programmes in Malaysia (CRP and ELEP); (2) the results of the three empirical surveys which were conducted for the purposes of this study; (3) the review of the literature; and (4) the researcher's five years of practical experience in working with the Teaching of English as a Second Language (TESL) pre- and in-service teacher training and development programme at UPM. It is hoped that the results of this study will have some implications for future considerations on teaching literature in ESL courses, particularly in Malaysia, and also provide some basic principles and directions for future research in the area. More importantly, this initial effort should be regarded as a primary attempt to address the inadequacy of courses on methodology in the teaching of literature in ESL in the Malaysian teacher education curriculum. It may also serve as a practical guide to those who are interested in understanding more about the nature of literature teaching in ESL in general and in the Malaysian context in particular.

This thesis examines how representations of Toronto in contemporary Canadian literature engage with place and further an understanding of spatial innovation in literature. Acknowledging the Canadian critical tradition of discussing place and space, the thesis moves the focus away from conventional engagements with wilderness motifs and small town narratives. In this way the thesis can be seen to respond to the nascent critical movement that urges engagement with contemporary urban spaces in Canadian literature. Responding to the critical neglect of urban representation, and more particularly, representations of Toronto in Canadian literary criticism, this thesis examines Toronto as a complex and contradictory site of symbolic power across critical, political and popular discourses. Furthermore, this thesis repositions an understanding of Toronto by paying attention to literary texts which depict the city's negotiation of national, local and global forces. The thesis seeks to understand the multiplicity of the city in lived, perceived and conceived forms - seeing Toronto as Torontos. Questioning existing frameworks deployed in Canadian literary criticism, the thesis develops a unique methodology with which to approach the complex issues involved in literary writing about place, drawing on contemporary Canadian criticism and transnational approaches to critical literary geography. The central chapters focus on four texts from the twenty-first century, three novels and one collection of poetry, approaching each text with a critically informed spatial lens in order to draw out how engagements with Toronto develop spatial innovation within literature. The thesis analyses how engaging with Toronto challenges writers to experiment with literary form. In turn the thesis seeks to elucidate the spatial developments achieved through literary writing. The thesis then demonstrates an understanding of the material geography of the city, situating readings with reference to interview material from parties involved in writing, producing and distributing literary depictions of Toronto. Hence it combines traditional literary criticism with a spatially and socially engaged criticism, in order to clearly address the literary geographies of Torontos.

History is a problem for the history plays. The weight of ‘true’ history, of fact, puts pressure on the dramatic presentation of history. Not fiction and not fact, the plays occupy the interstitial space between these opposites, the space of drama. Their position between the binary opposites of fact and fiction allows the history plays to play with history. They view history as a problem to be solved, and the different ways in which each play approaches the problem of history gives us a glimpse of how they attempt to engage and deal with the problem of creating dramatic history. Each history play rewrites the plays that preceded it; the plays present ‘history’ as fluid and shifting as competing narratives and interpretations of the past come into conflict with each other, requiring the audience to act as historians in order to construct their own narrative of events. In this way the plays dramatise the process of remaking history. This can be seen in the relationship between the two parts of Henry IV, which restage the same narrative in a different emotional key, and the way that Henry IV’s retelling of the events of Richard II from his own perspective at the conclusion of 1 Henry IV forces the audience to re-evaluate the events of the earlier play, reinterpreting the dramatic past and imaginatively rewriting the play in light of the new perspective gained on events. The history plays thus create a new, dramatic history, a history without need for historical precedent. The plays deliberately signal their departure from ‘fact’ through anachronism, deviation from chronicle history and wholesale dramatic invention. In this sense the plays deliberately frustrate audience expectations; knowledge of chronicle history does not provide foreknowledge of what will happen onstage. History in the theatre is new and unpredictable, perhaps closer in spirit to the uncertainty of the historical moment rather than the reassuring textual narrative of the chronicles.

