The aim of this thesis is to explore the changing representation of ships and sailors in English maritime fiction in the early twentieth century, as sailing ships were being replaced by steamships. It begins with a critical review examining the reception of Joseph Conrad’s maritime fiction and subsequently presents new readings of five of his sea novels and their response to the transition between sail and steam: The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ (1897), Lord Jim (1900), Romance (1903), Chance (1913) and The Shadow-Line (1917). Arguing that Conrad’s work is not the culmination of the maritime fiction genre, the third chapter examines sea stories that retreated back to the past in pirate adventure narratives. It begins with a contextual review of pirate fiction, followed by analyses of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s pirate short stories (1897 and 1911), F. Tennyson Jesse’s Moonraker (1927), and Richard Hughes’s A High Wind in Jamaica (1929). In the same period, other maritime texts turned away from the pirate romance to embrace the harsh realities of the brave new mechanised maritime world and the changing role of the sailor on modern vessels; chapter four examines the impact of war on maritime fiction through an analysis of Erskine Childers’s The Riddle of the Sands (1903), which responded to and exacerbated national fears about invasion, while chapter five considers the impact of industrialisation on maritime fiction in James Hanley’s Boy (1931) and Malcolm Lowry’s Ultramarine (1933). The sixth chapter considers the role of fact and fiction in Richard Hughes’s In Hazard (1938) and examines the ways in which this text looks back to Conrad’s work. Ultimately, the texts discussed prompt a reconsideration of the maritime fiction genre, while the conclusion suggests how it enables further experimentation with the sea story throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century.

This thesis aims to explore the processes of translating by focusing on the translating of poetic metaphor. The methodology used is the application of George Lakoff's theory of conceptual metaphor to two case studies, in which problems of translating will be identified, and a theoretical conclusion will be formulated. The Introduction sets out the author's basic assumptions on the process of translating, the cognitive approach to metaphor, and the adoption of Lakoff's cognitive models of metaphor in the following case studies. Part I deals with the translating of metaphors of sickness in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Chapter one attempts to construct cognitive models of sickness as seen in contemporary English against which concepts of sickness in the Elizabethan age are compared. Chapter two undertakes a detailed examination of selected Chinese translations of metaphors of sickness in Hamlet organized in accordance with the cognitive models identified earlier. Chapter three draws preliminary conclusions on the translatability of basic metaphors common to English and Chinese and the difficulties encountered in others, which can be traced to cosmological differences between the two cultures. Part II studies metaphors of love in Sylvia Plath's poetry. Chapter four presents Plath's model of love on the basis of Zoltán Kövecses' model, and discusses its conflicts with traditional Chinese concepts of love. Chapter five analyses problems involved in Chinese translations, mainly of the 'perverted' model of love in Plath's poetry. A preliminary conclusion reached in chapter six points to cultural incoherence as the main obstacle in the translating of her innovative metaphors. After reviewing current opinions on the translation of metaphor, the author proposes a model of the translating of poetic metaphor in the hope that the findings from the case studies may contribute towards a general theory.

This thesis traces the cultural significance of ghost beliefs in English society from c.1660 to c.1800. It is an attempt to partially re-enchant these years and to nuance historical characterisation of eighteenth-century England as an enlightened, secularising and ‘anti-superstitious’ nation. Moreover, I aim to restore ghost beliefs to historical legitimacy and my central argument is that they played a crucial role in shaping the specific social, political, economic and religious contours of eighteenth-century life. Ghosts have been largely exorcised from existing accounts of this period and so this research represents a fresh contribution to historical understandings of the long eighteenth century and to historiographies of the supernatural more generally. The following chapters describe how ghost beliefs blended with the religious cultures of Anglicanism and Methodism by reinforcing orthodox theological teachings. The idea that dead souls could return to earth also complemented clerical initiatives to reform lay spirituality and to temper the extremes of rational religion. I chart how ghost beliefs fared in the face of new enlightenment philosophies, and how they informed discourse of politeness, individuality and interiority. This is accompanied by explorations of the relevance of ghost beliefs in everyday life. I describe the places and spaces in which ghost stories were told, the people who narrated them and those who listened. This ‘thick description’ emphasises how the spread of ghost stories was encouraged by contemporary labour relations, by the expansion of British imperial and trading interests overseas, and by patterns of sociability that were intrinsically linked to the realities of eighteenth-century life. I have harnessed insights from socio-linguistics and the sociology of literature to theorise the relationship between ghost stories and ghost beliefs. I have examined the production, circulation and consumption of ghost stories, as well as their form and content, to explain how these texts reflected and shaped the opinions of a variety of readers. In so doing, this thesis suggests an important relationship between literary forms and historical change.

