This thesis analyses the constructions of the market in the thought of Adam Smith and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and their relevance for contemporary political philosophy. Combining the history of ideas with systematic analysis, it contrasts Smith’s view of the market as a benevolently designed ‘contrivance of nature’ with Hegel’s view of the market as a ‘relic of the state of nature.’ In two interpretative chapters these two constructions of the market are discussed within the contexts of Smith’s and Hegel’s thought. In three systematic chapters, the relevance of these different constructions for the problems of identity and community, social justice, and different notions and dimensions of freedom is discussed. The first of these chapters argues that the conceptualization of the labour market as a market place for human capital or as a locus for the development of a professional ethos has a deep impact on how one thinks about the relation between individual and community, cutting across the debate between liberals and communitarians. The second systematic chapter shows that the market can be seen either as an instrument for addressing issues of social justice or as an institution against which social justice needs to be realized: for Smith, who thinks that free markets reward virtue and equalize income, it is the former, whereas for Hegel, who holds that free markets lead to unpredictable results and exacerbate social differences, it is the latter. The third systematic chapter addresses the relation between different aspects of liberty and the market. It shows that the market offers both chances and risks for liberty in the sense of individual autonomy, and analyses the relations of the market to positive liberty in a political sense. The concluding chapter draws some broader methodological lessons, arguing for a closer integration of economic and political theory at a ‘less-ideal’ level.

This thesis seeks to offer a clearer understanding of the Jesuit theologians and philosophers who comprised the group known the 'Fourvière Jesuits'. Led by Henri de Lubac and Jean Daniélou, they formed part of the nouvelle théologie, an influential French reform movement that flourished from the 1930s until its suppression in 1950. After identifying a certain lacuna in the secondary literature, this thesis attempts to remedy certain historical deficiencies by constructing a history both sensitive to the wider intellectual, political, economic, and cultural milieu of the French interwar crisis, and that establishes continuity with the Modernist crisis and the First World War. Chapter One examines the modern French avant-garde generations that have shaped intellectual and political thought in France, providing context for a historical narrative of the Fourvière Jesuits more sensitive to the wider influences of French culture. This historical narrative of the Fourvière Jesuits follows four stages. Chapter Two examines the influential older generations that flourished from 1893 to 1914, such as the Dreyfus generation, the generation of Catholic Modernists, and two generations of older Jesuits, which were instrumental in the Fourvière Jesuits' development. Chapter Three explores the influence of the First World War and the years of the 1920s, during which the Jesuits were in religious and intellectual formation, relying heavily on unpublished letters and documents from the Jesuits archives in Paris (Vanves). Chapter Four analyses the crises of the 1930s, the emergence of the Fourvière Jesuits' wider generation, and their participation in the intellectual thirst for revolution. Chapter Five examines the decade of the 1940s, which saw the rise to prominence of the members of the generation of 1930, who, thanks to their participation in the resistance, emerged from the Second World War, with significant influence on the postwar French intellectual milieu.

This thesis probes how recent experimental American "crisis fictions" from authors including Mark Z. Danielewski, Kathryn Davis, and Evan Dara reformulate transatlantic Romantic literary debates about technological and environmental change. Arguing that such texts extend previously theorised ties between Romanticism and postmodernism, it identifies enduring ties between late-postmodern accounts of crisis and those of Romantic predecessors. Responding to the upheavals of digital revolution and ecological risks, these texts, published between 1995 and 2012, inventively engage several linchpin constructs in transatlantic Romantic writing: chiefly, the imagined supersession of subjective and temporal boundaries; a sense that the natural and non-human world is of crucial importance; and a reliance on idioms of sublimity to suggest the unrepresentability of the aforementioned crises. Although numerous critics have traced similarities between Romantic and postmodern modes, this thesis considers those resonances as deeper questions of cultural and literary history. It proposes to more carefully historicise the Romantic intellectual heritage in late postmodernism, identifying intermediating moments that inform contemporary accounts of crisis. It unearths how late postmodern technocultural and environmentalist imaginaries were always already Romantic. Deeply informed by countercultural, mid-century American movements and ideas that themselves drew significantly from transatlantic Romanticism, contemporary figurations of upheaval, syncretically figured in mid-century publications such as the Whole Earth Catalog, are indebted to both Romantic and neo-Romantic heritages. This thesis additionally argues that the digital revolution and unprecedented environmental crisis act as pressures on postmodern literary practices from the mid-1990s onward. Digital speeding and a looming sense of ecological risk register as even earlier crises than the terrorist attacks of "9-11", requiring a recalibration of what the postmodern might mean and do. Crucially, in their preoccupation with embodied realities and environments, including natural ones, the contemporary narratives examined here diverge from the assumption that the natural world bears little importance in postmodern fields of representation. Finally, many recent literary experiments figure themselves as materially participating in the technological and medial systems they respond to; formal experimentation is, accordingly, another centre of interest. This research examines how select texts deploy formal strategies to "materially instantiate" Romantic ideas, to borrow Katherine Hayles's term. Although numerous critics have suggested that Romantic discourse permeates digital cultural imaginaries, existing scholarship devotes little attention to how formal experimentation intersects with narrative strategies.

