During the late 19th century, arts and literature had a surge of sensory awareness, made manifest through sensory analogy, intersensory metaphor, and synaesthesia. This dissertation explores this phenomenon through a study of five poets and artists: Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Barlas, and Julia Margaret Cameron. Using imaginative sensing, these artists transformed the relationship between artist and observer, assigning greater responsibility to their audience while simultaneously asserting artistic control of their work. Their fascination with sensory mixing and multisensory awareness demonstrates unique ideas about perception and embodiment, ideas that have sparked both controversy and imitation. I begin with a brief history of the condition known as synaesthesia, considering its position as an “abnormal” clinical condition, a desired artistic state of transcendence, and a simple transfer of metaphor. Chapter 1 describes how two French poems brought synaesthesia to public consciousness and prompted a literary movement. In Chapter 2, I explore how poet-painter Dante Rossetti used “acts of attention” and unheard music to demand viewers’ embodied participation. Chapter 3 introduces John Barlas, a relatively obscure British poet who crafted exotic, sensory-laden environments that hovered between the actual and imagined, insisting that the reader use his sensory imagination to participate. Moving to the realm of photography in Chapter 4, I consider Julia Margaret Cameron, whose “out-of-focus” pictures changed photography from a mechanistic technology to high art by incorporating the sense of touch. Historically, the senses have been ranked and separated, with priority given to vision, the sense most associated with reason. I argue that considering the senses as bundles of interconnected experiences and through imagination rather than as isolated methods of physical perception can show how the senses function culturally and give us a much greater understanding of how we process the world. While no time period has regarded the senses with the intensity of the late 19th century, the embodied approach of the era can be applied to our current “sensory revolution” and can impact how we regard technology, cultural studies, and interdisciplinarity. Evaluating how 19th century artists blended the senses through imaginative constructs gives a more thorough explanation of the characteristic sensuality of the period and provides a model for how sensing can function more fully in current endeavors.

This dissertation aims to provide an insight into English country house fiction by twentieth and twenty-first century authors, such as E.M. Forster, Evelyn Waugh, Iris Murdoch, Alan Hollinghurst, and Sarah Waters. The variety of literary depictions of the country house reflects the physical diversification of the buildings in question, from smaller variants to formerly grand residences on the brink of physical collapse. The country house is explored within the wider social and cultural contexts of the period, including contemporary architectural development. Given the exceptionally evocative and integrating properties that the influential theories of Martin Heidegger and Gaston Bachelard attribute to a house in general, it is unsurprising that the concept of the country house has inspired discussion of such a wide spectrum of topics. Its unique centring quality is echoed in the dense intertextuality prominently marking its literary representations, and enables the successful implementation of various temporal idiosyncrasies, which often set the house apart from the habitual passing of time. Within the scope of contemporary fiction, architecture and poetics of space, the country house accentuates different conceptions of dwelling. Consequently, the literary portrayals of the country house can be...

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In the reading of the servants in examples from the period 1920-1950, the servant question is invoked to expose the workings of class. The servants in these narratives of Bowen, Green, Taylor, Waugh, Mansfield and Panter-Downes, lady’s maids, housekeepers, nannies, a butler and a chauffeur, are in thrall to the collective structures of societal ordering, and reluctant with respect to social mobility. Class was not fully being negotiated in this period, in fact little change was visible. Fer example intimacy, such as that between the lady’s maid and her mistress, meant that class confrontation was unlikely. The nanny showed that culturally constructed mechanisms such as nostalgia could be employed to discourage the desire for change. In terms of the socio-historical context any transformation in the make-up of domestic life – that is, the move towards homes without servants - was a fairly gradual business. But, there was a widespread belief in a change that had not really taken place – and that certainly had not taken place within domestic service. Any transformation of society was superficial; the governing ranks would not permit their disempowerment through genuine class change. I contend that the literature supports this perspective. Servants desire subservience; they find comfort in the familiarity of the system of household ranking-by-status. In the process, authority itself is portrayed as being less immutable, more malleable and thereby equipped for the future. In this sense the narratives read in this thesis go to make up a literature of resistance, in refutation of the overwhelming narrative of the time, progressing instead the notion that class must persist with its boundaries intact, as its hegemony is desirable and necessary for the smooth, successful operation of society.

本論文はイギリス20世紀のカトリック作家イーヴリン・ウォー(Evelyn Waugh)(1903-66)の後期作品、主に1940-1960年代に書かれた小説について論じるものであり、とりわけ、彼の最後の作品である『名誉の剣』三部作(the Sword of Honour trilogy)を中心に考察する。本論の考察の目的は、作品が書かれた時代のイギリス社会とウォーの作品との関連性、そして彼が希求した、キリスト教徒としての召命のテーマを探ることである。 / This dissertation is on Evelyn Waugh's (1903-66) later novels, written from 1942, through the Second World War, to 1965, especially on his last ones, the Sword of Honour trilogy. With discussions focusing on the relationship of Waugh's works with British society of the same period, this thesis clarifies the theme of vocation, which is observed in most of his novels. / 博士(英文学) / Doctor of Philosophy in English Literature / 同志社大学 / Doshisha University