Although he was a prominent and influential playwright during his theatrical career, the work of James Shirley (1596-1666) has been neglected since Dryden's description of him in 'MacFlecknoe' as a mere 'type...of tautology'. Shirley holds a unique place amongst Caroline dramatists as, at the height of his career, he left London to become resident playwright of the first purpose-built theatre in Ireland, the Werburgh Street Theatre. This seminal event has received fairly little attention from scholars, and the plays of this Irish period (The Royal Master, The Doubtful Heir, The Gentleman of Venice, The Politician and St. Patrick for Ireland) have not previously been examined as a whole. This thesis examines Shirley's Irish period in its entirety, from the circumstances surrounding his move to Dublin in 1636, through an exploration of his relationship with the Werburgh Street Theatre and what influenced his Irish plays, to the factors which resulted in his return to England in 1640. The thesis historicises the production of these plays in their socio-political context. The chapters (chronologically arranged by play) provide close textual studies and contextual material relating the texts to their patrons, performance spaces, audiences, print history and Irish politics. This research reveals that during this four year period, Shirley gradually adapted his writing style in a targeted attempt to appeal to the tastes of the Dublin audience. Shirley managed the theatre with John Ogilby, who was appointed Master of the Revels in Ireland by Lord Deputy Wentworth. An analysis of the relationship between these three key figures has contributed to a comprehensive picture of the socio-political conditions of Shirley‘s writing. Through the investigation of Shirley's work and professional position during this time, this thesis builds on recent critical recovery work (including that by Hadfield/Maley, Rankin, Dutton) on the literary-political circumstances of Stuart Ireland.

The primary objective of this thesis is to examine the interaction between drama and politics in Ben Jonson's two surviving tragedies, Sejanus and Catiline, during the early years of the Jacobean and Restoration periods. Jonson relied heavily on classical scholarship in writing his two extant tragedies, his stated reason being to convince the readers of their "truth of Argument". But Jonson, nevertheless, adapted his sources in an ingenious way that both suited his dramatic purposes and served to cast light on social and political realities in the England of his own day. For Jonson, as for many Renaissance historians, the past had meaning primarily because of its valuable lessons for the present and the future. Thus, one of my aims is to examine both the nature and the extent of Jonson's dependenceo n the classical sources which provided him with the historical stories and details that he dramatized in the two plays. SuccessiveE nglish governmentsi n the seventeenthc entury treated drama, especially that based on historical material, as a potentially dangerous medium for disseminating propaganda and for influencing public opinion against specific government policies. Therefore, part of this work will be devoted to discussing censorship regulations within early Jacobean and Restoration England, and to examining their effects both on Jonson and on the reception of his two tragedies. Each of the two plays is studied in the context of its historical sources in order to determine Jonson's method of adapting his sources as well as the extent of topicality that each play seems to provide, both on the Jacobean and the Restoration stage. The method adopted in this study is to place the two Roman tragedies within the contemporary setting for which they were originally intended and then within the context of the early Restoration period when the two plays are thought to have been revived.

Both Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon achieved their first real poetic successes during the Great War. Linked together as fellow officers and friends, and flushed with the promise of greater poetic achievement ahead, both writers perceived the war initially as a vehicle by which they could rid themselves of Victorian influences and produce startling results as realists. But as the war continued and both men began to suffer its effects, they realized that their verses had failed to alert a victory-determined British populace to its jingoistic mentality. By mid 1919, both poets were trying to adjust to civilian status and to re-organize their lives after the upheaval of the war: Graves attempted at first to expiate his memories of the Western Front by moving to the Oxfordshire countryside and by writing sentimental verse, but dissatisfaction with his marriage and an inability to exorcise his neurasthenic nightmares led him to experiment with psychological self-analysis in his poetry. Sassoon's response to the war, in contrast, motivated largely by a homo-erotic attachment to the enlisted men under his command and a conviction of social injustice, turned him briefly to socialism and social satire for a thematic approach to his poetry in the early Twenties. In their joint discontent, Sassoon and Graves searched throughout the mid-Twenties for personal order and artistic direction. Graves delved into Eastern philosophy and biblical exegesis until, with the arrival of Laura Riding, his domestic and creative life was turned around; from Riding, Graves gained the strength to reject the values imposed upon him by his background and his literary peers. Similarly, Sassoon struggled to find a poetic cause commensurate with his talents, but his disillusionment with the modern world caused him to turn inward for inspiration. This introspection led Sassoon to a contemplation of his past, through which he was eventually to find the symmetry and positive cultural values that were lacking in the modern world. Thus, in their individual searches for creative inspiration, both Graves and Sassoon severed relations with contemporary British society and each turned to his own form of self-imposed exile. Graves chose to escape into the uncharted brave new world of the then undiscovered Majorca, while Sassoon opted for the bucolic world of rural England in remembrance of things past. The roads chosen at this juncture were to determine the direction and tone of both writers' future works. The recent publication of two biographies of Graves and of Sassoon's diaries (1915-1925), together with collections of their unpublished letters, allow a much clearer understanding of the two poets' work throughout the war years and the Twenties, and reflect the inexorable road to self-exile and autobiography that was eventually to provide the only means of exorcising the war from their personal lives and artistic endeavours.