This thesis examines the articles the Brazilian writer Lima Barreto (1881-1922) published in the popular satirical magazine Careta. It argues that Careta epitomises Lima Barreto’s aim to create social impact through literature, as it provided him with the largest readership he enjoyed in his lifetime, reaching hundreds of thousands of readers weekly nationwide and internationally. The thesis expands the knowledge about the strategies Lima Barreto used to convey his ideas, showing how he endeavoured to engage with mass audiences in order to combat social fragmentation and intellectual alienation in early twentieth century Brazil. The significance of this thesis is evident on two levels. First, I demonstrate throughout the chapters that Barreto fully engaged with Careta to convey his ideas to a mass audience, choosing the magazine as his main periodical voice in the last years of his life. This argument challenges the idea that Lima Barreto was a marginal writer in the First Republic. Second, the originality of this thesis lies in locating and uncovering almost one hundred and fifty hitherto unknown texts, most of them published pseudonymously in Careta. Chapter one discusses the militancy of Barreto's works. Chapter two argues that Barreto elected magazines, more than newspapers, to convey his message to a large audience. Chapter three relates the early history of Careta. Chapter four suggests that Barreto incorporated pictorial strategies into his articles. Chapter five argues that Barreto embraced Careta's central theme derived from the Commedia dell'Arte. Chapter six discusses systematically the pseudonyms attributed to Barreto in Careta and provides robust evidence that he published many hitherto unknown texts pseudonymously. Finally, I conclude that Careta encapsulates Barreto's efforts to reach a mass readership and communicate with readers beyond literary circles.

The aim of the present study is to paint an overall picture of how Voltaire interacted with the books that made up his personal library. Situated at the crossroads between history of the book, literary history and literary studies in the standard meaning of the term, it seeks to deepen our understanding of the ways in which Voltaire used his books and of the different types of notes that he left in them. These notes are of course texts in themselves – short ones, to be sure, but texts all the same – and their material, literary and polemical significance have never before been studied in depth. We begin by classifying the marginalia according to the function they seem to have played for Voltaire and, based on their material characteristics, by developing methodologies to analyse these short manuscripts, along with the non-verbal markings that accompany them. An analysis follows of the ways in which Voltaire used the white spaces in his books, then of the links that can be established between the signs of his reading and the genesis of his published works. Finally, we study the poetics of the marginal notes as well as the dynamics at work in the annotated library as a whole. Throughout, Voltaire’s notes and reading habits are placed in the context of the critical literature that has grown up around the subject of marginalia. Along the way, we compare his marginal notes to those of other literary figures of the period, for the subject of this study is clearly the marginalia of a writer, which are necessarily inextricably linked to his principal activity – writing. Indeed, one might speak of an interpenetration, of a blurring of boundaries between reading and writing. Beyond the marks of Voltaire's reading, the study of marginalia raises questions that are relevant for other non-canonical and paratextual materials. To place them in the spotlight transforms their status, and a note that was 'marginal' comes to be considered a text in its own right.

