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The connection between Romanticism and nationalism, like most aspects of Romanticism, is complex and manifests in diverse ways. This project seeks to examine how Romanticism in Scotland, France and Germany could emphasize individualism and nationalism simultaneously, and seeks to elucidate the ways both these concepts were understood by Romantic scholars. It argues that although the connection between Romanticism and nationalism was not necessary, Romantic sensibilities were often compatible with nationalist theory. Romanticism can thus be said to have laid the theoretical groundwork for the possibility of nationalism, by emphasizing history, imagination and the importance of the collective. However, in all those things the Romantics also focused on the importance of individuals: lauding historical heroes, the imaginative genius of the scholar, and the fulfilment of the individual through belonging to a community. It further argues that the Romantics were influenced by the Enlightenment scholars’ emphasis on the individual, but sought to move away from individualism as a universal principle toward an understanding of individualism that balanced uniqueness and belonging to a particular community. Moreover, it contends that Romantic nationalism can be distinguished from later nineteenth century integral nationalism, by its relative emphasis on the individual, diversity and cosmopolitanism, but that it contained within it elements of, and therefore perhaps the seeds for, more virulent nationalism.

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This thesis discusses the ideals of behaviour which sought to govern family life and which were common currency in England and northern Europe, how they were constructed, and how the late medieval gentry and nobility interacted with them. Hagiography, sermons, and courtesy literature all explicitly sought to influence the views and behaviour of their audiences, whilst the letter collections of the Pastons, Plumptons, Stonors, Celys, and Armburghs offer an insight into the self-perceptions of the recipients of this didactic material. Much of this material has been studied, but it did not exist in a vacuum. Images in books, often marking key moments in a typical life-cycle, supported, extended, even contradicted the notions inculcated by these texts, were increasingly relevant to later medieval daily lives, and both influenced their audience and were used by their audience as a form of self-fashioning. The five chapters of this thesis each explore a different aspect of the medieval lifecycle. Chapters One and Two take the foundation of the household, marriage, as their starting point, discussing courtship and the ideal marriage ceremony, as well as the attributes and behaviour of the ideal spouse. Chapter Three turns to how this household operated on a wider scale, demonstrating how lords were caught between Christ's example and the pressures of lavish lay display when building networks of friendship. Chapter Four considers the genesis of a new generation: how images and texts conveyed sometimes different notions of the ideal mother and father, the location of the household as a place of learning, and the importance of models when shaping the development of the ideal child. Lastly, Chapter Five investigates the end of the lifecycle, death, and how images and texts worked together to propound the central medieval idea of a 'good death'. Consideration is given throughout this thesis to how the norms of behaviour communicated by texts and images may be studied.

The present study focuses on the activity of the Young Communist League (Komsomol) to promote the communist project during the so-called Thaw period in the Soviet Union (1953-1964). The term ‘communist project’ describes the complex temporal triangle in which the relevance of the present was rooted in its relationship to the heroic past and the bright future. Young people were supposed to emulate the heroism of previous generations while fighting remnants of the undesired past. This was presented as a precondition for achieving the communist future. The structure of this study reflects the chronology of the communist project. It analyzes the rhetoric used by the Young Communist League to promote the communist project and explores the strategies used to mobilize youth for building communism. The first chapter focuses on the organizational structure of the Komsomol and assesses its readiness for this task. Despite attempts to strengthen horizontal communication and control, streamline administration and reorganize its structure, the Komsomol remained hierarchal and bureaucratic. The second chapter explores the promotion of past heroism in rituals, social practices and the use of public space. The third chapter is also concerned with the past; it describes the Komsomol’s fight against ‘remnants of the past’, primarily religion and deviant behaviour such as hooliganism, heavy drinking and laziness. The final chapter focuses on the Komsomol’s attempts during the Thaw to bring about the future: its efforts in the economy, moral, political and cultural education, and the realm of leisure.

This thesis examines women’s experiences of, and attitudes towards, motherhood between 1945 and 1970. The thesis is based on ninety-two oral history interviews with women from different locations in Oxfordshire – rural, urban and suburban. Oral history is a methodology that can provide objective information about women’s lives, but also reveals their thoughts and feelings through the subjectivity of their accounts. The thesis forms a qualitative study looking at six aspects of motherhood. The first is the portrayal of motherhood in contemporary social surveys and community studies. The second is the issue of education for motherhood and questions over whether mothering was innate to women or needed to be taught. Thirdly, the thesis investigates maternity care provision and disputes over who should provide it (namely midwives, GPs or consultants); where this care should take place; and whether pregnancy and childbirth were medical conditions at all. Next it discusses theories of child development and discourses of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mothers, in order to look at women’s relationship with authorities on childcare. Then it considers critiques of working mothers and debates over whether women should work outside the home; if so, when they should do so; and what strategies they should employ so that work and motherhood could be combined. Finally it analyses popular conceptions of motherhood, marriage and the family, and how the interviewees related to representations of the ideal mother figure during the immediate post-war decades and beyond. The thesis concludes by demonstrating the real difficulties mothers faced during the period 1945-1970; that interviewees from all types of background shared an understanding of how ‘normal’ women should behave; and also that the stereotyping of the period as one of conservatism before the changes that began in the later 1960s and 1970s means the ways in which women were already organising themselves to improve their lives has tended to be disregarded.