This is a study of the multiple constructions and appropriations of Geoffrey Chaucer’s paternitas of the English literary canon. It examines the evidence from the compilatio and ordinatio of fifteenth-century manuscript anthologies containing the poet’s works, and it interrogates the social conditions of production of these codices, as well as the ideology informing their compositional and paratextual programmes. Conceptually, my thesis is underpinned by a broad engagement with manuscript studies, as the codices to which I attend become objects of bibliographical and codicological examination, while being scrutinised through a post-structuralist framework. This theoretical approach, which comprises Michel Foucault’s revisions o f historiography and the contiguous debates on translation practices and queer theories, allows me to read critically the socio-cultural situations which inform the plural incarnations and appropriations of Chaucer's paternal authority. My study is structured in four chapters. I begin in Chapter I by engaging with Thomas Hoccleve's literary and iconographic mythopoeia o f Chaucer who is positioned as the clerical and sober fons et origo of English vemacularity. In Chapter III interrogate the appropriations of this initial paradigm of paternal authorship and I demonstrate how fifteenth-century manuscript collections fabricate Chaucer as a courtly and lyrical Father whose work is validated by his affiliations to and reproduction of dominant aristocratic literary practices. Chapter III situates these hegemonic modes of composition and mise-en-page in the context of French manuscript culture with which Chaucer's patemality of the English canon is inextricably intertwined. These associations with the ‘master’ culture, however, disperse the Father's authority in an intervemacular site of linguistic and cultural negotiations. Similarly, Chapter IV engages with the displacement of Chaucer's paternitas in the material space of the codex, as the glossarial apparatus of the manuscript copies of his works articulates voices of dissent. No longer the stable patriarch constructed by Hoccleve, Chaucer occupies a fluid and permeable space of authority that can be inhabited by a polyvocality of hermeneutic voices and is, therefore, susceptible to perpetual acts of co-option.

This thesis examines the relationship between pedagogy and print in early modern England. I argue that while print held great educational opportunities, it also presented intense pedagogical challenges.  Writers had to overcome the difficulties of teaching a remote, anonymous readership and deal with the problematic status of their pedagogical publications as commodities.  These difficulties forced writers to employ sophisticated rhetorical strategies in order to facilitate instruction and privilege their educational ideals, resulting in a level of expressive activity in their writings which has often been underestimated. Chapter 1 considers the implications that the organisation of contemporary schools had for reading, and shows writers such as Roger Ascham and Edmund Coote appropriated spatial techniques of discipline to manage their readers.  Chapter 2 continues to re-evaluate the disciplinary thrust of schooling, demonstrating grammatical instruction performed a more complicated form of inculcation than previously appreciated. Chapter 3 develops the connection between educational authority and economic morality raised in Chapter 2, arguing educators such as William Kempe promulgated injunctions against the sale of wisdom to establish their pedagogical prerogative and discredit competitors.  Building on this, Chapter 4 examines how Thomas Elyot and Ascham apply discourses of giving in their prefaces to distance their writings from the pursuit of self-interest and establish a pedagogical bond with readers.  Finally, Chapter 5 investigates the impact of the Protestant valorisation of work on the self-presentation of pedagogues such as Richard Mulcaster and John Brinsley, arguing the idealisation of industry provided educators with a powerful new claim to authority.  I conclude that by the end of the sixteenth century, educators were coming to see their work as a skilled and honourable profession, and that the writers discussed in this thesis participated in this transformation.