This thesis places Forster's fiction in the homosexual tradition of English literature and presents, for the first time, a full exposition of the homoerotic motifs in each of Forster's novels. Homoerotic desire has been only partially recognized in Forster's texts, but as the following chapters show the desire for male love is pervasive and affects the structure and techniques of Forster's writing. Homoerotic desire in Forster's fiction attaches to the ideal of friendship and the theme of friendship is invariably connected with the metaphor of journey. Forster uses the metaphor of journey to transport his narratives beyond the confines of English middle-class values to a region where relations between men are acceptable. A homosexual reading of Forster's texts has several implications for his work. Firstly, it emerges that Forster's novels are covert texts which convey the ideal of male love evasively, by strategies of deferment and delay. Secondly, the author's interest in another country, Italy or India, is not for the sake of those countries but allied to homoerotic desire. Lastly, for all the apparent dissimilarities between them, all of Forster's novels variously approach homoerotic desire; the themes of journey and friendship are common to all the novels. The chapters of this thesis demonstrate the way homoerotic desire operates in Forster's narratives. This involves a close reading of the text and an alertness to the novelist's manipulation of language. The thesis reinterprets passages from Forster's novels that previously have either been overlooked or dismissed as obscure. Forster's treatment of homoerotic love in all his novels, except Maurice, is problematic. The narrator's attempts to conceal the real tendency of his narratives creates a tension between the explicit statements and the undercurrents in his texts. The conflict is never resolved, but it gives the novels the odd, peculiar quality that is characteristic of Forster's writing. Forster occupies a unique, if dubious position, in English literature as a homosexual writer whose work has been entirely assimilated into the mainstream, heterosexual tradition.

There is a tradition that Hardy's reception as a novelist was primarily characterized by attacks on the morality and philosophy of his novels or on his failure to produce works which conformed to the conventional popular novel of the day. This belief is most detrimental when it is argued that Hardy indiscriminately bowdlerized his novels to counteract these attacks and to appease editors, readers, and critics. This narrow approach to the critical reception of Hardy's novels ignores the broader artistic considerations, the concern with various concepts of the art of the novel, in the criticism of his novels from the time of the publication of his first novel in 1871 until that of his last major revisions for the Wessex Edition in 1912.To arrive at a precise understanding of criticism of Hardy's novels during the time he was writing and of the nature of Hardy's reaction, this study begins with a discussion of Hardy's response to criticism. The second chapter defines the critical climate into which Hardy's novels were first introduced through an examination of the status of the novel and its functions. The remaining chapters analyze various areas of concern in the criticism of Hardy's novels, indicating to what extent specific criticism reflects or deviates from tendencies in general criticism. Concepts of representation and the controversy over realism and idealism, discussed in the third and fourth chapters, greatly influenced considerations of the relationship of art and morality, the relationship of art and philosophy, and concepts of tragedy. They also formed the basis of many discussions of artistic and technical questions concerning plot, character and characterization, use of setting, point of view, and style. This study thus illustrates the importance of various concepts of the art of the novel which governed the critical reception of Hardy's novels as well as the intimate relationship between this reception and the transitional nature of novel criticism in the late nineteenth century.

Browning's poetry is notable for the number and importance of its references to other arts. This thesis attempts to assess the influence of painting and painterly ideas on Browning's poetry, with special reference to his contacts with painting in the early part of his life. His father's taste for and knowledge of painting are discussed, and connections are made between them and formal or technical details of Browning's style. His father's own artistic abilities and his interest in engraving are also considered in this light. This entails some consideration of the methodology of comparison between painting and poetry, both as Browning would have known it and, with reference to ray own explorations, in a modern context. Stress is laid on the fact that Browning's father's taste provided the poet with an alternative set of artistic models to those Romantic literary ones which are usually assumed to be of primary importance to his art. Specific comparison is made between features of Browning's work and Hogarth's, who was his father's favourite artist. This leads into a consideration of Browning's use of irony, based on principles shared with visual art. The final chapter deals with aspects of Browning's artistic relationship with his friend, Lord Leighton. Throughout, the comparisons of particular poems with paintings are intended rather as examples of Browning's usage than as claims of specific and confined borrowing or influence.

The following study is an examination of Byron's work, his letters and journals as well as his poetry, to discover his poetic theory. While he opposed 'systems and system-spinners' and held as inviolable truth that the poet was not bound by any rules of poetry, Byron nevertheless thought about and commented frequently on those concerns that ordinarily engage aesthetic theorists. It is difficult to think of a poet who left so many observations on the nature of poets, the purpose and value of poetry, the creative process, and the relation between the poet and his audience, without expressing his views in a formalised statement. When his random and often contradictory opinions about poetry are collected together, we have evidence of a poetic theory steadily evolving from his juvenile years towards the inimitable perfection of his final days to demonstrate that Byron took poetry more seriously than has been generally assumed. He has left a fairly comprehensive aesthetics of poetry that shows him sometimes aligned in theory with his contemporaries, at other times adhering to practices of the previous age, but frequently anticipating the views of modern poets. In the end, Byron's poetics is an eclectic theory that serves his personal need to see poetry as a worthwhile action. His final poetic theory was hard-won in contention against his own resistance to a poetic career, against public opinion and his susceptibility to that, and against a publisher concerned for profito. We can trace his poetics through the changes in the early, middle, and last stages, as Byron comes to terms with all the forces which both oppose and goad him on in his longing "to do some good" in the world.