Alors que la Première Guerre mondiale fait encore rage, le banquier et philanthrope Albert Kahn, crée, en 1916, le Comité national d’études sociales et politiques (CNESP). Composé d’intellectuels français, le CNESP se réunit une fois par semaine, et ce, jusqu’en 1931, afin de discuter des plus chauds sujets de l’heure. Résolument tourné vers l’international, ce comité, bien que les membres soient exclusivement Français, reçoit un nombre important de conférenciers étrangers et s’intéresse grandement à ce qui se passe à l’extérieur des frontières de la France. Ce mémoire, qui s’inscrit dans les courants de l’histoire internationale et l’histoire intellectuelle, met l’accent sur cet intérêt pour les sujets internationaux et étudie la conception que se fait le CNESP de l’internationalisme durant la période de l’entre-deux-guerres. L’analyse des procès-verbaux des rencontres révèle que le comité a une vision de l’international qui s’exprime sur deux niveaux. D’abord, il entrevoit l’international comme quelque chose d’objectif : le système international doit être organisé selon les principes de paix par le droit et les problèmes à caractère global doivent être solutionnés selon les méthodes objectives de la science. Ensuite, l’étude des considérations subjectives derrière de telles prétentions d’objectivité dévoile une conception de l’international qui est influencée par une forte croyance en l’universalisme des valeurs françaises. La conception de l’international génère donc une dynamique d’exclusion qui s’exprime plus particulièrement à travers un langage métaphorique lié à la famille. / During the heat of the Great War, Albert Kahn, banker and philanthropist, founded the Comité national d’études sociales et politiques (CNESP). Bringing together members of the French elite, the CNESP held meetings every week until 1931, to hold intellectual discussions about current affairs. Even though the members were exclusively French, the committee invited a considerable number of international speakers. This thesis, whose fields of research are linked to those of intellectual history and international history, places emphasis on this committee’s interest in international topics and studies its conceptualization of internationalism during the interwar period. This survey of the CNESP’s meetings reveals that the committee had a vision of internationalism that was expressed on two different levels. First, the committee understood the international as an objective structure: the international system had to be organized around principles of law and international problems had to be resolved by the objective methods of science. Second, study of the subjective considerations behind those pretentions of objectivity reveals that the conceptualisation of internationalism was influenced by a strong belief in the universalism of French values. This conceptualisation of internationalism therefore implies dynamics of exclusion that are expressed more particularly through a metaphoric discourse linked to the family.

This thesis compares the interaction of philosophy and literature in Plato and Lucretius. It argues that Plato influenced Lucretius directly, and that this connection increases the interest in comparing them. In the Introduction, I propose that a work of philosophical literature, such as the De Rerum Natura or a Platonic dialogue, cannot be fully understood or appreciated unless both the literary and the philosophical elements are taken into account. In Chapter 1, I examine the tradition of literature and philosophy in which Plato and Lucretius were writing. I argue that the historical evidence increases the likelihood that Lucretius read Plato. Through consideration of parallels between the DRN and the dialogues, I argue that Plato discernibly influenced the DRN. In Chapter 2, I extract a theory of philosophical literature from the Phaedrus, which prompts us to appreciate it as a work of literary art inspired by philosophical knowledge of the Forms. I then analyse Socrates’ ‘prelude’ at Republic IV.432 as an example of how the dialogue’s philosophical and literary teaching works in practice. In Chapters 3 and 4, I consider the treatment of natural philosophy in the Timaeus and DRN II. The ending of the Timaeus is arguably an Aristophanically inspired parody of the zoogonies of the early natural philosophers. This links it to other instances of parody in Plato’s dialogues. DRN II.333-380 involves an argument about atomic variety based on Epicurus, but also, through the image of the world ‘made by hand’, alludes polemically to the intelligently designed world of the Timaeus. Through an examination of Plato’s and Lucretius’ polemical adaptation of their predecessors, I argue that even the most seemingly technical passages of the DRN and the Timaeus still depend upon literary techniques for their full effect. The Conclusion reflects briefly on future paths of investigation.

After graduating from the Literae Humaniores course, which after the mid-nineteenth century came to revolve around Plato’s Republic, Walter Pater’s (1839-1894) professional duties spanning thirty years at Oxford were those of a philosophy teacher and lecturer of Plato. This thesis examines Pater’s deep engagement with Platonism in his work, from his earliest known piece, “Diaphaneitè” (1864), to his final book, Plato and Platonism (1893), treating both his criticism and fiction, including his studies on myth. Plato is an ideal philosopher, critic, and artist to Pater, exemplifying a literary craftsman who blends genres with the highest authority. Platonism is a point of contact with several of Pater’s contemporaries, such as Arnold and Wilde, from which we can take new measure of their critical relationships regarding aestheticism and Decadence. Pater’s idea of aesthetic education takes Platonism for its model, which heightens one’s awareness of reality in the recognition of form and matter. Platonism also provides a framework for critical encounters with figures across history, such as Wordsworth, Michelangelo and Pico della Mirandola in The Renaissance (1873), Marcus Aurelius and Apuleius in Marius the Epicurean (1885), and Montaigne and Giordano Bruno in Gaston de Latour (1896). In the manner Platonism holds that soul or mind is the essence of a person, Pater’s criticism, evident even in his fiction, seeks the mind of the author, so that his writing enacts Platonic love. Through close reading, we highlight his many references to Plato, identify Platonic subjects and themes, and explore etymological nuances in the very selection of his words, which often reveals a Platonic tendency of refinement towards immateriality, from seen to unseen beauty. As a teacher and an author Pater helped shape Oxonian Platonism, and through his writing we examine how Platonism informs his philosophy of aesthetics, history, myth, epistemology, ethics, language, and style.