This thesis has three main components: an exegesis; a novel, Between the Signs; and an experimental essay entitled ‘An Essay, Performed’ (to include a paper version, and a pilot of an accessible performed reading – documentation of which is included with this thesis on DVD). An Introduction explains how these elements fit together to form a cohesive and integrated thesis, and details what is explored in each of the five sections of the exegesis. The exegesis provides a creative perspective on, and a topical enquiry into, British and American Deaf literature, and addresses how my multidisciplinary background in theatre relates to, and helps illuminate an understanding of, Deaf literature. It considers how my understanding of Deaf literature has shaped my creative writing and, drawing on the work I undertook in theatre, investigates how other writers and practitioners could create more accessible texts. The exegesis includes a literature review; a reflection on writing Between the Signs; findings from two pieces of practice-as-research; and a field project in the form of five interviews with leading Deaf language artists in the UK. By generating unique creative insights into this underexplored literary vein, I produce a document that I believe will be of use to writers and practitioners who are creating Deaf characters or developing accessible texts. Set in Scotland in the lead up to devolution, Between the Signs is inspired by my work as a theatre practitioner and my subsequent study of Deaf literature. It is rooted in the theatre world and follows Maddie, a young drama school graduate, in her quest for belonging. The novel engages with Deaf literature and culture on a thematic level, exploring the notion of dual identities and the limitations of all forms of human communication. It has particular emphasis on the visual. The experimental essay, ‘An Essay, Performed’, is the result of one of my pieces of practice-as-research. It embodies elements of my practical, theoretical and literary enquiry; exemplifies some of my findings regarding accessible literature; and holds the key to where this work could go next. Extracts of this paper-based essay will be presented as a pilot of an accessible performed reading prior to the viva, and made available on DVD with this thesis.

This thesis employs translation theory in order to analyse a translation of William Shakespeare’s Othello by Anna Radlova, which was written and performed in Stalinist Russia. Radlova was the wife of Sergei Radlov, a respected theatre producer and director, who staged several productions of Othello in his wife’s translation. Their partnership therefore provides a fascinating example for theatre translation research of a close working relationship between translator and director. The thesis begins by discussing the elements of translation theory appropriate to such a task. Drawing on the theory identified, the next two chapters then set Radlova’s work in context. Chapter 2 offers new perspective on the history of Shakespeare, and specifically Othello, in Russia by analysing how his assimilation into Russian culture was affected by developments and trends in the practice of translation, while Chapter 3 provides the social background to the Radlovs’ work, assessing how their approach to Shakespeare was shaped by the tense political environment in which they were working. The close analysis of Radlova’s translation choices in Chapter 4, alongside comparison with the translations of Pëtr Veinberg, Boris Pasternak and Mikhail Lozinskii which preceded and followed her work, allows an assessment of the methods she employed to bring a newly Soviet Shakespeare to her audiences. The incorporation of archival material and contemporary reviews in the final chapter enables an examination of the effects Radlova’s translation tactics had on the play in performance. The thesis thus makes a contribution to the knowledge and understanding of the work of the Radlovs, while the focus on translations of Othello and the reconstruction of Radlov’s productions aims to add to the understanding of the Russian performance tradition of the play. The exploration of the reasons behind the popularity of Othello in the Stalinist period also provides insight into the potential for accommodation to the constraints of cultural politics under Stalin.

<p> Jane Austen&rsquo;s Pride and Prejudice, Christina Rossetti&rsquo;s &ldquo;Goblin Market,&rdquo; and Louisa May Alcott&rsquo;s Little Women are three works which focus on communities of women. Since women had such limited opportunities available to them in the nineteenth century, marriage was the most viable option for survival. An interesting connection found, though, among the literature written by women at the time is the way in which women thrive together in communities with each other&mdash;up until the men enter the scene. Once the men, or more commonly, one man who is also the future husband, disrupt these women-centered communities, the close bond among women is severed. These three authors envisioned a better option than marriage&mdash;a supportive sisterhood&mdash;safe, loving, and uninterrupted. How and why did women thrive together in these three fictional nineteenth-century communities? How did they communicate? In what spaces did these communities exist? In what ways did men disrupt these communities, and was it possible for women to regain a similar level of closeness with each other after the disruption of men (i.e. marriage)? This thesis looks at the various viewpoints and treatments each author brought to women&rsquo;s communities, their importance, formation, and men&rsquo;s intrusions upon them.</p>