This study traces the intellectual and political itinerary of the review La Relève, an influential cultural journal in 1930s and ‘40s Quebec, in order to explore broader trends within francophone Catholicism in the middle decades of the twentieth century. La Relève enjoyed a unique role as a propagator of French Catholic thought in Quebec due to its close ties with the prominent French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain. In the early ‘30s, members of the Relève group espoused a militant Catholicism with conservative-minded nationalist sympathies. The group’s encounter with Maritain in October 1934, however, moved La Relève towards a more communitarian Catholicism which was open to social and religious pluralism. During the later ‘30s, the Relèvistes would display a new interest in democratic forms of politics, reflecting the larger ‘democratic turn’ evident amongst many francophone Catholic intellectuals. In examining this shift, this study argues that the progressive Catholicism embraced by La Relève remained strongly rooted in longstanding Catholic social teachings and mentalities, thereby shedding light upon the political trajectory of the larger French Catholic Revival during this period. The emergence of a ‘Left’ Catholicism in France and Quebec was the result of a gradual and often contradictory process in which new attempts to engage with pluralism, democracy and human rights were heavily influenced by the traditionally anti-liberal and anti-individualistic perspectives of Catholic social and political thought. This study also examines the social and cultural environment of Catholic intellectual engagement in Quebec during this period, focusing upon the role played by friendship in defining the experiences of the Relève circle during the 1930s and ‘40s. Initially the product of a close-knit and often cliquish group of former schoolmates, La Relève provided a forum for masculine solidarity and shared intellectual and religious pursuits. The Relèvistes' conception of friendship expanded over the course of the decade, reflecting their exposure to the ideas of the French Catholic intelligentsia, for whom the idea of friendship signalled a wider community bound together by common religious, social and political goals. During the war years, the Relève group came to play a new role within the larger francophone Catholic intellectual community, founding a publishing company which printed numerous anti-fascist Catholic authors. In the postwar period, however, contact with the European intellectual milieu diminished, as the review closed in 1948 and the Relèvistes embraced new trends in Catholic thought which ultimately distanced them from Maritain. However, intellectual engagement with French Catholic thought would continue on in Quebec through the review Cité libre, which would play an important role in shaping politics and society in Quebec and Canada during the later twentieth century.

This thesis examines the role that scholarly digests and commentaries played in the formation of legal rules in the Muslim legal institution known as the madhhab. I posit that a shared approach to legal rule-determination, and the respect of juristic precedent that it entails, underlies the jurisprudential processes of all of the four post-classical Sunni madhhabs (the Ḥanafī, Mālikī, Shāfi'ī, and Ḥanbalī), and unites them in a wider ‘madhhab-law tradition’. Taking the Ḥanafī madhhab as a case study, the thesis analyses a commentary written by the late Mamluk jurist Ibn Quṭlūbughā (d. 879/1474) upon the digest of the celebrated Abbasid-era Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Qudūrī (d. 428/1037). In discussing the madhhab's heritage of precedent, Ibn Quṭlūbughā's commentary weaves an intricate tapestry of quotations and references from previous jurists and works, providing us with insight into how author-scholars reacted to, and interacted with, other jurists over space and time. Chapter 1 provides a short introduction to the lives of Qudūrī and Ibn Quṭlūbughā, and the contexts within which they produced their works. Chapter 2 employs both quantitative and qualitative analysis of the commentary, in order to deduce historical and geographical patterns out of which a periodisation of rule-determination in the Ḥanafī madhhab is proposed. In Chapter 3, Ibn Quṭlūbughā's jurisprudential theory of rule-determination is studied, examining both the justifications and the processes employed by jurists in arriving at a legal rule in the Ḥanafī madhhab. Chapter 4 then turns to the craft of commentary itself, analysing over eighty case examples for the logical relationships, rhetorical devices, and legal arguments that inform the actual practice of rule-determination through commentary. A final chapter then summarises the conclusions, and situates them within a broader discussion as to the nature of the madhhab-law tradition.